Condoleezza, My Love

“Hello, My Love.  I was just looking at the fantastically blue sky with its gentle white clouds.  The sun is shining brightly and the fields are filled with an array of colors.  The birds are playing in the trees and singing a variety of songs.  We’ve just come from the ocean and the waters were calm and gentle.

“Surrounded by so much beauty, I automatically thought of you.  How are you?”

From there the conversation turned to some papers that he had left on his desk -- what she should do with them -- and to some other business matters.

When he finished talking, I asked him if he was speaking to his sweetheart.

“No way,” he replied.  “That was the boss’s secretary.” I told him that if had been talking that way in the United States the next day he would have been fired and would probably have a lawsuit filed against him for sexual harassment.

However, we were in Venezuela and not in the U.S.

I think back to my first moments in Venezuela over twenty years ago. A Roman Catholic priest from the U.S. who had lived a few decades in Venezuela met me at the airport.  We had to wait a couple of hours for another person who was also arriving that afternoon.

As we stood in the arrival area, numerous Venezuelans approached, greeted and spoke with the priest.  When the person was female, he would say, “Hello, My Love,” and the two would exchange kisses on the cheek.  Probably needless to say, but:  I had never seen such encounters between priest and parishioners in the U.S.

It took me a while - was it weeks, months or years I don’t remember - to realize that Venezuelan customs were not U.S. customs.

Walking down the streets of Caracas, one is surrounded by a symphony of “piropos,” flattering words usually thrown like flowers by males to passing females.

Some might want to say that such remarks are a result of Venezuelan machismo but I deliberately used the word “usually” in the last sentence.  Here they come from the feminine side also.  I was in a supermarket recently when the cashier, whom I had never seen before, said to me: “Will that be all, My Love?”  In a drug store, a woman clerk whom I hardly know said:  “I like your haircut.”  While jogging I stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper and a woman said to me: “Sir, you have fantastic legs.”

Whenever I have run in the 10-kilometer “Bolder Boulder” I have passed many women and have been passed by many as we ran through the streets of Boulder, Colorado.  But I never heard any woman saying something like that to me nor did I ever say to one of them, “Hey, Miss, you have beautiful legs.”  Had I done so I think I would have been knocked down immediately or met at the finish line by the Boulder police.

It is in this context that I reflect on something Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said at a huge January 23 rally in Caracas. There is a common response in Venezuela to a question that occurs often in life:  “What does so-and-so have against me?  I’ve never done anything to him (or her).”  The usual reply is:  “Maybe he (or she) is in love with you.”

It was not surprising, therefore, that someone proposed this theory as the possible reason why Condoleezza Rice is always throwing mud (or might we say “cooked rice?”) in the direction of Chávez.  And it was very naturally Venezuelan for Chávez to mention the idea and to say he was thinking of “inviting her to get together and to ask her, ‘what’s your problem?’” (“Soy capaz de invitarla a una reunión para decirle, ¿Qué te pasa a ti conmigo?”)

He said that first she was angry, then she was sad.  As a Belgium priest that I have known for ages would say, “Ay, ay, ay!”

Chávez’s remarks bought chuckles to many Venezuelans but I have at least one friend who felt Chávez shouldn’t have spoken in such terms to the woman who was soon be the new secretary of state of the United States of America.  It was also seen in the same light by many of the opposition politicians who have no reason to be anything other than sour since Chávez trounced them at the ballot box in August 2004.

But I have talked to a number of other Venezuelans about Chávez’s remarks.  They all just smiled or laughed about it.  One said that he doubted any other president in the world had spoken that way about a U.S. secretary-of-state.

The matter brings up the question of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in the world of international diplomacy and who gets to decide the norms.  I must admit that I did not think it was proper when former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, Charles Shapiro, invited the press to an embassy party and hired a puppeteer to make fun of President Chávez.  Maybe I shouldn’t have felt it was improper.  But when I was in elementary school, I was taught that there was a difference between laughing at someone and laughing with someone.  In other words it is not funny to make fun of someone else, but it can be funny when you include yourself in the matter.  I don’t think Shapiro did this.

And talking about bad diplomatic taste, what about Condoleezza Rice’s reprimand to Chávez in April 2002 after the coup?  On that occasion National Security Adviser Rice warned Chávez that when he was back in the presidential palace he should “respect constitutional processes.” He always had.  I don’t remember her ever saying anything bad about those involved in the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Venezuela.

And what about the U.S. government spokespersons sticking their noses into the recent conflict between Venezuela and Colombia?  Other governments (with the exception of the U.S. lackey in El Salvador) didn’t take sides in the matter.  Was that diplomatically nice? Chávez and Uribe settled their differences with the help of Fidel Castro!  Even he didn’t take sides.

These days Chávez is touring the world cementing friendships with other countries.  He has great relationships with the presidents of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.  Before the end of the month he will be meeting again with President Uribe of Colombia and President Zapatero of Spain.  But U.S. diplomats seem to hate him for these friendships.  Recently the newly appointed Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick referred to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela as “the Pied Piper of Populism.”  Now, according to the Financial Times, Roger Pardo-Maurer, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the US Department of Defense, spoke of Chávez in terms of using a “hyena strategy.”  How’s that for a diplomatic compliment?

In any case, maybe Chávez shouldn’t have spoken as he did about the new U.S. secretary of state.  But I have to admit that his remarks didn’t surprise me and that I laughed and enjoyed them.

In spite of all the over-cooked rice that has been thrown at him recently, I also wouldn’t be surprised if some day Hugo and Condoleezza meet he might say to her, “Hello, My Love.  Glad to meet you.”  He is very much a gentleman and it would be very Venezuelan to do so.

I would suggest, however, that he not try to kiss her on the cheek.