Caracas Chronicles

PanfletoNegro has always been one of those oddities of Venezuelan cyberspace: minimally managed, open for anyone to write in and “anarchic” in the etymological sense, the site ought to be awash in unreadable garbage. And yes, there’s some of that, but there’s also a surprising proportion of very readable garbage, as well as some stuff that isn’t garbage at all.

Last week they had a “Semana Temática,” a theme week calling on contributors to think about Chávez’s legacy. All kinds of stuff came out, plenty of it eye-opening. I especially appreciated John Manuel Silva’s heroic attempt at a snark-free response, and Gordon Garcwin’s virtually all-snark approach to it.

I gave it a go myself – always a bit risky for me, since my written Spanish sucks – proposing that out of all the things gone FUBAR under Chávez, none went FUBARer than the left – Chávez destroyed any prospect that the parties of the working class will play a constructive role in the life of the nation for who knows how many generations to come.

I guess it’s up to you to say where precisely on the unreadable-garbage/readable-garbage/non-garbage PN spectrum it falls.