Hugo Chavez: what the media are saying

Left Foot Forward looks at the media's reaction to the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Left Foot Forward looks at the media’s reaction to the death of Hugo Chavez

The death of Hugo Chavez is “a body blow for the poor and the oppressed, throughout Latin America and the wider world”, writes George Galloway in today’s Independent.

Meanwhile, fellow Independent Voices writer Owen Jones has penned an article claiming that Hugo Chavez “demonstrated that it is possible to resist the neo-liberal dogma that holds sway over much of humanity”.

The BBC reports that Hugo Chavez has left the Venezuelan economy in a muddle. “So every Venezuelan now has a more equal slice of the cake. The trouble is, that cake has not been getting much bigger.”

“In the ranking of dictators, Hugo Chávez is in the welterweight class,” writes David Pryce-Jones in the Spectator.

The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has given “free rein to fears that Cuba will plunge into an economic abyss again if Caracas halts its subsidies estimated at well above the massive aid that the Soviet Union once provided to Havana”, reports the Miami Herald.

According to the editorial of the same paper, Hugo Chávez leaves behind “a country in far worse condition than it was when he became president, its future clouded by rivals for succession in a constitutional crisis of his Bolivarian party’s making and an economy in chaos”.

“Hugo Chávez strikes me as a familiar type of Latin American caudillo whose career would probably end in tears – his own or other people’s,” writes Michael White in the Guardian.

“With the death of Hugo Chavez, Cuba also lost the longed for great political leader after the slow public demise of Fidel Castro,” reports Isaac Risco in Cuba’s Havana Times.

State-run Islamic Republic of Iran News Network TV said Chavez was “a stubborn enemy of American imperialism in Latin America.”

Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz says that Chavez’s foreign policy was “one big provocation”.

Earlier today we looked at the mixed legacy Chavez leaves behind.

33 Responses to “Hugo Chavez: what the media are saying”

  1. Paul Garner

    What would Galloway know about championing the poor and oppressed? He’s just a cynical, selfish opportunist whose interests begin and end at his own front door.

  2. Mick

    poor little Chavez, the rich, brutal and completely obsessive killer that he was.

    That people in the Left can honour him is disgusting and shows just how close to the NF our mainstream leftists are. The Left claim allsorts of Nick Griffin, but look at them.

    Indeed, remember when 23 Labour MPs signed an early day motion prasising castro, with Harman saying he as a ‘hero of the Left’?

    Bully: http://devilsexcrement.com/2011/01/26/how-a-bully-dictator-like-hugo-chavez-runs-a-country/

    Bloodlust: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/venezuela/9779771/Hugo-Chavez.html

    ‘P*** off Mr. Chips’: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/03/06/hugo_chavez_dead_at_58_good_riddance_303363.html

  3. Mick

    And as a previous article here says, ‘Under Chavez Venezuela forged some pretty unsavory alliances – including the Castro dictatorship in Cuba and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Chavez was also an opponent of the Arab Spring, supporting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi until the end and siding with Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war.’

    Opposition to Arab Spring was good. yet their placement of the fact Chavez destroyed the economy to give cash to people who were scarecely raised out of poverty due to the knock-on effect is in the ‘good’ pile.

  4. Dr Talent

    Thought I’d pop by to see if this blog had closed down yet. No! The Trade Union dollar must still be flowing…………… but a nice surprise………. a new image for the blog. So much better than that deeply heavy purple…………

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