Venezuela Opens Chávez Institute To Spread Late Leader's Socialist Message
Venezuela Opens Chávez Institute To Spread Late Leader's Socialist Message
The opening of this institute clearly shows how, whether hated or loved, the late President Hugo Chávez has “become a national obsession,” points out AS/COA’s Christopher Sabatini.
Venezuela celebrated the birthday of the country’s late President Hugo Chávez by setting up an institute to spread the deceased socialist leader’s ideas and political message.
President Nicolás Maduro, who says he is the political “son” of Chávez and claims his ideological mentor speaks to him in the form of a bird, signed a decree to open the doors of the "Institute for the Advanced Studies of the Thinking of the Supreme Commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías," The Wall Street Journal reported.
More of a think tank than an actual university or scholarly center, the Chávez institute will be chaired by his brother Adán and based in Chávez’s home state of Barinas....
Chávez was adored by the country’s poor and working class for his social and economic reforms while despised by businessmen, opposition media and U.S.-friendly Venezuelans for his nationalization reforms, the dramatic rise in violent crime rates and a censoring of the media, among other things.
“You either love him or you hate him,” said Chris Sabatini, the senior policy director at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, a nonprofit think tank in New York City. “He’s become a national obsession.”
Under Chávez, Venezuela set up more than 100,000 state-owned cooperatives, created “Bolivarian Missions” to provide medical, educational and other social welfare programs to poorer Venezuelans as well as increased state spending in a number of government programs aimed at curbing the private sector....
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