I spent several days with Chavez, and I don't normally interview serving politicians, and I found him refreshing, I have to say. He answered all my questions. He didn't demure from anything, when I asked him about the poverty remaining in Venezuela. I found him a man of extrordinary good humor. What was interesting about him, is that he would go to... His energy is limitless. He would do something like ten or twelve major meetings a day, and he would turn up carrying a pile of books, of Victor Hugo, Orwell, Dickens, and he would read them to the audience, and he would relate what these classics were saying about ordinary people. It is quite extrordinary to see this process of education, and I think it ran two ways. It was about the people, but it was also himself. We like to see all these movements in terms of single personalities. Well, there is no doubt in my mind that Chavez's great engine is a grass roots movement, and without them he would not be powerful.
John Pilger (DN 7-jun-2007, directory of The War on Democracy - documentary film, to be released in England, but not is USA)
But in South America, from Venezuela to Argentina, is I think the most exciting place in the world... After 500 years, the beginning of efforts to overcome these overwhelming problems... The indiginous populations, for the first time in hundreds of years, taking a very active role in their own affairs. In Bolivia they succeeded in taking over the country, controlling the resources. And it is also leading to significant democratization, real democracy in which the population participates... It had a real democratic election last year, of a kind that you can't imagine in the United States, or in Europe for that matter. There was mass popular participation. And people knew what the issues were. The issues were crystal clear and very important. And people didn't just participate on election day. These are things they had been struggling about for years... So clear issues, popular participation, ongoing efforts, elected someone from their own ranks... That's a real democratic election of the kind we can't imagine. In fact, in our elections the issues are unknown. There's careful efforts to make sure the issues are unknown to the public, for good reasons. There's a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy. So you have to keep away from issues and concentrate on imagery and illusions and so on. The elections are run by the same industries that sell toothpaste on television.
Noam Chomsky (Democracy Now 18-apr-2007)
I think there’s an amazing revolution going on in Latin America. In the last—in this decade, nine countries, representing more than 80 percent of the population, have democratically and peacefully voted in presidents who say, “We don’t want any more war. We don’t want any more terrorism. We don’t want any more exploitation by foreign corporations.” They’re saying, “We don’t want foreign aid. We simply want to have the right to use our resources to help our people.”
And these are countries, Amy, every one of them, that during most of my lifetime were run by brutal dictators who were US puppets. And now, all that’s changed in the last—less than ten years. And I think there’s tremendous hope there.
John Perkins (DN 8-may-2008, author of The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption)