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]
"The government doesn't want the truth to come out, that's why ruling party lawmakers are stalling on the approval the proposed law," said Ramon Medina, a member of the First Justice opposition party. Tarek Saab, a pro-Chavez lawmaker, denied the ruling party is dragging its feet or standing in the way of an investigation.***
In addition, Chavez said, an American was involved in what he characterized as an assassination plot against him uncovered in Costa Rica four months ago. He said the details of the plan revealed at the time essentially predicted what transpired April 11, when a protest march on the presidential palace turned violent and led to his arrest by senior military officers.
"I am being objective about this. I can't be launching accusations, and I want to believe that a government that has stood so strongly behind democracy is not involved in this tyrannical, macabre coup," Chavez said during a one-hour interview at the presidential palace. "It is very important to clarify these matters as soon as possible."
...As evidence, the president talked for the first time about an alleged plan to assassinate him. Chavez said he was vacationing with his family in Barinas province in western Venezuela when he received a phone call from his foreign minister, Luis Alfonso Davila, on Jan. 1 telling him to return to Caracas immediately. When he arrived, Chavez said, Davila told him that a man from a Central American country had appeared at the Venezuelan Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica. Chavez said the man told Venezuelan officials that he was a mercenary who had been training with perhaps a dozen other men in a Central American country for a mission scheduled for this year. The men had gathered in San Jose to await an American member of the team, who over drinks on New Year's Eve said, "Chavez is done. He doesn't know what's coming."
Chavez refused to provide further details of the alleged assassination plot, including what country the informant was from or where he is now. He said he did not know whether the American was a government official or a private mercenary.***
Dodd has wisecracked that Reich, in charge of Western Hemisphere affairs, lacked "adult supervision" in handling the coup while Secretary of State Colin Powell was in the Middle East. In fact, Chavez's government holds the U.S. blameless, recognizing that Reich neither encouraged nor condoned the Venezuelan president's temporary removal.
Why, then, are Dodd and his allies in Congress elevating Chavez, who as an army officer once bungled a left-wing coup himself, as a symbol of Latin American democracy? Dodd, who appears to be gearing up for an investigation of Reich's performance and is reported to be contemplating a trip to Venezuela, never seemed exercised about Chavez trampling democratic practices in trying to model himself after Fidel Castro. Nor do Reich's critics mention that Chavez's brief fall from power came after his troops opened fire on unarmed demonstrators.***
…………. Opposition lawmakers are trying to demonstrate that Chavez ordered his security forces to fire on peaceful protesters. They are also probing the alleged participation in the shootings, of the so-called Bolivarian Circles - neighborhood groups promoted by Chavez but accused by his opponents of acting as pro-government vigilante squads. Chavez, a former army paratrooper who spent time in jail for taking part in a 1992 coup, is the first Venezuelan president from the country's poor, dark-skinned majority. "The poor majority feels for the first time that there is a project that takes them into account," said Tarek William Saab, a pro-Chavez lawmaker.
…………. Many members of the middle and upper classes now staunchly oppose the government, believing Chavez - a close friend of Cuban President Fidel Castro - is a closet socialist. Critics say Chavez has accumulated tremendous personal power through his party's majority in Congress and by stocking the judiciary and other state institutions with allies. Mirna Perez, a lawyer who demonstrated against Chavez last week, said she voted for him in 1998 and now regrets it. "He's been the worst thing possible for Venezuelan democracy," she said.***
Further to the south in Latin America, Hezbollah and the terrorist Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) are operating in the tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. The suspected activities of these groups include counterfeiting U.S. currency and drug smuggling, with the area in which they function described as a "haven for Islamic extremists" by the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Asa Hutchinson, in testimony before the House International Relations Committee. "The situation in the tri-border area [of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil] highlights the ease with which terrorist organizations can infiltrate and assimilate in other countries and go relatively undetected for an extended period of time," Hutchinson stated.
The linkage among various terrorist groups and nations associated with support of terrorism in Latin America combines considerable financial resources and technological expertise. In addition to the vast oil wealth of Iran, the South American terrorist network can rely upon South American drug money to finance its activities. Colombia alone produces 90 percent of the cocaine and "at least" 70 percent of the heroin sold in the U.S., according to estimates of the House International Relations Committee.***
Prosecutors were seeking charges of conspiracy to commit murder against the supporters and members of the leftist rebel group that has kidnapped hundreds and stepped up violence in Colombia since peace talks with the government there broke down, officials said. Ashcroft has said previously that members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, have killed 13 Americans since 1980 and kidnapped more than a hundred others, including three U.S. missionaries in 1993 who are believed to have been killed.
The indictments were being sought in Washington, the officials said. FARC frequently has been implicated in cocaine drug running that affects the United States, U.S. officials have said. The rebel group is estimated to have 17,000 members and is one of three main rebel groups involved in Colombia's long strife. Last month, Ashcroft announced the indictment on cocaine charges of three FARC members who conspired to deliver plane loads of cocaine into the United States from 1994 until February 2001.
The three included Tomas Molina Caracas, whom the government said commands FARC's 16th Front, which operates in eastern Colombia and controlled a key airstrip near Barranco Minas essential for carrying processed cocaine out of the rural region. Caracas is known in the region as ``El Negro Acacio.'' The others were identified as FARC members were Carlos Bolas and a man known to the government only as ``Oscar El Negro.'' [End]
Some analysts said this unorthodox command change, in which a lower ranking officer replaced a general, revealed the extent to which the coup had split the military, leaving a legacy of suspicion and mistrust. "There is definitely a purge in progress and what we have is a very precarious situation," said Alberto Garrido, an analyst and author of several books about Chavez, who staged a botched coup in 1992 six years before winning elections. "Putting a colonel in place of a general shows there is a lack of trusted figures among the generals," he told Reuters.***
…. "There is an advance in the sense that this issue is now on the agenda in Central America," says Miguel Angel Sandoval, a Guatemalan political analyst, who is part of the signature-collecting campaign. "People are saying that this can't go on. We are heading in the right direction."***
______________________________________________
"We fight against poverty because hope is an answer to terror. We fight against poverty because opportunity is a fundamental right to human dignity. We fight against poverty because faith requires it and conscience demands it. And we fight against poverty with a growing conviction that major progress is within our reach." President George W. Bush, March 22, 2002.
The plan is wickedly simple. Organize a massive march to the Washington, D.C. headquarters of Omnicom, the behemoth conglomerate that generates most of the country's riches, ostensibly to show support for their valiant struggle against the meddlesome, regulation-crazy Doe. Then, suddenly, turn the march around and head to the White House, which, your military co-conspirators tell you, will be left unguarded, to demand that Doe resign, or else ... ***
One month after Chavez was removed from office and then quickly restored, dissent is rebuilding in this South American nation of 24 million people - but it is leaderless and disoriented. Most Venezuelans look upon the opposition parties with disdain, considering them corrupt and incapable of proposing a viable alternative to Chavez's self-described leftist "revolution." In desperation, the parties have pledged a unified strategy for toppling Chavez: convoke a national referendum to push him out.***
Even if unsuccessful, sources said, the second attempt to topple Chavez likely will be violent and will affect at least a half-dozen major garrisons simultaneously, demonstrating that the president does not control the deeply divided military.
If the reports are accurate, fighting likely would erupt between military units in different garrisons, and the resulting bloodshed could push Venezuela to the edge of a civil war, especially if the Chavez regime calls on the civilian Bolivarian Circles for its defense.***
"It is possible that it will be re-established in the coming months," Portal told a news conference. Under an October 2000 agreement between Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro Venezuela was supplying the oil to Cuba on special terms, allowing it 15 years to pay and charging 2 percent a year interest on amassed debt.
Venezuela signed similar agreements with other countries in Central America and the Caribbean. During the two days when Chavez briefly lost control, Venezuelan oil company officials announced a series of changes that included an end of oil shipments to Cuba. [End]
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