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A BRITISHER’S VIEW: Hugo’s curtain call no ‘Chavesty’

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See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.

By Shavana Abruzzo

Brooklyn Daily

Any time a dictator kicks the bucket, it is a step forward for mankind — and one less tyrant on the planet.

Hear that roar? That’s civilization applauding the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the high-handed autocrat and oil czar — make that a former one — who deluded and intimidated his people, while deriding the free world and embracing fellow oppressors like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Chavez branded President George W. Bush “the devil,” former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “little girl,” and British Prime Minister Tony Blair “immoral,” but strong-armed his own people during his 14-year stranglehold on Venezuela.

He grabbed power in a military coup, seized control of the Supreme Court, quelled dissent through armed militias of roving banditos, and ruthlessly shelved his critics. One anti-Chavez news channel was fined $2.1 million last year for its coverage of a prison riot.

Hugo’s legacy is rotten.

He left Venezuela a hugely violent nation, with 53 murders a day reported in 2011. He left it a welfare state, importing more than 70 percent of its food — astounding for a nation that is one of the 10 most biodiverse countries on earth. He left it a paradise few wanted to visit — with just 600,000 tourists recorded there in 2009 — despite boasting the longest Caribbean coastline of any country, the world’s highest waterfall, snow-capped peaks, and lush rainforests. And he left it an environmental disaster, due to extensive logging, mining, and oil extraction that permanently destroyed nearly 30 million acres of forest a year.

He also left it a hell-hole for freedom-lovers.

Daniel Duquenal, who lives in San Felipe and writes the award-winning blog “Venezuela News and Views,” told this column about how Chavez robbed him of his civil rights.

He cannot spend his own money freely: “Currency control forbids me to buy books at Amazon.com.”

State extortion is rife: “[There was] corruption at the harbors where, for a misplaced comma, the government threatened to confiscate the merchandise unless I paid around $30 to a certain military.”

He had problems obtaining a passport: “[It was] impossible to access the mandatory web page with my ID number — eventually I had to pay someone.”

It is not the socialist sanctuary Chavez promoted: “The more we look at it, the more it looks like a warmed up, leftover communism that tries to pretend to be something else.”

Duquenal began his blog in 2002 as letters to friends overseas with the introduction, “Unknowingly, I have written the diary of Venezuela’s slow descent into authoritarianism, the slow erosion of our liberties, the takeover of the country by a military caste, the surrendering of our soul to our inner demons.”

Now he predicts a bleak future.

“His evil is already done, we are screwed,” Duquenal says.

Count on it, if hardliners like interim president Nicolas Maduro have a say.

“Any foreigner who comes to criticize our country will be immediately expelled,” Maduro said as foreign minister in 2008.

His leadership — and that of other Chavistas — can only further degrade an earthly paradise that in 1970 was one of the 20 richest countries in the world, and deserves the right now to live life on terms not set by hooligans.

https://twitter.com/#!/BritShavana

Read Shavana Abruzzo's column every Friday on BrooklynDaily.com. E-mail here at sabruzzo@cnglocal.com.

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