Blog: How the New York Times Became Irrelevant on Latin America

While regular readers of the New York Times will have noticed its steady march to the right, this article on Hugo Chavez illustrates just how far to the right they have gone.

The NYT has been rattling the sabers against the populist Chavez for years. Their position is so erroneous that they had to find a reactionary ex-pat blogger to articulate the position they have been obliquely illustrating in the months leading up to the election. 

Venezuela, despite what The NYT will have us believe, actually has political structures that are more democratic than our own in the U.S. If we are going to call Venezuela (and lets just throw in all the other Latin American countries whose governments we do not like without providing any evidence: Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba) authoritarian, then the U.S. is in good company.

The author takes a bunch of familiar right-wing cheap shots at Chavez, attributing his popularity to idiosyncratic appeal or skill at manipulation. And the author attributes all matter of political events across the continent as evidence of Chavez's "irrelevance." No time is given at all to real, consistent grassroots support, to the zeal with which rural areas have defended him against coups, strikes, economic and attacks over the years. No time is given to the way he has redistributed income, reduced inequality, and made the poor politically relevant in the country again. No time is given to his real influence in the continent, despite consistent US pressure and attacks. In fact, Venezuela has one of the lowest levels of inequality on the continent. The author's pantheon, Brazil, has the higest.

Throwing around the words dictator, authoritarian and radical without any real analysis to talk about Chavez doesn't give any more validity to that position than Romney asserting his bipartisanship gives any validity to his.

The main ideological battle being waged in Latin America is the one against US arrogance; Not any minor quibbles between Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. The question is not about Chavez's position in Latin America, as the author poses. Rather, it is, when is the US going to drop the Monroe Doctrine and stop destabilizing governments that try to redistribute resources more equally? Perhaps more consequential to The NYT: when will they ever publish anything sensible about Latin America?