People's Democracy

IT was for the first time in contemporary Latin American history that a right wing military coup had the tacit support of Washington. Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela for the last three years, has been trying to chart out a radical new course for Venezuela, free from the hegemonic influence of the United States. As soon as the Bush administration assumed office, it had made the ouster of Chavez, a top priority. The US state department’s Latin American desk, is full unsavoury characters, who had key roles to play in destabilising the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Iran-Contragate scandal and setting up para-military death squads in El Salvador and Honduras.

On assuming office, three years ago, the charismatic Chavez had set out to change the course of Venezuela’s history. The country was dominated by a corrupt elite, that had plundered the country’s phenomenal riches. In a series of elections and referenda conducted in the last three years under Chavez, the two elite parties who had monopolized political power were made irrelevant, and a more democratic and egalitarian constitution was put in place.

Chavez did not confine himself to domestic politics only. As the world’s fourth leading oil producer, Chavez felt that Venezuela had a special responsibility to the global community. He also wanted the revenue generated by oil, which accounts for most of the country’s earnings, to percolate down to the majority of the Venezuelans. After Venezuela took over as the OPEC chairman, Chavez angered Washington, by making an official trip to Iraq and meeting with president Saddam Hussein. He was the first head of state to visit Iraq after the Gulf War.

Chavez has other ambitious plans for his nation, with land reforms being on top of his priority list. The big landlords had responded by organising vigilante gangs to victimise poor peasants fighting for their rights. Landlords and their agents had killed more than 50 peasants and supporters of land reforms in the last three years. Many of the present day landlords are illegal squatters who had grabbed swamp land reclaimed by the government in the 1960s for redistribution among the poor peasantry, resulting in 46 per cent of the best farmland being owned by one per cent of the population. One of dreams of Chavez is to induce urban slum dwellers to go back to the land and make Venezuela into a prosperous agrarian country.

In a desperate attempt to derail reforms, the discredited Venezuelan elite had started their devious manoeuvres late last year to oust Chavez. The rich oligarchs opposed to Chavez controlled the leading papers and the popular television stations, which were used to vilify Chavez and the government. Chavez however went full steam ahead with his reforms, including the implementation of the plans for reforming the country’s oil sector under the control of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) company. Before the coming of Chavez, the PDVSA had a well earned reputation of being a state within a state, answerable to no one. It was run like a western corporation with a highly paid managerial staff which put profit before all else. Chavez wanted the oil money to be used for the welfare of the people.

The PDVSA top managers had started to openly expressing their unhappiness at being overtaxed and deprived of capital by the state. After Chavez tried to revamp the PDVSA management, the machinations to overthrow him gained momentum. A section of the managerial staff went on strike in early April. They were joined by the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) and Fedecamaras, the main association of the country’s businessmen. Though Chavez had succeeded in getting rid of many of the corrupt leaders in the trade union movement, aligned with the old parties, he had failed to put people who shared his ideology in leadership positions. This task will remain on his agenda after the recent events.

A general strike was called for April 19, which was opposed by the supporters of the government. In the recent past, the city of Caracas had become polarised with the rich and a significant section of the middle class aligning with the anti-Chavez forces, and the poor overwhelmingly with Chavez. Sections of the army leadership also openly started fomenting rebellion against the president. The top army commander who went on to lead the failed coup attempt, met with the strike leaders. Due to the strike by the PDVSA workers, oil production came to a halt adding to the economic crisis.

Encouraged and financed by the elite, with the support of the American State Department, the organisers issued a call for an indefinite strike. Chavez had angered the Bush administration when he criticised the American president’s "You are with us or against us" statement after September 11. Chavez had also said that he was against the killing of innocent Afghan civilians in America’s so-called war on terror. The fact that Chavez is an unabashed admirer of Fidel Castro and that Venezuela under him is supplying oil at a concessional rate to Cuba, has, of course, not gone unnoticed in Washington. In a recent agreement, Venezuela had agreed to supply half of Cuba’s annual oil imports. The PDVSA spokesman found time to announce, when later, in the short time during which they had succeeded in pushing Chavez out of power, that Venezuela would immediately stop selling oil to Cuba.

From early April the western media had started predicting that the days of Chavez were numbered and that the countdown for his demise had started. The right wing in the army had indicated to the strikers that all that was needed was a "provocation" to launch a coup. The violence on the streets of Caracas in the second week of April, in which around a dozen people were killed, provided the pretext. The section of the army leadership aligned with the oligarchs, surrounded the presidential palace with tanks in the dead of night. The cabal of generals then proceeded to arrest Chavez and installed the leader of the business confederation, Pedro Carmona, as the president.

The coup plotters then put out lies about Chavez, saying that he had resigned voluntarily in the face of massive street protests and all that he had requested was safe passage to Cuba. These fabrications were faithfully put out by the western media, which had even refused to describe the sordid episode as a military coup. Washington wanted the world to believe that Chavez was removed as the result of massive street protests.

The Bush administration had declared that Chavez was responsible for his own ouster because of his attempts to repress the street protests. The spokesman for the American president in fact gone out of his way to praise the Venezuelan military immediately after the coup. The Bush administration officials patted themselves on the back reminding the media about the long history of close cooperation between the US and Venezuelan military.

Most Latin American countries viewed the developments in Venezuela with alarm. They made it clear that they would not recognise the overthrow of the legally elected civilian government. But what precipitated the sudden collapse of the military coup was the stiff resistance put up by the supporters of Chavez all over the country, including Caracas. Influential sections of the military also revolted against the coup plotters in areas outside Caracas.

Within 24 hours, many of the supporters of the coup themselves turned against the army, when the newly appointed president announced the dissolution of the legislature and reconstitution of the judiciary. The million member Workers' Confederation was the first to withdraw support.

The army leadership which had imprisoned Chavez in an island off the mainland, found itself with no option but to free him, and in less than 28 hours Chavez resumed his presidency.

In a speech to soldiers immediately after his return to the Presidential Palace, Chavez said: "A handful of oligarchs who tried to overthrow him had learned their lesson." Cuba has hailed the return of Chavez as a "revolutionary victory" over a "fascist and reactionary counter-revolutionary coup".

As was to be expected, only the United States and a few other countries had reasons to be upset with the turn of events. Of the Latin American countries only neighbouring Colombia seems to have welcomed the coup, going by the statement of the Colombian foreign minister, who had welcomed the interim leader for a day, Pedro Carmona, as a "friend of Colombia". The Colombian government had also lent a hand in the destabilisation attempt against Venezuela. Recently the government in Bogota has made unsubstantiated charges that Chavez was allowing Venezuelan territory to be used by the leftist FARC guerillas to mount attacks against the Colombian army.

Whatever the charges that others may try to trump up, as Cuba had said,