------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the July 5, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- AMID COUP RUMORS: STRUGGLE SHARPENS IN VENEZUELA By Andy McInerney Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez promised a "peaceful, democratic revolution" to root out the South American country's corrupt U.S.-backed political establishment. He assumed the presidency with close to two-thirds the popular vote in the 1998 presidential elections. His mandate was reinforced when his coalition won 120 out of 128 seats for the National Constituent Assembly in July 1999. Nearly two years later, reactionary forces backed by the U.S. government and opposed to the process that Chavez's election has unleashed are gathering strength. At the same time, Chavez has called for the creation of "Bolivarian circles"--popular organizations to defend the revolution. For the last year, there have been persistent rumors of plots brewing in the Armed Forces to oust Chavez. At least since January, a series of "dirty tricks" bearing all the hallmarks of the CIA appear to be aimed at provoking elements within the Venezuelan Armed Forces to launch a coup. The Jan. 20 edition of the business-oriented magazine The Economist ran a small item called "Twist in the knickers." "Irritation was unconfined," it said, "when several commanders in Venezuela's armed forces recently received women's underwear through the post, along with pamphlets insinuating that this was all they were fit to wear because of their failure to overthrow the country's elected president." But Chavez's opponents don't confine themselves to sophomoric and sexist pranks. In a significant article in Venezuela's Revista Koeyu Latinoamericano, journalist Dr. Heinz Dietrich Steffan describes the growing coup winds in the country. He reports that one attempt was already made as Chavez returned from a 21-day tour of Asia on June 3. "Three security cordons, cutting the lights and communication, and the deployment of special response units frustrated the plans of the plotters," he wrote. "But the conspiracy remains latent, and the date foreseen by the coup leaders for a new attempt runs from June 20 to July 5." Steffan bases his article on "multiple interviews with civilian, political and military sectors in the country." The anti-Chavez coalition, he writes, includes the remnants of the traditional big-business parties in Venezuela and receives support from counter-revolutionary Cubans based in Miami. One visible actor in the anti-Chavez mobilizations is Hernan Ricardo, a Venezuelan jailed with Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner that killed all 73 people aboard. Steffan notes the "recycling" by the Bush administration of some of the most notorious figures of the Reagan-Bush administrations. Otto Reich, Bush's nominee to the post of Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, was the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela until 1989. The article identifies two interrelated tendencies within the anti-Chavez forces. One prefers the slow strangulation of the Venezuelan economy, hoping to diminish Chavez's popularity and avoid creating a martyr. Another is aiming at a more immediate attempt on the president. Four factors underlie the growing audacity of the anti- Chavez forces, Steffan writes: the lack of determined response by the forces supporting Chavez; the regroupment of the old Democratic Action (AD) and Social Christian (COPEI) party structures after their 1998 defeat; the growing animosity of the U.S. government; and the defection of some layers of Chavez's original Popular Pole coalition, in particular some elements of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) party. "A military disturbance, whether or not it fails on the battlefield, will always be to the political advantage of the destabilizers," Steffan writes. "Of course, the date and the plans of the conspiracy--like all of life--may change. One call from Washington, government preparations or logistical problems, among other factors, could modify the plans. Nevertheless, the threat of a coup is a real threat for the whole region." (Steffan's complete article, in Spanish, is reproduced at http://www.eurosur. org/ ebelion/sociales/ venezuela240601.htm). Politically, right-wing sectors are trying to mobilize the petty bourgeois layers against the "Cubanization" of Venezuela, organizing rallies in front of the Cuban Embassy in Caracas. The official trade union leadership, with deep historical ties to the AD party, has allied itself with this right-wing mobilization. What is Washington saying? The U.S. State Department's Peter Romero said on June 5: "[Chavez] has the right to travel where he wants and to say what he wants, but what he says will have consequences in terms of U.S. perception." THE CHAVEZ 'THREAT' Why is the U.S. government aiming at destabilizing--and possibly overturning--the Chavez government? To date, the Chavez "peaceful revolution" has not transcended the bounds of bourgeois democracy. The old, corrupt ruling parties have been cleaned out of government-- but they remain free to organize. Slavish, pro-U.S. history is being erased from school textbooks and curriculum--but the official Catholic Church is allowed to operate its own religious schools and to campaign against Chavez. The armed forces have been deployed on public works projects. In particular, the Chavez movement has not yet touched private property. The rich still own the main newspapers and media. U.S. investment is respected--and in fact courted. But in the sphere of foreign policy, Chavez has crossed a line. He has time and again defied the U.S.--a mortal sin for a leader of a country in the U.S. "sphere of influence." He has refused to allow his territory to be used as part of the "Plan Colombia" war against the Colombian insurgencies. He traveled to Iraq in defiance of the U.S.-orchestrated blockade. He has helped to revitalize OPEC, refusing to yield to U.S. demands to increase oil output and lower the price U.S. oil companies pay. Before Chavez assumed the presidency in 1999, Venezuela was the biggest oil exporter to the United States--ahead of all the Middle East oil powers. After one year, it had dropped to the fourth biggest. What the U.S. government fears most is that the process unleashed by Chavez's election will transcend the bounds of political reforms, and will pass over to a genuine socialist revolution. The Venezuelan masses, 80 percent living in poverty amid a sea of oil wealth, have concrete expectations that their social demands will be addressed. THE 'BOLIVARIAN CIRCLES' The April 16 New York Times reported that Chavez has talked of forming a "people's militia" of a million strong. The Venezuelan president made this more concrete in mid-June. On the second anniversary of the elections for the National Assembly, Chavez told assembly members that he would again launch a "Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement" (MBR). That was the name of the movement of mid-level officers he led that staged a popular uprising against the Venezuelan government in 1992. Key to the new MBR would be the formation of "Bolivarian circles": popular neighborhood-based organizations to defend the revolution. They are named for Simon Bolivar, the 19th Century Latin American who led the independence wars against Spain and advocated a united Latin American nation. MBR leader Guillermo Garcia Ponce described the circles in the June 4 edition of the Caracas-based El Universal: "The Bolivarian circles are the organized people in the neighborhoods, townships, projects, every place in Venezuela, in order to strengthen the revolutionary process, to bring the people into the activity of the government, to make participatory democracy effective, to carry out the Constitution and to defend it. "We have now finished with the electoral aims and the creation of a new [political] institution. We have now entered on a thrust toward the economy, toward social solutions. For that the greatest unity of political force is needed." On June 9, President Chavez spoke before a plenary meeting of over 1,000 delegates of the Communist Party of Venezuela, wearing a hammer-and-sickle pin on his trademark red beret. "In the revolutionary battle," he told them, "the most important thing is revolutionary organization. It is not the moment for grandeur, it is the moment for unity, for the offensive. "Let's smash the conspiracy and support the revolution--the slogan is exceedingly clear. That's the order of the day." The mark of a true revolutionary process is the dismantling of the old state apparatus--especially the armed forces, courts, and police--and the creation of a new one, one that reflects the masses of working people and organizes them to act in their own interests. That process was not carried through in Salvador Allende's Chile of 1973--and a potential revolution was drowned in blood by a U.S.-backed coup. In the face of U.S.-backed efforts to destabilize the incipient Venezuelan revolution, this is the most urgent task. The anti-war and progressive movement in the United States needs to be on the highest alert to defend the Venezuelan people's right to build their own future. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
