Hugo Chávez: ¿socialista? Por Silvio Rendon

Leemos que Chávez se estaría orientando por el "socialismo". Mejor leamos la página financiera del New Yorker:

SYNERGY WITH THE DEVIL
by James Surowiecki

A year ago, progressive activists and policy wonks descended upon Caracas, Venezuela, for the World Social Forum, a kind of Davos conference for the global left. People packed into the Caracas Hilton to listen to panel discussions on the evils of neoliberalism and the threat posed by U.S. hegemony, and Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, gave a speech to a crowd of some ten thousand in which he called for “socialism or death.” It was a striking demonstration of Chávez’s importance as an anti-capitalist symbol. And yet, only six months earlier, in the very same hotel, Chávez’s government had hosted a rather different meeting of international luminaries. The attendees were American businessmen, and the meeting was a trade fair intended to convince American companies that Venezuela was friendly to foreign investment and eager to expand trade with the U.S.

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Even stranger, Chávez’s demonization of the U.S. has had little or no impact on business between the two countries. The U.S. continues to be Venezuela’s most important trading partner. Much of this business is oil: Venezuela is America’s fourth-largest supplier, and the U.S. is Venezuela’s largest customer. But the flow of trade goes both ways and across many sectors. The U.S. is the world’s biggest exporter to Venezuela, responsible for a full third of its imports. The Caracas skyline is decorated with Hewlett-Packard and Citigroup signs, and Ford and G.M. are market leaders there. And, even as Chávez’s rhetoric has become more extreme, the two countries have become more entwined: trade between the U.S. and Venezuela has risen thirty-six per cent in the past year.

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The paradox is that Chávez’s anti-Americanism is central to his global appeal, while American consumers and companies are central to the economic performance of his regime. So, while he’s going around the world giving speeches about how the goose should be killed, he relies on the golden eggs to keep himself in power. This may seem like a state of affairs that can’t last, and Chávez’s supporters and detractors alike assume that, soon enough, his deeds will begin to live up to his rhetoric: he’ll cut off oil supplies to the U.S., or the like. But deep-seated ideological and political hostility between countries is often less of an obstacle to trade than you might think. Japan, for instance, is South Korea’s second-largest trading partner, despite the fact that Korean resentment toward Japan runs very high, thanks to a long history of Japanese imperialism in the region. China, meanwhile, treats Taiwan as a rebel province, and has threatened military action if it attempts to declare independence, but foreign trade between the two countries totals nearly sixty-five billion dollars. Trade does not, as Enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Paine believed, always bring peace in its wake, “operating to cordialize mankind.” (Think, after all, of the First World War.) But the benefits of trade often excuse even the most grievous of sins. Sometimes, it just makes sense to deal with the devil.
[Vale la pena leerlo completo]

Muy radical Chávez, para algunos, pero un buen socio comercial para otros.....