'I'm a socialist. I will infect you'

The World According to Chávez By: Jonathan Steele and Duncan Campbell - The Guardian Friday, May 19, 2006 venezuelanalysis.com

But it is in South America where Chávez has most support. His hero is the great - if ultimately unsuccessful - Latin American, Simón Bolívar: Chávez wants to realise the Bolivarian dream of continental integration and independence. He has already had his country renamed the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, a decision ratified by the electorate in a referendum. But Venezuela is unique in Latin America in being blessed with such vast amounts of oil. Even sympathetic analysts of Chávez's pro-poor policies wonder whether they really amount to a model for the rest of the continent. Surely Venezuela is an exception, with no direct lessons to offer its regional neighbours?

Chávez takes issue with that. Countries with natural resources have to take control of them, he says; narrow ruling elites and foreign investors have exploited them for too long, making super-profits for themselves. The Venezuelan governments which were in charge during the last era of high world oil prices in the 1970s wasted much of the revenue on patronage, corruption, macro-economic mismanagement and boom-bust spending. Washington's hostility to Chávez began when Venezuela's president sought to take control of his country's oil industry and stopped it being privatised. He thoroughly applauds Bolivia's new president Evo Morales for nationalising Bolivia's gas fields...

Some supporters suggest that the Venezuelan president's government is classic top-down paternalism, heavily dependent on the energy, charm and goodwill of the president himself. Chávez denies this. "Our participatory democracy is getting more solid every day," he says. "We have urban land committees, health committees, environmental committees, groups running savings banks, as well as elected local councils. Never in our history has Venezuela had such autonomous powers as we have today. It is different from the former neo-liberal model."

At an enthusiastic rally in London's Camden Centre on Sunday afternoon, Chávez delighted the crowd during his marathon three-and-a-half-hour speech by taking the same metaphor further. A few years ago, few people dared to call themselves socialists, he says. Now it is different. "We have to marshal our ideas for a better world. We have to infect people. Let's have a badge, saying, 'I'm a socialist. I will infect you'."