Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba

VENEZUELA, COLOMBIA & CUBA:
3 COUNTRIES, 1 ENEMY
by Charley Allan

This article written by a HOV Campaign activist in London was published in
today´s
edition of the The Morning Star <http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/> .

Washington's "hidden war" against the people of Latin America is reaching a
critical stage, and it's possible the future of the entire region could be
decided in the next two months. If the popular leftwing leader of Venezuela,
Hugo Chavez, convincingly wins the recently announced recall referendum
against him, scheduled for August 15th, the blow to the already fractured
opposition could be enough to secure Chavez' "Bolivarian revolution" for
generations. If however Venezuela's peaceful revolution fails, it would take
Latin America back in time thirty years or more.

There is no doubt that Chavez will win this election, as he has done (with
landslides) twice before - the difference now is that the whole world will
be watching. After more than five years of politically progressive policies
like land redistribution and massive investment in education and healthcare,
Chavez has more solid support of the people than ever before. He has also
made friends and allies in the anti-globalisation movement by sabotaging the
neo-imperialistic Free Trade Agreement of the Americas from within. A
victory in August will almost certainly result in him winning another
six-year term at the 2006 general election, and after that his radical
reforms will be irreversible.

But can the US let this happen to the country that used to be its number one
oil supplier (before Chavez)? All the signs are that it's intent on "regime
change". In 2002, the US backed a conventional coup which failed after just
48 hours. International pressure forced the Bush administration to back down
from providing decisive military support, and the population promptly
removed their dictator-for-a-day, Pedro Carmona (who was head of Venezuela's
biggest business federation at the time).

Eight months later the discredited, coup-supporting CTV union joined with
the business federation again to declare an indefinite general "strike". In
reality, this was a boss's lock-out, which collapsed after two months of
popular defiance. It did manage to cripple Venezuela's vital oil industry,
costing $10 billion and nearly bankrupting the country. Despite this, the
opposition still insists on blaming Chavez for "ruining the economy"!

Then there is the relentless propaganda against Chavez himself, especially
inside Venezuela. He is called everything from a "monkey" (due to his mixed
race) to another Mussolini or Hitler. It even stoops to forgery, as when the
daily paper Tal Cual printed a front-page photoshopped image of him waving a
revolver around, under the headline, "A Nation at Gunpoint." In the original
picture, Chavez was in fact holding a rose.

Internationally, the propaganda is more subtle, but only just. The Guardian,
adored by many as a progressive voice, last month published a piece straight
out of the CIA text-book. Headlined "Leftwing dictator or saviour of the
poor: Chavez faces new challenge to his rule", it was illustrated with a
beret-wearing Chavez waving to supporters, arm frozen in an almost nazi-like
salute. Writer Sibylla Brodzinsky, who usually works for the Miami Herald
(a.k.a "the coup-plotters journal") makes the pretence of being balanced by
quoting both sides, but then slips in some outrageous distortions. For
example, we are told that many Venezuelans "worry about his apparent
sympathy with neighbouring Colombia's left-wing rebels." (Note the cute use
of the word "apparent".)

This accusation (repeated over and over in the US press) is extremely
serious, as the "rebels" concerned are on George W Bush's terror hit-list,
and such a link could provide Washington with pretext for militarily
intervention. Unfortunately for the coup-plotters, the US's own top soldier
for the region, General Benjamin R. Mixon, Director of Operations of the
Pentagon's US Southern Command, has dismissed these reports for lack of any
credible evidence - ironically in the Miami Herald itself.

But the threat to Venezuela from Colombia is indeed real. After 140
Colombian paramilitaries training in a ranch near Caracas were arrested
there last month (reminiscent of the Contras in Nicaragua), Chavez described
them as being "the seed of a terrorist group". He is currently lobbying the
new Spanish government to cancel a contract to supply Colombia with
forty-three AMX-30 tanks. These tanks are useless against guerrillas in the
jungle or mountains, and are clearly intended for more conventional warfare,
such as invading countries and capturing towns.

The possibility of US-backed military intervention via Colombia, under some
dubious pretext (that's where the paramilitaries come in) grows daily. Andy
Higginbottom, from the Colombia Solidarity Campaign, explained, "The
situation on the Colombian border with Venezuela is very tense. Not only are
paramilitary death squads passing into Venezuela, but US Marines are also
stationed on the Colombian side patrolling the oil pipeline." He added, "The
poor people of Colombia look across the border and see in Hugo Chavez the
type of president they would like leading their country, while the rich in
Venezuela would prefer a hard right-winger like President Uribe of
Colombia."

Uribe, like his masters in Washington, believes in the "military solution".
In a land where right-wing paramilitaries operate with impunity, human
targets are more likely to be trades unionists or peasant organisers than
"narco-guerrillas". But whether Colombian officers really want a border
skirmish against a powerful and defiant neighbour, while their decades-old
civil war spirals out of control, remains to be seen.

Watching from across the Caribbean is Cuba, which has much to lose if the
Bolivarian government of Venezuela is defeated. Upon election, Chavez
started an 'oil-for-doctors' barter deal with the island, which was badly
needed after the collapse of their Soviet sponsor and previous oil supplier.
Significantly, one of the first acts of the Carmona dictatorship during the
coup was to announce that "not one more drop" of oil would go to Cuba.

For some time now the right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami have joined forces
with Venezuelan Chavez-haters, and are even undergoing military training
together in the Florida Everglades. When publicly challenged about this by
Chavez, US Ambassador to Venezuela Charles S. Shapiro said that it was "not
necessarily a crime" for terrorists to train on US soil, just as long as
they weren't preparing terror against the US. As in the first hypocritical
"War on Terror" heralded by Reagon, it's pretty clear that Bush is engaged
in a war OF terror against the progressive movements of Latin America, and
specifically the people of Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba. This time the
stakes could not be higher.

--
Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
In the contradiction lies the hope.
--Brecht.

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