Venezuela: Deepening Crisis

 Yohanan Chemarapally

IT HAS been the longest running national strike in Venezuela’s history. The strike which was called by the opponents of President Hugo Chavez in the first week of December has now stretched on for more than two weeks. The country has virtually come to a standstill as pro and anti-Chavez protesters take out huge rallies in the capital, Caracas. Venezuela’s oil production has virtually come to a halt and essential daily necessities becoming scarce.  The opposition hopes that by sabotaging the country’s economy, it would force the popularly elected Venezuelan president to either resign or call for a binding referendum on his rule.  The Bush administration has not helped matters by issuing a call for new elections in Venezuela. On the other hand, Washington had no restraining words for those bent upon destabilising the country.

The Venezuelan president had said in the third week of December that the situation is “under control” while criticizing the Bush administration’s suggestions. He said that he was sending the copy of the Venezuelan constitution to Washington. Elections are only due in four years time. The head of the country’s armed forces issued a stern warning to the right wing opponents of Chavez, stating that they are indulging in undemocratic acts like sabotaging the economy in pursuance of their selfish goals.  The armed forces have signaled that they would support Chavez if he decides to impose a state of emergency to rescue the country from the political and economic impasse it has been forced into.

Those intent on ousting Chavez, who was elected in a landslide victory four years ago, have the tacit support of Washington. America had always viewed Chavez with suspicion. Before becoming president, he was even denied a visa by the Clinton administration to visit the US. Chavez has been an outspoken admirer of the Cuban president Fidel Castro and is an opponent of American hegemonism in Latin America.

A TRAILBLAZER  

Chavez has been a trailblazer in Latin American politics. His election had signaled the re-emergence of the Left on the continent. The new presidents of Brazil and Ecuador, are the latest admirers of Fidel to assume office, though they too have reiterated that they do not plan to radically tinker with the exiting political and economic system.  In fact, in Ecuador, the career graph of the new president, Colonel Lucio Guiterrez, is remarkably similar to that of Chavez. Like Chavez in the mid-nineties, Guiterrez too had led an abortive coup in his country two years ago.  He too speaks on behalf of Ecuador’s underprivileged – the Andean Indians and the working class.  In both Venezuela and Ecuador, this is also the first time that leaders with distinct non-white skin pigmentations have taken power.  Till then power was the monopoly of the small white elite.

The elite in Venezuela initially tolerated Chavez in the hope that he could be coopted. But Chavez was determined to adopt his radical agenda to reform Venezuela’s social and economic sectors. Chavez had made it clear that he intends to use Venezuela’s huge oil wealth for the benefit of the downtrodden, who anyway constitute the vast majority of the populace.  Chavez had said at the beginning of the year that his country is facing “a colossal challenge that pits the past, hatred, desperation and death against the future, love, hope and life”.

In pursuance of his vision, Chavez had nationalized huge tracts of land and given it to landless peasants.  He brought in much need industrial and labour law reforms, angering the entrenched white collar trade union leadership. It was the passing of the rural land reform law in November 2001 which signaled the start of the opposition protests. And it was Chavez’s attempt to restructure the state oil company—Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and make it answerable to the state and the people, that set in motion the coup attempt in April 2002.

CIA ROLE  

That attempt earlier in the year to unseat a democratically elected leader had the open backing of the Bush administration. Chavez had infuriated the American president by openly questioning the rationale behind the American global anti-terror strategy after the events of September 11. The man in charge of the US State Department’s Latin American Desk, Otto Reich, is a former CIA man, who was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal in which drug money was laundered.  He is very close to the Cuban exile mafia in Miami.

Reich born in Cuba is said to have a plan for all the Latin American countries that have elected left wing governments. As ambassador to Venezuela in the eighties, he established a CIA network in the top echelons of the Venezuelan army and bureaucracy. This has stood the Americans in good stead as they set about destabilizing the government of Venezuela after Chavez took over.

The key civilian conspirators in the coup attempt of March regularly met with the current American ambassador in Caracas, Charles Shapiro, a former head of the US state Department’s Cuba Desk.  Top Bush administration officials had openly welcomed coup in April after having blundered into prematurely concluding that the putschists had succeeded. The Bush administration had started preparing the ground for an unconstitutional change of guard in Venezuela by planting stories in the American media about the “dangerous and precarious” situation prevailing in Venezuela.

After the failure of the last coup attempt, many had expected the opposition to lie low and wait for Chavez’s term to be over. The Bush administration, no doubt aware of the popular support Chavez retains, did not want chaos to return to the world’s fifth largest producer of oil especially at a time when they are contemplating a war against Iraq. Chavez, had also gone out of his way to be accommodative to his political foes.  He signaled that he was willing to compromise if his political enemies cooperated. He agreed to talks with the opposition under the auspices of the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the Carter Centre.

FRESH ATTEMPT

 But a few months after the April coup, events orchestrated by the Venezuelan elite, has once again brought the country to the edge of the precipice. The country’s Supreme Court, in a scandalous majority judgment, had set the main coup plotters free. (the Supreme Court, the Election Commission and other important state organs are still packed with appointees chosen by previous governments).  After that, the opposition led by the union federation CTV, the Chamber of Commerce and the two former establishment parties which cozily alternated in power, organised a series of strikes.

Many senior PDVSA officials are openly supporting the strike, seriously disrupting Venezuelan oil exports—the mainstay of the economy. Crews of seven PDVSA tankers carrying oil for export joined the strike. They constitute half of the company’s fleet. Chavez had described this “as an act of piracy” and has ordered the Navy to board the ships. The government gets a revenue of $9 billion from the PDVSA every year and provides for 15 per cent of the oil imported by America.

Three anti-Chavez demonstrators were shot by unidentified persons in early December, further fueling tensions. The opposition has wasted no time in blaming the government for the shootings. The Caracas air is thick with rumours of another coup attempt and the Bush administration has done nothing to discourage such talk.

Leading American newspapers like the Washington Post routinely describe the Chavez government as a “dictatorship”, preferring to forget that Chavez went to the Venezuelan people, three times since coming to office in 1998.

The Venezuelan middle class, sections of which had previously backed Chavez, has been adversely affected by the deteriorating economy. The devaluation of the currency by 50 per cent and skyrocketing inflation, have hit the middle class more than other sectors of society.  The government’s decision to strictly collect income tax for the first time in Venezuelan history was not appreciated by the middle class. Unemployment had jumped from 12 per cent in 2001 to 35 per cent in 2002. The reason for the economic downturn was due to the fall in the international price of oil, the country’s main source of income. The state budget for the year 2002 had to be reduced by 7 per cent relative to what had been planned. The April 11 coup only added to the economic problems, hastening capital flight out of the country.

On the other hand, despite the mounting economic problems, the poor have benefited a lot in the last four year since Chavez came to power.  For the first time in their history the poor have access to free medical care and education. The state run schools provide three full meals a day, an added incentive for the children of the poor to attend school. It is unlikely that the poor in Venezuela will desert Chavez without a fight. Observers of the Venezuelan scene say that the deep racial divide that has always characterized Venezuelan society now has crystallized into an ideological divide after the coming of Chavez. Half of Venezuela’s 23 million people live in poverty.

The Venezuelan president in a national address in the second week of December, has said that the opposition was trying to replicate the same type of events that preceded the April coup.  He described the opposition as “coup plotters” and “fascists”. He said that “a plan was in progress to defeat the constitutional government”. The right wing in Venezuela hopes to buck the leftward trend in the rest of the continent by resorting to unconstitutional means and taking the covert help of the United States.

All the countries in the region had strongly condemned the brief ouster of Chavez earlier in the year by sections of the Venezuelan armed forces. Chavez while addressing a huge rally in Caracas, vowed to defeat the “coup plotters”. He told his supporters who had packed the city center, that his opponents continue “to play the coup card, they continue to play the fascist card, they continue to play the destabilization card”.

All signs are that Venezuela is headed for an extended period of turmoil, which if allowed to go out of control, could result in civil war. It was the assassination of a popular left wing leader, Jorge Gaitan, in neighbouring Colombia more than forty years ago that sparked off the civil war in that country. That war still continues unabated. If the oligarchs and the US have their way in Venezuela, civil war may be unavoidable. The poor in Venezuela have shown that they will not abandon the Bolivarian revolution Chavez has started.