Posted on 04/14/2002 4:01:40 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
LINKS to Hugo Chavez's "government" June 2001 - March 2002
I'm keeping track of Hugoland formally known as Venezuela. Please LINK any stories or add what you wish to this thread. The above LINK takes you to past articles posted before the new FR format. Below I'll add what I've catalogued since that LINK no longer could take posts.
(March 1, 2002)-- Venezuela's strongman faces widespread calls to step down
By Phil Gunson | Special to The Christian Science Monitor
[Full Text] CARACAS, VENEZUELA - The man who won Venezuelan hearts three years ago as a strongman who could deliver a better life to the masses is now facing them in the streets.
More than 20,000 people turned out this week calling for the resignation of President Hugo Chávez, while some 2,000 supporters marched in a rival demonstration of support. The demonstrations come after months of building discontent with a president who has managed to alienate the labor class, the media, business groups, the church, political parties, and the military.
Four military leaders have publicly called for his resignation.
In November, Chávez introduced 49 "revolutionary" decrees. The package of laws - affecting everything from land rights and fisheries to the oil industry - unified virtually the whole of organized society in a nationwide business and labor stoppage that paralyzed the country on Dec. 10.
The protests this week have a note of irony, because they started out as a commemoration called by President Chávez. In his eyes, Feb. 27 is a milestone of his so-called revolution - "the date on which the people awoke" in 1989. That is when thousands of rioters and looters took to the streets in protest of an IMF-backed austerity plan, in which the government hiked gas prices.
In what became known as the caracazo, or noisy protest, thousands of rioters and looters were met by Venezuelan military forces, and hundreds were killed. Three years later, Chávez and his military co-conspirators failed in an attempt to overthrow the government responsible for the massacre, that of President Carlos Andres Perez. Chávez was jailed for two years.
"But the elements that brought about the caracazo are still present in Venezuela," says lawyer Liliana Ortega, who for 13 years has led the fight for justice on behalf of the victims' relatives. "Poverty, corruption, impunity ... some of them are perhaps even more deeply ingrained than before."
Chávez's supporters consist of an inchoate mass of street traders, the unemployed, and those whom the old system had marginalized. This, to Chávez, is el pueblo - the people.
"But we are 'the people' too," protests teacher Luis Leonet. "We're not oligarchs like he says. The oligarchs are people like Chávez, people with power."
On Wednesday, Leonet joined a march led by the main labor confederation, the CTV, to protest what unions say is a series of antilabor measures, including one of the 49 decrees dealing with public-sector workers.
Chávez won't talk to the CTV, whose leaders, he says, are corrupt and illegitimate. So he refuses to negotiate the annual renewal of collective contracts with the confederation, holding up deals on pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of union members like Leonet.
Across town on Wednesday, a progovernment march sought to demonstrate that the president's popularity was as high as ever.
"For the popular classes, Chávez is an idol," says marcher Pedro Gutierrez.
Pollster Luis Vicente Leon, of the Datanalisis organization, warns that marches are no measure of relative popularity. "There is a lot of discontent among ... the really poor," Leon says, adding that so far the protests are mainly among the middle class.
But the middle class can be a dangerous enemy. It includes the bulk of the armed forces, and the management of the state oil company, PDVSA.
This month, four uniformed officers, ranging from a National Guard captain to a rear-admiral and an Air Force general, called on the president to resign, while repudiating the idea of a military coup of Chávez, himself a former Army lieutenant-colonel.
But senior "institutionalist" officers "are under severe pressure from lower ranks frustrated at the lack of impact" that these acts have had, a source close to military dissidents says. In other words, a coup cannot be ruled out, although the United States publicly denounces the idea.
Meanwhile, the president's imposition of a new board of directors on PDVSA this week sparked a virtual uprising by the company's senior management. In an unprecedented public statement, managers said the government was pushing the company "to the verge of operational and financial collapse" by imposing political, rather than commercial, criteria.
The political opposition remains relatively weak and divided. But in the view of many analysts, a president who offends both the military and the oil industry is asking for trouble. In the bars and restaurants of Caracas, the debate is no longer over whether Chávez will finish his term, which has nearly five years to run. It is when and how he will go - and what comes next. [End]
Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States' duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."
Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.
"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
Electronic pages and a message to a Robertson spokeswoman were not immediately returned Monday evening.
Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporter and a major supplier of oil to the United States. The CIA estimates that U.S. markets absorb almost 59 percent of Venezuela's total exports.
Venezuela's government has demanded in the past that the United States crack down on Cuban and Venezuelan "terrorists" in Florida who they say are conspiring against Chavez.
Robertson accused the United States of failing to act when Chavez was briefly overthrown in 2002.
"We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability," Robertson said. ........***
Chávez and Jamaican Prime Minister P.J. Patterson are expected to sign an accord establishing the PetroCaribe initiative, Venezuela's proposal to supply petroleum to Caribbean countries under favorable financial terms, a Foreign Ministry statement said Monday.
The two leaders will meet in the northern resort town of Montego Bay, the ministry said.
Chávez, who was in Cuba following talks with Fidel Castro, will be joined by Venezuelan Foreign Trade Minister Gustavo Maraquez and Planning and Development Minister Jorge Giodani, the ministry said. …..***
I guess it's up to good people to be in charge if chirping is not enough.
Chavez has played out to be as problematic as he signaled.
I'm glad we have troops and a friend as president in Colombia.
"When people look up to you, you have to be careful of what they look up and see." …***
Pat Robertson ignites war of words***…..Robertson has made incendiary comments before. In 2003, he suggested that the State Department ought to be blown up with a nuclear device.
Still, many Latin Americans take him seriously. The 700 Club is dubbed in Spanish and broadcast around the region. Robertson ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, and his 2 million-member Christian Coalition helped get President Bush elected in 2000 and re-elected last year.
"Mr. Robertson is no ordinary citizen," said Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuela's ambassador to the United States. He "has been one of the president's staunchest allies."
As a result, Robertson is viewed in Latin America as having some degree of support within the Bush White House, said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington and a Chavez critic.
"The way Robertson's declarations will play in Latin America is that Chavez is right and that the U.S. is out to get him," Shifter said……***
Chavez supporters said Wednesday the suggestion by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson that the United States should "take him out" gave credence to Chavez's warnings that the U.S. government is searching for ways to overthrow his leftist regime.
"If anyone had a doubt, now they no longer do," said Maritza Uzcategui, a 50-year-old nurse and Chavez supporter. "He's been saying they want to kill him."
U.S. officials called Robertson's on-air remarks inappropriate and repeated assurances that the United States is not considering killing Chavez despite its questions about his commitment to democracy and accusations he is spreading instability in Latin America.
Robertson apologized Wednesday, saying it was wrong to call for someone's assassination. "I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him," he said in a statement.
For months, Chavez has peppered his speeches with mentions of assassination plots and purported U.S. efforts to oust him. He warns that Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest petroleum exporter, will cut off oil shipments to the U.S. if it backs any sort of conspiracy against him.
At the same time, Chavez has been seeking to raise Venezuela's profile internationally, extending preferential oil deals to countries from China to Argentina in an effort to strengthen alliances and line up alternative trade partners from the U.S., which is the No. 1 buyer of Venezuelan oil.
By legitimizing Chavez's warnings about plots, Robertson's words will raise the president's profile and bolster his already high domestic support, which is drawn primiarily from the country's poor majority, said Luis Vicente Leon, director of the Venezuelan polling firm Datanalisis. ……….***
Chavez brought up Robertson's remarks while addressing supporters at the presidential palace, saying "he has expressed the desire of the elite that governs the United States."
"If something happens to me, the responsible one will be George W. Bush," said Chavez, who has repeatedly accused the Bush administration of plotting to overthrow him.
The United States has repeatedly denied having any intentions to try to topple Chavez or harm him.
Chavez's comments were his sharpest since Robertson called for his assassination Monday on his TV show "The 700 Club," saying the United States should "take him out" because Chavez poses a danger to the region.
Robertson later issued an apology, saying he spoke out of frustration. U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack on Tuesday called Robertson's remarks "inappropriate," but stopped short of condemning them.***
Roughly 1,000 demonstrators were marching through the capital to demand that officials on the National Election Council, which is seen as pro-Chávez by government opponents, are replaced before upcoming congressional elections.
Six people were injured when alleged Chávez supporters attacked the march, launching fireworks and throwing glass bottles, rocks and tear gas canisters, Caracas Fire Chief Delio Martínez said.
The violence broke up the march several blocks from congress. The injured were taken to nearby hospitals, the Globovisión television news channel reported.
''This government is all about lies,'' said Rómulo Zambrano, a 50-year old publicist, as he marched toward the National Assembly in downtown Caracas. ...........***
Mr. Quiroga charged that Mr. Chavez and Mr. Castro had a "regional plan" to "destabilize" South America.
Mr. Morales lashed back by accusing Mr. Quiroga of "following orders from [President] Bush."
Charges of Venezuelan interference are based in part on a meeting last month in Caracas between Mr. Morales and Mr. Chavez. The talks also were attended by Felipe Quispe, the extremist head of the Pachakutec Indigenous Movement (MIP).
While MAS and MIP cooperated in the sometimes-violent protests that have ousted two Bolivian presidents since 2003, Mr. Quispe and Mr. Morales are rivals for the support of Indian constituencies in the high Andes. Yet, shortly after their return from Venezuela, Mr. Morales named a one-time close aide to Mr. Quispe, Alvaro Garcia Linera, as his running mate.
In accepting the nomination, Mr. Garcia vowed to campaign for full nationalization of Bolivia's oil and gas resources and for a new constitution favored by MAS.
While he recently has become known as a socialist opinion leader and television pundit, Mr. Garcia faces legal charges involving past activity with the terrorist Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army (EGTK).
One of the leading conservative candidates, businessman Samuel Doria Medina, once was kidnapped by the EGTK, which obtained a $5 million ransom negotiated through the London firm Control Risks.
Some of the money is thought to have gone to finance leftist parties in Bolivia, as well as the 1996 armed takeover of the Japanese Embassy in Lima, Peru, by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.................***
At a signing ceremony for the oil deals in Jamaica on Tuesday, Chavez urged Caribbean governments to consider Cuba-style socialism as an alternative to capitalism.
"Fidel, I think you were always right: It's socialism or death," he said.
Yet Chavez can only go so far in eroding U.S. influence in the Caribbean, analysts say. The United States is the biggest trade partner of most Caribbean countries and their largest market for tourism.
The same day the Dominican Republic signed the Petrocaribe oil agreement with Venezuela, its legislature overwhelmingly approved a free trade agreement with the United States and five Central American countries.
"Only a crazy person would have turned down Chavez's deal with oil at $70 a barrel," said Miguel Ceara-Hatton, a U.N. economist in the Dominican capital of Santo Domingo. "This won't change relations with the United States."
Still, the Petrocaribe agreement left Caribbean countries indebted to Venezuela. Nine countries - Antigua, Belize, Grenada, Guyana, Dominica, Suriname, St. Kitts, St. Vincent and the Dominican Republic - signed deals under the initiative in Jamaica. Cuba and Jamaica had previously signed.
............."Chavez has been generous," said Larry Birns, an director of the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. "And in certain respects, he'll expect dividends."***
''That's why we propose to this assembly that the United Nations leave this country, which is not respectful of the very resolutions of this assembly,'' he said.
He said Bush's economic policies that pushed free trade and market openness were ``an infinite tragedy.''
When a diplomat handed him a note telling him he had gone over the allotted time, Chávez tossed it away, saying that if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, he could too. He spoke for 22 minutes. ...***
The report does not link Chávez personally to the training in explosives, weapons and urban guerrilla tactics. But it notes that part of the training took place in two Caracas military bases, one used by the army reserves and another that houses the Defense Ministry.
And in a concluding section, it says that backers of the Venezuelan president, ``with covert support from the government of Hugo Chávez . . . have strengthened incipient subversive movements.''
The Herald repeatedly sought the reaction of Venezuelan Vice President José Vicente Rangel, who most often speaks for the government, and Gen. Julio Quintero Viloria, commander of the reserves. Neither responded.
However, after the Ecuadorean newspaper El Comercio broke the story earlier this month, the Venezuelan Embassy here issued a statement denying the story and saying Chávez ''is against all groups or organizations that support the use of violence.'' The president himself later dismissed the newspaper's story as part of a U.S. government propaganda campaign against him.
If the allegations are proved to be true, however, they would bolster a rash of recent U.S. complaints that Chávez's self-proclaimed socialist and revolutionary government has become a destabilizing factor around Latin America. .......................***
The populist government is reorganizing the country's colossal oil industry, taking a bigger share from private multinationals. Planners are reorganizing the banking system, placing stringent restrictions on lending while creating state banks. Venezuela is also developing a state-to-state barter system to trade items as varied as cattle, oil and cement as far away as Argentina and as near as Cuba, its closest ally.
"It's impossible for capitalism to achieve our goals, nor is it possible to search for an intermediate way," Mr. Chávez said a few months ago, laying out his plans. "I invite all Venezuelans to march together on the path of socialism of the new century."
According to many mainstream economists, the change is simply a mix of plans taken from the protectionist policies of the 1960's and others adopted from Cuba and countries of the former Soviet bloc. It may not be communism - as detractors contend it is - but it mixes socialism with capitalism and what some call improvisation.
Many of the president's grandest plans are put into practice at the year-old Ministry for the Popular Economy. Planners there have already created 6,840 cooperatives that employ 210,000 people nationwide, many producing for the state………….***
Chavez said he would take the message that Washington's "capitalist, imperialist model" was responsible for exploiting developing economies and ruining the global environment to this week's summit in Argentina, also to be attended by U.S. President George W. Bush.
"We don't need American imperialism to live," Chavez said at a ceremony announcing Venezuela's plan to launch a telecommunications satellite with the help of China.
Chavez accused the U.S. of breaking a contract to supply parts for Venezuela's fleet of 21 F-16 fighters and pressuring other countries from helping to maintain them. Israeli media reported last month that Israel canceled a lucrative deal to upgrade the warplanes under American pressure.
"We can do whatever we want with the planes. Maybe we'll send 10 to Cuba, or maybe to China so that they can see the technology. I say with whatever country that can use them," said Chavez, a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Venezuela originally purchased its fleet of F-16s in 1983 for US$615 million. Until Chile acquired a fleet in 2003, Venezuela was the only Latin American country to possess the warplanes made by Lockheed Martin.
Chavez said he would remind leaders from other Latin American and Caribbean countries at the summit in Mar del Plata of other threats posed by the U.S.
"In Mar del Plata, I will say that Venezuela is free," Chavez said. "The capitalist, imperialist model threatens to destroy life on this planet ... it destroys waters, rivers, lakes, seas, contaminates the environment. It's a system that generates misery, poverty, death."
He also criticized U.S.-backed free-trade policies that he said make poor nations poorer while keeping them trapped in cycle of crippling debt payments.
"They make us slaves," said Chavez, pledging to oppose the U.S. plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas and saying it would be "buried" at the summit.
Chavez, who says he is leading a socialist "revolution," has used Venezuela's oil wealth to push for regional solidarity, offering fuel with preferential financing to various Caribbean and Latin American countries. ........***
As a result, Bush may find it hard to win many debate points if he focuses on resuscitating the same free-trade-area (FTA) project first adopted a decade ago as a goal for the region. "There's a reaction in Latin America to liberal economic policies and to anything associated with what many people consider a failed experiment," says Mr. Tinker Salas. "For Bush to propose the same FTA all over again will only revive those old issues and convince people he is out of touch with the reality people have experienced."
What Bush has going for him is that the region's new leaders, though willing to accept help and favors from an oil-rich Chávez, have not rushed to return to the failed models of state-run economies and inflationary spending that prevailed during long decades of dictatorship. Nor do they want to shut the door on the United States.
Take Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. A longtime labor leader, he was expected to turn to heavy government intervention but instead has relied on trade and fiscal discipline to boost the economy and create jobs. He will greet Bush in Brazil after the Americas summit.
"Leaders of the new Latin left have to speak a different rhetoric to very dissatisfied populations, but at the same time they are not straying too far outside the prevailing economic box," says Oscar Raúl Cardoso, a foreign affairs analyst here. "They have to maintain a different kind of bond with the people, but that doesn't mean they are going very far in Chávez's populist direction."
'A hen who lays golden eggs'
But Chávez is popular in some countries, such as Argentina, and leaders cannot disregard that, Mr. Cardoso notes. In Argentina, for example, Chávez has rescued a number of state-owned factories slated to close, and has breathed life into Argentine shipbuilding - and saved thousands of jobs - by ordering several ships.
"Chávez is having a good moment because he has a hen who lays golden eggs," says Venezuela's Pino. "It's hard to resist that kind of friend."
Latin leaders are not averse to using Chávez as a kind of smoke screen to hide behind. "They are happy to let Chávez do the dirty work they may believe in but don't want to do," says Cardoso. Many governments, he says, oppose a hemispheric free-trade area as envisioned by the US, "but instead of saying so they will point to Chávez and say there is no consensus."
In the end, Chávez may win the rhetorical battle but not many, if any, converts, experts say. "I don't see [the region making] any historic choice between Chávez and the US," says Pino. "But ... governments know they have to act to fill some big holes in the system. That can sound like they are moving in Chávez's direction." ***
Venezuela supplies the US with about 13 percent of its imported oil, and Chávez delights in publicly tweaking the US by suggesting that he could sell that elsewhere, for example to China. Another recent taunt is that if the US withholds parts for Venezuela's F-16 fighter planes, Chávez will give the aircraft to Cuba or China.
Chávez's muddle-headed concept of socialism for Latin America is often confusing. He says it is "to transcend the capitalist model," and that it is not communism, at least not "at the moment," but is the alternative to communism, building a "social, humanist, egalitarian economy." Often his philosophy sounds less like a vision for the future than a rant against what he decries as American "imperialism." He has also paid a state visit to Iran, praising the leadership of its mullahs.
Two potential negatives loom for Chávez. One is his dependence on oil, and his current reckless spending of oil revenues based on the resource's current high prices. If the bubble should burst, he would be hard put to continue expanding social services at home and financing revolution throughout Latin America.
The other problem is the inevitable departure from the scene of his comrade-in-arms, Fidel Castro. Castro is 78 years old, and one or two recent lapses suggest that he is in failing health. The likelihood of Cuba's continuing along the path of communism after Castro seems slim. Communism in Cuba is already discredited with the masses and is held nominally in place by Castro's reign of oppression. Cuba's people are the prisoners of a regime that offers them neither political freedom nor a free market economy. ....***
Chávez blasts Fox
CARACAS - (AP) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called his Mexican counterpart a ''puppy of the empire'' for supporting a Washington-backed free-trade zone at the Summit of the Americas.
Mexico reacted by calling in the Venezuelan ambassador, Vladimir Villegas Poljak, to explain Chávez's remarks.
''How sad that the president of a great country like Mexico allowed himself to be the puppy of the empire,'' Chávez said Wednesday evening in his first public speech since returning from the 34-nation summit in Argentina.
The barb comes after Mexican President Vicente Fox, apparently irked by Chávez's strident calls against the trade pact, said in comments to news media after the summit, ``there we have some presidents, fortunately a minority, who blame other countries for all their problems.''
Fox, a staunch supporter of the trade zone, also criticized Argentine President Néstor Kirchner, for failing to support the pact.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13127649.htm
Rodriguez, the Venezuelan foreign minister, said Monday that his government in recent days had "waited patiently for some kind of positive explanation from President Fox" about his public criticism of Chavez. When no explanation was forthcoming, Rodriguez said, "the necessary step was taken."
Chavez last week called Fox a U.S. "lapdog" working in favor of Washington's "imperialism."
The Caracas daily Tal Cual, a frequent critic of the Venezuelan leader, published a cover illustration Monday of Chavez drawing a pair of six-shooters. "Looking for a Fight," the headline said.
"This wouldn't have happened if Fox had been more diplomatic and hadn't said what he thought," said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, a leading analyst of Mexican foreign policy in Mexico City. "Fox threw a stone and Chavez replied with a brick," Fernandez said. "Chavez is thrilled. The more the problem escalates, the happier he is." .....***
The 250-page Peripheral Warfare and Revolutionary Islam was written by Spanish politician and academic Jorge Verstrynge and is being distributed on the personal orders of Army Chief Gen. Raúl Baduel, a long-time supporter of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.
Baduel's office said he's not available for an interview until January. Armed Forces Inspector General Gen. Melvin López Hidalgo said he was unaware of the book but argued that its publication by the army should not be taken as ''tacit support for the opinions it contains.'' It's simply an example of ''freedom of expression,'' he added.
The book focuses on asymmetrical warfare, a term for ''David and Goliath'' conflicts between adversaries of vastly different capacities, such as the war between U.S. forces and Iraqi insurgents.
Verstrynge was a keynote speaker at a recent military conference in Caracas on asymmetrical warfare, which has been adopted by the Venezuelan military as a key defensive concept, based on a possible attack by U.S. forces to seize Venezuela's oil wealth or topple Chávez.
''For us, it would have to be a war of resistance,'' said Baduel in a speech last month.
Chávez, an anti-American populist who has vowed to build a revolutionary ''21st Century socialism'' in Venezuela, has repeatedly alleged that Washington plans to assassinate him and invade his country -- allegations strongly denied by the Bush administration.
Verstrynge, born in Morocco to Belgian and Spanish parents, was a leading member of Spain's right-wing Popular Party before switching to the ruling Socialists. A political-science professor at Madrid's Complutense University, he has authored a number of other books.
'It is unfair to attack `revolutionary Islam' '' and not ''U.S. religious extremism,'' he wrote, adding that Washington has plans to ''re-colonize'' the world that he called ``a danger never equaled in history.''................***
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