Is
Venezuela Next?
By Saul Landau
29 March, 2004
Counterpunch.org
Someone
once asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization.
"I think it
would be a good idea," he replied.
Democracy in Latin
America might also prove nice if the United States would allow it to
occur. Traditionally, when Latin Americans elect governments that show
even vague intentions of redistributing the lopsided national wealth
toward the poor, US officials get their knickers in a twist and force
new elections: the pro-US candidate then emerges. But Washington's rhetorically
concealed fusion between popular elections and imperial appointments
hardly assures Latin American stability.
Indeed, since 1999,
seven Hemispheric heads of state have left office before finishing their
terms. In October, four months before US and French officials dispatched
Haiti's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, pro US President Gonzalo
Sanchez de Lozado fled Bolivia to Miami. Massive popular protests erupted
against his pro-American economic policies. Similarly, Paraguay's Raul
Cubas had to quit when faced with heavy opposition, some of it turbulent.
Ecuador's pro free trade president, Jamil Mahuad, also got 86'd. Peruvians
sort of elected the fascistic Alberto Fujimori, currently exiled in
Japan and facing criminal charges in Peru -- and also hoping to return
to Peru to grab the presidency again. President Alejandro Toledo, who
replaced the disgraced Fujimori, followed US dictates on free trade
that has created deep unrest. In December 2001, Argentina's economy
collapsed and Fernando De la Rua resigned in the face of popular revolts
against neo-liberal policies. Pro-US economic (free trade) policies
caused the undoing of these regimes.
"Pro-US,"
however, hardly describes Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, the current target
for covert destabilizing. In 1998, the 49 year old former paratrooper
won massive electoral support for president. Chavez was elected again
in 2000 for a six year term.
Opposition leaders
claim that Chavez wanted to convert Venezuela into a Cuba-style system.
Having botched a 2002 coup attempt, Washington-Caracas plotters launched
a recall referendum to force a new vote. But the Venezuelan election
council announced on March 9 that only 1,830,000 of the 3 plus million
signatures passed muster; 2.4 million would force a recall election.
On March 15, Venezuela's Supreme Court overruled the Council.
The Electoral Council
appealed to another branch of the Supreme Court, which ordered the Council
to hand over all material relevant to the case. The Council maintains
that constitutionally is alone is qualified to decide on recall procedures.
Chavez says he will abide by the decision of the Court.
Paradoxically, members
of the Bush administration who helped rig the 2000 Florida election
charged Chavez with electoral hanky panky. Bush officials call Chavez
"Castro's little buddy," and mock his verbal assaults on US
imperialism, which they see as a sign of disobedience.
The wealthy, their
politicians, media owners and top executives and former managers at
the state oil company, along with their labor leader partners from the
elite oil workers union, all tried and failed to dispatch Chavez in
the April 2002 coup. These former coup makers and their Washington backers
have the chutzpah to claim that Chavez -- not they -- has undermined
democracy. Imagine US officials daring to charge others with undermining
democracy as they keep their contaminated hands in Haiti following their
overthrow of Aristide.
In recent speeches,
Chavez quoted from documents acquired under the Freedom of Information
Act that show US agencies funded the efforts of former coup makers.
Chavez demanded that the US "get its hands off Venezuela."
The documents he
cited show that "Sumate," a group that directs the signature
collection for Chavez' recall, received $53,400 from the congressionally
funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose mandate is to fund
causes that strengthen democracy.
The recall campaign
organizers have also fomented vehement street rallies that have cost
at least eight lives. Members of the elite bang pots and pans in their
own neighborhoods--only servants use them in their homes -- but some
of Venezuela's massive poor get paid by US-backed operatives to do more
violent protesting.
These tactics resonate
with memories of tested CIA formulas, like the one used to foment revolt
against the government of Salvador Allende in Chile 1970-3.
"It's done
in the name of democracy," said Jeremy Bigwood, the journalist
who obtained the documents proving US complicity, "but it's rather
hypocritical. Venezuela does have a democratically elected President
who won the popular vote which is not the case with the US" (Andrew
Buncombe, 13 March 2004 Independent).
NED targets foreign
leaders who believe insufficiently in free trade and privatization or
who want the government to play an active role in the economy.
For example, NED
targeted Aristide for his refusal to comply 100% with the demands of
the privatizers, like the IMF and the US government. It sent money to
his opponents while the US government itself cut off loans, credit and
aid to the Haitian government.
Washington can't
very well try these tactics with Venezuela without fear of a retaliatory
oil policy by Chavez. But it did enlist its old Cold War ally, the foreign
policy wing of the AFL-CIO union, the American Centre for International
Labor Solidarity. The AFL-CIO, losing membership at home, nevertheless
spent workers' money to train and advise opposition anti-Chavez forces.
The US government acts as a loose organizer to bring together the anti
Chavez unions and discredited political parties like Democratic Action
and Copei, whose past governments have looted their nation's treasury
over some four decades.
Chris Sabatini,
NED's Latin America director, claims his agency only wants to "build
political space" (Independent, March 13). Such statements seem
laughable. But ridicule alone cannot combat this democracy posture.
Indeed, US concern about democracy shows only when that ancient Greek
form begins to function for the poor. In Chile in the early 1970s and
in Venezuela today, the wealthy chant "democracy" only when
tax policies designed to help the poor threaten their fortunes.
The media, owned
by the rich, don't report facts about how past "democratic"
governments routinely looted Venezuela's treasury. But they have spread
panic about Chavez' budget, which prioritizes public health and education--areas
the rich don't use--and hope the US intervenes more forcefully.
US troops routinely
intervened throughout the region in the 19th and 20th Centuries. After
20 years of occupying Haiti (1914-34) marines handed over the reins
of government to militarized lackeys who repressed their own people,
but pledged loyalty to Washington. After World War II, as democracy
became an exportable national value--even racial integration by the
1960s -- the CIA redefined the word to coincide with US policy interests
around the world.
The world's greatest
democracy overthrew elected governments in Iran (1953) for their intention
to nationalize oil and in Guatemala (1954) for distributing some of
United Fruit Company's uncultivated acreage--after compensating the
Company according to its declared tax value -- to landless peasants.
Traditionally, the US removes "undesirable" candidates who
win elections, and substitute a more obedient candidate.
In the 1960s, US
covert operations helped depose reformist President Joao Goulart in
Brazil (1964) and poured money into the coffers of its candidates throughout
Latin America. In response to the Cuban Revolution, US-backed counterinsurgency
campaigns strengthened the most undemocratic elements of Latin America
while, simultaneously, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson extolled the virtues
of the Alliance for Progress to build democracy. The Alliance received
far less funding than the military in Latin America.
Nixon authorized
the overthrow of the elected socialist coalition of Salvador Allende
in Chile--accomplished by bloody coup in 1973--and the formation of
what Reagan's UN Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick distinguished as only "authoritarian"
governments, as opposed to the truly evil "totalitarian" ones.
Authoritarian regimes
could change, she opined, while totalitarian remained immutable. She
didn't say that US-backed authoritarian governments in much of South
and Central America also murdered their opponents. The totalitarian
ones at least offered services and, as it turned out, they also changed--collapsed.
Kirkpatrick maintained
that "Central America is the most important place in the world."
Picture her saying this at a sanity hearing! However ideologically bizarre,
Kirkpatrick and her ilk proved coldly calculating in backing covert
wars to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979-90) and supporting
military coups (authoritarian) against elected governments in the 1970s
and 80s.
In the 21st Century,
Washington shows its evolution by ousting Aristide, and cites his antipathy
to democracy as the reason. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
explained: "We believe that President Aristide forfeited his ability
to lead his people because he did not govern democratically." (March
14, 2004 NBC's "Meet the Press") She offered no evidence.
The Chavistas watched
the Haitian drama with the understanding that they are next on the Bush
hit list. Otto Reich, Special Envoy to the Western Hemisphere, and Assistant
Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega, have
barely disguised their aggressive intent.
As hysteria mounts,
Chavez followers--mostly among the 80% of Venezuelans who are poor --
gain greater understanding of both their enemies and their own roles
in changing their history. They elected their president, and democracy
demands that their will, the majority, prevail. The day George W. Bush
believes in such a simple formulation grass will grow on my palm. So
stay alert, Companero Hugo and members of the Bolivarian Circles!
Saul Landau is a
fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at Cal Poly Pomona
University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit: www.rprogreso.com.
His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S KINGDOM, has just
been published by Pluto Press. His new film is Syria: Between Iraq and
a Hard Place, now available from the Cinema Guild.