Hugo Chávez is just one of Latin America’s many eccentric leaders
In a region where first ladies organize meetings for witches, and presidents punish opposing soccer players with a swift kick on the behind, Hugo Chávez’s peculiarities are relatively par for the course. (Flickr: EXAME.com)
By CASTO OCANDO
Channel: Latin American Affairs
The theory that the U.S. may have developed a sophisticated laser-like beam capable of inoculating cancer in several Latin American presidents, is not the only wild idea spread by eccentric Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, nor is it an isolated act in a continent full of eccentric leaders and governments.
The idea of the cancer laser, expressed by Chávez without a hint of humor before a group of high military officials last Thursday, Dec. 29, is the latest addition to Chávez’s long list of incredible and bizarre statements.
“Would it be so strange that they’ve invented technology to spread cancer and we will not know for 50 years?” Chávez asked.
Chávez’s claims came shortly after the government in Buenos Aires announced that Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was to undergo treatment for thyroid cancer.
Chávez himself has been subjected to sessions of chemotherapy for an undisclosed type of cancer. Three other South American leaders have had to undergo medical anticancer treatments as well: former Brazilian President Lula Da Silva, the current president of Brazil Dilma Rousseff, and the president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo.
In January, Chávez was the subject of humorous comments after he accused the U.S. Navy of having caused the deadly earthquake in Haiti, using advanced machinery that generated shock waves through the seabed and shook the small island nation.
In February 2008, during a live broadcast, Chávez revealed to a stunned audience another astonishing hypothesis: that in the past there could have been life on Mars, but it was likely extinguished by the effects of global warming, which is a consequence of “savage capitalism.”
“I am one who says, and this is just my speculation, that on Mars, why couldn’t there have been life? Why not? Maybe we just (…) Maybe on Mars they produced (…) pigs, and just (…) overheating, a process similar to that here (on Earth) we could have done with life on Mars,” said Chávez.
In another televised speech in 2005, Chávez denounced the opposition to have hired an army of “200 witches” to do black magic in order for him to get out of power.
“They threw voodoo at me,” the president said in his program.
Several people who know him intimately, such as Luis Miquilena, a former close political advisor who later joined the opposition, say that Chávez had the habit of keeping an empty seat at the dinner table, reserved for the spirit of Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan national hero who founded the country.
Some observers believe that Chávez’s eccentric statements are intended to appeal the imagination of his followers, most of them in the lower strata of Venezuelan society.
“I always thought his eccentricities were intended to appeal to his domestic audience and not an expression of ideology,” said former president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in his memoirs.
But Chávez is hardly the only leader with a history of eccentricity.
The late Argentine president Nestor Kirchner used to be very dismissive and even rude with the world leaders and captains of industry who visited him.
In 2004, he sent a low level officer to receive Hu Jintao, President of China, although he had come to Argentina to sign investment agreements of $20 billion. On another occasion, he chose to go to the Buenos Aires suburbs to inaugurate a minor public construction, rather than to meet Carly Fiornia, the then-chairman of computer giant Hewlett-Packard, who had come to expand investments in the southern country.
In Bolivia Evo Morales is well known both for his love of coca leaf and for his passion for soccer. In matches he plays, he usually punishes other players that commit a foul against him by kicking them in the rear end. Morales has also been spreading conspiracy theories such as that he’s afraid to enter the U.S. because he believes federal agents would sneak drugs inside his plane, to justify his arrest.
In Nicaragua, the first lady Rosario Murillo is an outspoken advocate of witches and witchcraft. In 2008, Murillo organized the first congress of witches in Nicaragua with the full approval of President Daniel Ortega, a leader who once declared himself a Marxist.
“The constant use of flowers by Ortega during political events is part of witchcraft rituals practiced by the presidential couple,” said Nora Sandigo, Nicaraguan activist who lives in Miami.
Yet, it is in their economic policy where left-leaning governments in Latin America have implemented the most eccentric prescriptions on behalf of the XXI Century Socialism - at a stunning cost.
A report in early 2010 by the conglomerate HSBC, aptly titled “The Costs of Eccentricity”, identified Argentina, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Honduras, as the most eccentric countries in the region, due to the economic policies developed by their governments.
“In general, these initiatives and stances have resulted in overheated economies with higher inflation rates, low relative leverage, capital flight, and poor asset performance. Therefore, the costs of policy eccentricity could be significant.”
