The name of Jon Lee Anderson has been linked to Latin America for at least three decades.  He is a renowned American journalist who has written several books dedicated to topics such as guerrilla groups, leftist icons and post-9/11 wars. Indeed, Jon Lee has an amazing capacity to create journalistic profiles.

For many years, Anderson has not only written about Latin America for prestigious media in the United States, the Americas and Europe, but was also a part of the academic team of training in the Fundación del Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (New Ibero-American Journalism Foundation), one of the many legacies of the acclaimed writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

During his time at the Foundation he was able to teach, give workshops and conferences, and interact with Latin American journalists. Today, due to his recent allegations referring to the situation of Venezuela, a lot of his disciples are grieving.

Jon Lee’s style of journalism is not objective, that is simply not his personal seal. Nonetheless, he has trespassed the boundaries of what may be considered a personal view, with a not so hidden intention of trying to defend Chavismo-Madurismo in matters of public opinion.

Anderson’s positions to the public have become openly ridiculing. It has been written with an out of place, teasing and burlesque tone that, by trying to justify a major crisis that millions of Venezuelans suffer, simply abandons the basic precept of any journalist: putting oneself in the other person’s shoes, especially with those who suffer.

It is not the first time that this journalist makes an ironic remark about situations that affect millions of people, but his most recent tweet from June 16 definitely crossed the line:

“So electrical blackouts are not exclusively evidence of the failure of socialism and Venezuelan “castrochavismo”, then ?!”

The emoji that he used in this tweet doesn´t have any translation, clearly. Jon Lee believes he made a great joke, or that cree que se la comió, as Venezuelans would say.

Jon Lee and the right to pontificate

I don´t know him personally, but I was able to cultivate friendships with some figures of American liberal journalism, associated with emblematic names in the journalism world in the same country as Jon Lee. They participate in a sort of “star system” which, as stars, allows them the sensation that they have the right to pontificate about what happens in other countries.

“I think Chavez is awesome, really great guy, but I couldn’t tolerate him as President of the US.” This is how one of most renowned names within American journalism summarized the ambivalent relationship that he, like Anderson, held with anti-imperialism regimes such as Cuba and Venezuela. Unlike Jon Lee, this veteran journalist was more prudent and, when he wrote about Venezuela, he decided to write what he saw. For that simple reason I do not mention him by name.

We could conduct an anthropological analysis about what it could mean when intellectuals applaud dictatorships, or justify them, precisely when they don’t suffer the daily consequences of them. On this matter, Cuban history would have a lot to say.

But just like this journalist that I met in Washington, Jon Lee is trapped in his anti-Trump agenda. He looks at Venezuela through his rejection at the Trump administration and that makes him and many others lose sight of a lot of things, they have even come to distract attention from the USD $23,000 million corruption plot that the Maduro regime was supposed to dedicate to the Venezuela electrical system.