President Chavez didn't actually come to class to talk with us about populism, but he was in Cochabamba for a recent ALBA summit. One of the Bolivia Semester Students, Bridget Winstanley, happened to be in the crowd as he left the conference hotel. He was connecting with the crowd when he saw her and said, in Spanish, "Where are you from?" Bridget froze. Chavez's rhetoric, and for that matter Bolivian President Evo Morales' rhetoric, has definitely not been US-friendly. He tried again, "You, white woman, where are you from?" Still frozen, Bridget was nudged into action by a few friends.
Los Estados Unidos - The United States, she told him. Ah! "Viva Los Estados Unidos! - Long Live the United States!" Chavez said. And then, in English, he exclaimed, "You are my sister!"
Val recently made an interesting, speculative post about the encroachment of soy farming into the Brazilian Amazon. Her post was extremely prescient as the New York Times seemed to follow her with a related, very popular, and controversial editorial by a livestock rancher suggesting local meat consumption may have less of an impact on the environment than vegetarianism, because of the environmental impact of soy farming.
Thank you, Mr. Chavez, for providing us with such a vivid example of populist political behavior. Thank you, Bridget and Val, for such interesting posts, and for the related pictures I linked from your sites.
This is such a cool story! Go Amizade students! <3
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