Just Egg or the Whole Pie? American Media and the Colombian Hostage Situation

In an incident rarely so conspicuous, the mainstream American media was caught with egg on its face with regards to Venezuela.

The background: Chavez has been involved in hostage negotiation with Colombia's FARC for some time now. The belligerent government of Uribe has clearly demonstrated it has no interest in opening a dialogue with the FARC over the years, and would rather engage in spectacular telenovela style politics and military intervention in order to maintain its tenuous hold over the Colombian electorate, even while it shoves both hands into the public cookie jar. Since the Venezuelan government is obviously to the left of Uribe, and closer in ideological leanings to the FARC than the Colombian government, they offered to act as a more sympathetic intermediary that might be able to relate to the FARC, something that the traditional Colombian political parties had refused to do since La Violencia.

After long talks, a handover of some of the FARC hostages was scheduled over the New Year, but failed to materialize. The FARC cited Colombian military activity in the region where the handover was supposed to take place, and refused to meet. The major American media outlets, and consequently unthinking conservative and liberal bloggers, trumpeted this delay - one CNN article put it - as demonstrating the "limits" of the Chavez government. They recognized everything that I have here, and yet still chose to frame this incident in the most curious way that they did. To me, this either shows their complete ineptitude in understanding the South American dynamic, their blatant ideological leanings, or most likely, both.

Today, two hostages were freed with the help of Chavez. The most recent CNN article on the topic says nothing of Chavez's past "failures", though it does include a quote by one freed hostage, Clara Rojas, who thanked Chavez for "returning [her]... to life". How embarrassing it must be to conclude irrationally and prematurely that Chavez had failed, that somehow his integrity as the president of Venezuela had been challenged by his failure to succeed in work that he was effectively doing pro bono, only to find that he did succeed. There is nothing more satisfying when editorials by the elite masquerading as 'objective' news stories are exposed for what they really are. This happens continually with regards to Venezuela, for despite all of his faults, Chavez is an institutional socialist that has certainly learned from the mistakes of his predecessors. Rarely, however, does it happen so neatly.

The ILO and Reactionary Politics

Venezuelanalysis.com has recently posted an article on its site discussing ILO criticism of Venezuela's treatment of business leaders. The article also goes on to praise Colombia for the "progress" it has made protecting labor leaders. Now, I know the ILO has not exactly been calling for the end of capitalism since its creation in 1919, but since when did it become its ardent defender? Both claims of the ILO, situated in proper context, are absolutely ridiculous, and the organization should be ashamed of its contributions to reactionary politics.

Labor conditions in Venezuela have improved, if only marginally, in the last 10 years. According to CEPAL-ECLAC's 2006 Statistical Yearbook, the unemployment rate has gone from among the higher half in the region in 1990 and 1995 to the lower half of the region in 2005 - this taking into consideration the brutal opposition-organized strikes in 2003. Female urban labor participation rate has made some of the biggest gains in the region, rising from 37.5% in 1990 to 51.7% in 2005, and the gender wage ratio, charting the average pay of women in relation to men, is the best in Latin America, rising from 80.4% in 1990 to 99.7% in 2005 . Enrollment in primary education - necessary to ensure bright futures for workers - has gone from 82.1% in 1995 to 92.0% in 2004, and gains in second and third level education enrollment have been even larger. On the business side, gross capital formation has made steady gains from $18 billion (in current market prices) in 1995, to $30.3 billion in 2005, with comparable gains for gross fixed capital formation. Related statistics show similar gains for domestic industry. (CEPAL statistics are available here). Labor conditions in improving in Venezuela, if only marginally right now, and clearly, so are the prospects for capital.

Meanwhile the situation in Colombia is much more dire. No fewer than 26 unionists, including 5 union leaders, have been killed in Colombia this year. Since 1986, Colombia's Escuala Nacional Sindical has recorded over 2500 murders of unionists. Thus, the 2007 numbers are down from the 21-year average of 119, but this is hardly the cause for a pat on the back. Most union members in Colombia are assassinated by right-wing paramilitaries, and given Uribe's close ties with these groups, as is slowly coming out now, justice will not be served until he is out of office, and these murderers are thoroughly prosecuted for their crimes instead of being offered amnesty. (Colombia statistics available here).

Capital has its advocates in the form of the WTO, World Bank, IMF, OECD, a whole host of agencies within the UN, and of course, most national governments around the world. The ILO should stick to its mandate by promoting the interests of "working people", not "owning people", and certainly needs to consider context when praising a country which has one of the highest rates of labor-related murders in the world. Either the quality of ILO's scholarship and research should be called into question, or they have become traitors to those they swore to defend. Neither would surprise me.