Hugo Chávez Opened Space for Left Leaders and Moderate Reformers in Latin America

To watch this entire interview on Democracy Now! visit http://bit.ly/YNj2VU. Democracy Now!'s Juan González and scholar Greg Grandin discuss how Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez created space for other left-leaning and reform-oriented leaders in Latin America. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And one point I made in my column in the Daily News today on Chávez is that, to the degree that he was seen by the United States and Europe as the most radical of Latin American leaders, he created space for an enormous diversity of other left-oriented leaders that seemed almost more acceptable to the West up against the figure, the lightning-rod figure, of Chávez. GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, for a long time, Washington policymakers and opinion makers were trying to create this idea that there were two lefts—a good left and a bad left—in Latin America, vegetarian left and a carnivore left. And the kind of emblematic leaders of that was Lula in Brazil, a reformist, you know, administered within the institutions of law, and Chávez. You know, fiery populist is a word—a description that I'm sure has been used kind of like Mad Libs, you know, in obituaries of Chávez. But in reality, they actually worked together very nicely. I mean, if you read the WikiLeaks cables, it was no—the U.S. was constantly trying to push this notion of a division or a divide between Brazil and Venezuela, and Brazil constantly rebuffed it. And certainly, Chávez's more flamboyant style on the world stage created a much more willingness to work with so-called more moderate reformers like Lula. And I would argue that their differences had more to do with the political structures that they inherited than anything. And I think they both, in very real ways, had exactly the same goal. To watch the full 50-minute roundtable and to see several exclusive Democracy Now! interviews with President Hugo Chávez, visit http://bit.ly/YNj2VU. Democracy Now!, is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on 1,100+ TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: Facebook:   / democracynow   Twitter: @democracynow Subscribe on YouTube:    / democracynow   Listen on SoundCloud:   / democracynow   Daily Email News Digest: http://www.democracynow.org/subscribe