For a Venezuelan, I’ve traveled the world a lot and I am grateful for it; Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. All these different perspectives and if they even know what Venezuela is, you can be sure that the first word that comes to their mind is ”Chávez”. If you must know, Chávez is the previous president who took the power on 1999, legalized re-elections and left in 2013, when he died of cancer. Many of the years with him, to not say all, were considered as authoritarian and we would have a status of ”Partly Free” by the Freedom House Organization.
Why Am I tell you this? Cause you should fear. Since the day 1 of Trump’s campaign, Venezuela felt worried for America and felt the ultimate national Déjà Vu.
Now, don’t take it from me, take it from the MULTIPLE articles of EACH of these: CNN, Univision, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times and the hundreds of news sites out there that openly compare the two characters.
Enrique Krauze, a Mexican essayist and publisher describes Trump as a Latin American Populist and even as a ‘Caudillo’: “His extreme self-inflation, his call for unthinking acceptance of the supposed power of his personality; his ability to keep America safe from the dangers of terrorism, Mexicans and the Chinese, his promises that under his guidance, America will ‘win so much, you may even get tired of winning’ “
We don’t only perceive Trump as a capitalist copy of Chávez in the way he speaks, in his actions, in his words, in his ego, but we also have proof to support the frightening similarity.
1) The populism behavior. The recipe for populism is universal, says The Washington Post. Find a wound common to many, find someone to blame for it, label them and paint yourself as the savior. The United States #1 Problem is racism and that’s exactly what he aimed for. Let’s get honest for a second. Trump didn’t win because of his “excellent economic measures”. He won because there are lots of people out there that was waiting for an opportunity to kick immigrants out of the country. Same way, Chávez was successful in 1998 (may I say, also, not by too much) because of popular masses and nothing else. Chávez has a whole background on seducing and promising the world to the most unfortunate population in Venezuela (Aka: the majority) and so when he told them that one day there was going to be equality and half of the cars, houses and properties of the wealthy and middle class was going to be taken away and given to them just like that, you can imagine the outcome.
John B. Judis in The New York times says: Their populism pitches the idea of a noble section of the people against the idea of an utterly corrupt elite and adapts it into an emotive way to different contexts; The “Anti-Immigrant” for the once again “Great America” and the “Anti-American” (also, anti-capitalism) for the “Revolutionary Venezuela”.
2)The division. I am not an expert on the subject, but I can tell that right now there’s a great polarization in the US. Either you’re a Trump supporter or not. Which maybe great for the president, but it seems like right now politics can be a deal breaker when it comes to socializing while a few years back, maybe the topic didn’t even come up. Venezuela, too, used to be like that. Before Chávez, if your candidate lost, you would celebrate anyway with your buddies that liked the winning party and if your candidate won, you would invite the buddies that liked the looser party over. It didn’t really matter.
Truth is that Venezuela never had discrimination or segregation problems, but nowadays, politics breaks families away and just being around someone that is distinctively from an ideology different that yours (being the options opposition or government) it disgusts everyone.
And just for the record, Trump tweeted about how big it would be a Trump Rally, I don’t mean to scare you, but Chávez constantly convoked Government supporting rallies on the same day opposition rallies were convoked. Get ready!
3)Trump’s and Chavez’s favorite: Twitter! Chavez was the first president to ever use twitter in such an informal and incorrect way. Venezuela’s former dictator even used it to taunt other countries once in a while as told by CNN “I want to add to what was said by our friend the Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin: The United States is a true parasite to the world economy!” Chávez and Chávez Jr especially like to use it as a weapon to the opposition.
“After the disaster that is coming to the opposition the 7-O (October, 7), Hopefully, it will emerge out of their own a true politic leadership. We’ll wait on it!”
Después del desastre que se le viene encima a la oposición el 7-O, ojalá que surja de su seno un verdadero liderazgo Político.Esparamos eso!
— Hugo Chávez Frías (@chavezcandanga) September 8, 2012
Did Crooked Hillary help disgusting (check out sex tape and past) Alicia M become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in the debate?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2016
4) One of the iconic aspects for both of them is offensive declarations, in general, but also to their competition or anyone that threats their authority. Besides the countless times that Hugo manifested his open repudiation towards the opposition (supporters and politicians) in the worst way, the best example for an offensive declaration could be the unforgettable time he even cited the bible to make clear that “Rich people goes to hell, that it’s wrong to be rich and it’s inhumane”. Another great example could be when the female deputy María Corina Machado proposed a debate and in response he publicly mocked her ”An eagle doesn’t hunt flies. You’ll never be president. Ever”. Now, it is not necessary to tell you how outstanding is trump in offensive declarations to women, Mexicans and also, as a reincarnation of Chávez to anyone that competes with him or dares to say something negative about him.
For english subtitles click here
5) TERRIBLE RELATION WITH THE MEDIA!:
Whenever bad news were being spread, Chavez would just say that it was all a part of the ”media war” meaning that the media would twist the truth or that only his bad actions were transmitted in order to create an inconvenient image of him.
This for sure rings a bell, but further than that, BBC news says the relationship between the mainstream media and Mr Trump has long been tense. During his presidential campaign, he banned outlets such as the Washington Post from rallies, attacked broadcasters for not showing on camera how big his crowds were, and encouraged his supporters to boo reporters at his events. Similarly, Chávez also would’t allow news channels that he didn’t like into any kind of political events and for the same reasons.
Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 6, 2017
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
6) YOU CAN’T TAKE THEIR WORD FOR ANYTHING
It takes nothing but some typing and a click to notice how much Chávez and Trump contradict themselves. Jorge Ramos, A Reporter from Univisión called out Chávez about it on a unforgettable video that went viral. He said ” A few time ago, I was checking some file videos and I realized a very important thing. The 5th of december of 1998, the actual president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez lied to me and millions of venezuelans 3 times during an interview. An interview made 1 day before he was elected. Chavez ensured he would give up the power after 5 years, that he would’t nationalize any enterprise and that he wouldn’t take from private hands the TV channels. Very well, today we know that this is not true, he’s got the monopoly of power in Venezuela” May I say, Chávez, as said before, extended the presidential period 2 years more, legalized immediate reelection and died in power, so instead of lasting 5 years he was around for 14 years, also, he expropriated almost 1200 enterprises and managed to take all TV news channels off air in case he couldn’t get them sold to him or controlled by him such as RCTV, American Network, Globovisión, Venevisión, among others. Just in case, this interview is one google search away from you, so you can see his lies for yourself.
Trump, at the same time, seems to have two different personalities on every issue. On abortion; he claimed he was ”Very pro-life” on a American Conservative Union event then ”Very pro-choice” in a NBC news interview, then in a MSNBC news he said ”There has to be some kind of punishment for abortion”. On health care; On a republican debate: “Ted Cruz: Donald, true or false, you said that the government should pay every penny of a everyones health care? Donald Trump: That’s false”, On 60 minutes “Everyone should be covered. I am going to take care of everybody. The government it’s going to pay for it because we’re going to save so much money on the other sides”. On illegal immigrants; “If they are here illegally, you take them back”, “You have to show some kind of compassion, you just can’t throw everybody out, how are you going to throw somebody out that has lived here for 20 years?”. On minimum wage; On fox news “Wages too high will not be able to compete against the world, I hate to say it but we have to live it the way it is”, On NBC news “I don’t want people to make 7 hours and 25 cents an hour, I would like to see an increase of some magnitude”.
Now, many of you could state a million reasons why Chávez is not like Trump and many of you could state a million reasons why he is indeed like Trump, the important matter here, is that America is loosing its country.
Open your eyes! You think nothing can happen to you! You think your country is perfect and inviolable! Don’t you think we used to have a democracy too when he arrived? 16 years later this is were we lay.
Take care, because maybe you’re not going to fall into a dictatorship but terrible things can happen anyway and I, thinking of the United States of America as my second home country, wouldn’t like it for you to see it going down as I had to see mine. God bless America.
