Aletho News

Oscar Heck: This is one of the main reasons why I love Venezuela …

VHeadline commentarist Oscar Heck | November 12, 2010

I’ve been thinking about Venezuela, as I often do. I live here most of the year, sometimes in the shantytowns of Caracas, sometimes along the Caribbean coast and sometimes inland, either in the Andes or near the Venezuela/Colombia border, south of Lake Maracaibo. It is a wonderful country with wonderful people, although I suppose that one could say the same thing about any other place on earth, depending on one’s point of view.  But I love Venezuela.

I fell in love with Venezuela … and with my wife, who is Venezuelan … almost thirty-five years ago.  As it happened, and without my consent, I was born in Canada, the result of love-making between a French Canadian father and a Latina mother … in the days when there were very few “mixed” marriages.  When growing up in Canada, I was treated as an outcast by most teachers and by most adults, especially when they discovered that my mother was a Native … which “explained” why I had, unlike the vast majority of children in Canada at the time, jet-black straight hair, dark eyes and darker skin. As I grew up I dreamed of going away, anywhere where my skin color did not matter … but, alas, as I have so far discovered, after having been in 34 countries, skin color does matter, almost anywhere in the world, although to differing degrees.

Here in Venezuela, skin color matters, especially to many of those of lighter shades, meaning, those of European ancestry.  It is much the same in Canada, but with one marked difference. In Canada, the majority are whiter-skinned and the minority are darker-skinned. In Venezuela, the vast majority of the people, unlike what one may believe when watching “Miss Universe,” are darker-skinned. (We are not told this in the media or in travel brochures.) The minority, about 20%, are whiter-skinned … and they hold most of the “wealth” in the country. To most whiter-skinned Venezuelans, that is, to the minority, darker-skinned Venezuelans, the majority, are essentially uneducated laborers, thieves or drunks … and to many whiter-skinned Venezuelans, darker-skinned Venezuelans are “monkeys from the hills,” as they are sometimes called. As an aside, Globovision, one of Venezuela’s “news” media outlets (copycatting CNN, as far as I can see), alluded to this a few years ago, when openly and laughingly comparing, live on TV, Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s President, to the monkey-people from Planet of the Apes. (You can search for the date of this event by searching “oscar heck mugabe” on the VHeadline.com search engine.)

Most “middle-class” and wealthy Venezuelans, the minority, live in huge homes or apartment buildings surrounded by barb-wired and electrified, ten-to-twelve- foot (or higher) fences or walls equipped with armed guards in order to “protect” themselves from the “ignorant, thieving savages.” We are not told about this in the media outlets which many non-Venezuelans read, hear or watch … Venezuelan media outlets such as El Universal, El Nacional, Tal Cual, Venevision, RCTV, Globovision (and many others) … or “trusted” non-Venezuelan media outlets such as CNN … or Fox, The Economist, CTV, the BBC, The Globe and Mail, and so on and so forth …

… even documentaries misrepresent reality …

(Why, just yesterday we were stuck in traffic in the bus in Las Mercedes, one of Caracas’ “trendy” USA-copycat mid-to-upper class districts, and my jaw fell to the floor – but I picked it up — as I watched people going in and out of a specialized car dealership which sells armoured private vehicles, such as bullet-proof SUVs. I was wondering, “What kind of society buys and sells armoured vehicles at a local car dealership? Why would anyone need an armoured vehicle? What kind of people drive around in these?)

So why would I love Venezuela?

Because I live and work with the majority, with the poorer, darker-skinned, more “normal” people … with “El Pueblo.”

For centuries, since the time when the Europeans left the fetid, disease-filled, crime-ridden and overcrowded lands which they inhabited, in order to “discover” (or rather plunder) other territories – which already existed and were inhabited by millions – the average Venezuelan, the majority, has been exploited, firstly as slaves, and then as meagrely-paid slave-wagers. We were never taught that in history class … and the mass-media certainly doesn’t say anything about this … and this not only applies to Venezuela, but to perhaps as much as 80% of the territory of the earth we live on.

No wonder Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s democratically-elected President, became (and is still) so popular with the majority of Venezuelans.

Chavez knows that Venezuela was not “discovered” by Europeans. It already existed, and so did a large population of people inhabiting these lands, many of whom were massacred and raped and maimed by Europeans … and many of whom died from the Europeans’ filth-induced diseases, some of those diseases being intentionally transmitted to the Natives in order to “get rid of the savages.” Those who were spared were to be “white-cized” with the convenient excuse of being “Christianized.” We were never taught this in history class, were we? But Chavez speaks of such things …

Chavez knows that this “get rid of the savages” or “white-cize them” mentality still exists today in Venezuela, as it does in any part of the world where the Europeans have set foot. In Canada, for example, the Europeans were “nice to the savages,” but only after slaughtering hundreds of thousands (and perhaps millions). Being “nice to the savages” was to “give” them small portions of basically useless land, which the Europeans had stolen from the Natives in the first place, on which to live. “Being nice to the savages” was to also kidnap the Native children from the tepees and ship them off like animal-cargo to white Christian torture schools, conveniently called “residential schools.” For those who are interested, especially the younger generation who wishes to learn some truth, research “residential schools in Canada” on the web. You will be amazed at the fact that until the last generation (the 1970s), these “legal” white Christian and governmental torture-and-rape centers still existed and operated amongst us “fantastically civilized” Canadians. We were never taught this in history class … and I took history lessons in the 1970s! And still, in Canada, such facts are obscured by politicians, by the media, by the educational system and by Canadian society as a whole. In Venezuela, when Chavez talks, he speaks openly about such similar facts. He is not scared to speak the truth. The new system of education in Venezuela tries to bring to light the truth, or as much of it as possible … instead of conveniently hiding it.

Chavez knows that exploitation, war, theft, lies, dishonesty, deceit, individualism, selfishness, consumerism and repression of the masses are all symptoms — or rather mechanisms — of capitalism. I would go beyond that and include “legal” murder and rape as well, which are used in “legal” capitalist warfare (especially against the darker-skinned) … and I would also include the use of the Christian religion for capitalist purposes.

How come the prime minister of Canada doesn’t talk about such issues openly? Why does Chavez?

This is one of the main reasons why I love Venezuela … besides the heat, the warmth of the people, the fabulous landscapes, its mysteries, the Caribbean coast, the magic …

oscar.heck@vheadline.com

November 15, 2010 - Posted by aletho | Supremacism, Social Darwinism, Timeless or most popular