Venezuela's unforgivable sins - by William Blum

First there was the coup attempt against Hugo Chavez in 2002, which briefly overthrew him, with Washington's fingerprints all over the scene; then US support for an oil-workers strike in 2003 aimed at crippling the Venezuelan economy; the next year brought American financing of a failed referendum to recall the democratically elected Chavez, followed by the assassination of the government prosecutor who was investigating those behind the coup attempt; the Venezuelan attorney general has stated that the CIA had advised in the assassination.{4}

This year, in May, the United States proposed to create a committee at the Organization of American States that would "monitor the quality of democracy and the exercise of
power in Latin America." Everyone at the OAS meeting knew it was aimed at Venezuela, but the United States denied it; this despite the fact that in the previous month "[Bush] administration officials had made several statements tying the effort directly to their concern about Hugo Chavez".{5} The proposal fell with a thud.

Then, for the December 4 congressional elections, several of the main opposition parties withdrew their candidates. Chavez supporters charged Washington with having influenced those parties to do so in order to cast doubt upon the validity of the election, which the opposition knew would again show substantial support for Chavez and his program. If this charge is true, it would be reminiscent of what the US did in Nicaragua in 1984, when it bribed and pressured various parties opposed to the Sandinista government to drop out of the race. In the end, the United States ousted the Sandinistas by the use of violence, including the clearly implied threat to prolong the terrible civil war if the Nicaraguan people did not vote the Sandinistas out in the 1990 election. The war-weary Nicaraguans did just that.{6} This won't be as easy for Washington to pull off in Venezuela since the army supports Chavez to a significant extent, whereas in Nicaragua the US was able to assist the former army to regroup as the Contras to wage civil war. Is the Bush administration crazy enough, or desperate enough, after all else has failed, to turn to a military solution to the Venezuelan "problem"? (The "problem" is that Hugo Chavez is not in love with the American empire or Washington’s neo-liberal plans for the planet, and says so unequivocally and frequently, with explicit examples of what the US has done. If the man is allowed to get away with this it can only encourage other uppity Third World leaders.)

4. Associated Press, November 5, 2005, re CIA ties to the assassination
5. New York Times, May 22, 2005, p.10
6. William Blum, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II", chapter 49, particularly pages 298-300