NYTimes: Fucking unbelievable.

Check this bullshit out.

Most important, Mexico is a young democracy that eliminated an essentially one-party political system, controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, that lasted more than 70 years. And with all its defects, the domination of the party, known as the P.R.I., never even approached the same level of virtually absolute dictatorship as that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or even of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

Say WHA? Unbelievable. Perhaps I'm naive to be surprised (given the NYTimes's ugly track record of taking a strict anti-democratic, right-wing line on Latin American politics). But "absolute dictator"? Comparing Chavez to Mugabe? What the FUCK!? Chavez has been elected by overwhelming majorities in elections with high turnout that have been certified by countless independent international bodies, including Jimmy Carter's organization. These Right-wing slanderers, we should take note, NEVER actually challenge the popular mandate Chavez has in Venezuela because they would have literally no grounds on which to challenge it. He has the staunch support of more than 60% of the electorate, which should come as little surprise since the majority of the country is quite poor and had been previously disempowered and disenfranchised for decades.

What the Right-wing slanderers DO say is that Chavez is stepping on "private enterprise", he's taking freedoms away from the minority (middle class and wealthy business elites) opposition, etc. "Absolute dictator" is completely ridiculous slander.

And this "young fledling democracy" bullshit that the author offers us about Mexico? Its about as credible as his claim that Chavez is an "absolute dictator". He says literally nothing about the 2006 Mexican presidential elections where Felipe Calderón of the right-wing PAN stole the election in a highly suspect and last-minute attempt to stop populist Left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador from winning. (Obrador had consistently led in all major polls for months leading up to the election and was backed by large social movements). When Calderón "won" the election in a haze of controversy and sabotage, George Bush was the first to step up and "recognize" his "victory" and attempt to give credibility to the contested result. Millions of people took to the streets to protest the result, but ultimately nothing came of it.

Venezuela, on the other hand, has a more robust democracy than most countries in the world. Turnout in Venezuelan elections routinely blows US elections out of the water. Morever, Chavez has diffused some forms of power through local councils ("Bolivarian circles") which involves the participation of hitherto ignored groups of Venezuelans at the local-level. But it should come as no surprise that the Right doesn't like Venezuelan democracy, since the electoral mechanism there has consistently (with the exception of Chavez's referendum loss last year) resulted in majorities of Venezuelan's emphatically opposing the neoliberal march of the Right. This is why the US-backed opposition/business elite attempted a coup to overthrow Chavez by force in 2002; because they knew that they couldn't stop the forward momentum of him or the movement behind him by challenging it at the ballot box.