Hugo Chávez was in fine form this morning at the football (soccer)
stadium counter-rally in Mar del Plata, quoting Rosa Luxembourg,
preaching socialism for the XXIst Century and generally kicking the ass
of the ruling class while a mile away the other heads of state of the
hemisphere (minus one little island whose leader wasn’t invited cause
even now after four and a half decades the mere thought of his beard
makes the Yankees wet their pants) were trying to come up with a plan to
upstage Chavez's coup: at the stadium he had Maradonna seated at his
right hand.
And what a crowd! A gigantic ghosted version of Korda's famous image of
Che over the flags of all the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean
sewn together in anti-imperialist solidarity, giant banners with Sandino
and Bolivar and Martí and a sea of placards with Evita's image. And an
indigenous leader - it may have been Evo Morales, but I’m not sure -
telling a reporter as he marched, "we demand the right to
plurinationality." They want their rights as indigenous people, as
Bolivians, AND as Latin Americans recognized and respected.
On the podium, the man who has replaced Fidel Castro as "Bush's nemesis
in Latin America" in Lucía Newman's scripts, the leader of the
Bolivarian Revolution, President Hugo Chavez.