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Still, supporters of pluralistic, constitutional democracy have not given up. University students have marched in opposition to the proposals, despite violence from pro-Chavez forces and jeers from the president, who calls them "fascists" and "rich bourgeois brats." But as Douglas Cassel of the Center for Civil and Human Rights at the University of Notre Dame put it in a recent radio commentary, "Show me a revolution opposed by uni- versity students en masse, and I'll show you a phony revolution."
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Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university. During the past few weeks, Mr. González and other student leaders here have organized protest marches by tens of thousands of students opposed to a constitutional referendum set for Dec. 2.. .
The student movement has taken the government by surprise, highlighting an embarrassing irony for the fiery Mr. Chávez: University students, long a bastion of the left here as in the rest of Latin America, are overwhelmingly opposed to him. They have also emerged, along with the Catholic Church, as among the last major opposition to Mr. Chávez in a country where he already controls the congress, courts, army and most media outlets.
But I doubt you will hear a peep of protest by the US left about this destruction of liberal democracy in Venezuela.