Environment

Almost all recent major social conflicts in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia have revolved around access, control, and ownership of natural resources: oil, natural gas, water, and minerals. These conflicts are centered on two separate, and at times conflicting, popular demands.

While Chavez's government touts the policy for its enormous oil sector, it has left less lucrative areas like the diamond industry unregulated. The result is smuggling, environmental damage and international concern.

The South American mega-pipeline project to transport natural gas from the Caribbean to the River Plate, supplying a large part of Brazil en route, "has cooled down because of attacks from within South America itself" and due to attempts by the United States to delay the plans, complained Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez probably wasn’t an environmental activist in his youth, yet one of his finest characteristics is his openness and his willingness to listen and learn. President Chávez has been listening to calls from anti-globalization and environmental activists around the world now for years and learning how to change Venezuela’s form of governance so as to support and endorse efforts of conservation, balanced consumption and decontamination campaigns.

On the one hand, Chavez needs political support from indigenous peoples. But he also seeks important hemispheric integration, which could jeopardize this support.

The Venezuelan President wants to paint himself as an underdog on the world stage, struggling against U.S. imperialism and the voracious consumerist appetites of North Americans. By moving towards ethanol, Chavez may deflect criticism that he is hypocritical. In adopting alternative fuels, he also gains politically by shoring up ties to Cuba and Brazil, two key allies in the region.

In Maracaibo, Kozloff interviewed Jorge Hinestroza, a sociologist at the University of Zulia and former General Coordinator of the Federation of Zulia Ecologists. During the insightful hour long interview, Hinestroza illuminated many of the contradictions within the Chavez government’s environmental policy.

The forests of the world are disappearing at a rate like never before seen and Venezuela may rank on the top 10 deforestation list, but two weeks ago Venezuela began to fight back.

Canaima, god of evil in Venezuelan legends, is the name of a 1935 novel by the famed Rómulo Gallegos which explodes that myth, and of a national park whose borders, as if pushed by the deity himself, pit mortals against each other as they fight for survival and wealth, for the environment and gold.

Few public policies here are as popular as is almost-free gasoline. Wealthy Venezuelans, who generally despise Mr. Chavez, say that if the government stopped subsidizing gas it would only waste the money on corruption. The poor fear a bus-fare hike.