A kiss for Condi, Condi

I think Venezuela's Hugo Chávez may have been listening to Steve Earle's "Condi, Condi". He went on TV in one of his famous talks to the nation and recited a rhyme for her. Blowing a kiss toward the camera, he said:

Te mando un beso Condoleezza.
Toma tu beso Condoleezza
y perdóname ésa

[I send you a kiss, Condozleezza
Take your kiss Condozleezza
And pardon me for it]

This was in response to Rice's very public attempt to organize a front of Latin American nations against Venezuela's president, who concluded his rhyme with a warning:


No te metas conmigo Condoleezza,
no te metas conmigo, chica.

[Don't mess with me Condoleezza,
Don't mess with me, girl.]

And he added in prose, "Venezuela es libre y por más que intenten apoyar movimientos internos acá todos los vamos a derrotar". [Venezuela is free and however much someone may intend to support internal [opposition] movements here, we going to defeat all of them.]

You can watch the video clip at the linked article by clicking on Vídeo del programa de Chávez.

The American reporting on Venezuela and its conflict with the Bush administration has been pretty superficial. (Duh!) The Bush administration, installed originally by the Supreme Court's partisan Scalia Five, and which is committed to shooting, bombing and torturing Iraqis into setting up a democracy, thinks that democratic processes in Venezuela are deficient.

I'm genuinely puzzled by the administration's hostility to the Chávez government. I'm confident that the Bush administration has not the least interest in democratic freedoms for the people of Venezuela. They're surely more interested in having a reliably compliant government in charge of one of the world's largest oil producers.

But the Chávez regime has not committed any acts of hostility against the US. Which is arguably admirable restraint on their part, since the US actively supported the failed military coup of 2002 and apparently tried to encourage another one after that.

Nor has it tried to overthrow governments in other Latin American countries, though there have been allegations from the administration that brought us Iraqi WMDs that Chávez' government is supporting anti-government rebels in neighboring Colombia.

He has certainly pissed off a lot of rich people in Venezuela by aggressive measures to asset popular control over the nationally-owned oil company and to open opportunities for workers. (In Latin America, "working class" is still usable in normal political talk.) But does it actually hurt American interests, or threaten us in any way, if some wealthy Venezuelans want to bitch and moan because they can't suck at the public tit of the national oil company as freely as they've been accustomed to doing? If they're like the wealthy in America, they're going to bitch and moan about how hard they have it not matter how well things are going for them.

It just seems crazy to me, after the Bush administration has mobilized virtually the entire Muslim world against the US, and has our democratic allies in Europe freaking out over our foreign policies, to be trying to stir up even more trouble and conflict with Latin American nations, especially one that is one of the world's major oil suppliers.

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