06 Feb 2015
Inviato da Anthony Brown 
Chavez’s Legacy: The Transformation from Democracy to a Mafia State
(by Anthony Brown) – Chavez’s Legacy: The Transformation from Democracy to a Mafia State is an inside look at the Venezuelan political evolution. Inspired to Bolivarism Movement it started implementing a Marxist political project, it soon morphed, internationalizing its ideology through cooperation with International Terrorism and Narcotic-Terrorism, eventually declining into a Mafia State.
The author, Ari Chaplin, has a good knowledge of the subject as he was born in Romania and witnessed firsthand the horror of communism. He clearly questions the assumption that the Venezuela’s ‘socialist paradise’ and the Latin American Revolution, liberated the countries in the region from U.S. alleged imperialist domination.
In his analysis, he goes beyond Chavez’s state’s rhetoric and ideological line and examines state actual practices demonstrating the radical, antidemocratic character of Chavism.
Further in his investigation of the Venezuelan model he describes first the transformation of the country into an authoritarian/totalitarian political system and then its affirmation on the international scene cooperating with drug cartels. Doing so he allowed criminal networks to become an integral part of the government and eventually ending in a mafia state whose aim is pillaging the oil revenues.
Neighbouring countries are experiencing the same fate. They have shown a similar sharp economic decline as well as a clear weakening of state institutions, enabling the cartels to operate freely. This process precipitated the establishment of mafia states, where the drug cartels have become an integral part of the ruling elite.
It is now evident that Ari Chaplin was right in his analysis: with its economy in recession, the highest inflation in the Americas, and a chronic shortage of food and medicines, Venezuela is not defending the revolutionary government and the construction of socialism, in the face of “fascist” threats from Venezuela’s domestic opponents and the United States but global criminal networks.
