Since it is anti-intellectual Monday I found the perfect way to ease my bewildered readers in the new week. I have been considering for a while writing a post on the latest insult that Chavez keeps throwing at anyone who does not agree with him: pitiyanki or Yankee lover. But procrastination pays as Romero or the New York Times published last Friday the complete account. Personally I could not agree more with Charito Rojas of Notitarde quoted by Romero: "If being pitiyanqui means loving liberty and progress, science and excellence, then I am a very Venezuelan pitiyanqui".
The amusing thing here is that Chavez is running out of bad words. That is, after having accused us of so many perversions he now must dig into more obscure words, and tries to make them sound like awful insults through his delivery. But it does not work well. The sycophants that surround him have long ago opted at repeating any silly or gross utterance from their leader, as is, without any effort at understanding. And us, well, we have learned long ago not to be vexed and instead take it as a badge of honor. That is how "escualido" eventually left the Chavez vocabulary. That is the curse of people who insult without property, and usually out of place: after a while people stop paying attention, or worse, find it quaint. You know, a little bit like the boy who cried "wolf!" story except that we already have the wolves running the streets of Caracas without Chavez doing a thing about it.
But while Chavez tries to be creative with words he also tries to be creative in much darker ways, such as strengthening his alliance with Russia who has been invited for military exercises in Venezuelan waters. Romero also informs us of that development. This Chavez announcement came a few days after Chavez supported Russia's action in the Caucasus establishing once and for all that some empires are more equal than others. Chavismo of course does not say anything about that, such as they say nothing about Nicaragua's Ortega rape of his step daughter. But we have already amply described here the abjection of chavismo, including its easy qualification of "genocide" for any order measure taken by a non chavista entity whereas real genocides as in Chechnya are totally ignored.
This at least gives us the latest best new word with real meaning when Pedro Llorens of El Nacional called Chavez pitiruso.
PS: "pitiyanki, y a mucha honra" honorable US lover (unless someone finds a better translation).
PS2: I might be a pitiyanki but my team is the Red Sox.
-The end-