Posted on 11/30/2005 7:58:12 AM PST by FerdieMurphy
Venezuela snubbed a visiting congressional delegation at the Caracas airport. Just what transpired at the airport -- and why -- remains unclear.
WASHINGTON -Venezuela snubbed a visiting congressional delegation at the Caracas airport. Just what transpired at the airport -- and why -- remains unclear.
President Hugo Chávez's campaign to woo members of the U.S. Congress suffered a major setback this week as Venezuelan authorities, amid contradictory reports, snubbed members of a senior delegation of U.S. lawmakers by not letting them disembark from their aircraft for several hours.
The lawmakers eventually left without ever getting off the plane.
Chávez and his top government officials had been meeting with members of Congress on a regular basis. Some were advocating more dialogue between the two nations, which often lob bitter accusations against each other.
But after the Caracas airport incident, members who advocate closer ties are going to be ''in the margins,'' said Michael Shifter, with the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think-tank. ``The vast majority of members of Congress are going to take this as a slap in the face.''
The delegation, led by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., the powerful chairman of the House International Relations Committee, arrived in Caracas on Monday afternoon, hoping to find ways to ease rising tensions between Venezuela and the United States.
Instead, the bipartisan delegation of six members of Congress and 22 staffers departed two hours later in frustration after airport authorities refused to allow the aircraft to park near the official VIP terminal and then didn't allow vehicles to approach the plane to pick up the passengers, according to U.S. officials.
DISAPPOINTED
Hyde's office said in a statement that delegation members were disappointed with the Venezuelan government's ``capricious and unexplained decision.''
The Venezuelan foreign ministry said in a statement that the arrival was ''delayed a few more minutes'' because the airport's VIP terminal was reserved for the Spanish defense minister, who was in Caracas to sign a weapons deal that the U.S. opposes.
The statement said the office of Vice President José Vicente Rangel was quickly negotiating a solution to the ''inconveniences,'' but that the delegation had already decided to leave.
This was the first time a congressional delegation had become embroiled in the war of words between the Bush administration and the Venezuelan government.
Chávez has accused the United States of planning to invade his country and unseat his leftist government, while the U.S. government says Chávez is governing in an increasingly authoritarian fashion.
Still, a steady stream of lawmakers has traveled to Venezuela to meet with senior officials, including Chávez.
In recent weeks, the Venezuelan government negotiated the distribution of cheap heating oil to low-income U.S. residents through the offices of Reps. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., and William Delahunt, D-Mass.
The Hyde delegation's visit came just days before a legislative election in Venezuela.
The two sides, according to U.S. officials, started bickering over the group's agenda, which included a meeting with opposition leaders and the Súmate nongovernmental group. Venezuelan officials accuse Súmate of seeking to topple the government.
MEETING TIME
The Venezuelans wanted to know when the Súmate meeting was to take place, something the U.S. refused to divulge, fearing the Venezuelan government might ''sandbag'' the agenda, said a senior U.S. Embassy official, who agreed to be interviewed only if his name was not revealed because of the delicate nature of bilateral relations.
Trouble began at Maiquetía International Airport well before the plane was scheduled to land, the embassy official said.
When embassy officials asked whether it would be allowed to land near the VIP terminal, the airport authority gave contradictory responses.
The plane eventually parked far away and airport security refused to let an embassy bus drive up to collect the delegation.
Eventually, the Venezuelans dispatched an official airport bus to pick up the passengers. The vehicle approached but then turned around and drove off.
PROMISES
With the acting ambassador out of the country, the embassy's No. 2 official, Kevin Whitaker, called the vice president's office and was promised that the issue would be resolved quickly.
But about half an hour later, the members of Congress huddled and decided it was time to leave.
''After waiting for two hours, it was clear that they did not want us there,'' Luis Fortuño, Puerto Rico's congressional delegate, said in phone interview from Brazil, where the delegation was Tuesday.
We can only hope.
Meanwhile, stay out of Venezuela owned Citgo stations. Don't even buy a gumdrop there!
100 years ago, the US Navy probably would have sunk the tanker on its own initiative.
I miss the Old School.
He's a SOB, and he's not our SOB!!!
I am currently boycotting Citgo... I never liked them anyway.
Translation: Insult to and upon initial snub...
"not letting them disembark from their aircraft for several hours."
Chavez was probably still recovering from a night of shorting coke, and did not want to be seen in an intoxicated condition.
Most of your gas is coming from VZ anyway. :-0
The VZ blogs are all ecstatic about boycotting the election next Sunday, but they are not proposing a plan of what to do next. If you boycott, then a coup is your only ensuing option. There is no other option. But the blogs won't talk about that for obvious reasons.
So I am left wondering: does the opposition have the power to remove Chavez this time? Where are the loyalties of the military? The police?
The Caracas police are right wing, no?
Unfortunately our state department is laced with left-wing pinkos who see Chavez as a communist Simon Bolivar.
-`The vast majority of members of Congress are going to take this as a slap in the face.''-
This will give our misrepresentatives a fine opportunity to perfect their puckering up abilities. I'm sure a little slap won't affect their decision to mingle with American enemies.
Gunboat diplomacy worked pretty well for us. Our Latin American relationships were better then than now. Plus we got a great canal out of it and pro-US governments courtesy of United Fruit. Not to mention wonderful floor shows in Havana nightclubs. Sure, the leftists hated it, but they hate us anyway.
This is how I see it as well. Its a circular problem. Chavez controls the election machinery, and is willing to make the results come out the way he wants them. He is willing to file charges against his opponents, to force them into exile. He is willing to send his goon-squads out to beat up and even open fire on the opposition. Some people have been murdered. And, in any case, his constitution allows him to rule by decree, over the heads of his Congress and his Supreme Court, which is packed with his people. So there is little point in elections.
On the other hand, he has gone a long way toward making himself coup-proof. Officers who favor him have been advanced in rank, those that oppose him have been forced out, generals who oppose him have been forced into exile in some cases.
He has cut off contacts between his military and ours, to make it more difficult for outsiders to get access to his officers.
He has established parallel forces which are outside normal government control. For example, his new Army Reserve answers not to the Army, but to someone in Chavez' inner circle. The Bolivarians are a civilian goon squad that he has armed and are used for violent action that the army would refuse to do.
The Caracas police force was under the control of an opponent to Chavez, and for a time they were disarmed.
He has established a civilian guerrilla group out in the countryside, near the Colombian border. They have been seizing control of small towns in the area away from the elected mayors. They are occasionally bussed into Caracas when he needs extra people for a demonstration.
He has Cuban officers assigned as observers at every military post, and he has other Cubans in Venezuelan uniforms who can be used to do what Venezuelan soldiers won't do.
It might be possible to organize a coup within one or another military organization, or police force, but with so many parallel forces, most of them outside the normal military chain of command, it will be difficult. Who ever does it will have a fight on his hands. It won't be enough to take down Chavez, you would have to take them all down and quickly. This is not a job for the timid.
Excellent post!
Do you have friends or relatives in Venezuela?
Good question.
My personal claim to fame is just that I was there during Chavez' 1992 coup attempt, and as a result I have followed his career with morbid interest ever since.
I was working there at the time, and the morning of the coup, I woke up to machine gun fire coming from not that far away. As the day wore on, and I really needed a cup of coffee, and I realized that Venezuelans were out and around as if nothing were happening, I eventually ventured out into the streets (found my coffee) and observed some of the goings on.
I have followed Venezuelan news pretty closely ever since, especially anything to do with Chavez. There are others here at FR who are similarly interested in Chavez, who periodically post articles about him, and also thanks to the miracle of Internet its easy enough to scan the headlines in El Universal with my morning coffee.
Somewhat coincidentally, I'm working with a number of Venezuelan emigre's, who were forced out and now reside in the states. They all have a story to tell. They are good people, very decent, and technically very good.
"Why are members of Congress conducting American foreign policy?"
Better them than Jesse Jackson, who's never been elected to anything.
Yes, yes... More "dialogue" with communists is clearly the answer. After all, it has always worked so well in the past. ;-)
I have lived in Venezuela also. I have friends and relatives in Venezuela.
I have read your posts for quite sometime, and all your posts have insightful info. Specially when you talk about Venezuelans being socialist even before Chavez.
So, if my map is right, you were living near Miraflores presidential palace around La Carlota Air base during Chavez' 92 coup?
Do you currently live in Florida or Texas? Because where I live (Houston) there are a lot of chavista Citgo ex-pats (It has worsened since Citgo moved its headquartes here from Tulsa). If you happen to be near the famous Galleria Mall at Westheimer ave. in Houston you'll see a large proportion of pro-chavez Venezuelans shopping stuff. Quite a contrast with several South and Central Florida cities (especially Miami, Orlando, Weston, Boca Raton, Kendall among others)
Thanks for posting and keep up the great work!
Thanks for the compliment.
I was staying at the time near Altamira. The president's house was probably a mile away, and La Carlota airport was just across the freeway.
The cops were assigned to clear soldiers off the tops of the high-rise buildings around Altamira, so they were working that area. Thousands of Venezuelans turned out to watch the action, so I did too.
It was a strange experience. In the days after, the professionals I dealt with were in deep mourning. The average folks were fired up, they were for the coup and they were for Chavez. Politicians were jumping on Chavez' bandwagon, trying to be more Chavez than Chavez (Caldera comes to mind) and proceeded to wreck the country over the next several years.
In a normal world Chavez would have rotted in jail for 30 years, but because politicians were trying to trade on his popularity for their own political gain, they pardoned him (despite the fact that many, many people died in the coup attempt).
Anyway, I have been rather fascinated by Chavez since then, like watching a slow-motion carwreck, you know its going to be bad, but you just can't look away.
I think Miraflores is the presidential palace downtown, where he has his offices, but the official residence is not far from La Carlota. The heavy fighting was at all three places.
They had hoped to catch him (Carlos Andres Perez) at his home, but right before the coup started his Defense Minister informed him that it was coming, and he left home and went downtown. So his wife was in the residence during that battle there.
He was in his offices in the palace downtown when the fighting started there, and they whisked him away though tunnels (some people say he went to Curazao for a short time).
Chavez had thought that the Minister of Defense would join the coup, but at the last minute the minister decided to remain loyal to the president. Most of the army went with the Minister of Defense.
The coup was actually completely successful everywhere except Caracas; they managed to seize several state governors. But Chavez failed to get the president, failed to take any of his objectives, including most importantly Maiquetia airport on the coast, and most important failed to win over the Minister of Defense.
Failing to win over the Defense minister meant he failed to win over the rest of the army. When he realized that, he surrendered. The only thing he asked was 60 seconds on camera to explain why he had done what he did, and the rest is history.
Never give a guy like Chavez access to a camera.
What websites can one watch for the latest. You don't have a blog apparently. I would prefer an exile site because the in-country bloggers are only anti-Chavez but seem to be scared about talking about what they plan to do after the boycott.
A boycott? What is your prediction of what will happen?
Colombia declares war and invades?
I'm inclined to agree, unfortunately. Chavez has so much of his machinery locked into place that even nominally democratic reforms won't reach him. He has learned well from his master Fidel.
I'm familiar with Alek Boyd's site.
http://vcrisis.com/index.php?content=home
He re-posts most of his material here on FR, but its all together at his website.
Alek is a Venezuelan living in exile.
He's pretty good and pretty well informed.
As for what is going to happen, that's hard to guess.
Colombia isn't going to invade, they have their hands full fighting the FARC. Actually, the FARC is assisted directly by Chavez, and has rear-bases in Venezuela, so Colombia has cause for war, but they wouldn't do it and couldn't if they wanted to.
With his multiple and parallel security forces, Chavez has made himself pretty coup-proof. No single commander could organize a coup and get to Chavez; Chavez is an old coup plotter himself and he understands the process.
He has riddled his services with Cubans, so he has parallel sources of information.
There are only two avenues I can see. One is for his inner circle to turn on him. He is crazy, but so far he is getting them where they want to go. So they will stay with him a little while longer.
But if his madness goes over the line, whatever that line might be, they may turn. Or if his parallel forces (which are outside army control) become too autonomous and start to fight one another (some of this is already happening) some of his commanders may be forced to take firm control. And at that point Chavez could be squeezed out.
The other way would be for the anti-Chavists to organize and push him out themselves. This is tough, because while the army would not fire on them, the "other" forces will. The last time this happened when they marched on the palace and the bolivarians opened fire, the press reported 30 killed. Venezuelans who were there say the number was in the hundreds. Thats when Chavez was arrested, and subsequently "un-arrested" a couple of days later.
If there is a next time, they need to organize a mass ralley (before they were able to put a million people in the streets), hold a massive prayer service, have a priest give them last rites, and then march into the palace come what may.
It will be ugly but I don't see another option.
If most of our gas is coming from Venzuela, then why does the market fluctuate so much when the Sauds say something about increasing production? Or they're famous "we have plenty of oil for the world" line....
....inquiring minds want to know....
I think 20% of our gas is coming from Venezuela.
I had assumed that all intelligent conservatives maintain control of the police and military and violently stop any democratically elected leader from doing anything but a cosmetic change at the top.
I thought that was what conservatism was all about: not trusting the "masses". Sounds like President Bush really screwed up in allowing that to happen.
Latin America is supposed to have right wing police and military and then they can have all the leftist kooks they want actually running the economies and what have you...but not taking over the election commissions and the army and police themselves! Sounds like someone at the CIA was asleep at the wheel.
Imagine this: John Kerry won the presidency and proceeded to remove all the Republicans from the Marines and the Army (not just at the secretary of defense and 4 star general level), and many had to run away to other countries.
Do you think for one second that a massive coup wouldn't be quickly in the offing, regardless of the idea that Kerry was "democratically" elected?
I can only give you my take on the matter.
First, the difference between "left" and "right" isn't so clear in actual practice. One is a little more anti-business, one is a little more pro-business, but they agree (at least in Venezuela) that the central government should control the major sources of wealth in the country. The economy in Venezuela has always been controlled from the top and center. That has not changed; Chavez is really just more of the same in that sense.
Secondly, Chavez has been a master at combining elements of left and right in his own persona. We would refer to him as a leftist because of his populist rhetoric and his friendship with Castro, but he appeals to the masses on a patriotic level, he has avoided any open attack on the church, he refers to himself as a "primitive" Christian, for example. His support is centered in the military.
So despite the fact that he has surrounded himself with leftists I would tend to think of him as a fascist. I don't mean that as a pejorative, but as a technical term. He uses whatever appeal works best. Pro-indigenist in some countries, appealing to patriotic symbols, always promoting the military as the last best hope for clean government. He is, of course, very active in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and others.
This is the key to why he wasn't overthrown. The older officers hated him, saw him right away as a nutcase. The younger officers love him. He tells them they are the hope for the nation, the only force that stands for the people and for those patriotic virtues military men hold dear... and they love hearing it.
So after his massacre, when the generals walked in and arrested him, it was the younger officers running the jails that released him and put him back in power.
Why have we not interfered?
First, he came into office with very nearly 100% support from the people. Not a Saddam-style-100%, but a real 100%. This is due to a couple of elements. First, as I mentioned earlier, Venezuelans love their military. Their memory of military rule is that it was a "golden age". I can't tell you how many Venezuelans told me, in the years before Chavez, how much Venezuela needed to go back to military rule.
So Chavez looked to them like the answer to their prayers.
Secondly, while he immediately started tearing down the constitutional institutions of power, and replacing them with his own, the people there saw this not as an attack on freedom but as Chavez standing up for the little guy. In Venezuela the natural political philosophy is a kind of populism that is deeply embedded in the people, both rich and poor alike. So they continued to back him for a long time. He set up several elections back to back and continued to get real landslide majorities. In the early days he had no need to rig an election.
Third, while he immediately began to cause us problems, he did so in a very small way at first, so it was easy to see it as the normal kind of problems we deal with everywhere. Chavez would have to go a long way to be as big a pain as Villepin, for example, and we're not gunning for Villepin.
Fourth, it is only recently that we have begun to see him as a threat outside his borders. His involvement in backing the coup against Mahuad in Ecuador, his backing of the military rebellion in Peru, the cocaleros in Bolivia has only just begun to catch our attention.
Fifth, none of that matters if he is going to serve his 5 years in office and then leave. But we have slowly begun to realize that he is probably not leaving, he plans to be around for a long time.
Sixth, while he is definitely a pain in the neck, so far he is not a direct threat. We have other matters that are of far more pressing interest to deal with. So while we don't really like him, unless he really messes up he is not at the top of our list. You can see that he wants to be at the top of our list, he keeps trying to get our attention, but frankly we're busy right now. He'll have to wait.
So sadly, tragicly, he is Venezuela's problem. They will have to figure out the right combination to get him out of power. He probably isn't going voluntarily. And he is prepared to fight. The typical anti-Chavists, in the end, are middle class people who just want peace. The Chavists are prepared to fight.
If you want peace, and your enemy is ready to fight, guess who wins and who loses.
Isn't there some federal law that supposedly bars Americans from conducting their own foreign policy with other governments? If so, why is it never enforced?
We have all kinds of elected and former elected officials running around like ninnies trying to make their own foreign policy when the Constitution give sole power over foreign policy to the president.
"First, the difference between "left" and "right" isn't so clear in actual practice. One is a little more anti-business, one is a little more pro-business, but they agree (at least in Venezuela) that the central government should control the major sources of wealth in the country. The economy in Venezuela has always been controlled from the top and center. That has not changed; Chavez is really just more of the same in that sense.
Exactly! Both Copei (the supposedly right-wing party) and AD were highly socialist, with exchange controls, price controls, hyperinflation such measures applied by both parties.
As you correctly said, Chavez is more of the same. I think Venezuela since 40 years ago became like a train destined to crash with a concrete wall. Chavez has only sped up the crash.
Figures.
The two sides, according to U.S. officials, started bickering over the group's agenda, which included a meeting with opposition leaders and the Súmate nongovernmental group. Venezuelan officials accuse Súmate of seeking to topple the government.
MEETING TIME
The Venezuelans wanted to know when the Súmate meeting was to take place, something the U.S. refused to divulge, fearing the Venezuelan government might ''sandbag'' the agenda, said a senior U.S. Embassy official, who agreed to be interviewed only if his name was not revealed because of the delicate nature of bilateral relations.
......''After waiting for two hours, it was clear that they did not want us there,'' ***
___________________________________
Well, it looks like Chavez sandbagged the agenda.
That would have never had happened. He could not even suggest the idea without a giant backlash from Rupublicans.
The mere thoght is frightening, but I highly doubt anythign like that could happen in the near future.
These are important political class Americans who have been selected (elected) by the sheep to go to Washington where the voter promptly forgets how the haughty political class congresscritter got there.
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