4-10-07, 9:10 am
Book Review: Cowboy in Caracas: A North American's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution by Charles Hardy Willimantic, CT, Curbstone Press, 2007
Almost all of the recent books about Venezuela focus on the big changes at the top – the government of President Hugo Chavez and the new ministries and social programmes or the coups, sabotage and propaganda by local oligarchs and US imperialism.
But the most significant transformation there has been happening at the grass roots. It was millions of the poorest people in the world who voted for this radical, peaceful process and who have since had to defend it with their lives.
Former Catholic priest Charles Hardy was sent to Venezuela 20 years ago from the US by the Maryknoll Missionaries, which has a left-wing reputation and is sympathetic to the religion's liberation theology tendency.
For much of that time, he has lived in Nueva Tacagua, a poor neighbourhood barrio on the hilltop outskirts of the capital Caracas, as an integral part of the community. As such, he's been both an eyewitness and a participant on the front line of the poverty wars.
Hardy was there in 1989 when the IMF imposed austerity measures, triggering spontaneous food riots known as the Caracazo, and he was there three years later when Chavez led an armed uprising against the president behind the ensuing massacre.
He describes this history from the point of view of typical slum-dwelling Venezuelans, who have suffered the most from corrupt regimes of the past.
Ironically, for a country awash in oil, the chief priority of the people in his community was water. Hardy was particularly impressed by their practical system of recycling its various degrees of dirtiness.
But clean water from above is plentiful in Venezuela. One year after Chavez's first landslide electoral victory, after weeks of rain, the people went to the polls to approve a new constitution.
The celebrations were marred by the natural calamity of another kind of landslide, as heavily populated mountainsides came loose and tidal waves of boulders, trees and mud erased high-rise buildings, small neighbourhoods and many thousands of lives.
The archbishop of Caracas said that this was God's punishment for the vote.
Few people thought about the constitution after that, yet the little blue book has since become a potent symbol of liberation. It was this peaceful weapon which was waved in the faces of soldiers and police during the 2002 coup and countercoup.
Unfortunately, at least for his readers, Hardy was not in Venezuela during those critical days in April 2002.
But the account by his Venezuelan wife makes gripping grass-roots reporting.
Back in the US, however, he was able to connect with journalists and rebut the right-wing arguments defending the coup, which were pretty much all that the international media were publishing at the time. He found himself more useful to Venezuela outside the country.
Responding to criticism that Chavez has a cult - or religious - following or that he has too much power, Hardy compares the devoutly Catholic president to Moses, adding that they both 'became megaphones for ideas and dreams existing within the ordinary person that had been repressed for too many years.'
After all, what is the new constitution but an updated version of the 10 commandments?
Like Chavez, the author has given a platform to the people's hopes and dreams. Listening to these personal stories is a good way to understand their revolution from below.
From Morning Star
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