Allegations by a top U.S. military chief that Margarita is a base for radical Islamic groups posing a potential terrorist threat have angered both the 12,000-strong Arab community and the government of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez. "We have nothing to do with terrorism here. Pure business, that's what we do," Naim Awada, who emigrated from Lebanon 20 years ago, told Reuters in his clothing store in Porlamar. All around him, shop names like Nabil Import, El Laden Mustafa and Flower of Palestine attest to the strong Arab presence on Margarita, an island of tourist hotels, arid hills and abundant beaches off Venezuela's eastern Caribbean coast.
Arab community leaders and Venezuela's government say the allegations by the Pentagon's top soldier for Latin America, Gen. James Hill, are really part of a wider campaign by foes of Chavez to try to discredit the populist president abroad. They say Chavez' opponents, who have failed to topple him over the last year despite a short-lived coup and a crippling two-month anti-government strike, are seeking to paint him as a dangerous anti-U.S. maverick collaborating with terrorism. The debate is more than just academic for Washington because Chavez, a former paratrooper and coup plotter elected in 1998, rules over the world's No. 5 oil exporter that is also one of the top suppliers of crude oil to the United States.***
By Venezuelan standards, the protest Friday was small, but Castro's imprints on Venezuela continue to loom large. Clearly, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez prefers a Marxist dictatorship cloaked in a constitution that puts him in control of the economy, the courts, the news media and the legislative branch. "We voted for change, but we didn't vote for a revolution," Juan Fernandez told me recently. Fernandez was a key player in the nation's petroleum industry until Chavez fired him to put a political hack in charge. Fernandez's firing, and that of others, led to the failed coup against Chavez a year ago.
About 200 Venezuelans living in the Orlando area came out to hear Fernandez speak earlier this month about his blueprint for peaceful change. He is among those Venezuelans who are leading the charge for new, democratic elections, just recently meeting with Bush administration officials in Washington. But because Fernandez was among those who participated in the national strike against Chavez's government late last year, he's now a wanted man in Venezuela. Fernandez is among several prominent Venezuelans in the growing opposition movement whom Chavez wants to send to prison. His case remains pending. Fernandez's "crime" was simply to offer an opposing point of view. No guns, no secret plots, but a very public national strike seeking new presidential elections.
Since the strike ended, Chavez has moved aggressively to squeeze out businesses, big and small. Chavez has made it illegal, for instance, for Venezuelan businesses to pay in U.S. dollars for goods imported into the country or to get paid in dollars for exports even as the country's currency plunges downward. Venezuela watchers note that of the $1.3 billion that Venezuelans have sought in U.S. currency, the Chavez regime has released only about $30,000, mostly to cover living expenses for students studying abroad.
Chavez has used the failed strike as a pretext to clamp down -- not unlike Castro's move to nationalize foreign enterprises, seize all U.S. dollars and quash any dissent on the island in the early 1960s. Castro argued then that the revolution was under attack from Uncle Sam. Chavez, too, has tried to make that argument, even though polls continue to show that most Venezuelans want new presidential elections.***