A combative liberal fighting off a rich man’s conspiracy, or owner of a process that systematically violates political and human rights and now faces the rejection of those who trusted him to change their lot?
o A well-meaning democrat bent on giving the poor a break, or a cynical charmer with a hidden agenda that includes emptying the country’s coffers with no regard for the poor?
o A respectful member of the civilized international community, or ally and benefactor of terrorist organizations that use his country as resting ground and launching pad?
o Guru of Constitutional rule, or scheming autocrat who’s used democratic process to sequester the balance of power while cunningly keeping it all under wraps by expert lobbying and a well-orchestrated global public relations campaign?
o Who is Hugo Chavez, what is he doing, why is he doing it, and what could this cost us all
o Will the South American country explode in the face of a too-cautious international community?
THE VENEZUELAN MYSTERY
The situation in Venezuela has people around the world either scratching their heads in perplexity or arguing endlessly on opposite sides of the fence as to what’s going on in what used to be the West’s most reliable oil supplier, but where its government now seems incapable of guaranteeing anything beyond today.
President Hugo Chavez is on the ropes. An Army paratrooper who tried to overthrow President Carlos Andres Perez in two bloody coups in 1992 and was, himself, elected President six years later in a landslide victory based on the promise to clean up his country’s corrupt government and use resources to better the lot of its huge poor majority, Chavez is reeling from a civil uprising of a huge majority of Venezuelans trying to force him out of office, and which is so potent it could actually break the whole country.
The size, breadth and character of these opposition forces, along with their determination, are making observers around the world sit up and notice. When coupled with Chavez’ stubborn refusal to acknowledge even the legitimacy of his adversaries, his ordering of troops into the streets of Caracas and having them illegally disarm police he considers could be a threat, plus his scaling up of rhetoric while continuing to arm, train and import paramilitary recruits to overcome foes, would seem to indicate that Venezuela is on the brink of a civil war, especially given the country’s recent history of politically-motivated street violence.
WHAT’S GOING ON?
Telling anyone who wants to listen that he’s the victim of a heavily-backed national and international conspiracy implemented by local racist “oligarchs” determined to recover power in what was once Latin America’s most stable yet corrupt democracy, the outspoken Chavez has fallen dramatically from public grace, a dangerous predicament for someone who already had a narrow escape from disaster in April of 2002.
At that time, the President somehow managed to come back from exile only 48 hours after having resigned, following a confusing series of incidents which started with seventeen people killed and three hundred wounded near Caracas’ Miraflores Palace, seat of the Venezuelan government.
The opposition accuses Chavez of plotting and executing the massacre of a peaceful protest march of close to a million Venezuelans by his armed followers, which led to the military hierarchy disobeying his orders to further deploy Army troops against the civilian opponents –thus saving countless lives– and demanding and obtaining his immediate resignation, as announced to the nation by the country’s highest-ranking officer and Chavez confidant, General Lucas Rincon, who also informed that the entire body of the Chiefs of Staff also were putting their charges at the disposal “of the new authorities”, after which announcement Rincon simply went to bed.
As conditions to resign, Chavez demanded safe passage to Cuba for himself and members of his family and Cabinet, plus seven million dollars in cash. After the agreement was brokered between the President and top Generals, however, other high-ranking officials balked at allowing him to flee, insisting that he should be put to justice for the massacre. The President, facing certain conviction and notoriety, went back on his verbal resignation and got word to his followers to fight to bring him back.
As these talks were under way, with Chavez in custody, the subsequent void of power caused by the flight of the whole of the President’s Cabinet, including his hand-picked Vice President, and many of his well-placed allies, was then used by a small group of officers and civilians to take control and decree the abolition of democratic institutions. This was the coup, but perpetrated not against the President, who had already resigned, nor his government, whose members had mostly fled, but aginst the opposition.
The actions of this group were met with immediate rejection by most opposition leaders, causing a new void which was just what key Chavez players in the military needed, using it to effectively maneuver him back into power, after promising in his name an apology to the country, toned-down rhetoric and an immediate referendum on his Administration.
The President has his own version of what happened in April, romantically portraying those days as the fruit of a cold-blooded conspiracy contrived by rich, white plotsters to topple him, foiled thanks to his steadfast refusal to resign and to the outraged reaction of “millions” of loving, poor (and non-White) Chavistas in the streets demanding his return to power.
A COUNTRY ON HOLD
Nine months after the April crisis, the government has blocked all attempts at an independent investigation into the massacre and incidents of those days, contributing to the resurfacing of bad blood, which has resulted in renewed politically-motivated killings at opposition marches and events, and bringing conflict, again, ito a head.
On December 2nd, the opposition upped the wager, crippling the economy with a “civil stoppage” demanding immediate elections. This was promoted by desperate businessmen faced with bankruptcy, union workers looking at a twenty percent unemployment rate and a 53 percent “informal economy” rate (mostly street vendors), oil industry workers corralled by advancing politization and purges within the industry, and men and women of all ages and social classes desperate over the crashing economy and over Chavez’ attempts to control private property and education, and systematic attacks on athe opposition and media. The stoppage includes a shutdown of all oil-related activity, industry, commerce and schools and, partially, banking.
Government reaction has consisted of blanket accusations of everyone being “oligarchs”, as well as nationalistic hype accusing striking oil workers of being traitors wanting to deliver the oil industry into foreign hands. All this spiced with bumbling Rambo military operations attempting to get people to get back to work, oil and gasoline delivered to customers, and credibility returned to a deluged President who increasingly seems to have lost the possibility of taming the country, despite his insistent bravado and apparent control over key power points.
Seven weeks into the strike, Chavez is hanging on for dear life, with oil drilling and refining still 85% below normal and opposition forces showing no sign of letting up. To listen to the President, however, this is just another chapter of the treacherous Plot Against Democracy, and he’s well on his way to turning the tables on the “Arch Enemies of the People’s Revolution”, giving contradictory figures as to the impact of the stoppage on the oil industry.
Meanwhile, he has decided to bring into play some of his international friends, asking for and receiving the backing of Brazilian president Lula da Silva to organize a Group of Friends of Venezuela (which iideally would be a group of his allies). Next to manifest themselves were a group of Colombians, brought in busloads armed with special one-year visas, supposedly to root for the President on a march on January 23rd, although once in Caracas their leader said they were there for whatever and as long as the President needed them. Also, Chavez has received the announced support of Evo Morales, of Bolivia, a leftist leader of the cocaine leaf growers who just lost out in the recent presidential elections in that country, who is also coming to town with a group of his rabble-rousing associates.
Meanwhile, Chavez has used all his resources to block progress at the OAS-sponsored Negotiating Table, set up to help broker a “peaceful, constitutional and electoral” solution to the situation. He’s also moving to abort a Constitional call for a Referendum that would ask people if they want him to resign, refusing to green light it to take place on February 2nd as planned by the National Electoral Council. Chavez has gone so far as to say on television that he wouldn’t resign even if the referendum were held and 90% of the people asked him to.
During the strike, his government has seemed intent not so much on allaying and reverting the economic and social hardships caused by the strike, as on giving the impression it is recovering its grip on key elements involved, especially the oil industry. At the same time, it’s using an iron fist to retain hold of the Armed Forces, take control of a 10,000-man strong city police force known for its soft gloves when handling marches but which Chavez accuses of massacreing his supporters’ marches; new controls have been established also over the Central Bank, which for the first time did not issue its monthly report at the end of December, and pressure has been put on Supreme Court justices and Congressional Deputies suspicious of wavering, as well as on the Attorney General to push investigations against enemies and independent media, which the President is trying to gain control of or neutralize.
And, the President is using every resource available to convince as many people as possible –and as many foreign governments and opinion leaders– that he’s is going to survive this threat, too.
WHY ON EARTH SHUT DOWN THE COUNTRY?
When asked why they would go to the extreme of shutting down the country to exact the ouster of the President, both opposition spokesmen and ordinary citizens, businessmen and workers alike, insist that Democracy in Venezuela was long ago victim of Chavez’ autocratic design and that no other mechanism has worked to pressure the President to work with them to take the country to a new, higher, plateau. That in Venezuela not only was the pre-stoppage economic situation desperate and it’s future bleak, but what’s now at stake is not the tenure of a president nor the duration of his mandate, but the future of Democracy, itself, and the future quality of life for the children and grandchildren of all.
In this sense, vast unemployment is due in part to the closing of over thirty percent of Venezuelan industries, and is accompanied by figures such as 880,000 homes suffering extreme poverty, an 87% increase in staple food prices in this term alone, 142,000 children between seven and twelve years of age who do not assist school, as well as vastly increased numbers of homeless children, to be seen begging on many city corners across the country.
To listen to the opposition is to hear of widespread and unchecked corruption at all levels of government, and of gross mismanagement of funds, with paltry results to show for the 120 billion dollars handled by the Chavez Administration, the most ever for a Venezuelan president. This does not include a domestic debt illegally multiplied by five by him.
Unresolved scandals involve $3.2 BILLION illegally taken by the government from a “Macroeconomic Stabilizing Fund” a year ago, with no explanation given nor accounting offered, as well as the illegal retention of funds which should have been funneled to state and city governments, but which are in arrears, also with no apologies. There’s the case of $200 million vanished from state-owned Banco Industrial de Venezuela, and a similar situation in the “People’s Bank”, plus $200 million in double payments detected in the Plan Bolivar, a largely uncontrolled goodwill program managed by the military in the first two years of Chavez’ term.
Scores of these well-documented accusations against the President for crimes ranging from receipt of illegal foreign campaign contributions to corruption, from inciting others to commit crimes to his own Crimes against Humanity, have been put on hold by a beleaguered and suspect Supreme Court and by an Attorney General known for his loyalty to the President.
According to sources in Venezuela, the reason the President was able to get away with all of this is because us deftly used his enormous initial popularity –and backing by the press– to broker a tailor-made Constitution, sequester the Judicial and Legislative branches of government and the offices of Attorney General, Comptroller and Ombudsman, and to break the spirit of the Armed Forces.
This he achieved by purging all but the most loyal officers, pulling troops away from the hot Colombian border –where Colombian guerrillas now use the resultant open door policy to ravage border states, murdering and kidnapping businessmen and cattlemen– and forging troops into a Praetorian Guard at the beck and call of his “revolution”, putting them out to police the streets and complementing them with a specially-armed and trained Cuban-like paramilitary force used to harrass, discourage and attack opposition activities under the guise of “spontaneous” popular reaction to their purported threat to Democracy.
Thus, it is now commonplace for huge opposition marches, in numbers upwards of a million and a half people, to be confronted by small groups of trouble-makers armed with rocks, slingshots, sticks and guns, making it practically impossible for them to actually arrive at their planned destination, despite having permits. The trouble-makers, openly paid, organized and coordinated by members of Chavez’ party or by military officers supposedly in charge of maintaining order, are rarely repressed and almost always successful at harrassing and blocking the opposition the President has made clear is their enemy.
This strategy of harrassing peaceful marches overflows to other institutions that the government feels might offset the President’s quest for absolute power, such as the Catholic Church, independent media, political parties, businessmen and labor unions, as well as private property, itself, also at the mercy of the unchecked Chavista hordes, with property invasions in rural areas near the Colombian border and programmed looting in some cities.
A few weeks ago, Chávez informed the nation and his Armed Forces that loyal forces would not obey court orders that crossed his own orders and decrees, opening the door to multiple instances of even greater abuse of power, human rights violations against striking workers, unconstitutional confiscation of private property, politically-motivated illegal arrests and retaining of prisoners contravening court orders to release them, and continuing a take-over the Caracas municipal police despite a Supreme Court order ordering the force’s resources be returned to the Mayor’s office it belongs to. Instead of doing so, army troops proceeded to take away its complete arms cache, leaving it useless, not only to protect security in marches, but to combat crime in a city where murder figures have doubled since the military intervention.
THE VENEZUELA CONNECTION
What kind of president, one might ask, would submit his country to these hardships? The answer would seem to lie in Chavez’ close ties to Fidel Castro, Saddam, Khadaffi and Communist China, to Colombian guerrilla forces, to Brazil’s and Ecuador’s newly-elected leftist Presidents Lula da Silva and Lucio Gutierrez, as well as to a motley array of would-be coupsters and far-leftist politicians strewn across Latin America, including near-miss presidential candidates Morales, in Bolivia, and Daniel Ortega, in Nicaragua. US military sources have insisted that Venezuela’s Margarita Island is a Latin American center for Al Qaeda activities.
Castro, the guerrillas, both new South American presidents, and Morales and Ortega share membership with Chavez in the Forum of Sao Paulo, a collection of Communistic, Ecological and Native American organizations formed at Castro’s request after the implosion of the Soviet Union, with the intention of guaranteeing survival post-1989.
Of these, Castro and the guerrilla organizations are considered terrorists or harborers of terrorists by the State Department, and indications grow as to Chavez’ open and under-the-table support for them and for each of the presidential candidates arisen from the Sao Paulo ranks. Observers point out the Forum’s manifest goal to take power throughout Latin America, saying that Chavez is more intent on forwarding these aims than on managing his country, and assuring that the ravaged economy is simply part of the old Communist maxim, “destroy in order to govern”.
There is one other key area in which Chavez’ connection with Castro has been a key factor in bolstering his international image: Allegations against his government are not well known abroad and it is rather common belief that Venezuelan opposition is principally composed of insensitive rich businessmen wanting to wrench power from a well-meaning president bent on helping the poor masses.
This is in part due to the opposition’s loose composition and lack of cohesion, and the fact that just recently has it started to act as a body and coordinate actions and messages.
However, this international void of information and abundant existence of disinformation regarding Venezuela are mainly due to the Chavez government’s deft use of a very competent lobby in Washington and New York, and a fine-tuned and powerful public relations network across the globe, placed in Hugo’s hands by Castro, one of his key contributions to the survival and expansion of who would be, at once, his protegé, benefactor and aspiring heir.
All this scenario brings Venezuela closer and closer to an armed confrontation which has been staved off up to now only because of the opposition’s determination to proceed peacefully and according to the law. Observers now fear that if it were to reach the conclusion that it might be in their best interest to give up their Gandhian approach and respond to government abuse and provocation, the table would be served for an outright civil war. Is the international community up to defending a crippled democracy with something beyond talk, before it’s too late? It would seem not.
Successive reports in this series will look into these allegations of Chavez’ ties to terrorist organizations and activities, his alleged use of the democratic process to pervert institutions and amass power, into accusations of systematic Human Rights violations by his government and allies, and the impact of his Administration on Venezuela’s ravaged economy, before and after December 2nd.
The Venezuelan crisis is already impacting gasoline prices around the world and putting a damper on President Bush’s sights on Irak. Aside from this effect, is there, in fact, a threat to Democracy in this South American country and —if there is— is there an even bigger threat brewing to the United States and to the Western Hemisphere?
Who is Hugo Chavez? What is he doing, where is he going?
