[NYTr] What a Difference a Day Makes: Venezuela's Independence Day
 
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:54:23 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
excrpted from VIO Venezuela News Roundup - Jul 9, 2007

[The Washington Post reports on events in celebration of Venezuela's
Independence Day that took place at the residence of Ambassador to the
U.S. Bernardo Alvarez last Friday.  The Post notes that politics were
put aside during an evening of cultural exchange, at which a diverse
crowd demonstrated strong bonds of friendship and between the U.S. and
Venezuela. -VIO]

The Washington Post - July 8, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701295.html

What a Difference a Day Makes

By David Montgomery

Imagine you're Hugo ChC!vez's man in Washington, and you live less than
two miles from the White House, whose occupant your boss has called a
drunken, sulfur-smelling "political cadaver."

Some days must be harder than others.

"Being an ambassador of Venezuela in the U.S. is sort of an unhappy
happiness," says Bernardo Alvarez with a wistful smile.

But he doesn't look all that unhappy. He looks revolutionarily
liberated -- at least from his stuffy ambassador's tie and suit coat,
for which he apologizes, explaining that the official residence has
been turned upside down for Independence Day preparations, completely
overrun with cooks and musicians, and it's impossible to get in there
to change or do anything else.

Wait, Independence Day? Is Team ChC!vez going all Yankee Doodle Dandy on
us?

No! But in one of those excellent ironies of the calendar, Venezuela's
Cinco de Julio begins just as smoke from Fourth of July fireworks --
that sulfur smell again! -- clears, with parties extending into the wee
hours of July 7. July was a good month to throw off colonial masters.
(Also see: Argentina, Colombia and Peru).

The U.S. and Venezuela even share a revolutionary hero or two.

But the Venezuelans don't do fireworks. By midnight Friday, Alvarez
would be crooning folk ballads under a tent in the ambassadorial garden
on Massachusetts Avenue NW, backed by a band of traditional cuatro
players, before a crowd of Chavista true believers and international
allies, who were dancing and throwing red roses.

By the time he starts singing, he will know if anyone from the Bush
administration showed up to help celebrate.

"We hope they come," the ambassador says with a smile.

* * *

The morning of July 5, the statue of a sword-wielding SimC3n BolC-var
mounted on a steed towers over a small group of diplomats and military
officers on a plaza near the White House. The dignitaries represent
Venezuela and other Latin American countries. BolC-var led Venezuela to
independence from Spain on July 5, 1811. Born in Caracas, the dashing
commander also helped free Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Panama.

An embassy official gives a ceremonial reading of the Venezuelan
Declaration of Independence. Alvarez declares, "Now, more than ever,
Venezuela is struggling to assume a full independence" -- referring to
the freedom to carry out the ChC!vez program without meddling by the
United States, which now plays the part of Spain in the national drama.

ChC!vez takes BolC-var as his revolutionary role model. At ChC!vez's
urging, Venezuelans voted to rename the country the Bolivarian Republic
of Venezuela.

Elected president in 1998, ChC!vez has wrought large changes, with
popular support, extending access to health care, education and a
political voice to the poor. But he has also taken greater control of
the oil industry, obtained legislative permission to rule by decree and
closed a television station. Critics in Washington say he's leading the
country away from democracy.

Alvarez bats away such cavils. Why, he asks, is Venezuela held to one
standard of democracy when there is nationalized oil in Mexico and
television stations are closed in other nations? "Do you think it is a
democratic practice that if you want to be elected senator in this
country, you need at least $20 million?" But there's still the famous
ChC!vez mouth, unavoidable even when the man himself is on another
continent. A table near the statue holds copies of ChC!vez speeches. One
of them from January devotes a page-and-a-half to excoriating JosC)
Miguel Insulza, the secretary general of the Organization of American
States: "He's a true idiot, from the 'i' to the 't,' " ChC!vez said.

But hey -- isn't that Insulza himself, here now, joining Alvarez in
laying wreaths to BolC-var?

"I am not the first one or the last one to be treated that way by
President ChC!vez," Insulza says later.

That night Insulza is in the front row for a spectacular performance in
the organization's downtown headquarters. It is the creation story of
Venezuela, told in dance and music. Every country has a triumphal
narrative it likes to tell itself on Independence Day, and in the
Venezuelan version, three races -- white, Indian and black -- unite,
after some initial bloodshed, throw off colonial bonds and build a
vibrant modern nation.

There is no ChC!vez in this vast, mythic rendering of Venezuelan
history, as there might not be a President Bush in a July 4 recounting
of the Story of America.

* * *

Friday night, the Venezuelans aren't done yet.

Alvarez, now in a dark suit and peach-colored tie, greets hundreds of
guests streaming into the residence. The crowd is thick with
ambassadors from Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. Here comes
Gustavo Guzman of Bolivia, representing ChC!vez's ideological soul mate,
Evo Morales, looking bohemian in hippie hair, black suit, no tie,
black-framed glasses and a boyish smile. He's the maverick. The rest of
the men bow to the Washington consensus of dreary, tightly-knotted and
buttoned-down embassy dress, while the women are permitted to strut on
the highest of heels in the sleekest of silk.

A towering gringo in a blue suit appears in the mansion's doorway and
powers inside with a hearty greeting to all. It is Thomas Shannon,
assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, the State
Department's point man on Venezuela.

Shannon says he has come out of "respect for the people of Venezuela,
and a recognition that while in democracies governments may come and
go, the ties and friendships between people will remain."

How diplomatic. But on second thought, that's the theme of the evening,
of the entire two-plus days of Venezuelan independence in the belly of
the beast that can be Washington.

Presidents come, presidents go. History is long.

"Bush is a man, ChC!vez is a man," says Dilenia Lopez, rolling her eyes
as if to say, You know how men are. "The problem between Bush and
ChC!vez has nothing to do with the people."

The Afro-Venezuelan group Eleggua strikes up percussive dance music.
But the night is still young, and the crowd remains on best Embassy Row
behavior, so there are few dancers. One of them is Maia Rodriguez, 19.
"If we were back home, it would be crazy!" she says. Born in Bolivia to
an American mother and raised in Venezuela, she has triple-citizenship.

"I like my president," she says, waxing idealistic about ChC!vez, as do
so many young supporters. It sounds as if they are talking about Bobby
Kennedy. "There is so much hope."

Susana Mota brought her American fiance to the party to show him there
is more to Venezuela, and Venezuelans, than what sometimes appears in
the media. "This is a good representation of my country: beautiful
women, nice people, good food," she says.

And she passes on a secret -- don't tell ChC!vez: "We like Americans. We
love to copy you guys. The music. The styles. Venezuelans, just to be
sophisticated, we talk English sometimes."

It's getting late, most of the non-Venezuelans have left, and now the
dance floor is filled. The women's high heels are getting caught in the
rubber mat spread on the lawn, temporarily trapping them like exotic
birds.

The cuatro band takes the stage -- with traditional guitar-like
instruments and a flute -- and the old songs come out. The folk tunes,
the love ballads, the salsas and boleros, songs everybody knows, older
than any regime, songs that have seen presidents come and go.

It's like karaoke with a live band. A Venezuelan army sergeant in
uniform sings, then the press attache and then the ambassador himself:
glass in hand, unhappily happy, singing sad songs about love of the
land, about love itself and not about politics.
       
                                *
================================================================
.NY Transfer News Collective    *    A Service of Blythe Systems
.          Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us         .
.339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012     http://www.blythe.org
.List Archives:   https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
.Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr
================================================================