Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is not actually known for his love of personal freedoms. Recently, in a bid to cut down on electricity and water consumption, he banned singing in the shower.
Perhaps there is some kind of logic behind this ban. It may be that those who are fond of singing O Sole Mio (or whatever the Spanish version might be called) in the shower take longer to shower than those who do not sing.
Like most other countries, Venezuela has felt the ravages of the current recession. Even the South American version of socialism has not made Chavezland immune to the economic downturn that has caused us to tighten our belts.
Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, was no friend of socialism. " Socialism is a good idea, until you run out of other people's money", she quipped, borrowing a saying some sources have originally attributed to Mark Twain.
We should perhaps have to take issue with this definition of socialism. As a term, socialism means different things to different people and it has produced a variety of experiments, from the more radical ones advocated by Friedrich Engels and Henri di Saint Simon, who dreamed of a socialist utopia, to a more realistic Scandinavian welfare society that is basically a mixture of capitalism and socialism.
Now it seems that president Chavez has just introduced a novel aspect of socialism. At least the Venezuelan variety of socialism might not be a good idea for would-be opera singers. The new ban could make it a lot harder for them to practice.
In other words, we should probably not expect to hear of world-famous Venezuelan tenors in the near future.
Joel Kontinen is an author and translator currently living in Finland. His bacground includes an MA in translation studies and a BA in Bible and Theology. He mostly writes about origins issues.
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