Venezuela e socialismo

Eu não concordo com muito do que o autor (o diretor do jornal oposicionista venezuelano em língua inglesa Caracas Chronicles) escreve aí em baixo (nomeadamente acho que ele está a usar uma definição muito alargada de "socialismo" - note-se que o argumento dele não é "a Venezual não é socialista" mas sim "o Equador, Bolívia, Brasil, etc. também são ou foram socialistas"), mas...

No, Venezuela doesn’t prove anything about socialism, por Francisco Toro, no Washington Post:

Venezuela is clearly having its moment in the American conservative mediasphere. The country’s catastrophic collapse is, we’re told, all we need to know about the terrifying dangers of socialism. (...)

I’ve spent two decades chronicling every agonizing twist and turn in the decay of Venezuela’s democracy, economy and society. You’d think I’d be on board with these takes. Think again. I’m revulsed. It’s appalling to see my country’s suffering leveraged for cheap partisan point-scoring. (...)

It bothers me because it’s lazy. But it bothers me more because it’s wrong.

Since the turn of the century, every big country in South America except Colombia has elected a socialist president at some point. Socialists have taken power in South America’s largest economy (Brazil), in its poorest (Bolivia) and in its most capitalist (Chile). Socialists have led South America’s most stable country (Uruguay) as well as its most unstable (Ecuador). Argentina and Peru elected leftists who, for various reasons, didn’t refer to themselves as socialists — but certainly governed as such.

Mysteriously, the supposedly automatic link between socialism and the zombie apocalypse skipped all of them. Not content with merely not-collapsing, a number of these countries have thrived.