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Now in the face of their deepening crisis, center-left regimes (like in Brazil and Argentina) have made no or few provisions for unemployed workers, peasants, public employees and small business. Instead, (in pursuit of new markets and investors) "bankers, export elites and multi-national corporations" are favored as in America.
However, Venezuela's center-left regime pursued an alternate strategy, including nationalizing key sectors, protecting vital social ones like food, and expanding agrarian reform to increase production. Chavez vows to maintain social services and is practicing Keynesian policies to do it - large-scale public investments combined with subsidizing the most needy. Still, Venezuela's dependence on oil revenues makes it vulnerable to declining prices, something very much in play today that threatens social stability along with high inflation and "mal-distribution of income, property and power."
Overall throughout the continent, "Mass protests, general strikes, and other forms of social unrest are beginning to manifest themselves." America will try to capitalize on them to maintain dominance over its "back yard."
Addressing Economic Needs Via Electoral Processes: The Case of Venezuela
Democratic political processes require:
-- "Free and equal competition for political office;
-- access to the means of communication; and
-- competing ideas and freedom to speak and act without physical or psychological coercion."
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