* From El Libertario, # 44 September-October 2005, voice of the Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas, exposing the show of international mega-ceremonies the Chavez regime uses to try and acquire revolutionary legitimacy by means of petro-dollars and verbosity.

There took place in Caracas, during August, an event that was obviously inspired by the Cuban assistants to the official propaganda apparatus: the XVI Students and Youth World Festival (XVI SYWF). In 1997 the Castro regime resurrected this Stalinist commemoration in its desperate search for support for its fossilized regime, although it wasn’t even a shadow of its past as the extinct Soviet Union that had provided the required economic and political support was sorely missing. Luckily for the Cuban government, now in charge of this decaying undertaking, there appeared some interested in giving it financial oxygen: in 2001 it was the Algerian military rulers who produced the show to gain justification from the left to the genocidal repression they were then waging against the Berber people and the Islamic insurgency. Later came another military ruler stuffed with oil currency: Hugo Chavez, whose government financed the show at a cost, officially recognized and approved by the supine Venezuelan National Assembly, of 1.8 billion bolivars (almost US$84 million, at the official exchange rate) although given what we’ve seen so far, it probably reached the sum of US$90 million.

The XVI SYWF was characterized by a sycophantic tone one would hope unthinkable in these times. Besides the pathetic spectacle of the North Korean delegation parading the sacred icons of Kim Il Sung and his heir, the Last Emperor, the majority of those attending participated without a word in the ceremonies exalting the country’s government and its leader (as well as Castro and his dictatorship). For sure this participation was forced upon many government employees (the same as in the electoral meetings, the bosses ordered the attendance of official functionaries) and a large portion of the visitors, who were thus paying back expenses and pampering dispensed by the host State. Those who were able to avoided with relish those “solidarity and revolutionary duties