LatAm Fashions
| 09:27 UK time, Monday, 5 June 2006
Another in an occasional series of career shortening admissions.
Hugo Chavez is good news.
You won't read into that statement any personal view of the Venezuelan president, I hope.
As I come through the door at Bush House each day, there's a device looking a bit like a cross between an airport metal detector and a revolving door that erases any personal opinion. Zzzzzph! There... gone.
But the arrival and political gamesmanship of the Venezuelan president has put Latin America on the global news agenda in a way that it hasn't been for many years.
It's bound to make the neighbours nervous, of course, when Mr Chavez orders thousands of Kalashnikov rifles and now Su-30 fighter jets from Russia.
That kind of development can turn into the kind of 'good news' that falls into the 'if it bleeds it leads' school of journalism.
Nonetheless, the way he has switched on a debate about energy resources, indigenous peoples, poverty and relations with the US has definitely sharpened interest in a region that should make more headlines than it does.
A ´óÏó´«Ã½ friend of mine, whose family origins are Latin American, told me he decided to become a specialist in the Middle East when he failed after three years to get a single item from his home region onto the main TV news bulletin.
Hugo Chavez (with help from Presidents Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia and now probably Alan Garcia in Peru) has created a news agenda that should redefine our approach to reporting about redistributive politics, energy security and trade reform.
These are all important areas that need more light shed on them.
And you don't have to like someone to recognise they are making a difference.
Comments
That device on the Bush House revolving door that zaps personal opinion from presenters as they enter also injects, at the same time, Beeb Opinion.
Chavez, Castro, and Bush [in my opinion] represent the bad old days of the Cold War. The American Continent [including Latin America] will be in the news as long as we have these reactionary Cold War Vestiges.
Lula and Alan Garcia [while of the Left] represent an approach that should be emulated in the American Continent.
I would like the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to cover the Social Democratic Party of Cuba [and other dissident groups in Cuba]. I would also like the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to give publicity to Alternative Political Forces in the USA such as the Libertarian Party [lp.org] and the Green Party [gp.org]
And Chavez was also a co-founder of Telesur, a hemispheric television news network which will assist him and his followers in shaping the news agenda for this region.
Here is a link to the story:
Matt
Welecome to the new Latin American World Order.
Neal Saferstein