NACLA has Latin America writer Daniel Denvir's review (5/11/09) of a new Bart Jones biography of Hugo Chávez. In it, Denvir's reasons for having "never been a big reader of biographies"--"the product of our most unfortunate and idol-indulging tendencies"--give way to the fact that some leaders' "images become proxies for larger ideological, social and cultural debates--often to the point of caricature." Denvir's contention that "a good biography can take on this echo chamber residuum and tell a more reality-based story" becomes that much more urgent when, "in the case of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, this is a politically necessary task":

The New York Times editorial board claims Chávez aids guerrillas. Ethically challenged televangelist Pat Robertson called for his assassination. And when talking heads aren't calling him a terrorist, they take up the Venezuelan right wing’s cartoonish image of Chávez as hyperbolic and verbose buffoon. Admittedly, recent conservative attempts to provoke hysteria over the Chávez-Obama handshake at the Summit of the Americas seem to have fallen flat.

The Jones book crucially "takes on mainstream media coverage of Chávez and explains the Bolivarian Revolution's victories--and thus its high level of public support" while it also "acknowledges that Chávez is a leader with serious faults... but methodically knocks down the charge that he is a dictator." Denvir further notes that "conservative talk radio and mainstream media have eagerly spilled copious ink cataloguing Chávez's sins. Meanwhile, far less attention is given to President Álvaro Uribe and the Colombian political establishment's ties to right-wing paramilitaries, who actually kill their political opponents," and suggests that "a comparative Lexis-Nexis study on the subject would be enlightening." Well... see Extra!: "FAIR Study: Human Rights Coverage Serving Washington's Needs: FAIR Finds Editors Downplaying Colombia's Abuses, Amplifying Venezuela's" (2/09) by Steve Rendall, Daniel Ward & Tess Hall

The North American Congress on Latin America has published (NACLA Magazine, 5-6/09) Dan Beeton's account of how, following Evo Morales' huge win in the Bolivian presidential referendum of last August, his opponents instigated "riots, economic sabotage and the massacre of more than 20 indigenous"--during which Bolivia threw out the U.S. ambassador for attempted spying and allegedly providing "funding for violent opposition groups." Yet, Beeton tells us, "save for one Washington Post article, the [subsequent U.S.] Morales visit garnered no full-length reports in major U.S. papers."

This could arguably be a good thing, considering the results of what little attention was paid to Morales having solicited Sen. Richard Lugar's "remarkable statement implicitly acknowledging that the United States had made a mistake in failing to condemn the September violence":

Only the Associated Press and the Washington Post even mentioned it, and the AP initially misrepresented the statement completely, reporting that Lugar had said "the United States rejects any suggestion that it did not respect Bolivia's sovereignty or the legitimacy of its government." (A correction was never issued. A subsequent AP article in December cited Lugar's statement correctly and reported Morales' encouraging response.)

Although Lugar's statement was handed directly to the Post, neither the meeting with Lugar nor Lugar's statement made it into the print edition of the paper's article on Morales' visit. This is a striking omission in a 700-word article, since it was arguably the most newsworthy event of the visit. A Web version of the article did mention the Lugar meeting, but only in the 13th paragraph.

Hear of similarly shoddy press treatment of the other great official U.S. enemy of Latin America on FAIR's radio program CounterSpin: "Dan Beeton on Venezuela" (2/13/09).