On December 2, 2007, Hugo Chávez’s attempt to grant complete power to his PSUV and instate himself as Venezuela’s dictator failed. An average Venezuelan student decided not watch every liberty stripped from Venezuelans and led 200,000 people on marches against Chávez’s constitutional reforms. For his efforts, Yon Goicoechea is this year’s recipient of the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.
“Chávez is not Venezuela. There is another different Venezuela that is growing in our land. Another different Venezuela, with a new perspective of life, with a new perspective of government, and with a new of modernity,” Goicoechea said when accepting the award.
In his acceptance speech, Goicoechea explains that his goal was not only to stop a tyrant, but to start a revolution:
We cannot be defined by dictators any more . . . And, now it is our time to make a revolution: the revolution of ideas, the revolution of ideals, and the revolution of progress. I think the only revolution possible in Latin America and other poor countries is the revolution of making a state with solid, stable, and free institutions. But, also a revolution that makes citizens know and recognize their own capacity to overcome poverty and to solve their own problems.”
Yon believes that “humans have the capacity to get better all by themselves.” To Americans this notion is simply absurd; we all know that the government must help people in need, especially the poor, because they are incapable of helping themselves . . . silly Yon. However, as Yon explains, “Poor people are not stupid. They don’t have to be cared [for] by the government. They have to be left alone by the government. Everyone can be better, they just need the opportunity.”
“Everyone can be better, they just need the opportunity.” Yon understands this opportunity exists when government interference is minimal. Yon understands “[overcoming] poverty, the great enemy of Latin America, is through liberty because the only way to overcome poverty is through human capacity to innovate, through human creativity, through human work.”
Lance Nation is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run jointly by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.
