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-Caveat Lector-
Sunday, January 12, 2003; Page B04
Walking around Caracas late last month during Venezuela's ongoing protests,
I was surprised by what I saw. My expectations had been shaped by
persistent U.S. media coverage of the nationwide strike called by the
opposition, which seeks President Hugo Chavez's ouster. Yet in most of the
city, where poor and working-class people live, there were few signs of the
strike. Streets were crowded with holiday shoppers, metro trains and buses
were running normally, and shops were open for business. Only in the
eastern, wealthier neighborhoods of the capital were businesses mostly closed.
This is clearly an oil strike, not a "general strike," as it is often
described. At the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which controls the
industry, management is leading the strike because it is at odds with the
Chavez government. And while Venezuela depends on oil for 80 percent of its
export earnings and half its national budget, the industry's workers
represent a tiny fraction of the labor force. Outside the oil industry, it
is hard to find workers who are actually on strike. Some have been locked
out from their jobs, as business owners -- including big foreign
corporations such as McDonald's and FedEx -- have closed their doors in
support of the opposition.
Most Americans seem to believe that the Chavez government is a
dictatorship, and one of the most repressive governments in Latin America.
But these impressions are false.
Not only was Chavez democratically elected, his government is probably one
of the least repressive in Latin America. This, too, is easy to see in
Caracas. While army troops are deployed to protect Miraflores (the
presidential compound), there is little military or police presence in most
of the capital, which is particularly striking in such a tense and volatile
political situation. No one seems the least bit afraid of the national
government, and despite the seriousness of this latest effort to topple it,
no one has been arrested for political activities.
Chavez has been reluctant to use state power to break the strike, despite
the enormous damage to the economy. In the United States, a strike of this
sort -- one that caused massive damage to the economy, or one where public
or private workers were making political demands -- would be declared
illegal. Its participants could be fired, and its leaders -- if they
persisted in the strike -- imprisoned under a court injunction. In
Venezuela, the issue has yet to be decided. The supreme court last month
ordered PDVSA employees back to work until it rules on the strike's legality.
To anyone who has been in Venezuela lately, opposition charges that Chavez
is "turning the country into a Castro-communist dictatorship" -- repeated
so often that millions of Americans apparently now believe them -- are
absurd on their face.
If any leaders have a penchant for dictatorship in Venezuela, it is the
opposition's. On April 12 they carried out a military coup against the
elected government. They installed the head of the business federation as
president and dissolved the legislature and the supreme court, until mass
protests and military officers reversed the coup two days later.
Military officers stand in Altamira Plaza and openly call for another coup.
It is hard to think of another country where this could happen. The
government's efforts to prosecute leaders of the coup were canceled when
the court dismissed the charges in August. Despite the anger of his
supporters, some of whom lost friends and relatives last year during the
two days of the coup government, Chavez respected the decision of the court.
The opposition controls the private media, and to watch TV in Caracas is
truly an Orwellian experience. The five private TV stations (there is one
state-owned channel) that reach most Venezuelans play continuous
anti-Chavez propaganda. But it is worse than that: They are also
shamelessly dishonest. For example, on Dec. 6 an apparently deranged gunman
fired on a crowd of opposition demonstrators, killing three and injuring
dozens. Although there was no evidence linking the government to the crime,
the television news creators -- armed with footage of bloody bodies and
grieving relatives -- went to work immediately to convince the public that
Chavez was responsible. Soon after the shooting, they were broadcasting
grainy video clips allegedly showing the assailant attending a pro-Chavez
rally.
Now consider how people in Caracas's barrios see the opposition, a view
rarely heard in the United States: Led by representatives of the corrupt
old order, the opposition is trying to overthrow a government that has won
three elections and two referendums since 1998. Its coup failed partly
because hundreds of thousands of people risked their lives by taking to the
streets to defend democracy. So now it is crippling the economy with an oil
strike. The upper classes are simply attempting to gain through economic
sabotage what they could not and -- given the intense rivalry and hatred
among opposition groups and leaders -- still cannot win at the ballot box.
From the other side of the class divide, the conflict is also seen as a
struggle over who will control and benefit from the nation's oil riches.
Over the last quarter-century PDVSA has swelled to a $50 billion a year
enterprise, while the income of the average Venezuelan has declined and
poverty has increased more than anywhere in Latin America. Billions of
dollars of the oil company's revenue could instead be used to finance
health care and education for millions of Venezuelans.
Now add Washington to the mix: The United States, alone in the Americas,
supported the coup, and before then it increased its financial support of
the opposition. Washington shares PDVSA executives' goals of increasing oil
production, busting OPEC quotas and even selling off the company to private
foreign investors. So it is not surprising that the whole conflict is seen
in much of Latin America as just another case of Washington trying to
overthrow an independent, democratically elected government.
This view from the barrios seems plausible. The polarization of Venezuelan
society along class and racial lines is apparent in the demonstrations
themselves. The pro-government marches are filled with poor and
working-class people who are noticeably darker -- descendants of the
country's indigenous people and African slaves -- than the more expensively
dressed upper classes of the opposition. Supporters of the opposition that
I spoke with dismissed these differences, insisting that Chavez's followers
were simply "ignorant," and were being manipulated by a "demagogue."
But for many, Chavez is the best, and possibly last, hope not only for
social and economic betterment, but for democracy itself. At the
pro-government demonstrations, people carry pocket-size copies of the
country's 1999 constitution, and vendors hawk them to the crowds. Leaders
of the various non-governmental organizations that I met with, who helped
draft the constitution, have different reasons for revering it: women's
groups, for example, because of its anti-discrimination articles; and
indigenous leaders because it is the first to recognize their people's
rights. But all see themselves as defending constitutional democracy and
civil liberties against what they describe as "the threat of fascism" from
the opposition.
This threat is very real. Opposition leaders have made no apologies for the
April coup, nor for the arrest and killing of scores of civilians during
the two days of illegal government. They continue to stand up on television
and appeal for another coup -- which, given the depth of Chavez's support,
would have to be bloody in order to hold power.
Where does the U.S. government now stand on the question of democracy in
Venezuela? The Bush administration joined the opposition in taking
advantage of the Dec. 6 shootings to call for early elections, which would
violate the Venezuelan constitution. The administration reversed itself the
next week, but despite paying lip service to the negotiations mediated by
the OAS, it has done nothing to encourage its allies in the opposition to
seek a constitutional or even a peaceful solution.
Sixteen members of Congress sent a letter to Bush last month, asking him to
state clearly that the United States would not have normal diplomatic
relations with a coup-installed government in Venezuela. But despite its
apprehension about disruption of Venezuelan oil supplies on the eve of a
probable war against Iraq, the Bush administration is not yet ready to give
up any of its options for "regime change" in Caracas. And -- not
surprisingly -- neither is the Venezuelan opposition.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, an independent nonpartisan think tank in Washington.
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
To view the entire article, go to
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41444-2003Jan11.html>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41444-2003Jan11.html
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