To sceptics they are naive Westerners seduced by hype who would not recognise communist tyranny if it expropriated their sandals. ”Malodorous, leftwing, US and European peace creeps armed with mom’s credit card and brand new Birkenstocks,” according to American Thinker, a right-wing magazine.
To the Venezuelan government, they are valued friends who witness firsthand the positive changes in the slums and countryside and who return home, a volunteer army of ambassadors, to spread the good news. To others, they are simply curious souls drawn to this corner of South America to see what all the fuss is about.
Meet the revolutionary tourists, a wave of backpackers, artists, academics and politicians on a mission to discover if President Hugo Chávez really is forging a radical alternative to neoliberalism and capitalism.
From a trickle a few years ago, there are now thousands, travelling individually and on package tours, exploring a left-wing mecca that promises to build social justice in the form of ”21st-century socialism”.
Successors to the so-called ”sandalistas” who flocked to Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s and to Cuba in earlier decades, their ranks are to swell further now that Chávez is accelerating his self-styled revolution after last month’s landslide re-election. ”Socialism or death — I swear it,” he said last week, and declared himself a communist.
”It’s just amazing being here. There is so much vibe and passion, there is truly a sense of revolution,” Lucy Dale (20), a university student from Chicago on a 17-day trip, said last week. ”I want to return to do volunteer work.”
Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based group that doubles as a travel agent, organised trips for almost 500 Americans last year, five times the 2003 figure, said Jojo Farrell, its Venezuela liaison worker.
From Britain, the WolverhamptonÂÂ-based Venezuela Solidarity Campaign is planning to send at least six delegations this year, mostly of trade union members. ”Interest is growing significantly,” said Andy Goodall, the coordinator.
The visitors tend to shun the Caribbean beaches in favour of tours to agricultural cooperatives, shantytown medical clinics and adult literacy programmes, part of the government’s effort to spend petrodollars improving the lives of the poor majority.
”We saw healthy, happy well-dressed children taught by well qualified teachers who get paid a decent salary. These are opportunities that did not exist for poor people before Chávez,” said Kate Young, who travelled with the Rotary Foundation.
Others hail Caracas and its alliance with other left-wing governments for loosening Washington’s traditional grip over the region. ”We need checks and balances to US unilateralism and any good North American would laud Chávez for doing that,” said Clif Roberts, a Californian writer who stayed on in Venezuela after attending a poetry festival.
Visiting celebrities such as the actor Danny Glover, the singer Harry Belafonte and the anti-Iraq war activist Cindy Sheehan have echoed the sentiment. London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone, and the US doctor-turned-political activist Hunter ”Patch” Adams, are expected later this year.
”Given the history of gringo intervention in Latin American affairs, the Venezuelans have greeted us with an amazing degree of hospitality and openness,” said Edward Ellis, an American anthropologist who coordinates tours.
Many enthusiasts set up solidarity groups when they return home and detail their impressions in blogs, amplifying the message sent out by Venezuela’s embassies, information offices and Bolivarian Circles, an expatriate network named after the 19th-century Latin American independence fighter.
The aim is to correct alleged corporate media distortion that depicts the paratrooper-turned president as an autocratic megalomaniac and plays down the groundbreaking social progress.
”The UK media is very disappointing, always a negative slant,” said Rod Finlayson (62), a Ford Dagenham trade union official who was thrilled by the nationalisations and cultural events. ”Bach in the slums. Stuff you could only dream about.”
Dreaming, say some critics, is the problem: instead of investigating complexities — such as the corruption and mismanagement undermining some social programmes — visitors sleepwalk through government spin and never hear allegations that Venezuela’s oil bonanza is being wasted or that democracy is being smothered.
Finlayson said his Transport and General Workers Union delegation ignored such voices because the goal was to express solidarity, not investigate. However, the delegation did encounter some Chávez critics: while walking through an upmarket district of Caracas, it was pelted with eggs.
Some groups, such as those travelling with Global Exchange, meet opposition figures and hear claims that Chávez is hoarding power by fusing his movement into a single socialist party, not renewing the licence of an opposition-aligned TV station and plotting to abolish limits on terms of office.
”I was encouraged by much of what I saw in Venezuela but the focus on one person as the source of hope and improvement strikes me as unfortunate,” said Sarah Gelder, an editor at Yes!, a magazine based near Seattle. Another left-wing journalist, Monica Vera, a documentary-maker, hailed the country as a progressive beacon but voiced unease: ”I just hope it continues on that track.”
Last weekend, Chávez welcomed his latest visitor, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and announced a plan to build new cities from scratch in the countryside. He also vowed to replace municipal governments with councils inspired by the Paris commune, France’s shortlived experiment with radical socialism in 1871. — Â