Chavez's Venezuela

Solution Preview

As an employee of the World Bank, you have been asked to research 1 economic concern in a South American country and write a report on your findings.
Select a South American country to research.
Select one of the following economic concerns to research:
Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

Research data sets for the one economic concern within the South American country that you have chosen.
In a 3-4 page report, answer the following questions:
What are 2-3 relationships between the economic concern you selected and that specific country's economy?
What trends do you see in the data sets?
Support your assertions of the trends with statistical evidence.

Hugo Chavez is intimately connected to Venezuelan politics and the alternatives to the Washington Consensus. President from 1999 until his death from cancer in 2013, Chavez sought to create a balanced modernization of Venezuela and lay down an example of non-dictatorial populism in Latin America.

First, the basics of Chavez's reform agenda, most of which has had plenty of time to take root and create results. Chavez refused to follow the dictates of either the IMF or the World Bank. He distributed unused land to poor peasants. He refused to guarantee the profits of American oil firms. Foreign capital had to contribute more to local economics than had been the case before 2000. Chavez created closer ties with OPEC. He created a new source of credit known as the "Bank of the South," which was to guide the economies according to local, not international, interests. He cultivated ties with Russia, at least in part to balance US control over Georgia and Ukraine. He has financed literacy projects, infrastructural repairs and strong increases in educational investment at all levels.

Prior to 2000, Venezuela had pursued the typical Washington policy of liberalization, privatization, democratization and, its ultimate goal, the increased penetration of foreign capital. Chavez attempted to reverse this. It was not so much a return to nationalization, but instead, a desire for "endogenous development." Not entirely unreasonably, Chavez sought an economics that primarily benefited Venezuela and reversed the distortions of dependency. Other than land reform, the center of his agenda was the creation of cooperatives. In each industry and locality, cooperatives were formed, made up of workers by sector, and received a certain degree of funding by Caracas.

Cooperatives were to slowly remove the profit motive from economics. Further, and as a result, it was to keep revenues local, empower workers and show that one not need become an eternal debtor to the major US banks to develop. Cooperatives, in other words, took over from certain firms in the oil, sugar and food industries, and were able to provide local services, in some cases, at a fraction of the cost that a normal corporation would require (Wagner, 2005).

The question revolves around his success. Rhetoric concerning ...