Venezuela's President Chavez wins hearts and minds in London

by Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Enthusiasm for Hugo Chavez was not simply limited to the politically committed -- captains of industry were there to cheer on the Latin American leader too

Few visitors who come to London without being able to speak English can have had such an effect on such a great variety of people as President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has just had here.

In the course of the hectic 48 hours that his presidential Airbus was on the ground, the leader of one of the world's biggest oil producers threw himself into one public meeting after the other and fitted in interviews for newspapers, radio and television and consultations with political leaders and captains of industry.

The effect he had on his hearers was remarkable, despite the fact that most had to understand him through the simultaneous translation they received through the little hand-held wirelesses they were provided with at the different venues.

Chavez's excursions into English were limited to "Good afternoon" and "I love you" a couple of times. He started with a meeting in the workaday surrounding of Camden Town Hall in north London which Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, chaired for him on May14 with hundreds of politically committed people, many of them young and many of them Latin American.

He continued in the baroque grandeur of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall near the Houses of Parliament the following day with the cream of British business with connections to the region. His long, forceful speeches were received with surprise and the enthusiasm.

When he took off on May16 for Algeria and Libya, the big producers of oil and gas in North Africa, those who had heard him had much to think about.

His stay to Britain, billed as private, came after a visit to Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican and to Vienna where the president of the EU was hosting one of the periodical summit meetings of Caribbean, European and Latin American heads of state.

This visit to London, unlike a previous one however, did not include a call on Queen Elizabeth II or British Prime Minister Tony Blair, though he conveyed his respectful greeting to them. It could hardly have been otherwise since earlier this year Blair had been scathing about the Venezuelan's friendship with Cuban President Fidel Castro when he replied to a question put to him in the House of Commons by one of the growing number of members of parliament who are Chavez's British supporters.

The messages Chavez delivered at Camden and Whitehall which lasted three-and-a-half hours and two hours respectively were unashamedly critical of neo-liberal ideas espoused by the government of the US and such bodies as the World Bank and the IMF.

He was particularly critical of US President George W. Bush, Blair's main ally, whom he accuses of backing the violent opposition in Venezuela and of supporting those in the US who want to finish with him and his government by any method, legal or illegal.

Though the two countries are mutually dependent on the flow of 1,500,000 barrels of crude oil which Venezuela supplies every day to the US, relations are strained, a point which was underlined by Washington as it announced a ban on the supply of US arms to Chavez while he was in London.

The Venezuelan leader went on to launch a defense of the sort of democratic socialism practiced in his country where, despite the success of a group of right wingers who overthrew him for 48 hours and proclaimed a dictatorship in 2002. In a series of clean election victories he has demonstrated his high levels of support among the majority who are sunk in poverty in an oil-rich country and who are just beginning to benefit from his massive new spending on social programs.

Chavez acknowledged the help he has received from Castro who has sent some 20,000 doctors and other medical staff to bring free health services throughout the country where none had existed before. Civil liberties and an aggressively free press have been maintained in Venezuela in contrast to the situation in the many dictatorships which over the years the US has supported in a region which was once known as "Washington's back yard."

His political message and his willingness to hold gatherings and meet the public at Camden endeared him to many young British people and many of the numerous ill-paid Latin American migrants in London.

It contrasted markedly with the somewhat lifeless political discourse in Britain and unwillingness of British political leaders to mingle with the electorate for fear of awkward questions or "for security considerations."

For British industrialists and bankers gathered in the gilded splendor of the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, Chavez had further endearments. While he urged them not to be afraid of what he calls "20th century socialism" he went on to appeal to Britain, which had done so much to help Latin America to free itself of Spanish domination two centuries ago, to return with investment and know-how.

Reminding them that Venezuela's cash reserves came to more than US$30 billion and its oil reserves were the world's largest, he invited them into such projects as four new underground railway systems, a natural gas pipeline to link Venezuela with Argentina -- crossing the Amazon River and Brazil on the way -- and vast new petrochemical schemes.

Not for nothing did the businessmen and bankers stand up and cheer when the stocky man in the well-cut suit and the red tie finished his speech. He wants to come back this way.

"I want to go to Ireland very soon," he told me."