Out of this week’s readings, I enjoyed “Speech by President Hugo Chavez, at the opening of XII G-15 Summit” the most. From the beginning, I could tell he was an extremely charismatic and passionate leader with obvious pride for his culture and people. It was interesting how he used Bolivar, a nineteenth century political figurehead, and his ideas of a free Republic as a starting point for his own proposition of making a change towards independence in the twenty first century.
In this speech, he gave a wide range of statistics as evidence of this ongoing trend of poverty, hunger, death and lack of education. I thought he was extremely successful in his effort to expose and address this everyday imbalance of wealth and creating his basis for why he feels there is a dire need for change, not just in Latin America, but also all over the world.
The end of the speech was particularly inspiring. He begins to move away from acknowledging the issue of dependence on other countries to improve conditions and starts his proposal on how to make their own change. I found the aim of this speech was to be both informative and motivational with mentions of both worldwide/Latin American problems and the encouraging “Why not” propositions.
The second lecture video provided much insight on the intentions of Hugo Chavez and his effect on the people. I can understand why people felt a strong connection with him and how he may have made them feel less excluded from the world of politics. It was nice to get some insight as to why Chavez chose Bolivar as a historical figure. It was a way to honor the independence attempts from the past and use it as a motivator to complete this unfinished revolution that Bolivar began.
From the second lecture video, I also learned that while much of Latin America excluded their indigenous people there were also efforts by countries to create the conditions for citizenship and full participation. Even though this was mainly because those countries had smaller indigenous populations and lacked natural resources, it was nice to see an attempt at a more inclusive government.
Overall, I found all of this week’s readings very fascinating, especially because I will be doing my video presentation on this topic. I look forward to doing more research on the people mentioned and sharing the knowledge in our lecture video.
Hugo Chavez has obvious respect for Simon Bolivar’s role in Latin America. In fact, his political campaign was based on Bolivarian Propaganda. From what I understand, Chavez used Bolivar’s vision of a united South America to promote nationalism within Venezuela. He used various forms of propaganda throughout the country, and, as you said, it’s also evident that Bolivariansim is present in his speech.
I also noticed an attempt to be inclusive to indigenous and black people in the readings for this week. I wonder if these governments actually tried to implement this, or if its just rhetoric from a few idealists. I can’t help but think that just because a national identity is built on the contribution of native people. that doesn’t mean that they were treated well.
I agree with you about Chavez’s speech, he seems very passionate and I see why he had many followers and admirers. I have watched a few of his other speeches, he is a very moving speaker. His speech brought up many issues but made a well thought through solution.
I enjoyed reading Chavez’s speech where he points out that America is a threat and wealthy countries try to manipulate Latin American economies through Free Trade.
Adding to what Emily said, I think all of the independence movements in Latin America influenced each other in some way and Chavez using Bolivar’s movement is a good example. Another example is Haiti’s slave revolution and Castro’s push for revolution outside of Cuba.