Hugo’s Finest in the Bronx - and video of LF!
[see a video of Liza at the URL below!]
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070101/featherstonev
Chávez’s Citizen Diplomacy Liza Featherstone
“A Kennedy!” The older ladies of Spofford Hills, a housing
cooperative in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx, are
brandishing cameras, thrilled to see the son of Robert F. Kennedy
outside their building on this radiantly sunny day just before
Thanksgiving. It doesn’t hurt that Joe Kennedy is also president of
Citizens Energy, a nonprofit providing heating assistance to low-
income Americans, and that he’s here to make a fuel delivery to
Spofford Hills. But the real star of the day–though absent–is
someone even more famous: Hugo Chávez.
Through Joe Kennedy’s organization, the government of Venezuela–and
Citgo, a petroleum company in which that country owns a controlling
share–provides heating oil to poor and working-class Americans at a
40 percent discount. The gathering in the Bronx celebrated the
program’s second year, as well as its expansion: This winter,
Citizens Energy and Citgo expect to deliver more than 100 million
gallons of oil to more than 400,000 households in sixteen states,
more than doubling the scope of last year’s petro-philanthropy.
Beneficiaries also include 163 American Indian tribes, most of them
in Alaska.
The program has come under fire from the American right for its
association with Chávez, whom the Bush Administration has painted as
a dictator and even a terrorist threat. Recent TV ads promoting it–
in which Citizens Energy praises “our friends in Venezuela”–have
particularly infuriated the likes of Fox’s Sean Hannity and inflamed
conservative talk-show hosts, who are calling for a boycott of Citgo.
(According to Citgo president Felix Rodriguez, the boycott and
conservative attacks have had no effect on the company’s revenues so
far.) But Citizens Energy spokesman Brian O’Connor says his
organization has asked every major oil company and every OPEC nation
to provide such assistance to poor Americans; Citgo and Venezuela
have been the only ones to agree. “We are very much in solidarity
with the people of Venezuela,” says Blanca Ramirez, treasurer of
Spofford Hills, which was taken over by residents after a landlord
abandoned it in the late 1970s. “But in a way,” she muses, “they are
even more in solidarity with us.”
Spofford Hills is depressingly located across the street from a
juvenile prison. On this day, however, the mood was upbeat as a large
green truck drove up to the building and began delivering winter
heating oil, a gift likely to save each of the co-op’s sixty-two
families about $200 this winter. Like many poor Americans, especially
in the country’s northern regions, the residents of Spofford Hills–a
mix of working people, the elderly and public-assistance recipients–
have in recent years, with the soaring cost of fuel, struggled to
stay warm during the chilly season. “Last winter there were days we
had to go without heat and hot water,” says Ramirez, who is the
mother of a 4-year-old. “We couldn’t afford it! We had to use space
heaters and extra blankets–everybody tried to do the best they
could.” For the many elderly people in the building, the cold nights
were a particular hardship. “I was afraid for her,” Moryama Flores, a
home attendant and building resident, says of her mother, who also
lives in the building. “She was coughing a lot. She made many
complaints.” Says Ramirez, “This year, all these old people will
probably not be suffering.”
The ceremony at Spofford Hills included speeches from Kennedy,
Rodriguez, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez and New York
Democratic Representative José Serrano, who has been an active force
behind the program. Though it was undeniably unusual to see
Democratic politicians, mainstream nonprofits and multinational
corporations carrying out–and praising–the vision of a Latin
American socialist leader, the tone was that of a straightforward,
feel-good political event. Yet the proceedings began to take on a
less-scripted and zanier quality when, just as the official remarks
concluded, a couple of masked youth from the building next door
dropped a big red banner, yelling “Viva Hugo Chávez!” No one seemed
to have any idea who those guerrilla enthusiasts were. Undaunted and
amused, everyone feasted on a Caribbean spread of yams, chicken and
pie, as the hip-hop group Rebel Diaz played loud rap music, to which
a smiling Rodriguez, dressed in jeans and work boots, gamely danced.
Though most of the US media remain hostile to Chávez, the fuel-
assistance program is showing some Americans another side of the man
and his government. Patrice White, a vocational counselor to the
disabled who lives with her husband and three daughters in the
Bronx’s Mount Hope neighborhood, which began receiving Venezuelan oil
last winter, is impressed that Chávez delivered on his promise to
help poor Americans. “It was refreshing,” she says. “Hugo Chávez is
not an American politician. With our politicians, it seems like 80
percent of what they say doesn’t happen.” White was also impressed by
the program’s efficiency: “You’d think there would be lots of red tape.”
Venezuela’s reasons for running this program seem varied. Undeniably,
it represents a bit of self-promotion on Chávez’s part. More
important, there is the delicious opportunity to insult the Bush
Administration, which has close ties to leaders of the 2002 coup that
briefly unseated the democratically elected Chávez, and to befriend
those Americans who have the least reason to support conservative
Republicans like Bush. But the program makes an even broader
statement than that: By showing that the richest nation on earth
requires foreign “assistance” to meet its citizens’ basic needs,
Venezuela reveals our most profound failure as a system. As Patrice
White says, “It could be seen as a slap in the face to American
capitalism. But I digress!”
When I speak with Felix Rodriguez, probably the only Texas oilman to
pepper his conversation with words like “solidarity,” he’s full of
kind words for America and its people. But he politely implies that
Citgo wants to show Americans–and the world–another model of
capitalism. “When people say, ‘Citgo is a good company,’” he says,
“we want that to mean not just that we are profitable, and not just
that we are humanitarian. We want to–we have to–do both.”
Perhaps most important, though, the heating-oil program is what
writer and New York University historian Greg Grandin, who has spent
time in Venezuela studying the Chávez government, calls “grassroots
diplomacy.” It provides Venezuela a way of building relationships
with organizations that serve America’s poor and working-class
people, as well as with the people themselves.
In addition to the practical help, it is this last aspect of the
program that most interests Bronx community activists. “We didn’t
want anyone coming here just to make a point,” says Wanda Salaman,
executive director of Mothers on the Move, a group that fights to
improve the quality of life in the South Bronx, “but we understood
the point.” Intrigued by the opportunity to build a relationship
based on understanding between peoples, rather than simply swipes
between leaders, Mothers on the Move and other community groups
established a coalition called Petrol Bronx, not only to insure
accountability–that is, to make sure that Citgo’s program continues
to benefit the people it’s supposed to help–but also to use it as an
opportunity to educate their communities about Chavez’s “Bolivarian
Revolution” and to teach Venezuelans about conditions in the Bronx.
RodStarz of Rebel Diaz, who lives in the building next door to
Spofford Hills, is working with Petrol Bronx to organize a hip-hop
delegation to Caracas. “Young people here are being incarcerated at
an alarming rate,” he tells me, gesturing at the prison across the
street. “The system in the United States is built for people like us
to fail. Venezuela’s trying to build something better.”
Venezuela has encouraged this citizen diplomacy by bringing
beneficiaries of the heating-oil program to Caracas. Along with sixty
other beneficiaries, Patrice White traveled to Venezuela last April.
Many other tenants in her building turned down Venezuela’s
invitation, spooked by State Department travel warnings branding the
country as a dangerous destination for Americans. Even White’s
husband urged her to stay home. But she’s glad she went. “I just fell
in love with the place,” she raves. “We all had a ball, and all of us
want to go back.” A guest on Chávez’s radio show, White was impressed
by his respect for his people’s intelligence: He spent four hours
explaining how Venezuelan oil reserves could be used to build
stronger relationships with people in other nations.
Annie Simoneau, a homeowner in rural Vermont and a mother of six
(four of her own and two foster children) who received Citgo’s
assistance last winter, also went on the April trip to Venezuela,
with her husband, an apprentice electrician. She was moved by the
respect they enjoyed–an unusual feeling for working-class people in
the United States. “They [Venezuela] put us up at the Hilton and made
us feel on top of the world,” she recalls. “I’m not so much into
politics–I just went over to thank him [Chávez].” But Simoneau says
she also wanted to see the country’s social programs and meet its
citizens. She expected that Venezuelans might be hostile to American
visitors, given relations between Chávez and Bush, but found none who
were. “It was person-to-person. They entertained us, gave beautiful
speeches, and for who?” She pauses, and marvels. “The poor people of
America.”
Person-to-person diplomacy may be increasingly important as the
American right continues to attack Chávez. Having met Chávez, White
speaks of him as if he is a well-meaning friend whose actions
sometimes need to be explained to others. After the Venezuelan leader
called Bush “the devil” in a speech to the United Nations, for
example, several small Native Alaskan villages refused Venezuela’s
oil assistance (tribal officials did not return calls from The
Nation). When White heard about that speech, she says, “I laughed. I
was surprised, but I think he wears his heart on his sleeve and is a
very genuine person.” It’s easy to understand, she adds: After all,
the United States sometimes acts like a “bully.” Simoneau’s reaction
to the incident is similarly indulgent. “He’s very emotional,” she
says of Chávez.
Of course, not everyone will get the chance to travel to Venezuela,
and some remain puzzled by Chávez and his motives. But with winter
looming, even the skeptics are grateful for his help. “I hope what
Hugo Chávez is doing for us, he’s also doing for his own people,”
said Josephine Cruz, a Spofford Hills board member who works as a
secretary in New Jersey. “But we got the oil. That’s the main thing.”