The utterance was captured on camera and immediately snowballed into a news, political and internet avalanche. Many people in Spain and Latin America have downloaded the ring tone to their cell phone that has the audio clip of Juan Carlos saying “¿Por qué no te callas?” There are several dozen music mixes of the confrontation on You Tube, at least one of which has been viewed over 1.1 million times and many have been viewed over 100,000 times. News media on both sides of the Atlantic eschewed attempts at fair coverage and took sides with a vengeance.

What the cultural phenomenon of “¿Por qué no te callas?” glosses over are some real issues that were attempting to be addressed at the 17th Ibero-American summit in Chile that ended on November 10th. The ironies and subtexts are also very interesting. Start with the fact that the person Chavez was interrupting and talking-over when Juan Carlos told him to shut up was Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Zapatero is a Socialist and is/was regarded by Chavez as a close ally as they share much of the same ideology and beliefs. Second, the Ibero-American summit is supposed to be a friendly event designed to foster closer relations among all of the Spanish and Portuguese countries of the world and help them work together on economic and other issues.

The issue being addressed when the mood began to get ugly was how to improve Latin America’s economic situation. As Time magazine pointed out:

"Chávez became visibly irritated at the summit when Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — a socialist and Chávez ally — insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty. Chávez blames "savage capitalism" for Latin America's gaping inequality and insists "only socialism" can fix it — hence his tirade against [former Spanish Prime Minister] Aznar and other free-market "fascists." At that point Zapatero chided Chávez, reminding him that Aznar himself "was democratically elected by the Spanish people." Chávez kept trying to interrupt — summit organizers even turned off his microphone — at which point the King said what was on most summiteers' minds, if the general applause he got was any indication.” 

The person for whom I feel the most sorry is the host of the conference, Chile's President Michelle Bachelet. I wonder if any of the parties involved in the fracas have apologized to her. Hosting a major international summit like this is a big deal for Chile and its President and to have it degenerate into name-calling and the general disaster that it became is probably seen in Chile as a huge disappointment. Worse still is that the issues of poverty and slow growth for the region was not addressed because of the exchange.

The debacle shows the weakness of ideological rigidness in general and that of Chavez in particular. Chavez rightly rails against the extreme right ideologies of people like Bush and Aznar and the destructiveness of their policies, but cannot escape the rigidness of his own enough to even let someone else finish what they have to say without interruption. Time Magazine continued:

 Back in Caracas today, Chávez is conveniently leaving the comments of Zapatero, who is supposed to be one of his leftist kindred spirits, out of the discussion. "What Zapatero said must have really bothered Chávez," says Venezuelan author and Chávez biographer Alberto Barrera. "It broke with the leftist fundamentalism on Latin America that he demands all his allies follow."  

And it pointed up a fact about Chávez's revolution that chavistas are too reluctant to acknowledge. Venezuela, with its vast oil wealth, can afford to indulge socialism and eschew foreign investment; but most other Latin American nations can't. Their economic growth still depends on the kind of capital that global competitors like China and India are raking in, but which Latin America seems unable or unwilling to garner. The chavistas rightly argue that the distribution of capitalism's fruits has been grossly unequal in Latin America — which is a large reason why leftists like Chávez have been swept into power in recent years. But the region needs that investment nonetheless — and even leftists like Zapatero sound impatient with the region's mediocre performance.”

I have to say that if I was a Socialist and had to choose between the Zapatero brand and the Chavez brand, there would be no question. Zapatero has ten times the brains and one hundred times the class of Chavez. Chavez’ behavior is a symptom of what seems to happen to many leaders who embrace extreme right or extreme left ideologies. They become infected with a disease that causes them to demagogue incessantly at the slightest provocation. The popular American saying applies here and that is, “Chavez, it’s not all about YOU.” It is about the people in the region, and your (Chavez) behavior caused a failure in the efforts to do anything about it. Chavez has to learn how to behave at major international summits and one of the more important rules of that behavior is that when a host or chair recognizes and gives the floor to someone else, you don’t interrupt them. Por qué no te callas, indeed.