When the King of Spain told Hugo Chavez to "shut up" at the Ibero-American summit in Chile, it kind of felt like a symbolic moment, and then it was finished off with a regal flourish as the King walked out while Daniel Ortega was in full flow. A storm in a tea cup or just a scene from just any other school playground?
Personally, watching the video from the standpoint of a reader of body language - it's fascinating. Politicians always attempt to claim the higher ground for themselves and that's exactly what was on view when current Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero railed against Chavez's charge of fascist against former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.
More seriously and more worrying here is how poorly the issues are covered. To the BBC for example, it almost seemed incidental that the basis to Chavez' name calling was Spain's support for the coup in Venezuela in 2002. In one article on the exchange the BBC fails to mention the substance of Spanish support of a coup in Venezuela, in another it prefers simply to collect Chavez's verbals (again without any reference to issues or context like this from the New York Times) and in a third it refers to a 'brief' coup. As if coups can be brief. Let's not get into semantics, but it was the illegitimate government of Pedro Carmona in 2002 that was brief, not the coup. Coups either take place or they don't. What's also interesting is the ignoring of issues in the wider region. For example, a Spanish King turning his back and walking out on Daniel Ortega doesn't attract any attention, even though as far as schoolboy behaviour goes, it's as childish to runaway with your hands on your ears as it is to say shut up.
Finally today, the BBC's Martin Murphy ran an article that reflected on the incident from the weekend, only without any reflection. It contained the curious sentence:
"For a president whose role model is the Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar it was particularly ignominious that a Spanish king treated him like a schoolboy."
That says it all. Deference is and has been everything for many years in international politics regarding Latin America. We should know who are betters are and accept it. Only now things are different with Chavez, and what might be outbursts for some or colourful quotations as the BBC puts it, are for others rare moments where we see that the Emperor, or indeed the King, has no clothes on after all.
Blogger Justin Delacour also noted the Associated Press' lack of (or belated lack) historical context.
Blogger Justin Delacour also noted the Associated Press' lack of (or belated lack) historical context.
