Two weeks ago I mentioned here the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez; I think he is the international Left’s best hope at present: anti-American without being bin Laden.
He causes trouble for the United States, but in the old-fashioned Cold War way for a Latin American: delivering two-hour speeches about gringo imperialism to various mobs, attributing Latin American poverty to American corporations, being lauded by the former Mrs Jagger, and being written up by the evergreen Richard Gott in the Guardian, who did the same for Che Guevara so many years ago. All Camden could rally to such a leader. Soon he will receive the greatest honour which the British Left can at present bestow — dinner here with London’s Chavez: Mr Livingstone.
We may also suspect that those big Latino demonstrations in the United States the other day have been vaguely good for the cause; holding out the hope that at some distant date independent states, allied to Señor Chavez or his successors, would be set up in southern California, Arizona and New Mexico by all those Latino nannies, handymen and waiters at present forced to attend to the wishes of Joan Collins and Michael Winner around successive Hollywood swimming pools.
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