Alejandro Velasco

send Venezuelan planes or they would charter planes.

Oh, it's not just Venezuelans.

It's like people, oh, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, you know, Central America, Caribbean.

This was a continental project for people, certainly Venezuela, for people to come from elsewhere and have their cataracts removed.

Now that I think about it a little bit more, there was something about the metaphor of seeing and of visibility that was important to Chávez.

You know, removing the cataracts so you can see clearly.

The idea is that you live under conditions of misery only because you're unable to see the realities of the world.

And if you just think differently and see differently, if you see people coming from all over the continent and being benefited in their health,

If you know that you now have access to doctors that you didn't have before, sure, they're Cuban, but you have access to health.

Like, that is the promise of a different world, and it is made real.

All the rest of it, we don't have to worry about.

Because who does?

We have so much wealth coming in that it's not a problem.

That is such a good point.

And let me, let me confess something to you.

Yeah.

So, you know, we tend to think rightly, this is, we have lots of evidence that most of the social programs that Chavez implemented were directed at the poor or working classes.

That is true.

But one of the more expensive social programs that Chavez implemented was not a social program at all, but that benefited almost exclusively the middle class.

And so the way that it worked is this.