Have you ever wondered how Venezuela ended up with a thug like Hugo Chavez as president? He didn’t blow in out of nowhere – if you watch Venezuela, you might hear scattered reports about how crummy and corrupt the political parties he replaced were, sowing the seed that eventually grew Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has a chronological rundown about what lowlife they were, and this is important to understanding what the current Venezuelan revolution is struggling against – not just Chavez but everything that preceded him.

I love this passage here:

Now I won’t deny that I am also opposed to the reestablishment of the old ruling parties that brought to life the Chavez phenomenon however the aforementioned motto of “NO VOLVERAN” is entirely inappropriate in my view for they have never left in the first place; they are still there, the old problems of the past have only been augmented by the new monolithic party that has choked the system.

The essay could benefit from a note about what the two lousy political parties, AD and COPEI, actually stood for – both were socialists that loved nationalization and enjoyed shoveling spoils in what we would recognize as something very like the Peronist tradition – there was nothing we would recognize as, say, Reaganite in either of them – instead, this leftist duopoly which controlled political life faced no ideological competition. Other than that, the essay tells a lot about whence Venezuela’s tropical dictator sprang and is worth reading.