Montaner's Poblem

   Carlos Alberto Montaner suffers.  He suffers the fool's disease.  Somehow his musings make their way to the Miami Herald despite his perpetual lack of understanding how things really are.

   His focus, for the most part, is to create myths about Cuba, maybe to make himself feel better about being on the wrong side of history.  Maybe it's just because he represents the extremist community which has held a grip on U.S./Cuba policy for decades, a grip which is loosening.  Now, he has side tracked a bit and created a poor literary work about Venezuela's political situation.

   He wrote a fairy tale about Maria Corina Machado.  She is one of the flies which the eagle doesn't hunt.  She's also a Venezuelan politician who represents the oligarchs who were one in control of Venezuela.  By virtue of being a lackey for the oligarchs, she has also become a favorite by the Washington "democracy organizations, receiving millions of dollars in attempts to challenge Hugo Chavez and the will of the Venezuelan people.

   Mr. Montaner wrote about this woman in a way that shows his unwillingness to accept the revolutionary process occurring in Venezuela.  Ignoring the overwhelming support that Chavez enjoys of his people, Mr. Montaner imagines that this woman is to be some sort of hero as she wages her campaign in favor of returning Venezuela to its formerly exploited state.  That is why during the coup attempt against Chavez, Corina signed off on the documents by the coup leaders which shut down government institutions and abolished the new constitution approved by the Venezuelan people.  She is firmly on the side against the masses, so she is a hero to Mr. Montaner. 

   Mr. Montaner was tickled pink by the fact that Maria Corina wants the Cubans out of Venezuela.  Less tickled pink would be the great number of Venezuelans who have benefited from the strong ties and solidarity between the peoples of Cuba and Venezuela.  To Montaner, a rupture in those relations would be welcomed since it would likely cause some difficulties to his arch enemy, Cuba.  He, as others in the rabidly anti-Cuba clique, want to make life difficult on the island for the people that they pretend to love. 

   As problematic as reality is for Mr. Montaner, the poor politician Corina can't seem to shake the temptations of using the language of despots such as Pinochet.  Her "popular capitalism" is an acknowledgement that populism itself is a greater than outright defense of the business interests eager to exploit.  She tries to position herself as a populist, but the Venezuelan people are not stupid.  They understand that giving reign to the oligarchs would mean their own exclusion from deciding their own destiny. 

   Poor Carlos Alberto.  He imagines that the defeat of Chavismo is unstoppable.  He ignores President Chavez's popularity.  He walks through life with his eyes closed and clumsily bumps into stubborn facts.  For a man who claims that Fidel suffers from dementia, his own has become pretty obvious.  That is Montaner's problem