One of the latest Caracas Chronicles post: "The dictatorship canard" got me thinking. The post speaks about the language some opposition speakers uses by calling president Chavez a dictator when in the strict sense of the word, he is not, not yet.
After reading it, I googled the word "dictator" and "dictatorship" in my blog, trying to find an ocassion when I explicitally reffered to the president as an actual dictator. But I couldn't find it. According to Google, I only mentioned the word in four entries (out of 111, without counting this one, that I have wrote so far): in one I spoke about "clear dictatorial tendencies" (means, Chavez is tending to become a dictator, I did not say he already is), on another I quoted a chant I heard at one demonstration that said "People! Grow up! This is a dictatorship!" but never made a stance on that quote; and the other two I use the word to refer to past dictatorship such as the Pérez- Jiménez one.
My conscience is clear. I did not fall in the tramp of calling something for what is not. Even counting that my blog is far more sentimental than analytical, this quick evaluation of its contents says that sometimes unknownly, I have done my best to speak in the name of the truth.
When you live here you are exposed to radical situations, and radical opinions on those situation and its quite hard to keep it real, to keep a stance that does not comes from Globo- paranoia (Globovision is the only opposition TV Channel that remains with an open signal) or from the equaly distorted and violent speech praised by the president.
But beyond those dangers I truly think that Chavez is not a dictator but he is not a democrat either. Time will only tell if Venezuela will stop being what it is: a some sort of democracy corrupted to become what some people want and others fear: an actual dictatorship. Chavez is not a dictator... yet.
And while we are all living inside this "yet", while are all warning others about the proximity of that "yet", while we are acussing others of claiming that this "yet" is coming sooner than when its actually coming; it seems to me that we might need to stop considering dictatorships with the model of the Soviet Union or the Cono Sur. The enemies of a democratic system can come under new signals, under new tools, under new ways to attempt against civil rights. They might don't use the same open horrible extreme tools to preserve a regime, as their predecessors had. What I fear the most is that they might don't even need those tools. But they hold the same intentions.
At the end the language can be tricky in two ways: one, to speak using the word starting with a D can make us fall in a lie, in a paranoid speech that make us loss credibility but if we avoid the D word we might lose it, when its meaning stops being the "no.. yet" and will finally come, as everyone warned but no one really prevent it, to slap us in our faces.
After reading it, I googled the word "dictator" and "dictatorship" in my blog, trying to find an ocassion when I explicitally reffered to the president as an actual dictator. But I couldn't find it. According to Google, I only mentioned the word in four entries (out of 111, without counting this one, that I have wrote so far): in one I spoke about "clear dictatorial tendencies" (means, Chavez is tending to become a dictator, I did not say he already is), on another I quoted a chant I heard at one demonstration that said "People! Grow up! This is a dictatorship!" but never made a stance on that quote; and the other two I use the word to refer to past dictatorship such as the Pérez- Jiménez one.
My conscience is clear. I did not fall in the tramp of calling something for what is not. Even counting that my blog is far more sentimental than analytical, this quick evaluation of its contents says that sometimes unknownly, I have done my best to speak in the name of the truth.
When you live here you are exposed to radical situations, and radical opinions on those situation and its quite hard to keep it real, to keep a stance that does not comes from Globo- paranoia (Globovision is the only opposition TV Channel that remains with an open signal) or from the equaly distorted and violent speech praised by the president.
But beyond those dangers I truly think that Chavez is not a dictator but he is not a democrat either. Time will only tell if Venezuela will stop being what it is: a some sort of democracy corrupted to become what some people want and others fear: an actual dictatorship. Chavez is not a dictator... yet.
And while we are all living inside this "yet", while are all warning others about the proximity of that "yet", while we are acussing others of claiming that this "yet" is coming sooner than when its actually coming; it seems to me that we might need to stop considering dictatorships with the model of the Soviet Union or the Cono Sur. The enemies of a democratic system can come under new signals, under new tools, under new ways to attempt against civil rights. They might don't use the same open horrible extreme tools to preserve a regime, as their predecessors had. What I fear the most is that they might don't even need those tools. But they hold the same intentions.
At the end the language can be tricky in two ways: one, to speak using the word starting with a D can make us fall in a lie, in a paranoid speech that make us loss credibility but if we avoid the D word we might lose it, when its meaning stops being the "no.. yet" and will finally come, as everyone warned but no one really prevent it, to slap us in our faces.