The Future of Change for Chavez: Time

Change comes rarely to time. Standard time -- our system of twenty-four time zones -- has become a fact. Like the stock market, lost in its ubiquity is the fact that it once didn't exist.

Last week, mercurial Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez turned a few heads when he announced that in September, the nation would turn its clocks back by half an hour, officially adopting Greenwich Mean Time minus 4.5 hours.

This is not the first time Chavez has done something critics have said is either eccentric or authoritarian. In recent memory he has asked to be allowed to rule by decree, asked to have the term limits for the presidency abolished, undercut the World Bank and IMF, become very popular with the poor in Venezuela, privatized many Venezuelan companies and called President Bush the devil. He seems to hang in the American imagination somewhere between Kim Jong Il and Che Guevara, depending on whom you ask.

But no one really seems to know what to make of the time change. Chavez, backed by his Science and Technology Minister, claims that the change will provide a more "fair distribution of the sunrise" especially for poor children, who have to get up early to go to school. He did not say why making school start half an hour later would have been more difficult than making the sun rise earlier.

This isn't about the poor. This is about making a break with the political and symbolic history of the international time system.

The international time system was created in 1884 because an explosion of transportation and communication technologies in the late nineteenth century made the lack of a coordinated time system an absolute disaster for the spread of the railroad and telegraph.

The movement had to be cooperative internationalist. It was not easy for France and Britain to agree on where the prime meridian would lie, but they, and other Western nations, saw it as a global necessity. At the time there was an enormous hope for the future of international travel and communication. Even so, it took decades for the standard time system to be adopted globally (Venezuela didn't officially take on GMT minus four hours until 1965).

So Chavez may not be that eccentric. The system into which he is throwing the wrench is profoundly internationalist, and he is profoundly nationalist. It was created primarily by, and in some sense for, Western nations (Japan was the primary non-Western nation represented) that were associated with colonialism and slavery, and Chavez is concerned about neocolonialism from the same nations. The system is meant to facilitate communication and transportation for travel and commerce, and he has privatized companies and isolated Venezuela, at least from many of those nations for which the system was originally created.

Consider the company he joins. Iran, Afghanistan, Burma and the Canadian province of Newfoundland are on the half hour. Nepal runs 5 hours and 45 minutes ahead of GMT. China is on the hour, but while it technically should span four time zones, the whole country runs on just one. With the exception of Newfoundland, which has a unique geographical position and history with its time zone, these are nations known for being isolated, particularly from the West; incurring sanctions from Western nations' having authoritarian leaders; and having isolated populations.

Time divorced from nature when the mechanical clock was invented. It became political when the prime meridian was established through the world's best observatory in Greenwich, England. Half an hour isn't going to untether Venezuela from the rest of the world. But it is symbolic statement and the polarizing leader of the nation knows what he is trying to say.

Comments

[interventor]

The wealth that Chavez spreads around comes, partially, from no new capital expenditures on the oil fields. Production is dropping, not because of depletion, but failure to invest and incompetence. Professional within the enterprise are replaced with cronies unfamiliar with the industry. One sees this replicated time and again in new socialist regimes. Think they would, at least, learn by experience of others. Its an Atlas Shrugged moment.

Never trusted populism, Adolf and Benito were populists.

[StopThePlanet]

So was Jesus.

[ExposingCommunists]

I'm sure many here support Chavez and I surely support his "President-for-Life" declaration.

I love Fidel's election system too. One man gets 100% of the vote. I love it!

Now, how do we make George "President-for-Life?" Imagine no election commericials!

"KING GEORGE?" IT DOES HAVE A RING TO IT!

[WilliePilgrim]

"From now on, everyone must wear their underwear on the outside of their clothes." President-for-Life, Fielding Mellish.

[S1m0n]

The Province of Newfoundland (Canada) has been a half hour ahead of Atlantic time for decades, to no ill effect. I daresay both Venezuela and the time zone system will survive.

[longnow]

Chavez socialism will choke itself in corruption. At least the corruption will be homegrown and
will be bottom up instead of top down. Chavez
and China? We'll see where that goes.

I have to laugh at the "conservative" Hispanics who worship Reagan and Bush. Then there are the
ones who worship Chavez and don't really mind
Bin Laden. I don't know which is worse.

[StopThePlanet]

Chavez may have many quirks but the reason he is such a populist president is because he has offered a share of the wealth to citizens of Venezuela that no other regime ever has. He has uplifted many from poverty by creating free education for the masses. He has usurped the oligarchs who have had a stranglehold on over 90% of the population for decades. He has removed the grip that foreign oil companies have had on the Venezuelan economy. He has championed a more socialist society that distributes the proceeds of the nation's resources more evenly. For all of these reasons he is reviled by those who had enjoyed exploiting Venezuela. He has a target on him by the Bush administration and he knows it. Yet he openly mocks them. This is probably what invokes the wrath of his detractors the most.

[interventor]

Why is the left so in love with Latin American leaders who manipulate their systems to ensure President for live status? Scratch Castro, Chavez, Morales and one finds Peron aka Caudillos. Would you be happy with W as President for the next 30 years?

[peterg76]

You've got to be kidding. This, coming from the country that started it's own form of daylight saving time, purely so Congress could look like it was doing something about energy without actually doing anything about energy? (As predicted by everyone not a member of Congress, there were no energy savings whatsoever.)

Chavez has:
asked to be allowed to rule by decree - way too authoritarian for comfort
asked to have the term limits for the presidency abolished - flagrantly self-serving
undercut the World Bank and IMF - a very good idea (ever checked their success rates?) and an inspiration to other victims of World Bank economic theocracy
become very popular with the poor in Venezuela - Venezuela is a democracy, that's part of his job
(de-)privatized many Venezuelan companies - also part of running an economy, one with a history of economic injustice, in a democracy
called President Bush the devil - inappropriate, but not the first time someone has confused Cheney with Bush

The populated areas of Venezuela are mostly close to 60 deg W, so it actually has a lot of merit, though it's probably as much for show as Congress's daylight saving time fiasco.

But beyond question, it's a purely Venezuelan issue.

And since when are India and central Australia isolated from the West?

[curioustorquemada]

Venezuela is lucky to have such a forward thinker. He has already started his own version of the Fairness Doctrine. TV stations that refuse to be fair and balanced unfortunatly should be shut down. The people deserve the truth.
I understand that he loves his country so much that is willing to administer beatings to reporters who write lies.I am sure it upsets him greatly when he is forced to do that. But like a father who spanks his child for lying it's a painful duty that he believes must be done for the good of the child.
I am confidant that the people will rise up and demand that the constitution be amended so he can serve the people as long as he wishes.
VIVA HUGO!!!!!!!!!!

[ceti]

Somehow, the writer leaves out India which is 5:30 hours ahead of GMT. As such, more than 1/6 of the world's population lives on the half hour.

The author also doesn't bring up the fact that the new time plan will also save on energy costs.

In the US's case which recently unilaterally changed the dates for Daylight Saving Time, Canada had to conform. Hmmm...

[hardrain77]

It seems that most Americans don't realize why they exactly should hate this guy and consider him an enemy. You ask your average person, they'll say something like 'he's a socialist commie dictator! Part of the axis of evil! Take em out!'

Does the average person know that the reason he's reviled and demonized in the media is because he's nationalized the industries of his country, so they actually benefit the people, not multi-national corporations just salivating at sinking their teeth into the rich oil fields (the same way they can't wait until the Iraqi oil law finally passes, which is one of the reasons why al-Maliki is on his way out)?

He is part of the South American democratic socialist revolution and looks like the heir apparant to Fidel Castro in terms of being an iconoclast that routinely makes the U.S. look like a big dumb bully.

[babylonandon]

I'll give you a really serious reason to hate Chavez: His goevernemnt at his orders has been actively aiding Iran and Syria to provide false papars to agents of Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to travel to Mexico and infiltrate across our southern border with ID's showing them to be of Hispanic background verses Arabic.

This has not only been documented by the FBI but by several news agencies (not Fox - I think one was thru NPR) that have followed along the trail and interviewed some the officials involved who were happy to be helping somebody who might kill lots of Americans.

[Unsui]

Chaves' many political successes, (being returned to power after a US backed coup for instance) by virtue of his populist political and economic theories, should be a wake-up call to Neo-Liberal Free Traders everywhere.
I think Katherine is mistaken if she really believes it will be Chaves who emerges from the Bush era living in an isolated nation: dawn change notwithstanding.
Kudos WorkingClass, great little history there, thanks.

[Dunnage]

Oil right there next door and rather than send in the suits, we send in hit men. So he nationalized the oil industry -- china's figured out how to do business with the dude.

[WorkingClass]

Chavez is no enemy of capitalism. Or negatively stated, Chavez is not a commie. He insists on the rule of law. No one, not even Chavez may violate the constitution. And He insists on the right of the people, thru their elected officials, to regulate the private sector (capitalism) for the good of the people. If the first president you remember is Regan that sounds pretty far left. But if your on the old side of boomer like me, and your first president was Ike, it doesn't sound far left at all. Its the world we grew up in.

The American government began to regulate capitalism for the good of the people under F.D.R. What resulted was the biggest, richest, most free middle class the world ever saw. Beginning with Regan we have turned back the clock to president Hoover. And we are learning again that unregulated capitalism is destructive of the middle class. Our State Department should be in dialog with Chavez seeking avenues of cooperation that would lead to the betterment of the people of both countries. Viva Chavez.

[longnow]

Chavez will see the problems he is causing inside
Venezuela begin to pile up. Then he people will
notice then it will take another generation to
unravel all the corruption that will replace
all the accumulated corruption that is there now.
I don't blame him for trying, however.

[vegasobserver]

Maybe what Chavez is trying to do is make it more complicated for international investors, bond traders, currency speculators, and stock markets to work with their counterparts in Venezuela. The confusion created would weaken capitalists in Venezuela, and weaken their ties to the international monetary and financial systems, which is what he wants. He's generally not a ruthless tyrant who uses tanks to accomplish his goals -- he's much smarter than that -- a sort of third generation socialist dictator. He uses the very levers of the "system" to undermine it. He doesn't want to destroy the free market economy completely, he just wants to control it completely, subjugate it and bend it to his own ends.