Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton's Band

DICK CHENEY, HUGO CHAVEZ AND BILL CLINTON'S BAND
Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President
Monday Aug 16, 2004

  There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be 
violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with 
this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 
'hacendados.'

  I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. 
Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching 
designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped 
about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

  That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that 
so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress 
which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from 
the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

  This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that 
Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to 
hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.

  But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable 
president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a "negro e 
indio" -- a "Black and Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless 
and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 
80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the 
Jaguar.

  So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in 
elections and today in a referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with our 
democracy-promoting White House?

  Maybe it's the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that 
rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the White 
House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum 
Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez 
cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of 
oil. It was a 'Goldilocks' plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; 
just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel.

  But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the 
oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred as 
freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three top 
oil industry lobbyists.

  Why should Chavez worry about what Dick thinks? Because, said one of the oil 
men, the Veep in his bunker, not the pretzel-chewer in the White House, "runs 
energy policy in the United States."

  And what seems to have gotten our Veep's knickers in a twist is not the 
price of oil, but who keeps the loot from the current band-busting spurt in 
prices. Chavez had his Congress pass another oil law, the "Law of 
Hydrocarbons," which changes the split. Right now, the oil majors - like 
PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of the proceeds of the sale of Venezuela oil; the 
nation gets only 16%.

  Chavez wanted to double his Treasury's take to 30%. And for good reason. 
Landless, hungry peasants have, over decades, drifted into Caracas and other 
cities, building million-person ghettos of cardboard shacks and open sewers. 
Chavez promised to do something about that.

  And he did. "Chavez gives them bread and bricks," one Venezuelan TV reporter 
told me. The blonde TV newscaster, in the middle of a publicity shoot, said 
the words "pan y ladrillos" with disdain, making it clear that she never 
touched bricks and certainly never waited in a bread line.

  But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez 
would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the 
President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill 
Clinton's ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- 
enemy.

  So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will of the Venezuela 
electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning most 
of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez' government 
"legitimate." Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security 
spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from 
the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the 
Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

  A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez' supposed unpopularity 
and "dictatorial" manner seized US news and op-ed pages, ranging from the San 
Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times.

  But some facts just can't be smothered in propaganda ink. While George Bush 
can appoint the government of Iraq and call it "sovereign," the government of 
Venezuela is appointed by its people. And the fact is that most people in this 
slum-choked land don't drive Jaguars or have their hair tinted in Miami. Most 
look in the mirror and see someone "negro e indio," as dark as their President 
Hugo.

  The official CIA handbook on Venezuela says that half the nation's farmers 
own only 1% of the land. They are the lucky ones, as more peasants owned 
nothing. That is, until their man Chavez took office. Even under Chavez, land 
redistribution remains more a promise than an accomplishment. But today, the 
landless and homeless voted their hopes, knowing that their man may not, 
against the armed axis of local oligarchs and Dick Cheney, succeed for them. 
But they are convinced he will never forget them.

  And that's a fact.

  ---

  Greg Palast's reports from Venezuela for BBC Television's Newsnight and the 
Guardian papers of Britain earned a California State University Journalism 
School "Project Censored" award for 2002. View photos and Palast's reports on 
Venezuela at www.GregPalast.com.


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