…in spite of his rhetoric.

In reading a few columns about Hugo Chavez, former Socialist leader of Venezuela, I'm reminded of how unimpressive he really was considering his country is blessed with one of the worlds largest supplies of crude oil. Oh sure, he could "foment mischief abroad", but that does not change the facts on the ground in Venezuela.

Peter Foster summed it up nicely in his recent column for the National Post:

"Mr. Chavez’s domestic policies — the usual socialist mélange of expropriation, money printing, price controls and demonization of business and the wealthy — led to perpetual inflation and empty store shelves, which he blamed on “predatory oligarchs” and “imperialist bandits.”

Few sum up the tragedy of so many Latin American countries better than Alvero Vargas Llosa in his columns for the Independent Institute, and his four books published to date.

I'll leave you with an important quote from his 2005 book, Liberty for Latin America:

"The history of Latin America is replete with violence against the individual, a recurrent revolution of the wrong kind. The many symptoms of individual sovereignty sparkling in the thick night of oppression indicate that such is not natural, voluntary fate of Latin Americans. The recurrence, generation after generation, of the five principles of oppression, however, has ingrained in the minds of many people certain presuppositions that conspire against their own liberation. There is such a thing as an inertia of oppression. The idea that certain things cannot be different, that blame for the harm brought about by certain institutions is attributable to particular individuals in charge of them and not to the very nature of those institutions, needs to be dispelled."

And finally, let's hope the people of Venezuela are now able to find Liberty as one of their biggest obstacles has passed on.