Human Rights Foundation denounces Gustavo Dudamel
OrchestrasThe HRF, an international charity dedicated to protecting human rights under authoritarian regimes, has issued the following message:
Last night, Gustavo Dudamel, the famous Venezuelan conductor, gave a concert directing the Maduro regime’s top youth orchestra at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
HRF was present as well, to remind the world of Maduro’s fraud and to call out Dudamel for engaging in shameless propaganda and providing cover for the Venezuelan dictator.
This can only get noisier when Dudamel takes over next year as music director of the New York Philharmonic.
Full details of the protest at Carnegie Hall by HRF can be found here, including the hard-hitting letter distributed to the concertgoers. https://www.facebook.com/100044471767916/posts/pfbid02A7KjsQHMdbxk9WxMAoFzQ3YzLF51SLiCYBSQZT21UhfKRPWV3ztTJ8EbZs1x2QF4l/?app=fbl
El tiempo me hizo comprender que estar en el pellejo de Gustavo siendo uno de los directores más famosos del mundo y el alma de todas las orquestas del Sistema, debe ser harto difícil; me refiero a mantener el equilibrio sin caer en contradicciones. ¿Debe Gustavo Dudamel dejar de dirigir a la Orquesta Infantil?, como lo está haciendo en estos días que están de gira, ¿debe renunciar y desvincularse totalmente del Sistema y hablar?, siento discrepar, pero mi respuesta es no, no debe hacerlo hasta que la gira no concluya. La música es poderosa y la mayoría de las veces no necesita de palabras para explicarse o para hacer llegar a la audiencia un sentimiento compartido. Ya llegará la hora de despedirse de esos niños, posiblemente sea un momento cargado de mucha emoción y entonces ese será el momento en que Gustavo hable, como lo hizo sin dudarlo hace unos años.
Yo celebré cuando en el 2017 vertió duras críticas al gobierno de Maduro, lo que le costó la cancelación de una gira que ya estaba programada y las amenazas del propio dictador. A Gustavo se le puede pedir que se pronuncie, desde luego que sí, pero, no a costa de la ilusión y la esperanza de esos cientos de niños que se están dejando la piel en cada nota que producen. Esa Venezuela es de todos; ya sé que el régimen utiliza al Sistema para lavarse la cara, pero, nadie puede ver en esos niños el reflejo de la violencia y la represión de un gobierno totalitario. La mayor ilusión de esos niños es poder tocar bajo la batuta del afamado director, cada sonrisa de esos muchachos encierra el deseo de vivir en paz, en armonía, en un país libre y democrático sin tener que ver la angustia en el rostro de sus padres por el futuro, la salud y el bienestar de sus hijos. Por todo ello Gustavo tiene que dirigir y terminar la gira, luego vendrá el momento en el que en la soledad de su habitáculo vuelva a pronunciarse sin perjudicar a esos niños que son inocentes de todo. ¡Ellos para mí representan gran parte de la Venezuela que añoro!
that’s easy for you to say.
Que?
The letter begins:
This evening’s concert is brought to you by the office of the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, a dictator—currently investigated by the
International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity—whose stated determination to violate the electoral will of the Venezuelan people is playing out with deadly effect on the streets of Caracas at this very moment, while you enjoy this beautiful music.
The children playing in this orchestra are individually innocent, but the collective entity to which it belongs, El Sistema, is an effective and essential public relations organ of the Venezuelan regime and well-documented as a diplomatic instrument of soft power on the international stage. Gustavo Dudamel has personally benefited to the tune of millions of dollars in off-the-books payments from the dictatorship and he operates as an unregistered foreign agent of the Maduro regime. He gently criticizes the dictatorship in public while, in private, serving as an unofficial ambassador for Venezuela’s tyranny. For years Dudamel has
been silent in the face of years and years of repression and violence in
Venezuela. Tonight is no different.
That is totally devastating. It shows-up Dudamel in a drastic way.
I’m surprised you’ve rushed to judgment like these other keyboard extremists (most of them anyway) and woke apparatchiks. There are always two sides to any story and I’m always extremely wary of anything at all said and written on social media. What an oxymoron!!
He could have side stepped the booking but that would have looked “weasily”. The guy is in a no win situation. He may not be a bad guy nor a good guy but like most of us caught up in a brutal culture.
Gustavo! people in your industry are starting to notice. And they will know your long and provable history of active involvement with the Venezuelan regime. @HRF will be waiting for you in NYC at ***every single concert***of yours when you’re director of the @nyphil. You need to explain the mountain of empirical evidence revealing your undeniable support for Hugo Chavez and now for President Maduro individuals with a history of censoring artists, journalists, and seeking to turn Venezuela into a monoculture of support for chavismo. As chavismo shut down the Caracas Atheneum, ransacked and pillaged museums considered “bourgeois,” and closed down academies and institutions not revolutionary enough, Dudamel was silent. Dudamel’s endorsement of chavismo’s censorship had its nastiest and most public expression in 2007 when Chavez shut down RCTV, an independent, privately-owned television channel with five rich decades of cultural history which had the temerity of not backing down in the face of government censorship. The Chavez government seized the television channel’s physical plant and even antennas and set up a pitiable replacement, TVES. Gustavo Dudamel was beaming with pride as he conducted the opening concert for this new propaganda channel at the stroke of midnight. Dudamel’s shameful performance was the very first program under the TVES banner.
That triumphant celebration (which for liberty-loving Venezuelans of all political stripes was the funeral of freedom of expression) is one of dozens of such instances for Dudamel, who is always present when his paymasters appear to need him. For instance, Dudamel performed again as he attended the funeral of Chavez and wept beside Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the then-president of the Iranian regime and one of the greatest enemies of human rights. After weeping for the dead dictator, Dudamel’s performance took place as he embraced Chavez’s anointed successor, Nicolás Maduro, in full view of the cameras. Only Dudamel knows if his support of Maduro is the result of philosophical alignment or simply ongoing financial reward for himself and for El Sistema (or both!). But this is not the issue. The issue is that now, as Venezuela is alight with protest, Dudamel pretends he has no knowledge of what is happening there and so blithely states that he has no categorical position on the matter of student deaths caused by Maduro’s uniformed thugs. You concertgoers deserve better. Dudamel’s libretto of clueless and apolitical music-lover is unbefitting a world class performer. Dudamel should stick to one consistent song sheet. He cannot dance to Chavismo’s tune at home and then take a Gulfstream jet back to L.A. to hobnob in Beverly Hills and pretend he does not know that his underwriters are the nemesis of peace, free expression, and a tolerant culture. In every nation’s struggle for democracy, civil rights, and fundamental freedoms there are no sidelines for those in the public eye who receive copious material benefits from human rights violators.
It will be no surprise that Gustavo Dudamel will remain the target of accusations of hypocrisy, mendacity, and greed.
He certainly seems to enjoy his outsized salary and benefits packages from the LAPO and NYPO, too.
What a hypocrite.
Have a look at Thor Halvorssen’s outsides salary and benefit package as well at his so called “Human Rights Foundation”. Worth noting the millions his foundation puts in “Bitcoin”. You think he’s clean?
It appears that Venezuela has become a tyranny of woke on steroids – a warning for us all. And it shows that a conductor cannot remain within the boundaries of classical music if he has arrived there on the money of such regime. The combination of great talent and weak character is a very unstable one that cannot be maintained for long, not even in the classical music world. The NY Phil get a hughe problem and may scratch their head.
I’m no defender of woke — quite the opposite — but I would like you to cite any instances of wokeism from either Chavez or Maduro.
You may be equating wokeism with communism — which is nonsense.
Both ideologies are quite totalitarian in nature and reject the possibility of pluralism.
I’m not sure that “woke” actually rises to the term ideology, but if it does it joins communism in having been utterly coopted by totalitarianism.
Communism was an ideology from the off because it sought to replace one world order with another approach. It succeeded for a long time in places like Russia because it faced a regime that was ruthlessly oblivious to the needs of and suffering of its people. It did not take long for its leaders to realise that the governance of a country that large has to be pretty dictatorial, and the widespread support of Putin has indicated that there is a streak in the Russian people, bred by history, that responds best to “strong” leadership.
“Woke” initially sprang up in free societies where a genuine reaction to injustices, particularly racial, was attacked by a move toward inclusion — something to which these free leaders paid lip service and that they tended to ignore when it was abused.
It did not take long for those of a totalitarian cast of mind to jump aboard and push for ever greater adherence to what was originally a pretty benign (if annoying) impetus. From colour-blind casting and diversity training to “Queers for Palestine” is a tortuous road, but it was traversed when a succession of feeble-minded institutions saw some moral benefit in adopting it. But with the first removed statue and renamed street, the die was cast, and the totalitarians were able to move in.
Shame on HRF. It’s a Youth Orchestra, playing music! Leave them alone! Can one single thing be celebrated and not protested? Just because Venezuela has a bad president that you don’t like means we need to tar and feather an incredible program that has helped countless musicians and children flourish for decades?! Dudamel deserves nothing but praise for the countless lives he has enriched through this work.
Since many people don’t like Bibi bombing Gaza should we protest the Israeli Youth Symphony?
If you don’t like Putin’s war then we should protest Russian Youth Orchestras?
A lot of people sure didn’t like Trump! Should the world have protested all American Youth Orchestras when they performed abroad?
Musicians are not obligated to take political stances and I applaud Dudamel for delicately walking that incredibly difficult tightrope ensuring that El Sistema remains in place and enriching the lives of Venezuelans when they need it most, while also not explicitly endorsing the regime and if anything making it clear he does not support them.
There are a thousand other more important things for HRF to protest other than a celebrated Youth Orchestra and incredible Conductor and human being like Gustavo.
Truly shameful and despicable.
I agree. Whenever children get the opportunity to learn to play music well together, let’s separate that from politics, or some day soon there won’t be orchestral and chamber music. And children will have ever shrinking opportunities to be anything other than idiots.
I don’t understand a thing of all these political complications but I’ve worked in a toilet paper factory and thus know what lack of opportunity means. So, why bother if you are paid by a suppressing state if you just happen to fall on the paid side of the situation? Just grab your money and be happy that you got an opportunity to do what you like!
Since my boss gets wound-up about these things I’ve done some reading (instead of this tiring job) and I found that all those musicians in nazi Germany were very happy to finally get such generous support and didn’t they do a good job? I read so many good reviews, it must have been a golden time really!
Sally
Clearly it is not the innocent children being scrutinized here . Thank you for bringing the Dudamel to our attention and calling him out for keeping oppressive policies alive which do not promote democracy. Thank you!
Respectfully, you miss the point entirely.
As Halvorssen said in his letter, the children themselves are innocent, but the organization to which they belong is literally owned and run by the office of the President, and has been deployed as an effective mechanism of soft power and influence for two decades.
In this case, the president is rounding up and torturing those who protest the theft of the election last week, people who are effectively demanding democratic control over their futures. “This time there will be no forgiveness”, he threatens. As he does so, he funds his youth orchestra to go on tour in the US, preaching a message of “social change” through music. If you don’t see the moral incoherence in that relationship, there is nothing I can do to persuade you of it.
To your point on equivalencies…. Imagine Carnegie Hall presenting the Children’s Orchestra of Russia right now, with Gergiev conducting. I don’t think so. Yet, Maduro and Putin are allies, and now militarily connected. New reports are claiming the presence of Wagner mercenaries in Venezuela.
So, maybe you will revisit your stance and draw different conclusions, knowing that the equivalencies you offer above are not really equivalent, and that the orchestra is an instrument of the Venezuelan state. Therein lies the moral impasse.
You Americans are really horrible people and this is plainly obvious by the two appalling candidates you have for President. Clean up your own foul backyard before hurling insults towards others!! Pass me the biggest bucket you can find in the meantime.
The ignorance displayed on here is beyond stunning. The HRF is an international human rights organization. It was founded by Venezuelan Thor Halvorssen Mendoza. And Russians Garry Kasparov is the outgoing chairman while the new chairman is Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Alexei Navalnaya. Why make up easily debunkable stuff and post it on here? What does that accomplish?
It has something to do with an outdated interpretation of sonata form.
And what does the US have to do with this? The HRF is Venenzulian.
I couldn’t agree more. I’m not sure that Robert Kennedy Jr. is as bad as Trump, but they certainly are both appalling.
There are horrible Americans – They are the ones who act exactly like you.
What an appalling non-argument. Kindergarten-level whataboutism. Please. The US has its problems, but remains the largest economy in the world. Venezuela has been suffering an extreme humanitarian crisis for several years now, one which has precipitated the exile of 8.5 million citizens, or one quarter of the population. Its ruling regime is sanctioned by the ICC for crimes against humanity, and cited by every human rights organization in the world for the detention and torture of dissenters. Don’t contribute here if you have nothing to say of real import. This isn’t a game.
Of course, how dare he undermine the CIA’s regime-change operation in Venezuela! Will this cancel culture never end? Is a conductor not allowed to have any kind of opinion that diverges from the mainstream, or even the right to remain silent and just make music?
“Is a conductor not allowed to have any kind of opinion that diverges from the mainstream, or even the right to remain silent and just make music?”
Sure, in benign contexts.
But not when that conductor substantially benefits directly from a regime that consistently abuses human rights. Not when that conductor promotes a message of “social change” while allying himself for decades, personally and professionally, with the architects of a nation’s total demise. Some hypocrisies and moral dissonances are simply too great not to attract objection and criticism.
Good stuff Gustavogoing against the US coup!
Yes, the Chavistas are a problem, though the real conflict is that it nationalized its oil interests. The US, in support of the Texas oil men who controlled Venezuela’s oil industry, has put embargos on Venezuela to destroy its economy and has attempted two CIA backed coups.
The HRF is a right-wing (some say far-right) advocacy group designed to align with US interests even though US foreign policy in Latin America is notorious for supporting dictators who abuse human rights. As a sort of alibi, it criticizes old US allies like Pinochet who are long gone but has remained relatively quiet about the US imposed fascist military dictatorships in Latin America.
Sistema, whatever faults it has, is a thorn in the side of the US propaganda campaign against Venezuela. Groups like HRF illustrate the harassment the NY Phil will face unless it silences Dudamel and distances itself from Sistema in Venezuela.
The HRF’s founder is Thor Halvorssen Mendoza. He was also the first Executive Director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education which is involved with countering “liberal bias” on university campuses. An old interview of Halvorssen by Sean Hannity on Fox News illustrates his far-right political orientation. The goals of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education are directly in line with far-right politicians like Ron DeSantis who is purging universities in Florida.
Thor Jr. also founded a documentary film company called the Moving Picture Institute. The New York Times provides an amusing description of their work:
“At a time when the most successful documentaries on political or social issues all seem to be anti-corporate, anti-Bush, pro-environmentalist and left-leaning, the Moving Picture Institute has backed pro-business, anti-Communist and even anti-environmentalist ones. The latest, “Indoctrinate U,” follows the first-time filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney as he turns Michael Moore’s guerrilla interview tactics on their head to address what he sees as political correctness on campus. In one scene, Mr. Maloney strolls into the women’s studies centers on several campuses and, playing innocent, asks directions to the men’s studies center.” (“A Maverick Mogul, Proudly Politically Incorrect,” August 19, 2007.)
Thor’s father, Thor Halvorssen Hellum, who comes from one of the richest families in Venezuela, was the drug czar during the administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez in the seventies where he worked closely with the DEA and CIA. He also worked with the CIA in El Salvador and Nicaragua during the dirty war of the eighties and was a close collaborator of Contra leader, Adolfo Calero. Ironically, the Contras were known for their brutal abuses, which only adds to the suspicions surrounding his son’s Human Rights Foundation. What kind of human rights groups collaborates with US backed and trained death squads like the Contras?
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch (not HRF) reported that human rights in Venezuela deteriorated during Pérez’s administration—the government with which Thor Halvorssen Hellum’s father worked. In 1993, Human Rights Watch reported that Pérez’s “tenure was marked by an increase in human rights violations, including arbitrary detentions, torture, extrajudicial executions, the violent repression of popular demonstrations and protests.” Torture was especially prevalent. Again we see how the HRF has some odd familial connections to the very opposite of human rights.
As further examples of HRF bias, notice how quiet it has been about the far-right/fascist military dictators the US imposed on Latin America such as Augusto Pinochet (Chile,) Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (Columbia,) Fulgencio Batista (Cuba,) Alfredo Poveda (Ecuador,) the last nine dictators of El Salvador, the last four fascist dictators of Guatemala, Raoul Cédras (Haiti,) Oswaldo López Arellano (Honduras,) Luis Somoza Debayle (Nicaragua,) Manuel Noriega (Panama,) and the last six fascist dictators of Uruguay. And where was the HRF when Carlos Delgado Chalbaud and Marcos Pérez Jiménez were military dictators of Venezuela before the Chavistas took over? Any organization honestly concerned about human rights would have been equally vociferous about these regimes.
We thus see the agenda of the HRF and the harassment it will be subjecting Dudamel and the NY Phil to in the coming years.
Don’t confuse them with facts, they’ve already made up their minds.
Sorry, I did not know the full info. I spoke to soon and it’s interesting, what kind of democracy supports dictators. It’s time to really understand that we don’t always have the full picture.
Interesting that in your lengthy screed you have not a word to say about Venezuela’s criminal dictatorship and its stealing of the election last week. You are a genuine dictatorship apologist, which makes your endless whataboutery entirely vacuous.
That is a well-known leftish delusion, i.e. of a certain interpretation of leftwing politics. This invokes protest rallies against the USA during the Vietnam War and never against the uninvited aggression of the communists, and protests against Israel’s attempts to get rid of Hamas and never against Hamas or Iran itself, never against Hezbollah, never against Russian’s war mongering. There are leftish people framing the victory of the allies in WW II as an invasion of capitalism into Germany, as a great disaster. It’s like Chomsky referring to all the ills of the world as being created by the USA no matter what, implying there are no bad people outside America, etc. etc…..
Mr. Osbourne,
Your opening line already contains falsehoods. The Venezuelan oil industry was nationalised in 1976. Chavez came to power in 1998. PDVSA long preceded him. American companies were involved in the extraction and refinement of Venezuelan heavy crude oil – a net benefit to all involved – until Chavez adopted his anti-US stance of Castro-Cuban “Revolution!” and kicked out all the industry experts. Fine. But the industry collapsed. The infrastructure disintegrated and productivity fell by an estimated 35% under the regime Once the global oil price also fell, it fatally exposed Chavez’s hopeless “eggs in one basket” approach to economics. Add the expropriation of private business and almost total dependence on imports, and you have the manifest disaster of today.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/venezuela-crisis
That aside, let’s unpack your attack on Thor Halvorssen, the messenger, in a diatribe of leftist apologetics notable only for avoiding Halvorssen’s actual message.
On the messenger:
The HRF casts a wide net over a global portfolio of human rights crises, whatever Halvorssen’s family connection to Venezuela, whose crisis occupies a tiny percentage of the HRF’s work, and is not diminished by Halvorssen’s proximity to it. Luckily, we have the internet to attest to this, where readers can find video recordings of all of this years Oslo Freedom Forum talks on a broad range of topics, from Ukraine, to Uyghur China, to Gaza, to India, to Open Source AI, to sport-washing in Saudi Arabia.
https://oslofreedomforum.com/event/oslo-freedom-forum-oslo-2024/2024-oslo-freedom-forum-talks/
The OFF also platformed a performance of “Canaima; a quintet for piano and strings”, a piece commissioned by the Gilmore Festival which condemns the environmental destruction of UNESCO World Heritage sites by the Maduro regime, along with the killing and displacement of indigenous people arising from illegal mining and pollution in those territories. The composer of this elegy to the environment? Gabriela Montero. On a side note, Maduro’s son Nicolasito owns some of those mines, and also sits on the board of El Sistema. Again, the pro-environment piece was recorded, as part of the 2024 Vaclav Havel Prize ceremony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEN0MEaFRys
You may have also missed that Thor Halvorssen produced “The Dissident”, an investigative documentary by Academy Award winner Bryan Fogel, about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by MBS. Saudi-funded Netflix didn’t want to touch it, despite their commitments to social justice narratives, but you can find it on Prime Video and Apple TV. Trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wnmC7uLTNQ
On the message:
Your argument boils down to this: Thor Halvorssen has family ties to the people fighting to restore democracy to Venezuela and, given the US’s past interference in other parts of South America, he must – by extension – be part of something even nastier than the pure evil holding Venezuela hostage today. It couldn’t possibly be that he is a decent, smart guy trying to make the world a better place by challenging the world’s most undemocratic monsters? I should point out that the newly appointed HRF chair is Yulia Navalnaya, not Tucker Carlson. And Mr. Halvorssen has personally released balloons into North Korea, delivering pen drives laden with information to counter totalitarian brain washing. Sounds like a terrible guy, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhj4rH13eoc
As for his unambiguous message, to which you pay no attention in your attempt to discredit him. It goes something like this: It is no longer acceptable to use children’s orchestras to launder and burnish the reputation of ICC-sanctioned, election-stealing, transnational criminals masquerading as governments, who own those orchestras and directly fund their propaganda missions in the US – a country they claim to despise, incidentally.
Maybe you could address that position, directly? I am interested to hear how you can possibly defend it, without resorting to whataboutisms, false-equivalencies, and a broad-brush, continent-wide, historical reading of a nation-specific, contemporary crisis.
Fire away.
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for your well written and truthful post. Wow, Americans are SO brainwashed!
This youth orchestra has been around long before Chavez or Maduro were in office. It was founded in 1975 and is one of the premier musical youth groups in the world. It is nonpolitical. Stop trying to exploit it for your own political benefits. These children are not pawns and don’t reflect the values of the current dictatorship in Venezuela. It’s one of the few bright points still functioning in the country. Leave it alone.
I think the point of this and other criticism of Dudamel and, to some extent, El Sistema on these pages is rooted in the undeniable fact that it is the current government of Venezuela that is exploiting these young musicians for their own political benefit.
Indeed.
Regimes that know they are not legitimate, always seek ways to have some façade that may show they are civilised after all.
Such as Afghanistan in the Olympics
And LIV Golf.
Exactly.
Do your homework. El Sistema was moved to a political department – the office of the President – under Chavez. It answers directly to the President. The president’s son is one of its directors, as is Delcy Rodriguez. You don’t get much more political than that.
Alright, I’ll talk as an El Sistema insider. I left Venezuela recently and spent more than 15 years as a part of El Sistema. We were not indoctrinated to support Maduro’s regime (contrary to what they do to children in public schools). These nepoticians are there to ensure we don’t turn the propaganda against them and sure, to make us play at political shows in their favor. But luckily they know we hate them.
Even the few (as far as I know) Chavez’s followers that work in El Sistema leave that stuff out. That’s not what it is about. Some of them are hypocrites, some are very convinced of their ideology, but what we all do there is teach music, and teamwork.
I eventually went to work in one of the most poor areas where El Sistema has a unit, Santa Rosa de Agua in Maracaibo. That’s where it matters the most. We really kept children out of delinquency (I know some of their friends and relatives were robbers and thugs, and often invited them to go do bad stuff). El Sistema has been and is flawed, and needs depuration, but the benefit is far greater than the cost.
Anyone can see that Maduro and his party’s regime is punishing Venezuelan people even if they try to bluewash themselves with talented youth orchestras or saying they support Palestine. We know better. And if you don’t, you’re the one indoctrinated, by one side or the other.
I also played for Chavez (and Uribe, for that matter) when I was 12, and for Maduro, in 2018. I would have LOVED to end it all right there, but it was impossible. We were at gunpoint. Armed forces (army, national guard, they’re all the same) cleared the area, scanned us and our instruments for weapons, and then surrounded the whole venue on the inside too. There was nothing we could do, other than glare at him and his wife and other VIPs of the party.
El Sistema is not allied with a government, it need state funding to keep operating. The regime has the state kidnapped. Should we end El Sistema to not depend on them? I don’t believe so. They try to teach better citizens for the future. And if the change is near (it feels that way now) now more than ever it has to keep operating. Luckily the regime has let them keep doing music and educating children, even at gunpoint. Do you know the main dish in this particular touring children’s orchestra rep? Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5. Coincidence? Probably Dudamel’s choice, too.
I cannot be totally apologetic of Dudamel either. But one thing is true: if he or el sistema openly opposed the government, is the children who will suffer and lose opportunities, education, and resources. If he wants to stay connected to El Sistema and keep working with the children and keep motivating them to be better, there is a path that must be walked, even if the international community despises him.
Thank you all for being well informed, on different degrees, about the situation in Venezuela. Maduro’s regime must end, just like any other violent and oppressive government has and must end, too.
Do not use children as pawns for your own political benefits! (Unless you’re using those children as propaganda tools to maintain your wealth and privilege derived from your corrupt, repressive dictatorship. Apparently, that’s fine. But never in the advancement of justice and liberty. Why that would be intolerable!)
It is not the children’s fault that they have to live under the Maduro regime, nor has Maduro any right to take credit for their success. Would you have Dudamel abandon the children when he has conducted the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra (the national youth orchestra of Venezuela) for 25 years.
Damned if you, damned if you don’t! People should understand the situation Dudamel faces, and Dudamel is trying not to further punish the kids of the Sistema!
Yes, it must be tough trying to decide whether or not to be the cultural ambassador of a dictatorship.
There are athletes currently in Paris representing almost every nation on earth (Russia and Belarus excepted). Not all those nations are democratic. Most athletes will have the support of their governments, to a greater or lesser degree.
I seriously doubt that many of these athletes consider themselves in any sense other than as competitors, and their nation is their sport, their team, their coaches, their family and friends cheering them on back home and in the stands.
Yes, some of them tear up when their flag is raised. But as a lot of us know, you can love your country without loving your government.
If you were directly responsible for the well-being of 170 children and their families, what would you say?
The more I read up on Thor Halvorssen, the more I question his intentions here… it all seems a bit self-serving to me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Halvorssen_(human_rights_activist)
All these posters defending El Systema and the poor children are either ignorant or deliberately using straw man tactics. If they would take the time to read the statement issued by the HRF that would learn that the protests are aimed solely at Gustavo Dudamel and the Venezuelan dictatorship for which he willingly propagandizes. The HRF takes pains to describe the kids as innocent in all of this.
And if one more persons clutches their pearls and avers….oh, stop making political pawns of these poor children!…, I think I’ll gag. Why is it fine to use them as pawns on behalf of a repressive dictatorship but not by those advocating for liberty in their homeland?
Between Total Blackness and Utter Whiteness there is Always more than Enough Space for a Vast Amount of types of Greyness and varied Shades.
Exactly so is Always regarding the Dichotomy of Truthfulness against Falsehood.
There is No Truly Justified Need to Accelerate the Production of Judgments, especially when these are Based Solely Upon Fragmentary Information and/or Instinctively Oriented Personal Preferences.
Let Dudamel do His Job Without any Noise Interferences.
It seems that Capital Punishment would be a better application.
If by that you mean punishment for his use of capitals, I’m with you!
What a stupid, mindless, sensationalist article without checking first what kind of a man is Dudamel. Follow this link: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/19/opinion/venezuela-gustavo-dudamel.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The children of a youth orchestra don’t deserve to be treated as pariahs just because their country’s leader is a shmuck. Dudamel is a role model for these kids, and by touring with them, he’s letting them know that they are valued and loved, despite their nation’s leader. Dudamel is on a rescue mission with these kids – he’s not demonstrating support for the Maduro regime. Picking on him isn’t going to bring down Maduro! So channel your hostility in a constructive way.
What is it about the brains of rich, privileged white men that make them believe they can foist their values on Hispanic liberals from a humble backgrounds? Worth reading why the New York Times thinks Thor Halverssen’s “a scion of wealth and privilege” here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/19/movies/19stra.html
Or is it that Thor Halverssen has too many monied interests himself in Venezuela and is threatened by the left wing liberal democracy there? Read his Wiki page, and all about his white privilege and family ties to money, riches, and business.
Nobody even rabidly liberal in the US mistakes Maduro for anything other than a dictator, indeed one whose takeover and corruption of Venezuela’s courts to remian in power is one that Trump slavishly imitates.
I’m sorry but there is not any “left wing liberal democracy” in Venezuela. There’s just a group of people that have kidnapped the country and bribes and threatens the army to keep them in power. There’s free opportunity to protest in a democracy, while in Venezuela more than 2k people have been imprisoned and abducted for protesting against rigged elections. Many have been shot dead by the armed forces or government funded paramilitary groups. Salaries are around 40$ a month while food and goods prices are on the international level (a lot of the available stuff gets imported from the US or other countries). If that’s your idea of a leftist liberal democracy then I would want to go to the rightest conservative autocracy I can find.
But Dudamel HAS spoken out. He’s been calling for the defense of democracy and the prevention of violence for YEARS. He spoke out in 2017 via New York Times Op Ed piece after the killing of Armando Cañizales, and when he did, the government cancelled tours with the Simón Bolívar Symphony. Dudamel could have washed his hands of it, but he remained committed to his orchestras. Even last summer, he spoke out in favor of change when he took the Bolivars to the Edinburgh Festival. To say he’s been silent or passive is verifiably and consistently false.
He’s remained conspicuously silent other than the occasional performative platitudes designed to salvage his reputation. Your claim is belied by the fact that he’s touring with El Systema. I don’t remember Toscanini doing lots of tours with Italian orchestras during Mussolini’s reign, do you?
As Lenin said, the world is full of useful idiots, ready to believe empty slogans. Ready to support corrupt dictators.
I heard the very young Dudamel. He had that special magnetic quality very few conductors have. I fear he may have lost it. His music making now is a shaw.
I was not surprised with his Paris experiance. Perhaps he can fool Americans, but in Europe too many people know how real music should sound. He got rich, fat, and too close to political power. It happened to greater conductors in the past, yet it is sad. Very sad.
This precedent was already started when they cancelled Gergiev for not denouncing Putin. Absolutely ignorant, as if he would put his life at risk just to make us in the West feel good. This phony, vindictive activism in the arts needs to end. Let musicians make music, and stop taking away our jobs!
Taking Gergiev as an example is rather unlucky, to put it mildly. He had enough engagements in the West to secure his livelyhood if he had decided to leave Russia and distance himself from its dictator. But he went out of his way to support Putin’s politics and got even closer to the Kremlin, reaping the fruits that easily came his way by doing so. He made a very clear black-and-white choice and that showed him up.
Slipped Disc should not supporting anarchist-like attacks on classical musicians and conductors no matter what country they are from. Why don’t you with your media raise badly needed funds for classical music education or something honorable? The military budgets for “non” authoritarian governments like USA are skyrocketing while a once great education system with classical music is in shambles. Maybe Dudemel other countries like China are trying make something of themselves with classical music for the next generation.
I’m sorry, but I don’t mind hearing less clamour on the streets NYC.
As we know, when a foreign government is under a deeply flawed political ideology (communism/socialism/whateverism) that is doomed to failure because it “doesn’t work”, we mustn’t just allow it to fail on its own; we must attempt to overthrow its government with CIA infiltration, color revolutions or even violent coups. Sanctions are also important tools. The politicians won’t suffer much, but the people will. That will teach them to vote for the wrong people!
Here is a recent book about the 2019 attempted coup to install “President” Juan Guaido.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Corporate-Coup-Overthrow-Venezuela-Democracy/dp/1682193594
The “children” in the Venezuela youth orchestra are ages 18 to 28. They don’t deserve to be pawns in a game. But they are adults and the international relations literature tells us that global recognition of groups like the youth orchestra is important for the domestic standing authoritarian regimes.
The oldest person in the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela that performed at Carnegie Hall this weekend is 17…
I met that dude at Harvard this year at his ‘graduation’. He treated everyone like an a-hole. So sad.
william osborne: Yes, the Chavistas are a problem, though the real conflict is that it nationalized its oil interests….The HRF is a right-wing (some say far-right) advocacy group designed to align with US interests…
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Back in the 1930s, it was fashionable among the political left in the US, including at the NY Times, to makes excuses for Joseph Stalin, if not outright support his.
It’s a given that portions of the political left in 2024 will be less resentful about a Nicolas Maduro than a (quote, unquote) rightwinger like a Donald Trump [or insert some other political conservative’s name here].
Gustavo Dudamel and the world of the arts in general is full of people of the political left.
In the 2020s, there are also political factions of the left like “Queers for Hamas.”
Dudamel has publicly criticized the dictatorship. Norman, it would be nice if you’d reached out to him for his side instead of interest publishing a one sided hit
I have heard his side from him several times.
Can you please post a link to that? I think we’re all interested in reading what he has said to you about it.
When last did you speak with him directly, Norman? The latest I can recall was from 2012… y’know… *before* Maduro was in power.
Journalists ask Dudamel about politics in every major interview. For several years now, he has sidestepped the question. His 2017 statement is ancient history. He no longer espouses that line.
The important thing here is to make sure you get you daily dose of outrage.
I have not heard of the HRF before. Another private funded Human rights organisation with a selective view on Human rights??? Dudamel should ignore them.