Martín Kohan, the newly-minted winner of the Premio Herralde, makes an interesting attempt to defend the conduct of Hugo Chávez in his spat with the King of Spain here. After pointing out that what the King did was ask the President of Venezuela why he didn’t shut up and not directly to shut up, he says,
It has to be admitted that what is expected of a leader is that he cultivate the art of oratory. Hugo Chávez, like Fidel Castro cultivates it through abundance, richness and the fullest baroque. That’s why he didn’t shut up. Those who don’t want to listen to him would be better off not asking him anything.
But Chávez doesn’t care whether he has been asked a question or not and his oratory has nothing to do with any attempt to explain or persuade. He just talks and talks and talks and tries to drown his audience in a flood of words and does so regardless of whether it consists of those who love him, those who are merely beholden to him economically or those who don’t care for him at all. The marvelous music of revolutionary nostalgia and solidarity with whatever tyrant happens to be opposed to Washington is playing inside his head and it sails forth unassisted whenever he opens his mouth.
So it’s an oratory based on abundance alright but of words only, not ideas, and the richness and baroque, such as they are, have to do with the stretching to the limits of parody and beyond of a certain vision of an enlightened great leader who will carry us over to the Promised Land if only we would trust him without reservation. It’s an oratory of repetition and attrition and is predicated on the certainty that he’s the only one with anything worthwhile to say. At least he doesn’t yet throw people in jail for trying to raise their voices against him but that day will probably come soon enough.
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