'It is as if Chávez is Allende' John Pilger
27 August 2007 11:59 DisplayDCAd('220x240','1','');
I walked with Roberto Navarrete into the national stadium in Santiago, Chile.
With the southern winters wind skating down from the Andes, it was empty and
ghostly. Little had changed, he said: the chicken wire, the broken seats, the
tunnel to the changing rooms from which the screams echoed. We stopped at a
large number 28. This is where I was, facing the scoreboard. This is where I
was called to be tortured.
Thousands of the detained and the disappeared were imprisoned in the stadium
following the Washington­-backed coup by General Pinochet against the
democracy of Salvador Allende on September 11 1973. For the majority people of
Latin America, the abandonados, the infamy and historical lesson of the first
9/11 have never been forgotten. In the Allende years, we had a hope the
human spirit would triumph, said Roberto. But in Latin America those
believing they are born to rule behave with such brutality to defend their
rights, their property, their hold over society that they approach true
fascism. People who are well dressed, whose houses are full of food, bang pots
in the streets in protest as though they dont have anything. This is what we
had in Chile 36 years ago. This is what we see in Venezuela today. It is as if
Chávez is Allende. It is so evocative for me.
In making my film, The War on Democracy, I sought the help of Chileans such as
Roberto and his family, and Sara de Witt, who courageously returned with me to
the torture chambers at Villa Grimaldi, which she somehow survived. Together
with other Latin Americans who knew the tyrannies, they bear witness to the
pattern and meaning of the propaganda and lies now aimed at undermining another
epic bid to renew both democracy and freedom on the continent. Ironically, in
Chile, said to be Washingtons model democracy, freedom waits. The
Constitution, the system of electoral control and the designer inequality are
all Pinochets gifts from the grave.
The disinformation that helped destroy Allende and give rise to Pinochets
horrors worked the same way in Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had the
temerity to implement modest, popular reforms based largely on the English
cooperative movement. In both countries the CIA funded the leading opposition
media, although they need not have bothered. In Nicaragua, the fake martyrdom
of the opposition newspaper, La Prensa, became a cause for North Americas
leading liberal journalists, who seriously debated whether a poverty-stricken
country of three million peasants posed a threat to the United States. Ronald
Reagan agreed and declared a state of emergency to combat the monster at the
gates. In Britain, whose Thatcher government absolutely endorsed US policy,
the standard censorship by omission applied. In examining 500 articles that
dealt with Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the historian Mark Curtis found an
almost universal suppression of the achievements of the Sandinista
government -- remarkable by any standards -- in favour of the falsehood of
the threat of a communist takeover.
The similarities in the campaign against the phenomenal rise of popular
democratic movements today are striking. Aimed principally at Venezuela,
especially Hugo Chávez, the virulence of the attacks suggests that something
exciting is taking place; and it is. Thousands of poor Venezuelans are seeing a
doctor for the first time in their lives, their children immunised and drinking
clean water. On July 26 Chávez announced the construction of 15 new hospitals;
more than 60 public hospitals are currently being modernised and re-equipped.
New universities have opened their doors to the poor, breaking the privilege of
competitive institutions effectively controlled by a middle class in a
country where there is no middle. In Barrio La Linea, Beatrice Balazo told me
her children were the first generation of the poor to attend a full days
school and to be given a hot meal and to learn music, art and dance. I have
seen their confidence blossom like flowers, she said. One night in
barrio La Vega, in a bare room beneath a single light bulb, I watched Mavis
Mendez, aged 94, learn to write her own name for the first time.
More than 25 000 communal councils have been set up in parallel to the old,
corrupt local bureaucracies. Many are spectacles of raw grassroots democracy.
Spokespeople are elected, yet all decisions, ideas and spending have to be
approved by a community assembly. In towns long controlled by oligarchs and
their servile media, this explosion of popular power has begun to change lives
in the way Beatrice described. It is this new confidence of Venezuelas
invisible people that has so enflamed those who live in suburbs called
Country Club. Behind their walls and dogs they remind me of white South
Africans. Venezuelas wild west media is mostly theirs; 80% of broadcasting and
almost all the 118 newspaper companies are privately owned. Until recently one
television shock jock liked to call Chávez, who is mixed race, a monkey.
Front pages depict the president as Hitler, or as Stalin (the connection being
that both like babies). Among broadcasters crying censorship loudest are
those bankrolled by the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA in spirit if
not name. We had a deadly weapon, the media, said an admiral who was one of
the coup plotters in 2002. The television station, RCTV, never prosecuted for
its part in the attempt to overthrow the elected government, lost only its
terrestrial licence and is still broadcasting on satellite and cable.
Yet, as in Nicaragua, the treatment of RCTV has been a cause celèbre for
those in Britain and the US affronted by the sheer audacity and popularity of
Chávez, whom they smear as power crazed and a tyrant. That he is the
authentic product of a popular awakening is suppressed. Even the description of
him as a radical socialist, usually in the pejorative, wilfully ignores that
he is actually a nationalist and a social democrat, a label many in the British
Labour Party were once proud to wear. In Washington, the old Iran-Contra death
squad gang, back in power under Bush, fear the economic bridges Chávez is
building in the region, such as the use of Venezuelas oil revenue to end IMF
slavery. That he maintains a neo- liberal economy with a growth rate of more
than 10%, allowing the rich to grow richer, and described by the American
Banker magazine as the envy of the banking world is seldom raised as valid
criticism of his limited reforms. These days, of course, any
true reforms are exotic. And as liberal elites under Blair and Bush fail to
defend their own democracies and basic liberties, they watch the very concept
of democracy as a top-down liberal preserve challenged on a continent about
which Richard Nixon once said people dont give a shit. However much they
play the man, Chávez, their arrogance cannot accept that the seed of Rousseaus
idea of direct popular sovereignty may have been planted among the poorest, yet
again, and the hope of the human spirit, of which Roberto spoke in the
stadium, has returned. -- © John Pilger
Venezuela disowns provocative quake aid
Perus earthquake relief effort was shaken by a political row this week over
food aid with labels bearing an image of Venezuelas President Hugo Chávez and
criticism of Perus government, writes Rory Carroll.
The cans of tuna, with labels lauding Chávez and condemning Peruvian
authorities as slow, inefficient and heartless, were distributed to survivors
of a quake that destroyed several towns and killed more than 500 people last
week.
Peruvian President Alan Garcia expressed dismay. One has to ask who is behind
this. This is not the moment to take advantage of the circumstances to make
electoral propaganda. Garcia, who has been under fire for delays in getting
food, blankets and other aid to stricken areas, has a tetchy relationship with
the Venezuelan leader.
But Venezuela issued a forceful denial of any links to the polemical aid and
said it might be an attempt to smear Chávez as a cynical opportunist. This is
a damaging manipulation, a vile manipulation because Venezuela has brought
humanitarian aid, not party politics, the countrys ambassador, Jose Armando
Laguna, told CPN Radio in Lima. If they want, they can go and open all the
bags that [Venezuela] brought and verify there is no political propaganda.
Venezuela has sent two military aircraft with 25 tonnes of food over the Andes
to Peru. Venezuelas information minister, Willian Lara, said hidden forces
were trying to make it appear that Chávez was manipulating the tragedy.
The cans were distributed in Chincha, the province south of Lima which bore the
brunt of the 8,0 magnitude quake, but it has not been established by whom. The
story broke in the Lima daily Expresso, a newspaper hostile to Chávez.
The label on the cans reads: In the face of the natural disaster ... the
Peruvian Nationalist party, along with our sister Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela, its leader Hugo Chávez and our leader Ollanta Humala, makes itself
present because the Peruvian government acts in a slow, inefficient and
heartless manner, not caring about the pain of the victims and leaving them
suffering from hunger, thirst and theft.
Humala is a leftwing opposition leader who was backed by Chávez in last years
presidential election but lost to Garcia. He has been attempting to mount a new
challenge on the back of the presidents sliding approval ratings. A
spokesperson for Humalas party denied any links to the controversial aid. -- ©
Guardian News & Media Ltd 2007
---------------------------------
All new Yahoo! Mail -
---------------------------------
Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane._______________________________________________
Ugandanet mailing list
Ugandanet@kym.net
http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet
% UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
The above comments and data are owned by whoever posted them (including
attachments if any). The List's Host is not responsible for them in any way.
---------------------------------------
