By: Ned Borninski, FPP Sr. Political Correspondent
Late
in the afternoon on March 5th, 2013, Vice President Nicolás Maduro conducted
a live televised broadcast to his country of Venezuela with some news that
would greatly upset and sadden his people.
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the President of Venezuela for more than
thirteen years and the man that many of the poor and downtrodden viewed as
their hero, was dead. Chávez had been
suffering from a cancerous tumor for the past two years, and although many
suspected that the disease could be terminal, it had not deterred his landslide
victory in the Presidential election only a few months before. When the news was announced, millions of
Venezuelans poured out onto the streets to express their mourning and grief for
their leader. At Chávez’s state funeral
a few days later, over thirty world leaders and celebrities were in attendance,
including the Presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and
Iran.
Americans Sean Penn, the actor,
and Jesse Jackson Jr., the civil rights crusader, also attended the funeral. Former United States President Jimmy Carter
even sent in his condolences.
With
such popular and international mourning over Chávez’s death, one might wonder
where United States President Barack Obama could be found in all of this. Shortly after Chávez’s death, the State
Department released a statement that read as follows:
"At this challenging time of President Hugo Chávez's
passing, the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and
its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan
government. As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States
remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of
law, and respect for human rights."
Due to the strain that has afflicted United
States-Venezuelan relations, this statement has widely been seen to be a
criticism of Chávez and his policies, as the United States has been referring to
Chávez as a “dictator” since the early 2000’s.
Indeed, according to recent polls, only six percent of Americans
approved of Chávez while he was in office, and famous televangelist Pat
Robertson even called for his assassination. In turn, Chávez’s government had
leveled intense criticism at the United States; Chávez even went so far as to
refer to George W. Bush as “the Devil” during a speech at the United Nations.
Ironically,
Robertson’s call may have been taken to heart by the Bush Administration. An astonishingly little known fact is that
the United States and the CIA had sponsored a coup in 2002 against Chávez’s then
still young government. This information was well known to the Venezuelan
government, and was further supported by secret documents leaked by Wikileaks. Perceiving him as a threat to US oil
supplies, elements of the Venezuelan military removed Chávez from power for two
days, setting up a puppet regime during that period that dissolved the
Venezuelan Parliament and the country’s constitution. However, the coup’s CIA
planners failed to take into account the fact that Chávez enjoyed far reaching
popular support across the population of Venezuela. A civilian uprising toppled the short-lived
government of coup leader Pedro Carmona and restored Hugo Chávez to power.
Since that moment, Chávez has spared no barbs against the country that
attempted to topple his government; the same country that had succeeded in
similar covert takeovers worldwide.
Just
who was Hugo Chávez, one might ask, and why did the United States oppose him so
much? Well, the answer to that question can be found with a look into Chávez’s
background. Born in 1954 to humble origins, Chávez attended the Military Academy of
Venezuela after high school. The young officer
quickly distinguished himself in operations against Maoist insurgents during
the 1970’s, educating himself on history and politics while doing so.
Sympathetic to the plight of the poor he witnessed, Chávez became involved
with left wing socialist groups. However, Chávez rejected the models of
socialism practiced in the Soviet Union and China. His hero was Simon Bolivar,
the liberator of Venezuela and much of South America during the wars of
independence early in the previous century. Indeed, Chávez would later become a
major force behind the renaming of the nation from the “Republic of Venezuela”
to the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” in honor of the nation’s founding
father.
Chávez
continued to gain influence by working as a teacher at the Military Academy for
a while and also by striving to protect the rights of the country’s
discriminated minority of Native Americans.
In 1989, Chávez supported Carlos Andrés Pérez for President of
Venezuela. After his election, however, Pérez
violently suppressed dissent in the nation, slaughtering hundreds of political
opponents and protestors. Chávez broke with Pérez at this point, and in 1992
attempted a coup against him. The coup
was quickly put down, and Chávez was imprisoned until 1994, when he was pardoned
after Pérez was impeached. Chávez spent
much of the next few years building up support for his own eventual
Presidential run. In 1999, Chávez was elected President of Venezuela, and one
of his first acts was to revise the country’s constitution to allow for more
direct participation in politics by the people of Venezuela, one of the main
factors that have led to around 81% of the population participating in
Venezuelan elections, compared to approximately 45% in the United States.
Governing originally as a center-left
social democrat, Chávez was nevertheless an opponent of the neoliberal
Washington Consensus. His government expanded welfare programs and regulated
the country’s oil industry, which had been an important source of oil for the
United States, to allow for more profits to be distributed to the people.
Additionally, Chávez criticized the United States’ foreign policy, arguing that
the War on Terror was only encouraging more terrorists due to the innocents who
were killed as collateral damage. For
these reasons, and also possibly the general climate of paranoia in post 9/11
America, the Bush Administration supported the attempted coup against Chávez.
However,
this coup would have the opposite effect Washington intended. Brought back into power by a massive wave of
public support, Chávez moved drastically to the left. Condemning the United States’ wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan, and also the treatment of Iran, Chávez labeled the United
States as an imperialist nation, out to conquer the world for its own benefit.
Interestingly, Chávez had his allies in the American left, including former
President Jimmy Carter, who condemned his nation’s coup attempt against Chávez.
Chávez also publically recommended Hegemony
or Survival, a book critical of US foreign policy by famed MIT professor
Noam Chomsky, another Chávez supporter. However, while his relations with the
United States went into the gutter, Chávez’s Venezuela found new allies in Iran
and the Middle East, and also in the other left wing governments of Latin
America. Angered by centuries of abusive
and imperialistic American interference into their nations similar to the coup
attempt in Venezuela, a wave of left wing governments such as those of Evo
Morales in Bolivia, Lula de Silva in Brazil, and Christina Kirchner in
Argentina rose as Chávez allies.
Chávez’s
government moved to the left on economics as well. While originally limited to
a few social democratic reforms, following the coup attempt the government
began supporting outright socialism. The
Chávez administration nationalized all of Venezuela’s oil industry and promoted
the creation of more than 100,000 worker cooperatives, where workers
democratically self-managed their own businesses. These reforms caused a 50% drop in the poverty
rate, and improved living standards for more than a million Venezuelans. Now,
with the failures of socialism in China and the former USSR, one might think
that Chávez’s variant would lead to a similar economic collapse. But, one would be mistaken. Chávez’s variant of socialism, referred to as
“Democratic Socialism” or “Socialism of the 21st Century” was a
decentralized, bottom-up, popular form of socialism that had little in common
with the bureaucratic collectivism found behind the Iron Curtain. Perhaps as a
result of this, for the years following the implementation of these policies
the economy of Venezuela has expanded by every measurable standard; that is,
except for a brief slump from 2008 to 2009 caused by the world economic crisis.
Of
course, this complete and total rejection of neoliberalism did not sit well
with the United States, or her ally, the authoritarian regime of Alvaro Uribe
in Venezuela’s neighbor to the west, Colombia.
The Bush administration continued to accuse Chávez of being a “dictator”
and of aiding global terrorism. Chávez
was specifically accused of helping aid the FARC terrorist group in Colombia.
However, upon Barack Obama’s election as US President in 2008, it seemed as
though relations would improve. Chávez
met Obama at a Pan-American summit in early 2009 and said to him, “I want to be
your friend.” Unfortunately, Obama, perhaps worried about his approval ratings
at home, declined, and continued the War on Terror and denials of US
involvement in the 2002 coup.
Despite
all of these events, Chávez always remained incredibly popular among the
Venezuelan people, most likely because of his advocacy on behalf of the poor,
minorities, and the downtrodden. Certainly, Chávez was not perfect; even his
most ardent supporters agree that his attempts to micromanage certain aspects
of the government turned out not to work for the best. However, Chávez continues to be, and will
probably be for a long time, regarded as one of the greatest politicians in
Latin America since Simon Bolivar, with his policies having vastly helped
millions of ordinary people. According to the Venezuelan Constitution, a new
presidential election shall have to occur within 30 days after Chávez’s death,
and Chávez’s Vice President and chosen successor, Nicolás Maduro is currently
the poll favorite. It is fitting perhaps, that the so called “Bolivarian
Revolution,” which survived sixteen elections and referendums, shall be
continued on even after its founding hero has passed away.
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