Photo from Reuters

(It’s not my fault he looks like Mickey Mouse in this picture – blame Reuters)

So much Chavez buffoonery today, I just couldn’t let it pass without comment. The Miami Herald writes about Chavez’ supposed fascination with the death of Simon Bolivar;

Bolívar, a leader of the revolution that freed Colombia and its neighbors from Spanish rule, died in Santa Marta 16 days later. ”It was easy to recognize,” reported the attending physician after an autopsy, that he died from tuberculosis.

But Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez — whose devotion to Bolívar knows no bounds — is questioning that verdict and suggesting he was poisoned by oligarchs in neighboring Colombia — his main current foe after the United States.

Chávez has created a high-level commission, led by his vice president, to open Bolívar’s coffin and ”clear up the important doubts woven around the death of the Liberator,” according to the Official Gazette.

Chávez has even questioned whether Bolívar’s remains actually lay at the National Pantheon in downtown Caracas, about 10 blocks from where he was born in 1783.

”I swear I will not rest in the search for the real truth,” Chávez said in December, promising “an investigation with all the resources Venezuela can offer.”

Historians dispute Chavez’ fixation;

Referring to Chávez’s suggestion of assassination by poison, [Germán Carrera-Damas, Venezuela's most prominent historian on Bolívar's era] said, “There’s just as much evidence to say that Bolívar died from a fall in the bathroom. This is just a decoy by Chávez. When things get difficult at home for him, he invents something to distract people.”

[...]

David Bushnell, a retired University of Florida expert on Bolívar, tied Chávez’s comments about Bolívar’s death to the president’s verbal attacks on Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, whom he has called a ”puppet” of the Colombian oligarchy and a ”lapdog” of the United States. The two countries engaged in a weeklong diplomatic crisis that ended earlier this month.

”Chávez says that the enemies facing him are the same ones who faced Bolívar,” Bushnell said by telephone from Gainesville. “If they killed Bolívar, according to Chávez’s thinking, then it would follow that they’re trying to kill him.

”It’s nonsense,” Bushnell added. “In Latin America in the 19th century, they used gunfire, not poison. What Chávez is claiming sounds like a Renaissance Italy tactic. I can’t think of any leading figure from 19th century Latin America who was killed by poison. A lot were shot, though.”

Bloomberg reports that Chavez has plans to begin seizing “idle” farm land. Apparently, milk producers and farmers are causing the wide spread food shortages by failing to plant and produce, according to Chavez;

“We have to intervene in all idle land,” Chavez said today during a ceremony to commemorate the government’s nationalization of a milk plant, in comments broadcast by state television. “We have to make them produce.”

Chavez is using rising revenue from oil exports to try to resolve politically sensitive shortages of basic foods like milk, beans and beef before state and municipal elections scheduled this year.

But, The Devil’s Excrement writes that the Chavez family in the state of Barinas, Venezuela has already started buying up parcels of land, making them one of the largest landowner families in the area;

[Wilmer] Azuaje all of a sudden got ambitious and sensing the weakness of the Chavez name in Barinas, decided he could be Governor. Thus, despite the express prohibition by Chavez for people to announce candidacies, Azuaje announced he was running in November. However, he also decided to go for the jugular and denounced the Chavez family for corruption, saying they have accumulated large pieces of land, most of which they keep in somebody else’s name.

He brought the evidence to the Comptroller’s Commission of the National Assembly and the stuff is apparently quite thorough, so much that they had to admit it as evidence and open an investigation.

Even Leftist Venezuelanalysis (generally written and maintained by US Leftists in support of Chavez and his revolution) reports on this tidbit;

“This cannot be socialism,” Azuaje asserted, and asked that the Comptroller`s Commission travel to Barinas and speak with those involved in the contracts to verify how Izarra and Báez were able to pay for the farms. He also denounced that the roadways in and around the farms owned by Chávez family members are better kept than statewide roads.

Chavez is still haunted by Raul Reyes’ computer hard drive, so he pretends that it couldn’t have survived the attack according to Daniel at Venezuela News and Views;

Chavez, scared shitless of the Reyes computer, is trying to promote the thesis that if Reyes was killed he certainly could not be survived by his computer. People like me, scientists by trade, know very well that if the bulk of Reyes body survived then there is a very good chance that the hard drive of his lap top could also make it.

Of course, the best way for Chavez to redeem his image is shut down opposition media (BBC link);

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government is holding a series of events in Caracas to counter “media terrorism”.
[...]
“Chavez’s government denies media outlets that are not subordinate to his hegemony access to public information”, David Natera, publisher of Venezuela’s Correo del Caroni newspaper, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

So, let’s recap; the oligarchs in Colombia are trying to kill Chavez because they killed Bolivar; while Chavez’ family is buying up land, and he’s trying to nationalize land (I remind readers that all politics in agrarian Latin America revolve around land reform), and to keep everyone quiet about his failures and FARC buffoonery, he tries to shut down the opposition media.

I’m sorry but I don’t see the resemblance between Bolivar and Chavez.