Venezuelan President Hugo Chàvez's reform programme involves helping the poor. Reason enough, writes Faiza Rady for Washington to resent his victory in this week's recall vote As in many Latin American countries the struggle in Venezuela is stark: it is all about class and race, pitting the rich, mostly white European ruling class against the African and indigenous poor majority. In Venezuela, though, the basic equation became more complex when the country's small and impoverished middle class joined the opposition, throwing in their lot with the rich and their corporate American backers. The case of Venezuela is interesting because it inverts the usual configuration. The administration of President Hugo Chàvez actually represents the interests of the poor and the dispossessed, and his "Bolivarian revolution" has chanelled oil revenues into housing, medicine, education and food for the poor who comprise 80 per cent of the country's population. And the poor came out in force during Sunday's recall referendum to support the president. On Monday Francisco Carrasquero, head of the National Election Council (NEC), announced that 58 per cent had voted "no" to the question of whether Chàvez should immediately end his term in office, while 42 per cent voted "yes". "The Venezuelan people have spoken and the people's voice is the voice of God," said Chàvez, who criticised the Bush administration's blatant support of the Venezuelan opposition. "Hopefully, from this day on Washington will respect the government and the people of Venezuela," Chàvez told the jubilant crowd of supporters who had come to the presidential palace, Miraflores, to celebrate their victory Monday at dawn. Meanwhile, the opposition accused the government of fraud. In the eyes of Chàvez's opposition and its CIA friends and financiers the sins of the Venezuelan president are manifold indeed. On the international front Chàvez has allied himself with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and is selling Cuban oil at discount rates. Besides ignoring the US embargo against Cuba, the Venezuelan president has irked Washington on several other counts. Chàvez early demanded that the permanent US military mission in Venezuela vacate their offices, saying that he considered their presence a "cold war anachronism". Other symptoms of Chàvez's insubordination include his refusal to cooperate with the Bush administration's "war on terror" by providing the CIA with information on Venezuela's large Arab community. Chàvez has also denied airspace to US war planes targeting Colombian guerrillas. But these are as nothing compared to Chàvez's anti- corporate globalisation stand. Disobedient, and rejecting the sacrosanct neo-liberal model, Chàvez goes about his business building alliances with other like-minded and questionable Latin American leaders like Cuba's Fidel, Brazil's Lula and Argentina's Nestor Kirchner. Chàvez and his allies, who dare to represent the poor and the working class, all oppose globalisation capitalist style and, in particular, the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Chàvez and his friends reject the FTAA as a grand plan to transform Latin and South America into a gigantic supermarket in which US multinationals will shop around for the cheapest labour and production rates. The FTAA model stacks all the cards in the multinationals' favour. Labour unions are out or, if need be, only coopted ones will be allowed to surface. Environmental protection laws and taxes will be eliminated, providing the corporations with a safe, unregulated haven. Chàvez and his mutinous group, however, refused to sit silent in the face of US plans to further throttle their economies. Instead they countered the FTAA offensive with a powerful regional trade alliance of their own, between Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina. "I consider myself a humanist, and a humanist has to be anti- neoliberal," explained Chàvez. Faced with such economic and political subversion the US retaliated in kind, deciding early that the Venezuelan president had to go. Hence, the 11 April 2002 coup against Chàvez. Venezuela's economic and political elites were regular visitors to the US Embassy in the weeks preceding the coup, while opposition legislators received advanced classes in counter- revolutionary strategy in Washington. One Venezuelan opposition delegation was sponsored by the International Republican Institute, a branch of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), long used by the CIA for covert operations abroad, reported William Blum in Counterpunch, the New-York based magazine. Even more disturbing, the US government is continuing its long-standing practice of running contra training camps in Florida. This bit of information was reported in a Wall Street Journal editorial (29 January, 2003). Charles S Shapiro, US ambassador to Caracas, admitted that Venezuelan nationals were training in a paramilitary coalition formed by the "F-4 Commandos" and the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta -- a killer battalion modelled on Cuban, Nicaraguan and Salvadoran contra forces. Chàvez had it coming. Besides dabbling in sabotage on the international scene, he is guilty of promoting socialism at home -- a dangerous trend in the region that could well spill across Venezuela's borders. His politics have even attracted mainstream American political figures, including former US presidential candidate Jesse Jackson and congressman Dennis Kucinich. "The world knows you are achieving something remarkable in Venezuela... today millions of people are benefiting from the government's investment in job training, small businesses and health care. We are disturbed by our own government's interference in your internal affairs," Jackson, Kucinich and other luminaries told Chàvez last week in a statement of solidarity. A poster in the Caracas subway succinctly captured Chàvez's message. The poster features a beautiful woman of African descent saying: "Today I'm a maid, tomorrow I'll be a social worker." She may be well on her way. Since Chàvez was elected in 1998 public spending on education has quadrupled. One million illiterate Venezuelans have learned to read and write since last year. But this is hardly the kind of investment of which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approves. Like tripling the health budget and opening subsidised markets for the poor, teaching people to read does not make it on to the IMF's list of prudent fiscal policies. But there is worse. Since 2000 the government has distributed 7.5 million acres of public land to 120,000 landless farmers, organised into cooperatives. Setting a precedent in Latin America, Chàvez made good on his electoral promises and established the most sweeping land reform programme in the region. Given this kind of record, no wonder Chàvez has enemies.
