Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died today after a long battle with cancer at the age of 58. One of the most polarizing figures of the past twenty years, Chavez in many ways assumed the mantle of Fidel Castro as the standard bearer for radical leftism/socialism throughout Latin America- which made him a key figure in a region struggling for identity after the collapse of the so-called Washington Consensus of the late 80s and early 90s.
I'll be honest: I didn't like Chavez. I thought he was anti-democratic, thuggish in his treatment of the opposition in Venezuela and took a country with a rich history of democratic stability and damn near pissed it all away. I didn't like his brand of leftism- I felt it was dated, tired and with the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the state lead socialist regimes in Eastern Europe, proven ineffective in the extreme.
But he fascinated me- I about fell in love with the whole damn region after reading this excellent book about the History of the Latin American left by Jorge Castaneda. I preferred the leftism of Da Silva and Bachalet more than Chavez and Ortega- and I think history will show that the more moderate, pragmatic leftism practiced by Brazil and Chile will come out ahead of the more radical, dangerous, anti-democratic leftism seen in Nicaragua and Venezuela.
A controversial figure in life, he'll undoubtedly be a controversial figure in death as well- and one can only hope given America's peripheral involvement in some damn fool coup attempt a few years back, we'll give a hearty endorsement to real democratic elections and then shut the hell up.
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