Leading
a popular democratic government in South America has,
it must be said, never been the most secure career
path. In this job, one not only has to contend with
the natural stress and tedium of political life: the
threat of being forcefully deposed, whether by a
recalcitrant business class or by the machinations of
the powerful neighbour to the north – or both
– is ever-present. The United States’
agenda has cast a long shadow over this continent
– supplanting the social democratic Allende
government in Chile in 1973 with the apparently more
congenial General Pinochet; defeating the Nicaraguan
Sandinistas by funding insurgents and later direct
bombing attacks; and, more recently, in February of
last year, intervening to remove the democratically
elected Jean Bertrand Aristide from office in Haiti.
The
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez might be forgiven,
then, for recently claiming (with typically bombastic
rhetoric) that “If I am assassinated, there is
only one person responsible: the president of the
United States.” As he told assembled listeners
last month, “I will not hide, I will walk in the
streets with all of you ... but I know I am condemned
to death.”
Chavez
is undoubtedly right that Washington has its eye on
him. As the fourth largest exporter of oil to the
U.S., Venezuela is of massive strategic concern to
the Bush administration. Some of Chavez’s
policies, though, have made this an icy relationship.
His petroleum law nearly doubled taxes on foreign oil
companies (including ExxonMobil), and the government
chose to regain control of the state-owned PDVSA oil
company. Increased oil revenues opposed by the IMF,
along with a substantial land reform programme, have
been a key plank of Chavez’s progressive
redistributory policies. Government funding has been
poured into literacy, health and other social
programmes, teaching, so it claims, over a million
adults to read and write in the last year – the
biggest literacy programme in history.
Wealthy
sectors of society – “the squalid ones”
in Chavez’s framing – are not enthused.
Nor, it seems, is the U.S. government. The Bush
administration has always regarded Chavez’s
government as illegitimate; Condoleeza Rice recently
described Venezuela as a “negative force”
in Latin America, accusing Chavez of turning the
country into a totalitarian society. Certainly, his
recent packing of the supreme court with supporters
has drawn some criticism from Human Rights Watch,
among others – but Chavez’s support among
the poor majority remains high. He has been
consistently victorious in popular votes 6 times,
most recently last August, when a recall election
(declared legitimate by international election
monitors and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter’s
team) returned him to office with 60 percent of the
vote.
As
for a possible coup attempt, many might consider this
paranoid and implausible – had one not been
attempted once already. In April 2002, Chavez was
kidnapped and forced out of office by a combination
of business leaders and a clique within the military;
massive popular unrest quickly forced the coup
plotters – among them Pedro Carmona, chief of
Venezuela’s confederation of business and
industry, and Ignazio Salvatierra, president of the
Bankers’ Association – to reinstate him.
Recently declassified CIA documents reveal that
Washington was well aware of the imminent coup
attempt before it happened – moreover, as a U.S.
State Department internal investigation into
Washington's role in the coup noted, “the
[State] Department, and DOD [US Department of
Defense] provided training, institution building, and
other support under programs totaling about $3.3
million to Venezuelan organizations and individuals,
some of whom are understood to have been involved in
the events of April 12-14 ...”
Why,
though, should Venezuela’s policies be quite so
provocative in Washington? As some have suggested,
its refusal to play ball seems to be regarded as
deeply threatening. “America can’t let us
stay in power”, Miguel Bustamante Madriz, a
minister under Chavez put it. “We are the
exception to the new globalization order. If we
succeed, we are an example to the Americas.”
Whether they will succeed – and what the U.S.
has left in store for this impoverished third world
country – remains to be seen.
Tim Holmes