Turning Venezuela into another Cuba/Convertir Venezuela en otra Cuba

Convertir Venezuela en otra Cuba
Desde el comienzo el Presidente Hugo Chávez dijo claramente su plan de convertir Venezuela en un estado Socialista. Las medidas contra la propiedad comenzaron este año, pero ¿cuanto tiempo tomara esto?. Venezuela no es la Cuba de mediados de los años cincuenta. Tiene una clase media, aunque disminuida, que no ha emigrado masivamente, y una cultura de consumo y democrática que ha permeado la sociedad. Aunque la oposición está perdiendo terreno, lo anterior, los conflictos internos del régimen y el desorden pueden hacer que eso no llegue nunca
_______________________________________________________________________________
Turning Venezuela into another Cuba
President Hugo Chávez, from the start, made clear his plans to turn Vene-zuela into a socialist state.

President Hugo Chávez, from the start, made clear his plans to turn Vene-zuela into a socialist state. Measures to curtail property rights that began earlier this year with the British-owned Vestey ranch are now being stepped up. How long will it take to turn this country into another Cuba?
Clearly, it’s taking longer for Chávez to remake Venezuela than it took Castro in Cuba. At the time, Cuba boasted Latin America’s largest middle class; but most salvaged what they could and soon left the country.
Venezuela’s middle class is now smaller and poorer than it was; but except for a large share of the expatriate community, plus a rising number of young professionals, most people stash what money they can abroad without leaving the country.
One reason it’s taking longer to turn Venezuela into a socialist state is that Venezuelans are more in sync with modern society than were Cubans. Also, Venezuelans, even when poor and living in a barrio shack, style themselves as being middle class.
Middle class Venezuelans are more consumer-minded than most Latin Americans. You see it in the country’s per capita consumption of cosmetics, in home appliance and cell phone ownership, in cable TV viewing by barrio dwellers, in the size of local shopping centers and the crowds they attract.
Venezuela also witnessed four successive decades of party politics, an experience the Cubans never had. To be sure, Venezuela’s democracy was far from perfect; and parties encroached on running almost everything, from professional associations to beach clubs. Nonetheless, millions of Vene-zuelans learned how to organize pressure groups, set up a neighborhood association, find a job through a political party, operate factions and splinter groups, and tap a share of the nation’s oil wealth.
Some Venezuelans are models for mankind. Others became adept at deploying corrupt practices. Fueled by U.S.-based mafia dons, corruption permeated Cuba’s Baptista regime. But payoffs never reached down to the average Cuban, or became an everyday practice as in Venezuela.
Venezuelan ways are very unlike those which Castro dealt with as he forged a socialist state in mid-twentieth century Cuba. Ours is a society of shoppers or would-be shoppers. Most need not work too hard, wink at social convention, employ payoffs for just about any public chore, and look to make life easy.
Little wonder that Chávez has brought in Cubans to help run Vene-zuela’s public agencies in health, education, justice, public works, and the armed services, let alone his home guard. But public agencies can’t seem to get their act together even with trained, disciplined, and well paid Cubans.
Opposition groups lose ground and measures to hamper private enterprise are stepped up, but wrangling within the regime’s political machine is getting out of hand. Even Chavista governors, legislators, and mayors now bait each other.
Remaking this country into another Cuba will take time. Thanks to disorderly ways there’s a good chance, one hopes, it may never come to pass.

By Henry Gomez Samper
President, DJ Editorial Council 24/09/05