Molly Moore: After Machismo's Long Reign, Women Gain in Spain

MADRID -- When Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega graduated from law school in the 1970s, Spanish law prohibited her -- and any other woman -- from becoming a judge, serving as a witness in court or opening a bank account.

Today, the angular, outspoken 57-year-old is Spain's first female vice president, helping orchestrate a cultural revolution in the boardrooms and living rooms of the country that coined the word machismo -- male chauvinism -- five centuries ago.

"We have a prime minister who not only says he's a feminist -- he acts like a feminist," Fernandez de la Vega said in her cavernous office of polished wood floors and cream-colored sofas. "In two and one-half years, we have done more than has ever been done in such a short time in Spain."

Her Socialist government is requiring political parties to allot 40 percent of their candidate lists to women and is telling big companies to give women 40 percent of the seats on corporate boards. Half of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero's cabinet members are women -- the highest proportion in any government in Europe.

New divorce laws not only make it easier for couples to split but stipulate that marital obligations require men to share the housework equally with their wives.

To draw more women into the armed forces, the government is shrinking the height requirements for women entering the National Guard and opening child-care centers on military bases.

Not even the royal family is immune: Zapatero wants to abolish the law giving male heirs first rights to the throne.

The push for gender equality in one of Europe's most macho cultures comes as both internal and outside forces are creating seismic social shifts: Spanish women are taking greater control of their own lives by waiting longer to marry and having fewer children. The European Union is exerting more pressure on members to enforce equality. And the growth of high-tech businesses with a greater sensitivity to hiring women is expanding job opportunities.

The chief executives of Spain's IBM, Microsoft and Google operations are all women. In many cases, they are not only hiring more female employees than traditional industries, but they are attempting to make the workplace more family-friendly.

Microsoft chief Rosa Maria Garcia, a 40-year-old mother of three, said she has mandated that no company meetings be scheduled before 8:30 a.m. or after 5:30 p.m. -- a revolutionary move in a country where workdays routinely stretch until 9 or 10 p.m.

Despite the advances, Fernandez said, "There is resistance. We have a long way to go."

Business organizations are attacking the proposed quotas for women on corporate boards. Some Catholic Church officials denounce decisions allowing gay couples to marry and liberalization of abortion laws as "demonic." Despite new laws cracking down on domestic violence, the number of women murdered by their partners has escalated this year -- in part, some sociologists believe, because men are striking back even harder at spouses who dare to report abuses to police.

Many men scoff at the law's efforts to legislate home life.

"Just because Zapatero says by law men have to do dishes, men are not going to do dishes," said Alberto Fuertes, a stocky, square-faced 37-year-old owner of a small factory. "That's ridiculous. It's totally absurd."

A recent government-sponsored television advertisement showed a man meticulously washing his car and admonished that if a guy can clean his auto, there's nothing unmanly in helping his wife pick up around the house.

Some women also take potshots at Zapatero's reforms and the women he has promoted to help him run the country.

After Zapatero filled eight of his 16 cabinet positions -- including the vice presidency -- with women, "the first thing they did was have a picture taken dressed up in party dresses and full of furs," sniped Ana Pastor, a member of the lower house of parliament and one of the most senior women in the opposition Popular Party. She was referring to a controversial photo spread of the female cabinet members in the Spanish edition of Vogue two years ago. "The vice president of the government, Fernandez de la Vega, is known as Fernandez de la Vogue."

Zapatero, elected in part on his promises to improve the station of women, has said his mission is to make up for lost time.

"One thing that really awakens my rebellious streak is 20 centuries of one sex dominating the other," Zapatero said shortly after his election. "We talk of slavery, feudalism, exploitation -- but the most unjust domination is that of one-half of the human race over the other."

During the height of the sexual revolution in the United States and other parts of Europe, Spain was just beginning to emerge from decades of dictatorship under Generalissimo Francisco Franco and a legal system that did not recognize rights for women. Domestic violence was considered a means of disciplining wives rather than a criminal violation, and many jobs were closed to women.

Despite advances in government opportunities for women, the Spanish private sector remains one of the most chauvinistic in Europe. Women sit on less than 5 percent of corporate boards and overall earn 30 percent less than their male counterparts. It remains common practice for companies to fire pregnant women, according to women's organizations and victims.

"The culture and tradition of machista is very deeply ingrained in the mentality of everyone," said Carmen Bravo, secretary for women's issues for Spain's largest labor union, known by the initials CCOO.

Fuertes, whose small factory makes mattress covers, said he has no problem hiring women -- all 11 of his employees are women, most between the ages of 46 and 55.

"The older generation of women are used to working hard," said Fuertes, balancing his 2 1/2 -year-old daughter on his lap after returning home at the end of a recent workday. "If I hire a 36-year-old, the problem is that she's going to take a lot of days off to take her child to the doctor. She knows her rights and knows I can't do anything about that."

At home, Fuertes said, it's not Zapatero's laws, but his working wife who has persuaded him to share in the cooking and cleaning.

At his parent's home, "My father crosses his arms and says to my mother, 'Bring me my coffee,' " Fuertes said. "My mother does everything -- she irons and cooks and cleans. Women now don't want to be like their mothers."

And if Alba, his daughter, grew up to marry a man like grandpa?

"I would not be happy," said Fuertes, as his toddler nestled against his chest. "It would go against everything I've tried to teach her."

Saturday, October 7, 2006; A01

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Anthony Faiola: Japan's Abe, Poised to Lead, Offers Nation Vision of Pride

TOKYO -- To glimpse the brave new Japan of Shinzo Abe -- the hawkish 51-year-old poised to replace Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister next week -- take a peek inside the eighth-grade history classes at this city's prestigious Tamagawa Academy.

Using new textbooks with lessons hailed by Abe as the foundation of a more confident nation, junior high students at the elite private school are this year being taught something that has been largely taboo in post-World War II Japan -- to take pride in their country. The texts omit or soften references to atrocities committed by Japanese troops during the war, assure students that the war was waged primarily in self-defense and promote the ideal of a proud and independent Japan.

The controversial books, thus far adopted by only a handful of schools, have the support of the government and are set for wider distribution. But they are only part of Abe's vision for the future. He has vowed to push through a sweeping education bill, strengthening the notion of patriotism in public classrooms in a way not seen since the fall of Imperial Japan, and to rewrite Japan's pacifist constitution to allow the country to again have an official and flexible military.

Abe (pronounced ah-bay) may well get his way. Currently Japan's chief cabinet secretary, he is overwhelmingly favored to succeed the retiring Koizumi in ruling party elections on Wednesday, a win that would effectively guarantee him the prime minister's post after a full vote of parliament on Sept. 26.

Although his proposals have flustered Japan's neighbors in Asia, where war-related grievances linger just below the surface, Abe and others define the changes as a natural maturing of Japanese democracy. Perhaps more importantly, they say the changes reflect the need for Japan to transform itself in the face of new threats.

In the decades after World War II, most Japanese took pride in their country's role as the world's model pacifist society, which operated by the rules of "checkbook diplomacy" and left its defense largely to U.S. military might. But today Japan is confronting the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea and the reality of a China that has become a military and economic superpower.

The rise of Abe, an unabashed nationalist set to be Japan's youngest postwar prime minister and its first to be born after the conflict, underscores a profound shift in thinking that has been shaped by those threats.

"Rather than getting praised for wrestling a good round of sumo under the rules that foreign countries make, we should join in the making of the rules," Abe said in a televised debate this month. ". . . I believe I can create a new Japan with a new vision."

Japan's foreign minister, Taro Aso, and its finance minister, Sadakazu Tanigaki, are also competing for the leadership of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP. But neither is as pedigreed as Abe to deliver on promises. His father, Shintaro Abe, served as foreign minister; his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was initially arrested as a World War II criminal but escaped the gallows to become prime minister in 1957.

In Abe's latest book, "Toward a Beautiful Country," Japan's presumptive new leader casts doubt on the legitimacy of the Tokyo war crimes tribunal that convicted Japan's wartime leaders. Asked by a foreign journalist last September whether he regretted Japan's defeat in the war, Abe briskly replied, "You refer to me as rather nationalistic, but I say that the person who is not patriotic cannot be the leader of his country."

The handpicked successor of Koizumi, a charismatic leader who laid the groundwork for Japan's gradual emergence from its pacifist shell, Abe has crafted a comparatively ambitious vision. Although he is likely to maintain Koizumi's emphasis on the U.S.-Japan alliance as the basis of national defense, he has also suggested he wants Japan to be a more equal partner. Some analysts predict that he will strive for a version of Washington's relationship with Britain, which closely cooperates with the U.S. military but acts on its own as it sees fit.

Analysts also note that Abe is popular largely because of -- not despite -- his unusually hawkish stance. He has been particularly fierce on the subject of communist North Korea, now seen as Japan's greatest security threat. When North Korea launched a battery of new test missiles on July 4, Abe went far beyond the diplomatic talking points, calling for a debate on whether Tokyo could stage a preemptive strike on North Korean missile bases.

Ten years ago, analysts note, such boldness would have sparked a public outcry here for his resignation. Today, it has helped ensure his election as Japan's prodigal samurai returned.

"Abe recognizes that Japan can no longer be the country it has been. We cannot sit back in the face of new dangers," said Ichita Yamamoto, an LDP legislator and close Abe ally. "Under our current constitution, if a U.S. ship is attacked aside a Japanese ship, we cannot even fight to defend our American allies. What kind of partner does that make us? We are living in a more dangerous world and it calls for a strong leader."

Abe's popularity has buoyed conservatives, who see him as the natural heir to Koizumi as the Japanese regain their pride. Though Koizumi infuriated China and the Koreas by visiting a shrine that honors Japan's military dead, including convicted war criminals, he unambiguously upheld the government's landmark 1995 apology, which recognized World War II as an act of Japanese aggression. Abe, in contrast, has been less clear, saying he recognizes the "spirit" of the apology but suggesting that historians should be the final judges of Japan's past actions.

Japanese pacifists, whose shrinking ranks have made them a minority voice here, have become anxious. They point to the continuing influence of rightist groups with armored black vans, whose members use bullhorns to shout racist propaganda on the streets of major Japanese cities. They also cite the punishments meted out to teachers who have refused to comply with recent requirements to stand for the national anthem and bow to the Japanese flag at school graduation and entrance ceremonies.

"I have a sense that the postwar generation of politicians in Japan -- including Abe -- have lost the older generation's sense of war guilt," said Takayoshi Miyagawa, a political strategist and noted pacifist in Tokyo. "This is taking Japan down a path we should not be going down again. It is a path that is leading us back toward a wicked nationalism that the young have now forgotten about."

Advocates of rebuilding Japanese patriotism call such talk alarmist, saying six decades as Asia's leading democracy and dominant economy have earned Japan the right to pride. The movement, they add, is not going forward without caution. At Tamagawa Academy, for instance, students using the revised, and more flattering, history books have also been told to use the old ones as supplemental material to help them formulate their own conclusions.

"We are trying to strike a balance between our role as teachers and our desire to give young Japanese a chance to be proud of their country," said Kiyoaki Ishizuka, Tamagawa's junior high headmaster. "The youth of every other nation enjoys that right. Why shouldn't Japan's?"

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Lori Aratani: With a Changing World Comes An Urgency to Learn Chinese

Pearl Terrell was so determined that her great-granddaughter Shayla begin learning Chinese that she spent two weeks this summer driving 100 miles a day from her home in West Virginia to a middle school in Frederick County so the soon-to-be fifth-grader could learn the language.

The U.S. government flew 10 teachers to Washington from China this month and gave them a five-day crash course in Dupont Circle on how to teach -- American-style -- before dispatching them to schools across the country. Although the number may seem small, the scramble to recruit and train these teachers for the start of this school year underscores the urgency the Bush administration is placing on establishing Chinese programs in U.S. classrooms.

After years of insisting that the world speak English, of grants and initiatives that established foreign language programs in fits and starts, Americans have awakened to a far more global playing field and the need for specialized languages, economists say. And nowhere is that more evident than with China.

"China is being mentioned everywhere in relation to everything from business, international affairs -- even the war on terror," said Kenneth Lieberthal, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan. "You buy things in the store -- they're made in China. . . . No one is hearing about France as the way of the future."

More than 1.3 billion people worldwide speak Chinese, and about 885 million of those people speak Mandarin, China's official language and dominant dialect. In the United States, only about 24,000 students in grades seven through 12 study the language, according to a report from the Asia Society, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that seeks to build ties between the United States and Asia. But educators say those students reflect a steady growth in the number of Americans wanting to learn Chinese.

"People are finally beginning to pay attention to Mandarin as a major cultural and economic prospect for students," said Michael H. Levine, executive director of education for the Asia Society. "The push is coming from the defense [community] and government and grass-roots interest from parents."

In January, President Bush unveiled a $114 million initiative aimed at increasing the number of so-called critical languages, such as Chinese and Arabic, taught in U.S. schools. The 10 Chinese teachers are the first recruits in a program the Bush administration hopes to expand to include teachers of Russian, Korean, Farsi and other critical languages.

"This is the largest initiative of its kind focused on language in half a century," said Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department.

There is no official tracking of Chinese programs, but about 96 public and private U.S. schools offer Arabic, according to the National Capital Language Resource Center, a joint project of Georgetown and George Washington universities and the nonprofit Center for Applied Linguistics. This fall, for example, Springbrook High School in Silver Spring will offer Arabic for the first time.

Chinese language courses are not new, particularly in the Washington area, where schools have long had an international bent. In Montgomery County, Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Richard Montgomery high schools have offered Mandarin since the late 1980s. Fairfax County schools have offered it since the 1990s.

But what is new is that interest in such courses no longer comes exclusively from Asian parents, who viewed the programs as a way for their children to maintain ties to their culture. Increasingly, it's non-Asian parents who want their children to learn Chinese, citing the desire to remain competitive for the best jobs. For example, in the Chinese language program offered in Frederick County this summer, only two of the 16 children were Asian.

"They want their children to have an edge, and they see Chinese as helping them get that," said Paula Patrick, foreign language coordinator for Fairfax public schools, where about 1,200 students take Chinese.

This fall, more than a third of Maryland's public school systems will offer Mandarin -- more than twice the number that offered it last year. (Some U.S. schools teach Cantonese, the dialect widely spoken in Hong Kong and the language spoken by many early Chinese immigrants, but far more offer Mandarin.)

In Virginia, where five school systems offer Chinese, educators in Fairfax launched a program last year to offer lessons to 1,000 students at two elementary campuses. That's in addition to the programs it offers at three high schools, where about 200 students are taking part. In Montgomery, where 17 schools offer courses, program enrollment increased 59 percent last year, from 656 students to 1,041.

In the District, H Street Community Development Corp. offered Chinese language training to 11 high school students this summer. At Washington Latin School, a public charter school slated to open next month in Northwest Washington, educators are hoping that their Mandarin program will be a draw for families when formal courses are offered in 2008.

School systems in Philadelphia, Houston, New York City and Portland, Ore., are poised to launch Chinese programs. Chicago public schools teach more than 3,500 students in the largest program in the nation.

Kathryn B. Groth, vice president of the Frederick school board, whose system will start a Mandarin program this fall, said she welcomes the global focus.

"I think Americans who used to feel other people needed to learn [English] now realize that the time has come when that doesn't work anymore," Groth said. "I've heard from people who say: 'Forget the engineering. Learn the foreign language. If you want a job, the foreign language is going to sell your engineering.' "

For her part, Terrell, the West Virginia great-grandmother, easily could have enrolled her great-granddaughter in Spanish or French courses and saved a lot of gas money. Terrell never considered foreign language a must-have when she was growing up, but she has changed her worldview.

"China is an up-and-coming country," Terrell said. "And if [Shayla] learns Chinese, it will be good for her -- and maybe she can teach me some as well."

In the sun-dappled classroom in Frederick County, Shayla and her classmates were more than eager to show off their language skills. Ariana Sadoughi, 9, of Frederick ticked off a list of Chinese phrases she had mastered: ni hao (how are you?), xie xie (thank you).

In another corner of the room, Xinchun Song was showing another group of students how to write the Chinese characters for big sister, little sister and mother. At one point, she separated the two characters that combine to form the word "mother," explaining to the children that when separated, one character translates to "horse" and the other represents "female."

"Does that mean my mother is a female horse?" one boy asked with alarm.

"No, no, no," Song said as she tried to explain the complexities of Chinese writing.

Yet even as U.S. educators are being pushed to expand Chinese programs, they are running into obstacles. It is difficult to find people qualified to teach.

Only a few universities in the United States offer teacher certification programs in Mandarin, according to Levine, of the Asia Society. Last year, George Mason University added a program to certify Mandarin teachers, but only two people have enrolled.

That's why exchanges such as the one that brought the 10 Chinese teachers, as well as two Arabic instructors from Jordan, to the United States are so critical, said the State Department's Farrell.

"This will help us get a jump-start," he said. The initiative to bring foreign teachers here will be complemented by a similar effort to send Americans overseas for language training, he said.

Still, some fear that school systems -- particularly those that serve mainly poor and minority children -- might not be willing to make the investment in adding language classes because they are focused on pushing students to meet reading, writing and mathematics goals required under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The Chinese government, however, is trying to do what it can to promote Chinese language. Hanban, or the National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, a nongovernmental organization funded by the Chinese government, has been instrumental in providing materials and in some cases helping school systems recruit teachers from China.

This summer, Hanban worked with the National Association of Independent Schools, a group representing U.S. private schools, to send a nine-member delegation to China that recruited 19 teachers for 16 schools.

Hanban has also forged a partnership with the College Board, the organization that administers the SAT and Advanced Placement exams. This fall, the College Board will begin offering AP Chinese courses in select schools. Hanban will help the organization recruit instructors from China to help teach the courses.

For their part, the Chinese teachers who trained in Dupont -- still full of energy after a long day of lectures on "The Culture of the American School" -- were eager to share their language and traditions with U.S. students.

Said Shijun Chen, a high school teacher from Beijing: "We feel very excited and very lucky to bring our culture here. It will be a really good challenge for us."

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Ibsen Martínez: Hugo Chavez: the Next Castro?

CARACAS, Venezuela

The democratic opposition in Cuba and abroad looks to the island's new day, without Fidel Castro at the helm, as a moment of transition. But Castro and his regime's apparatchiks refer instead to a "succession," as though living in a monarchy. Nearly 200 years after Latin American nations began winning independence from imperial Spain, and on a continent that has produced so many wondrous novels about deteriorating despots succumbing to the perils of absolute power, it seems we still can't let go of our kings.

The only problem with succession planning, of course, is that dead dictators can rarely stick around to supervise their elaborate designs. Today, things in Havana seem to be developing much as the ailing Castro desires, with younger brother Raúl assuming control. Nevertheless, the Shakespearean logic of royal successions suggests that more than one duke of Gloucester will try to crown himself Richard III. The extraordinary difference in this case is that not all the dukes vying to succeed Castro can be found in Cuba. To the south, across the Caribbean, another duke has emerged: Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

Indeed, Chávez is the piper leading the most strident anti-Americanism to parade through Latin America since the Bay of Pigs invasion, and his ascent has done much to shape the popular belief that radical left-wing governments modeled after his own will soon dominate the region. But does Chávez really have what it takes to assume Castro's place as the leader of Latin American anti-imperialism? Will he become a permanent pebble in Washington's shoe, as persistent and vexing as Castro, for decades to come?

Certainly, Chávez seems to believe so. However, he is missing much more than the charisma of the receding Cuban leader. He lacks the essential ingredient to take Fidel's place: legitimacy. Castro, for all his faults, earned his anti-American and anti-imperialist stripes. Chávez, awash in petrodollars, is too embedded in the very global system he purports to reject.

Castro sets a high bar for any regional successor, all the more evident now at the moment of his political death.

Consider his superlative permanence in power: 47 years. That is 17 more years than Mexico's Porfirio Díaz, 12 more than Paraguay's Alfredo Stroessner and 11 more than Spain's Francisco Franco. Even North Korea's Kim Il Sung -- the gold standard of aged despots -- totaled only 46 years in power. To match Castro, Chávez would have to remain in office, without interruption, until 2045, past his 90th birthday.

Such prolonged rule is possible only in a totalitarian dictatorship that leaves no space for dissent. In Castro's case, the Cold War helped him win absolute control over Cuban society. With a powerful and ever-present enemy so close, Castro could always manipulate the fear of an imminent invasion to militarize Cuban life. Any opposition was more than political -- it was treasonous. Castro thus governed unencumbered by domestic adversaries.

Chávez, by contrast, lives in a post-Cold War world, his conspiracy theories about the CIA notwithstanding. And in an era of democratic consolidation in Latin America, he has much less room to suppress the opposition at home, no matter how hard he may try.

Despite Castro's unquestioned power base, however, his capacity to disrupt his Latin neighbors, or even to predispose them against los Yanquis , has long been overestimated by his sympathizers, including Chávez. Castro's anti-American credentials date to the 1960s, when the Cuban revolution, still imbued with childlike optimism, openly backed leftist guerrilla movements emerging throughout the continent. But one by one, they failed. Indeed, the dictator's supporting role in the Soviet Union's military adventures in Africa during the 1980s came about only after his efforts to spark uprisings closer to home faltered -- a sort of revolutionary diversification strategy. Despite much rhetoric to the contrary, "exporting the revolution" ceased to be a priority for Castro long ago. After the Soviet collapse, survival became more important.

His regional appeal lingered, but in a half-hearted, nostalgic kind of way. Since the late 1980s, Castro has always been the star attraction at the inaugurations of democratically elected presidents throughout Latin America. His presence was a cheap and harmless way for other Latin American leaders to display a modicum of independence from the United States. Yet, as soon as the crazy uncle boarded his flight back to Havana, his erstwhile hosts quickly adopted the pro-market economic policies pushed by Washington and the International Monetary Fund. Castro -- whether wiser or simply older, or both -- looked the other way.

Chávez seems not to understand this hypocritical undertone to our region's anti-Americanism. Recall the Summit of the Americas last November in Mar del Plata, Argentina, where he proclaimed the death of the Free Trade Area of the Americas, a long moribund initiative begun by President George H.W. Bush. Though Chávez garnered great press -- not to mention fun photo ops with Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona -- many of the Latin American governments that he aspires to lead on his anti-imperialist crusade preferred to keep quietly negotiating trade preferences with the United States.

The rest of the region seems to have internalized the key historical lesson of our long and contradictory relationship with the United States: One rarely crosses Washington without eventually suffering the consequences. Porfirio Díaz's oft-quoted comment "Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States" applies to Latin America as a whole. Chávez may seek to lead, but few may opt to follow.

In two centuries of U.S.-Latin American cohabitation on this continent, few leaders have been as consistent champions of anti-Americanism as Castro. His charisma, at home and abroad, surely played a role. But the longtime U.S. trade embargo against the impoverished island also gave Castro the political and (paradoxically) moral legitimacy of a proud Caribbean David standing up to the menacing northern Goliath. Poverty, in a perverse way, legitimizes anti-imperialism and its modern-day variants, anti-Americanism and anti-globalism. It also helps explain why even Castro's bitter enemies recognize and respect his unbreakable attitude -- one that is the basis of the feelings he inspires among many of the region's residents.

Chávez, to put it mildly, does not inspire such emotions. Despite his integrationist rhetoric and efforts to buy allies (such as by acquiring big chunks of Argentine debt), he has become a divisive force, succeeding only in winning new enemies -- or at least losing friends -- throughout Latin America. His ties with fellow lefty head of state Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil deteriorated severely, for example, after Chávez encouraged Bolivian President Evo Morales to nationalize energy holdings, thus jeopardizing the investments of Brazil's state-owned oil company in Bolivia. True to himself, Chávez probably will make the mistake of seeking to broker, in his antagonistic and backhanded way, the coming internal battles in Cuba.

Chávez has also heaped scorn upon Latin American governments that seek to improve their citizens' economic prospects by quietly negotiating free-trade agreements with Washington. Yet Venezuela's president enjoys the benefits of his own informal trade agreement with the United States; after all, Venezuela is one of the most dependable oil suppliers to the United States. In the first five months of 2006 alone, Venezuela exported nearly 1.2 million barrels of crude oil per day to the United States, putting it in fourth place after Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. With a wallet full of petrodollars, Chávez can fund an arms buildup and social programs at home while trying to export his Bolivarian ideals throughout the region.

Unlike Castro, Chávez has found the profitable path to anti-imperialism. But it is a devil's bargain for Chávez, because such riches only erode the legitimacy he needs to lead a crusade against Washington. For how can you claim the anti-American and anti-globalization mantle when you so obviously benefit from both America and globalization? Chávez's Venezuela feels less vanguard than throwback -- the textbook case of a populist Latin American petrostate degenerating into an illiberal democracy, militarist as well as corrupt.

Absent Fidel, it is reasonable to expect that other leaders in the region may also aspire to become the new voice of whatever latent opposition to the United States remains. Chávez has neither the temperament nor the skill to beat out Lula, or Peru's Alan García, or even Mexico's conservative Felipe Calderón -- why not? -- for that role.

As quaint or misguided as it may sound today, true anti-imperialist leadership in Latin America still requires old-fashioned guts and commitment. Much of the mythology surrounding Latin America's crusader par excellence, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, resides in the fact that, even through the manner of his death, he stuck to his guns. Castro, also true to his rhetoric, nationalized the Standard Oil affiliate in Cuba after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and stood up to the U.S. embargo for decades. But Chávez, his anti-American bluster notwithstanding, is still dealing with the Chevron Corporation.

ibsnc@aim.com

Ibsen Martínez, a playwright and novelist, is a columnist for the Venezuelan daily El Nacional.

Sunday, August 6, 2006; B01

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Francis Fukuyama: History's Against Him

CARACAS, Venezuela

Early on in Hugo Chávez's political career, the Venezuelan president attacked my notion that liberal democracy together with a market economy represents the ultimate evolutionary direction for modern societies -- the "end of history." When asked what lay beyond the end of history, he offered a one-word reply: "Chavismo."

The idea that contemporary Venezuela represents a social model superior to liberal democracy is absurd. In his eight years as president, Chávez has capitalized on his country's oil wealth to take control of congress, the courts, trade unions, electoral commissions and the state oil company. Proposed legislation that would limit foreign funding could soon constrain nongovernmental organizations as well. And people who signed a recall petition against Chávez in the run-up to a 2004 referendum on his rule later found their names posted on the Web site of a pro-Chávez legislator; if they worked for the government or wanted to do business with it, they were out of a job and out of luck.

Chávez's success in attracting attention -- cozying up to Fidel Castro's Cuba, signing an arms deal with Russia, visiting Iran and incessantly criticizing the United States -- has popularized the notion that Chavismo embodies a new future for Latin America. By preserving some freedoms, including a relatively free press and pseudo-democratic elections, Chávez has developed what some observers call a postmodern dictatorship, neither fully democratic nor fully totalitarian, a left-wing hybrid that enjoys a legitimacy never reached in Castro's Cuba or in the Soviet Union.

Latin America has indeed witnessed a turn to this postmodern left in some countries, including in Bolivia, where Evo Morales, Chávez's kindred spirit, won the presidency last year. Nonetheless, the dominant trends in the hemisphere are largely positive: Democracy is strengthening and the political and economic reforms now being undertaken augur well for the future. Venezuela is not a model for the region; rather, its path is unique, the product of a natural resource curse that makes it more comparable to Iran or Russia than any of its Latin American neighbors. Chavismo is not Latin America's future -- if anything, it is its past.

How did Venezuela end up at such a pass? The answer is oil, oil, oil.

The country's modern political order was negotiated in a Miami hotel room in 1958 by leaders of its two traditional political parties; the resulting pact created a viable democracy that provided stability for four decades. But stable politics did not make for sound economics. With the growth of oil revenue through the 1970s, Venezuela was relieved of the need to create a modern non-oil economy. Commodities that the country once exported -- such as coffee and sugar -- soon withered. And rather than foster social mobility or strong public institutions, the two political parties bought social peace by distributing oil rents through subsidies, government jobs and patronage.

Venezuela did not suffer the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s, a trauma that in many ways inoculated countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Peru from relapsing into the worst forms of economic populism. Instead, Venezuela experienced a disastrous decline in living standards as oil prices fell during the 1980s. The country had never been part of the global economy -- aside from the energy sector -- and had no competitive industries to fall back on. Chávez and others on the left blame Venezuela's problems on globalization and "neoliberal" economic policies, but with the brief exception of the opening attempted by President Carlos Andrés Pérez in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the country never truly sought to globalize its economy.

There is more continuity between the pre-Chávez and Chávez eras than proponents of either would like to admit. The recent rise in oil prices has again exempted Venezuela from the laws of economics. The Chávez government has imposed a blizzard of regulations controlling the exchange of currency, setting prices, limiting the ability of employers to hire and fire, and mandating trade and investment deals based on political considerations -- all of which further undermine Venezuela's weak private sector. Yet, because of its hefty oil revenue, Venezuela's economy has grown sharply over the past two years. The irrationality of Chavistanomics will not be felt until oil prices fall.

Venezuela's peculiar history shows why Chávez does not represent the region's future. Countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Peru, lacking Venezuela's oil resources, know that they cannot get away with such dysfunctional policies; they experimented with them and were burned. It is no accident that postmodern authoritarianism is most successful in oil-rich countries such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela. While Bolivia's Morales aspires to be another Chávez, it will soon dawn on him that his country's natural gas is not a fungible commodity like Venezuelan crude oil. Morales's only real customer is Brazil, which he has already alienated through his nationalization of the heavily Brazilian foreign energy investments.

The dominant political forces in Latin America, while bringing to power a new generation of politicians on the left, run counter to those in Venezuela. Central banks and finance ministries throughout the region are much more capable than in the past of maintaining sound monetary and fiscal policies, and even left-leaning presidents such as Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Argentina's Néstor Kirchner are not inclined to stray far from economic orthodoxy.

In contrast to Chávez's politicization of Venezuela's institutions, Mexico has made its Supreme Court and Federal Electoral Institute politically independent. Brazil and Colombia have increased the autonomy of local governments, permitting experiments in budgeting and education; and Brazil and Mexico have undertaken programs to increase the incomes of the poor while giving them incentives to keep children in school.

There are already signs of an anti-Chávez backlash. While the Venezuelan president rails at U.S. interference in Latin politics, he has tried to promote populist allies such as Ollanta Humala of Peru and Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico. Venezuela's neighbors resent this, and have punished the Chavista candidates at the polls. Indeed, Chávez may well have cost López Obrador the Mexican presidency, since the number of votes the latter lost because of dislike of Venezuelan interference probably exceeded the small margin by which he lost the election.

Chávez's popularity among Venezuela's poor is based on his social policies. He has begun innovative initiatives, such as a network of health clinics in low-income neighborhoods, where Cuban doctors treat the poor. He has created subsidized food outlets that equalize the prices paid by rich and poor. And he has attempted to distribute land to peasants. Some of these policies, such as the clinics, meet pressing social needs and should have been undertaken long ago; others, such as the food subsidies, will be hard to sustain absent high oil prices.

A response to Chavismo must recognize that populism is driven by real social inequalities. Proponents of economic and political liberty in Latin America are often suspicious of grand social-policy experiments, perceiving them as a road to bloated welfare states and economic inefficiency. But free trade alone is unlikely to satisfy the demands of the poor, and democratic politicians must offer realistic social policies to compete.

Social policy is, unfortunately, difficult to get right: Unless it creates incentives for the poor to help themselves, it can become an entitlement that breeds dependence and out-of-control fiscal deficits. In Brazil, Lula's government took over a program of income transfers to the poor but in the process weakened enforcement procedures obliging parents to keep their children in school. And market policies are no panacea: Even Chile, which has extensive high-quality private education, saw huge student protests this spring because of the low quality of its publicly funded schools.

Democratic governments in Latin America must also work patiently at enhancing the quality of their public institutions -- improving simple things such as issuing business licenses, enforcing property claims and controlling crime. There is no cookie-cutter solution; it often requires local-level experiments, such as the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre's "participatory budgeting" initiative from the early 1990s, which opened the budget process to civil-society groups and forced politicians to show where the money was going. Bad public administration saps economic growth and delegitimizes democratic institutions, paving the way for violent swings and backlash.

Last December, a bridge on the road connecting the Venezuelan capital to its international airport collapsed, diverting traffic into the mountains and stretching a 45-minute journey into one lasting several hours. A two-lane emergency highway now bears this traffic; renovation of the bridge is still months away. The bridge epitomizes what is happening to Venezuela today: As Chávez jets to Minsk, Moscow and Tehran in search of influence and prestige, the country's infrastructure is collapsing.

The postmodern authoritarianism of Chávez's Venezuela is durable only while oil prices remain high. Yet it presents a distinct challenge from that of totalitarianism because it allows for democratic choice and caters to real social needs. At a recent conference of business leaders here, I witnessed many speakers openly criticize Chávez; their remarks were cited in the mainstream media. There is no police state in Venezuela -- at least not yet.

Chavismo remains a threat. But it need not embody Latin America's future, not if the region's democrats can reduce economic inequities through innovative social policy and nimble public institutions. Of course, such developments would not mark the end of history. Just the end of Chavismo.

fukuyama@jhu.edu

Francis Fukuyama is professor of international political economy at the School of Advanced International Studies

at Johns Hopkins University.

Sunday, August 6, 2006; B01

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The Washington Post: Keywords Used to Filter Web Content

The Washington Post obtained a list of keywords used by a Chinese blog service provider to flag offensive material. Of 236 items on the list, 18 were obscenities. The rest were related to politics or current affairs.

Most words on this list can be posted on Chinese Web sites, but their presence quietly alerts editors to examine the messages that contain them and possibly take action. In tests, postings that included long sections of the list were allowed to remain on several sites, but quickly removed from others. One site also blocked the computer used to conduct the tests from posting anything else.

In addition, on most sites, at least some of the sensitive phrases cannot be posted at all. Depending on the site, filters replace the offending words with asterisks or block the entire message.

Below is the list. Obscenities have been withheld.
Names of People

Bao Tong

Chen Yonglin

Cui Yingjie

Ding Jiaban

Du Zhaoyong

Gao Jingyun

Gao Zhisheng

He Jiadong

He Weifang

Hu Xingdou

Hu Yuehua

Hua Guofeng

Huang Jingao

Jiang Mianheng

Jiang Yanyong

Jiang Zemin

Jiao Guobiao

Jin Zhong

Li Zhiying

Liang Yuncai

Liu Jianfeng

Liu Junning

Liu Xiabobo

Nie Shubin

Nie Shubin (repeated)

Sun Dawu

Wang Binyu

Wang Lixiong

Xu Zhiyong

Yang Bin

Yang Dongping

Yu Jie

Zhang Weiying

Zhang Xingshu

Zhang Zuhua

Zhao Yan

Zhou Qing

Zhu Chenghu

Zhu Wenhu

Zi Yang (in English)

Ziyang (in Chinese)

Ziyang (in English)

zzy (in English, abbreviation for Zhao Ziyang)
Chinese Politics

17th party congress

Babaoshan

Beat the Central Propaganda Department

Blast the Central Propaganda Department

Block the road and demand back pay

Chief of the Finance Bureau

Children of high officials

China liberal (in English)

Chinese Communist high officials

Denounce the Central Propaganda Department

Down with the Central Propaganda Department

Impeach

Lin Zhao Memorial Award

Patriots Alliance

Patriots Alliance (abbreviated)

Patriots Alliance Web

Police chase after and kill police

Pollution lawsuit

Procedures for dismissing an official

Red Terror

Set fires to force people to relocate

Sons of high officials

The Central Propaganda Department is the AIDS of Chinese society

Villagers fight with weapons

Wang Anshi's reform and the fall of the Northern Song dynasty
Specific Issues and Events

Buy corpses

Cadres transferred from the military

Cashfiesta

Cat abuse

Changxin Coal Mountain

China Youth Daily staff evaluation system

Chinese orphanage

Chinese Yangshen Yizhi Gong

Demobilized soldiers transferred to other industries

Dongyang

Dongzhou

Fetus soup

Foot and mouth disease

Fuzhou pig case

Gaoxin Hospital

High-speed train petition

Hire a killer to murder one's wife

Honghai Bay

Horseracing

Jinxin Pharmaceutical

Kelemayi

Linyi family planning

Market access system

Mascot

Military wages

No Friendlies

Prosecutor committed suicide

Pubu Ravine

Shanwei government

Suicide of deputy mayor

Suicide of Kuerle mayor

Swiss University of Finance

Taishi village

Top ten worst cities

Wanzhou

Weitan

Zhang Chunxian welcomes supervision against corruption
Falun Gong

Terms related to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, including phrases from its "Nine Commentaries" manifesto against the Communist Party:

Chinese Communist Party brutally kills people

dajiyuan (in English)

Defy the heavens, earth and nature. Mao Zedong

Epoch Times

Epoch Times (written with a different character)

Epoch Times news Web site

Evaluate the Chinese Communist Party

Evaluate the Chinese Communist Party (abbreviated)

falundafa (in English)

flg (in English)

Fozhan Qianshou Fa

Guantong Liangji Fa

In the Chinese Communist Party, common standards of humanity don't exist

Li Hongzhi

lihongzhi (in English)

Master Li

minghui (in English)

Mother and daughter accused each other, and students and teachers became enemies

New Tynasty TV Station

Nine Commentaries

No. 1 evil cult in the world

Obedient citizens under its brutal rule

People become brutal in violence, Chinese Communist Party

People developed a concept of the Chinese Communist Party, but

People who could escape have escaped, and had people to seek refuge with

Quit the party

Run the opposite direction of the so-called ideals of Communism

Shenzhou Jiachifa

Spring Festival Gala of the World's Chinese

Steal people's painstaking work

Truth, Compassion, Tolerance

Zhenshanren (in English)
Overseas Web Sites, Publications and Dissident Groups

Century China Foundation

China Issues Forum

China Renaissance Forum

China Society Forum

China Spring

Chinese Current Affairs

Chinese World Forum

EastSouthWestNorth Forum

EastWestSouthNorth Forum

Forum of Wind, Rain and the Divine Land

Freedom and Democracy Forum

Freedom to Write Award

Great China Forum

Han Style

Huatong Current Affairs Forum

Huaxia Digest

Huayue Current Affairs Forum

Independent Chinese PEN Center

Jimaoxin Collection

Justice Party Forum

New Birth Web

New Observer Forum

North American Freedom Forum

reminbao (In English)

remingbao (In English)

Small Reference

Spring and Summer Forum

Voice of the People Forum

Worldwide Reader Forum

You Say I Say Forum

Zhengming Forum

Zhidian Jiangshan Forum

Zhongshan Wind and Rain Forum
Taiwan

Establish Taiwan Country Movement Organization

Great President Chen Shui-bian

Independent League of Taiwan Youth

Independent Taiwan Association

New Party

Taiwan Freedom League

Taiwan Political Discussion Zone
Ethnic Minorities

East Turkestan

East Turkestan (abbreviated)

Han-Hui conflicts

Henan Zhongmu

Hui rebellion

Hui village

Langcheng Gang

Nancheng Gang

Nanren Village

Tibet independence

Xinjiang independence

Zhongmu County
Tiananmen Square

Memoirs of June 4 participants

Redress June 4

Tiananmen videotape

Tiananmen incident

Tiananmen massacre

Tiananmen generation

World Economic Herald
Censorship

Cleaning and rectifying Web sites

China's true content

Internet commentator

News blockade
International

Indonesia

North Korea falls out with China

Paris riots

Tsunami
Other

Armageddon

Bomb

Bug

Handmade pistol

Nuclear bomb

Wiretap

Chinese People Tell the Truth

Chinese People Justice and Evil

China Social Progressive Party

Chinese Truth Report

Dazhong Zhenren Zhenshi

Jingdongriji

Night talk of the Forbidden City

People's Inside Information and Truth

Saturday, February 18, 2006; 11:11 AM

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