Chavez on Halloween

November 2nd, 2005 at 21:33 Björn Hallberg

I thought at first I would dismiss this out of hand, but then I got thinking. Perhaps it’s not as simplistic as Chavez’s presentation and some news sources make it out to be.

BBC - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has urged families not to mark Halloween, calling it a US custom alien to the South American nation.

“Families go and begin to disguise their children as witches. This is contrary to our way,” Mr Chavez said during his weekly radio and TV show.

Mr Chavez said Halloween was part of the US culture of “putting fear into other nations, putting fear into their own people”.

BBC seems to be stretching the english language far and wide these days. Since when did this constitute a “call for a ban?”
Anyhow, at first this seemed like a not so flattering outburst and a blot on Chavez’s record. But then I thought about the filtration process that happens here. First the simplification of the message Chavez wants to send. Transculturation or whatever doesn’t sell that well. And then there is of course foreign media doing a number on his comments.
On a side note, a considerable part of the Christian community are not so hot about Halloween. Many Catholics for instance feel like the religious meaning of the holiday is set aside, forgotten, or ignored. More fundamentalist Christians shun the holiday completely because of the secular tainting. But I think that is besides the point.

While Halloween today is part of American pop culture and has spread as such its secular festivities, or at least the precursor tradition, seem to originate in Ireland and Scotland and were introduced in the US via immigrants. Its modern form however was shaped in the US.
I totally agree with the dislike of Halloween, albeit for different or slightly more nuanced reasons. One being the appropriation of culture. Not harmful per se perhaps but I dislike it. The US perpetrates a lot of this nonsense. As for promoting fear, the jury is still out, obviously it promotes fear but I’d be more concerned with forcing kids to go trick or treating. That just smacks of Christian work ethics and the American dream as it were. Not to mention the commercial construct that now underpins the entire tradition. Plus the very idea of course that you are in some small way contributing to US cultural imperialism. It may sound like a cliché and a tad paranoid, but this is the most dangerous weapon of all that the US possesses. Opening up to US culture, even as benign as the best case scenario Halloween, and next you’re swarmed with McDonald’s restaurants and part of a “free” trade area. Just like the US sells the military image of itself via Hollywood, its economic machinery works in small but similarly confident strides.

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