Hands Off Venezuela

Chavez made these comments during his weekly television program today, which Jackson briefly attended to speak to Chavez and the audience. Jackson is on a three-day visit to Venezuela, during which he will meet with local religious leaders, Afro-Venezuelan groups, the president of the state oil company PDVSA, President Hugo Chavez, and visit poor-neighborhoods to see Venezuela's social programs at work.

Chavez had first mentioned the plan to supply discounted oil to poor communities in the U.S. last week, while in Cuba, but did not provide any details beyond that. Today he specified that it was heating oil that the Venezuelan government was looking into because this seemed the most feasible and most necessary approach. Given the high price of oil this year, heating oil is expected to reach very high levels this winter, which will be unaffordable for many poor families in the U.S.

“There is a lot of poverty in the U.S. and don’t believe that everything reflects the . Many people die of cold in the winter. Many die of heat in the summer,” said Chavez in explaining why Venezuela was interested in providing discounted heating oil to the U.S. poor. “We could have an impact on seven to eight million persons,” he added.

Chavez said that he was interested in talking to Jackson about this plan, so that his organization and other U.S.-based groups might help with it. Chavez mentioned the groups TransAfrica Forum, Global Exchange, and Global Women’s Strike that could also help implement the plan.

Part of the plan was for the U.S.-based and Venezuelan state-owned oil company Citgo to provide heating oil directly to poor households. Chavez said this would not present a loss to Venezuela because the idea would be to offer the oil at a lower rate because intermediaries would not be involved. Up to 30% to 40% of the cost could be saved said Chavez. Citgo licenses 14,000 gas station franchises and 8 refineries in the U.S.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez, had told Chavez that the embassy has already received over 140 requests about the plan, even though it has not been formally announced yet.

Free Eye Operations

Chavez spent a large part of his Sunday talk show discussing new healthcare plans for Venezuela. Part of this discussion also involved the provision of free eye operations to people in all of the American continents, north and south. The operations Cuba would provide the bulk of the operations, with Venezuela providing the transportation.

Chavez said that of the six million operations that Cuba and Venezuela would want to organize over the next ten years, there would be slots for 150,000 U.S.-Americans per year. Each country will receive a quota. Chavez gave some examples, explaining that there would be 100,000 for Brazilians, 60,000 for Colombians, 12,000 for Panamanians, 30,000 for Ecuadorians, 20,000 for Bolivians, and 20,000 for inhabitants of the Caribbean. Chavez said that those interested in the eye operations should turn to the Venezuelan embassies in their respective countries.

Speaking shortly after a press conference held by President Chavez and U.S. Reverend Jesse Jackson, Ramirez said that CITGO Petroleum Corp., the wholly owned subsidiary of PDVSA, is currently refining up to 664.000 barrels of oil through the refineries it owns and operates in the United States.

Venezuela is the world's fifth largest oil exporter and the fourth largest supplier of oil to the United States. Venezuelan oil accounted for 12% of U.S. oil imports.

Ramirez said that under the Venezuelan government plan, CITGO will set aside up to 10% of its refined oil products to be sold directly to organized poor communities, and institutions in the U.S. without intermediaries.

The plan calls for the sale of heating oil and gasoline to hospitals, nursing homes, schools and organized poor communities in U.S. soil, according to Ramirez.

Other Venezuelan government officials, who asked not to be named, said that Venezuela will not lose any money with this program because the idea is to "cut the middle-man", the intermediaries.

Ramirez said the beneficiaries will see a price reduction of about 30%.

Ramirez, who is also Venezuela's Minister of Oil and Energy, denied that Reverend Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition would be the recipient of the cheaper oil.

The Minister said Reverend Jackson's organization could help Venezuela identify those who are in need, but that they will not be the recipients of the products.

Ramirez was confident the program will be implemented before the U.S. winter begins.

CITGO Petroleum Corp. owns and operates eight refineries in the United States.

It is unclear how the CITGO gas will reach the consumers, as CITGO does not own any of the 14.000 CITGO-branded gas stations operating in U.S. territory through franchising.

"Impact on seven to eight million persons"

“There is a lot of poverty in the U.S. and I don’t believe that reflects the American Way of Life. Many people die of cold in the winter. Many die of heat in the summer,” said Chavez on Sunday during his weekly TV show, explaining why Venezuela was interested in providing discounted heating oil to the U.S. poor.

“We could have an impact on seven to eight million persons,” Chavez added.

Venezuela’s ambassador to the U.S. Bernardo Alvarez, had told Chavez that the embassy in Washington DC has already received over 140 requests about the plan, even though it has not been formally announced yet.

Venezuela also plans to provide free surgery for certain eye conditions for U.S. poor.

David Raby wrote a review on Alan Woods' book The Venezuelan Revolution: a Marxist Perspective for Hands Off Venezuela. David Raby is an Honourary Research Fellow at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Liverpool.

Order the book from Wellred Publications at a discount price of £5.99

Although many Marxists and progressive activists in general are still reluctant to recognise it, a real social revolution is under way in Venezuela, and this places the country at the centre of the international political struggle between capitalist globalisation (or imperialism, as it used to be called) and popular movements throughout the world. Moreover the unquestioned leader of Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution”, President Hugo Chávez, is already (and deservedly) an international figure of comparable stature to Fidel Castro or Che Guevara.

The great virtue of this book, and of Alan Woods as a leader of the Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, is to have recognised this fact at an early stage and to have acted accordingly by promoting the Hands Off Venezuela (HOV) campaign. Like this reviewer, but unlike legions of sectarian dogmatists and wishful idealists, Woods understood that revolutions do not develop according to a preconceived formula, and that the people (or the working class) cannot sit around for ever waiting for a perfect Marxist-Leninist party to appear, any more than they can make revolution as a spontaneous and unorganised mass (as some dreamers in the international anti-globalisation movement seem to believe). From my perspective Woods is still hampered by a somewhat doctrinaire view of the revolutionary party and the nature of revolution and socialism in our times, but any deficiencies in this respect are more than compensated for by his understanding of and support for the Venezuelan revolution.

In Venezuela, at least since the time of Chávez’ first election in December 1998, and more especially since the failed coup of April 2002, the masses have burst on to the scene and become leading protagonists of the political process. Indeed, as argued by retired General Jacinto Pérez Arcay, in a sense the people took to the streets during the Caracazo riots of 27 February-5 March 1989 (against an IMF deflationary package imposed by the social-democratic President Carlos Andrés Pérez), and have never looked back (Rosa Miriam Elizalde & Luis Báez, Chávez Nuestro, Havana 2004, p. 84). But the people involved in this spontaneous and directionless popular revolt (brutally put down on orders from Pérez with hundreds, indeed possibly thousands, of dead) found the leadership they lacked with the unsuccessful military-civilian uprising led by Lt-Col. Hugo Chávez on 4 February 1992. In the absence of an effective revolutionary party, it was Chávez and his Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement (MBR-200) who became in effect the vanguard of a popular revolutionary process which is still continuing, and the crucial point is that this vanguard role is recognised and accepted by the masses. It is no use lamenting that this is not the type of vanguard party conceived by Marx, Lenin or Trotsky; as Woods points out, what many self-proclaimed Marxists have failed to understand is ‘the dialectical relation between Chávez and the masses’. They mumble about ‘populism’, but ‘show their complete inability to connect with the real movement of the masses’ (p. 69).

It is this same blindness to the real dynamics of popular movements which leads many sectarians to condemn participation in the Bolivarian Movement and call for building a revolutionary party outside it; as Woods comments ironically, ‘So three men and a dog (or a drunken parrot) gather in a café in Caracas and proclaim the Revolutionary Party’ (p. 83). This is precisely what many dogmatists in Venezuela were doing for years before the Bolivarian movement developed, and some of them like Bandera Roja (Red Flag) have ended up as counter-revolutionary provocateurs, which is the logical conclusion of such arrogance.

Woods and the Revolutionary Marxist Tendency are taken seriously in Venezuela, including by President Chávez himself, precisely because they have shown an understanding of the real situation in the country and of the practical leadership provided by Chávez and the Bolivarian Movement. Woods also correctly stresses throughout the need for the revolution to be further radicalised and to take more decisive measures against the bourgeois oligarchy and imperialism. But where I part company with Woods is in his assessment of Chávez as a representative of ‘petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy’ who, while being supported in his progressive actions, must be pushed to the left by building ‘an independent revolutionary proletarian current’ (p. 93). This in my view is to underestimate the political capacity of Chávez and his intimate bond with the popular classes; it is this bond which is the real motive force of the Venezuelan revolution and which is driving it forward to take ever more radical actions. Just as with Fidel Castro and the 26^th July Movement in Cuba in 1959-61, so in Venezuela it is Chávez and the Bolivarian Movement who are leading the process forward together with the people. It was after all Chávez who surprised everyone in December 2004 by declaring, in his closing speech at the World Congress of Intellectuals and Artists in Defence of Humanity, that ‘we have to reclaim the legacy of socialism’ and ‘find the way forward to build the socialism of the twenty-first century’. Since then he has repeatedly returned to the theme of socialism, while taking measures such as the expropriation of the Venepal and National Valve factories and their conversion to a combination of state management and workers’ control, the acceleration of the agrarian reform and the signing of the ALBA agreement with Cuba which strengthens ties between the public sectors of the two economies. Of course popular pressure was also involved in these decisions - Chávez cannot do things alone - but this popular pressure takes place primarily within and through the Bolivarian Movement, which is as Chávez has explained nothing else than the organised expression of the social movements themselves: the Circles, the Urban Land Committees, the Local Public Planning Committees, the UBEs (Units of Electoral Battle, now converted into Units of Endogenous Battle, i.e. grass-roots committees for the promotion of self-sufficient development). The people in the barrios have made it abundantly clear that they believe in Chávez and the MBR-200, but not in political parties of any kind. In Cuba, the old Communist Party and the Directorio Revolucionario ended up uniting with the 26^th July Movement under the leadership of Fidel Castro, and other parties and organisations disappeared or became irrelevant; I predict that something similar will happen in Venezuela. Unlike Cuba, however, Venezuela will not be subject to the geopolitical pressures which led Cuba to adopt the Soviet model of socialism, leading to distortions of the Cuban process.

But these disagreements are part of the ongoing debate in Venezuela and outside about the future path of the first triumphant revolution of the twenty-first century. What is most important about this book is its contribution to the understanding and defence of the Bolivarian Revolution. As Woods himself recognises, ‘The greatest danger for the Venezuelan Marxists is impatience, sectarian and ultraleft moods. The revolutionary Marxist current is at present a minority of the mass movement. We cannot impose our solutions on it...’ (p. 132). And outside Venezuela, while being analytical and critical, our main duty is to build solidarity with the process through HOV and other organisations.

"We are going to hit a Cuban airplane," said Luis Posada in Caracas, Venezuela, according to a recently declassified CIA document. On October 6 1976, just days later, Cubana Airline flight 455 exploded off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 passengers.

Posada, who is 77 and has dual Venezuelan and Cuban citizenship, was arrested in Miami on May 17 for illegal entry into the US. He is claiming asylum and, so far, the Bush administration has refused to extradite him to Venezuela, where he is wanted for the terrorist bombing.

Until 1974, the ex-CIA agent, who specialised in explosives at Fort Benning, Georgia (later home to the infamous School of the Americas), was head of the Venezuelan political police — DISIP — from where he, reportedly, oversaw the assassination of prominent leftists.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has threatened to sever diplomatic links if Posada is not turned over, which the US is obliged to do under bilateral treaties. He has accused the US of harbouring a known international terrorist, making a mockery of its “war on terror.”

“We demand that the US government stop its hypocrisy and its two-faced attitude and send this terrorist, this bandit, to Venezuela,” Chavez insisted last month. “The world is watching.”

This case has become a major headache for George Bush, who is loth to give up such a loyal veteran of the right-wing cause.

Posada is hailed as a hero among Miami’s rich, Castro-hating Cuban exiles, who form a key component of his base of support, as well as that of Bush’s brother Jeb, the governor of Florida.

A policeman in the Batista dictatorship, Posada also participated in the Bay of Pigs invasion as part of “Operation 40.” Their mission was simply to assassinate Castro.

He also freelanced for the Las Vegas mafia, at one point, supplying mob boss Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal with detonators and fuses for car-bombs, according to the FBI.

Two Argentinian founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a movement which supports parents of missing or tortured people in south America, are also demanding Posada’s extradition. They accuse him of involvement in Operation Condor, the US military plan which co-ordinated the bloodthirsty dictatorships of the 1970s in the region.

After bribing his way out of Venezuelan jail in 1985, he worked for Oliver North, directing terror against the people of Nicaragua, supplying the US-backed Contras with weapons in an illegal war against the Sandinista government.

The main focus throughout his life, however, seems to be an obsession with overthrowing Fidel Castro.

Posada masterminded a string of bombings in Havana during an international youth and student festival in 1997, resulting in the death of an Italian tourist at the Copacabana hotel.

“We didn’t want to hurt anybody,” he claimed in an interview with the New York Times the following year. “We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come any more.”

“I sleep like a baby,” he famously boasted, showing little remorse for the misery he caused. “That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

In 2000, he was caught red-handed in Panama, preparing to assassinate Castro by blowing up a packed auditorium of over 3,000 students with 33 pounds of C-4 explosives. Although found guilty, he was pardoned in 2004 by outgoing President Mireya Moscoso, who promptly moved to Miami.

Reports that he was back in the US began surfacing earlier this year, but the government denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. However, after Posada held a press conference in Miami, this illusion was impossible to sustain and it was forced to act.

Appearing in an El Paso, Texas, courtroom last Monday, dressed in a red prison suit and bullet-proof vest, Posada renewed his request for asylum. His lawyer argued that his green card is still valid and requested that the case be moved to Miami.

The judge set an August 29 trial date and will decide next Friday whether to grant the self-confessed terrorist bail. The immigration trial is seen by Venezuela as a stalling tactic to obstruct the far more serious issue of extradition.

“The US government should not believe that, because it is delaying the process, the people are going to give in,” said Nicolas Maduro, president of the Venezuelan parliament. This week, Maduro announced that a parliamentary delegation had been sent to Washington to demand Posada’s extradition.

That message was echoed by protesters around the world, with millions taking to the streets in Cuba and Venezuela. Outside the El Paso courtroom on Monday and in 13 other cities across the US, demonstrations were held by anti-war coalition ANSWER.

On the same day, solidarity activists from Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia campaigns picketed the US embassy in London. Protests have also been held in Mexico, Spain, Portugal and the Philippines.

The problem for Bush is that, if he backs down, it will be seen as a major propaganda victory for Chavez and Castro, whom he views as deadly enemies. Both are left-wing charismatic leaders who give their people hope instead of fear and invest their nations’ resources in health care and education rather than weapons and the stock-market.

The US backed a failed coup against Chavez in 2002 and it has consistently labeled him a “negative force.” As well as providing an energy lifeline to Cuba by bartering oil for doctors, he has successfully torpedoed the neoliberal FTAA agreement, promoting his own “Bolivarian” alternative based on co-operation not competition between countries. The US imports 15 per cent of its oil from Venezuela.

Luis Posada is an old man who has dedicated his life to terrorising progressive movements in Latin America on behalf of the US. But one of the most dramatic allegations against him centres around some terrorism a little closer to home. Compelling evidence exists suggesting that Posada was part of the team that assassinated John F Kennedy, on whom he blamed the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

“Who, in 1963, had the resources to assassinate Kennedy? Who had the means and who had the motives to kill the US president?” asks Fabian Escalante, former head of Cuban counter-intelligence. “CIA agents from Operation 40 who were rabidly anti-Kennedy.”

Maria Lorenz was briefly Castro’s lover before being recruited by the CIA. In 1985, she testified under oath that, the week before the JFK assassination, she travelled from Miami to Dallas with members of Operation 40 in two cars carrying weapons in the boots.

In a videotaped interview made shortly before he died, Chauncy Holt, a self-confessed CIA asset and mobster, identified Posada as one of the Cuban exiles who were in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination.

Whether he was involved or not, it is clear that Luis Posada is a dangerous, vicious psychopath who should not be able to freely wander the streets no matter who he works for. As Chavez puts it, “The US has no choice, either send him to Venezuela or be seen by the world as protecting terrorism.”

The US corporate elite, who are no fans of Chavez themselves, seem to agree that Posada must be sent to Venezuela or US credibility in the “war on terror” will be completely lost. All major newspapers support the extradition, even the right-wing Miami Herald — aka the “Coup-plotters’ Journal.”

Bush himself put it best when he said bluntly, shortly after September 11, “If you harbour terrorists, you are terrorists.” But will the CIA ever let someone as knowledgeable as Posada spill the beans on all their dirty tricks over these last four decades in Latin America?

The country of Venezuela is a startling paradox of immense suffering and extreme wealth. According to a private Caracas-based polling company, Datanalisis, over 58% of the 25 million people in Venezuela live on less than $253 (Cdn) a month. The level of poverty becomes all the more damning when factoring in that Venezuela is also the world’s fourth largest oil exporter. This glaring contradiction remained unchallenged until the election of Hugo Chavez as Venezuelan President.

In 1998, Hugo Chavez was elected Venezuelan President with an approval of 56%. His electoral success came about because if elected he promised to immediately instigate land reform and to put the countries oil revenues back into public services like education and health care. Since his Presidential victory Chavez has made good on his promises. The government under his leadership has:

a)      built 657 new schools, created four universities, hired 36,000 teachers and given the opportunity for a formal education to three million new people

b)      distributed 5.5 million acres of land to 116,000 families organized in cooperatives

c)      traded oil to Cuba in exchange for 13,000 doctors in an effort to expand health care to 1.2 million more people

These are just some of the many things President Chavez has done in order to combat poverty in Venezuela. Unfortunately for Venezuelans these social programs aimed at giving the 15 million previously neglected people a decent standard of living comes into direct conflict with national and international business interests.

Before the election of Chavez, Venezuela was just another waypoint for the United States to get below market-value oil without having to give anything significant back. According to the Energy Information Administration of the US governmental department, in 1997, approximately 17.4% (1.773 million barrels a day) of all American oil imports came from Venezuela, making it the largest and most reliable oil source for the US in the world. This also accounts for over half of all Venezuelan oil exports.

By Chavez’s second year in power in 2000, Venezuela dropped from being the largest oil exporter to the United States to being their 3rd largest, sending over approximately 400,000 less barrels a day. Chavez, by actually enforcing OPEC quotas through decreasing oil production while maintaining the same level of profitability meant financial benefits for Venezuela at the expense of cheap oil prices. This was not a conscious effort by the Chavez government to undermine the United States but a means for Venezuela to redistribute oil revenue into social spending. In addition to this and putting heavier regulations on the public oil sector, Chavez raised taxation on the private oil sector to an average of 25% from the previous average of

7% as well as giving the state oil company, the PDVSA, a 51% stake in all new private oil developments. Once again, all the extra revenue generated by the Venezuelan State went back into social spending instead of private business subsidies. Under previous US-friendly governments this would have been unheard-of.

The wealth had always been in Venezuela, and now, under a more planned out economy, it was genuinely being used to benefit the whole of Venezuelan society instead of just acting as corporate welfare or private sector investment. All of these accomplishments were done through legal means and without violating the sovereignty of any other countries. Regardless of this, Chavez became the victim of imperialist manoeuvring and domestic sabotage.

It is no secret that in April 2002 a coup was orchestrated by the CIA to be carried out by the Venezuelan business congress and right-wing elements within the Venezuelan military. Chavez was kidnapped and many of his cabinet ministers were put under arrest. The head of the business congress, Pedro Carmona, was named President, the Constitutional Assembly was dissolved and the Supreme Court was virtually fired. The next day, the New York Times and Washington Post ran articles claiming that popular mass anti-government protests forced Chavez from power. No mention of a coup was made.

Meanwhile, private media outlets, which make up 90% of all Venezuelan media, were hailing the coup as a “triumph for democracy” and the “defeat of the dictator”. The majority of the Venezuelan populace had no idea what was going on because the one state-owned television station and all state run radio was ‘mysteriously’ cut. Long story short, within a couple of days the word spread throughout Venezuela and millions marched on the Presidential palace in opposition to the new illegitimate government. At that moment, palace guards sympathetic to Chavez stormed the palace and placed under arrest any members of the new government who had not yet fled. By the end of the day Chavez was returned safely and sworn back in as President.

The political intrigue did not end there. Less than 8 months later a lockout was organized by anti-Chavez high-level government bureaucrats to shut down the national oil company, the PDVSA. The concept was that if the economy was sabotaged Chavez would be forced from power. What the lockout organizers didn’t take into account was just how much the workers supported Chavez -- so much so, that they actually broke the lockout and ran the facilities themselves, without management, to keep the economy alive.

The list goes on.

Later still in August 2004 a national referendum was held on Chavez’s Presidency. The Carter Center, who helped monitor the vote, reported that over 90% of the eligible voting public voted, of which approximately 60% were in favour of keeping Chavez in power. This was yet another example of how the people of Venezuela have never failed to defend Chavez with their mass support whenever he has come under attack, legal or otherwise.

Despite his continual victories over local capitalists and US imperialism, the struggle is far from over for the President and people of Venezuela. The CIA is still, to this day, going on record making completely unfounded claims that Chavez is a threat to stability in South America and that Chavez is “aiding and abiding” terrorists and the drug trade in Columbia. The US state department has even invented a new set of terms just for Chavez by referring to his government as an “elected dictatorship” or an “authoritarian democracy”.

Anyone following the political situation in Venezuela should not be tricked by the unfounded rhetoric of the United States. Interested parties should also be aware that the anti-Chavez forces will not rest until he is defeated by whatever means necessary; the US conducted assassination of the democratically elected leftist President of Chile, Allende, in 1973 is just an example of how far the US has been willing to go in the past to enforce their agenda. It is for this reason as well as others that supporters of the reforms being made in Venezuela must be diligent in helping build international solidarity to support Chavez and the Venezuelan people against foreign intervention and to make any extreme actions on the part of the United States government an impossibility.

The New Democratic Youth of Canada is doing its part by endorsing the “Hands off Venezuela!” campaign, which is organized in almost 50 countries. The campaign is endorsed by Chavez himself and is so far operating in Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Peterborough, Waterloo, Toronto and Montreal. The campaign aims to educate people on the history of Venezuela and the current political situation. Raising awareness on the plight of Venezuela acts as a means to expose the not-so-hidden agenda of the US, the corruption of the Venezuelan oligarchy as well as provides a forum by which to promote the legitimacy of the struggle for participatory democracy in Venezuela.

Against imperialist intervention in Venezuela! For the defence of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela! For the victory of democratic socialism in Latin America!

For the last four weeks, Bolivian workers and peasants have been mobilising demanding the nationalisation of the country's oil and gas reserves. This movement represents the will of the majority of Bolivians to win control over their natural resources. The oil and gas multinationals have been benefiting from the country’s natural resources through illegal contracts for years, while the majority of Bolivians live under the poverty line.

Far from being a “radical minority” as president Mesa said, those who demand nationalisation of gas are the majority, as was shown by the open mass meeting that took place on June 6th in La Paz, with half a million people present, and the continued strength of the general strike, road blockades, mass marches and demonstrations.

We wholeheartedly support the legitimate demands of Bolivian workers and peasants and give support to their movement and organisations and the decisions they take about how to conduct their struggle.

We reject any attempt of the government or sections of parliament to impose a military solution or the use of repression to put an end to the protests. We also reject the attempts of the so-called “Civic Committees” in Santa Cruz and other regions to use paramilitary gangs against the peasant mobilisation.

We reject any foreign intervention. The solution to the problems facing the Bolivian people must be in the hands of the people themselves, without any interference from the Organisation of American States, the United States, etc.

We appeal to the labour and trade union movement worldwide and to all progressive people to show solidarity with the Bolivian workers and peasants in these crucial moments, send solidarity resolutions, pass motions, organise pickets of the embassies and oil multinationals, and in general support our Bolivian brothers and sisters.

Further details from
Bolivia Solidarity Campaign
53 Fladgate Road
London
E11 1LX

Protest Outside the US Embassy (Grosvenor Sq, London) Monday 13th June 4-7pm

BUSH - GIVE UP THE TERRORISTS!

"America has a message for the nations of the world: If you harbor terrorists, you are terrorists. If you train or arm a terrorist, you are a terrorist. If you feed a terrorist or fund a terrorist, you're a terrorist, and you will be held accountable." George W. Bush, 21st November 2001

Cuban-Venezuelan Luis Posada is wanted for blowing up an airliner in 1976, killing 73 people. He was arrested last month in the US, which is refusing to hand him over to Venezuela, where he escaped from jail. His partner in crime, Orlando Bosch, was given a presidential pardon by Bush the Elder and now lives in Miami, where they have named a street after him.

In Colombia this year a total of seven US soldiers (including a colonel) have been arrested for, between them, selling ammunition to right-wing paramilitaries and attempting to smuggle cocaine into the US. Before the Colombian judiciary could blink, they were whisked out of the country to prevent further embarrassment and have not yet been charged with any crime.

Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada used to be President of Bolivia, before he ordered the massacre of peaceful protesters in 2003 and fled to Miami to escape the furious backlash. Bolivians want him tried for crimes against humanity, but that doesn't seem likely while he's protected by the US government, who immediately granted him political asylum.

Notice a pattern?

The problem for Bush is that these cases all reveal the ugly underside of US foreign policy in Latin America. Declassified FBI documents prove Posada was a CIA agent (specialising in explosives) while also freelancing for the Las Vegas mafia. After escaping Venezuelan jail in 1985 he worked for Oliver North supplying arms to the US-backed Contras in their war against the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua. His terrorist career continues in Cuba (where he had been a policeman under the Batista dictatorship) with a string of hotel bombings during an international youth festival in 1997, resulting in several injuries and the death of an Italian tourist. In an interview with the New York Times the following year Posada practically boasted about this terrorism. He was part of the infamous Operation Condor, which co-ordinated right-wing military dicatorships in the region for the US government, and has tried to assassinate Castro at least twice: once in Caracas in 1971 (while head of DISIP, the Venezuelan political police) and again in 2000 in Panama, where he served four years in jail before being pardoned by the outgoing president (who now lives in Florida).

On Monday 13th June, there will be an immigration hearing in El Paso, Texas, to decide Posada's fate. The case has become a major headache for George Bush, as Posada is hailed as a hero amongst the rich right-wing Castro-hating Miami Cubans who form a key component of his (and especially his brother's) base of support. However, refusal to extradite Posada will clearly make a mockery of the whole "War on Terror". Posada is a 77-year-old man who has lead a lifetime of terrorism directed against progressive movements in Latin America. The embarrassing fact that this terror was in line with US foreign policy and supported by the US government doesn't make harbouring him any less hypocritical. Join the international outrage over these double-standards and protest outside the US embassy in London on this day from 4pm to 7pm. Music, food and an open-mic, with speakers from Hands Off Venezuela, Bolivia Solidarity Campaign, Colombia Solidarity Campaign and others. Pass it on!

www.handsoffvenezuela.org
www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk
www.boliviasc.org.uk

Ft. Lauderdale, FL, June 5, 2005—The representative of the host state, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, spoke at the 35th General Assembly of the OAS this Sunday night.

Referring to Secretary General Insulza, Rice said she and US President George W. Bush looked forward to working with Insulza towards making the OAS a “very effective organization for the promotion of democracy and prosperity in our hemisphere.”

Rice cast the US conflict with Venezuela as a divide between “nations that promote democracy, good governance and free trade, and those that do not.  Washington is eager to have good relations with all nations…provided that they agree on those core concepts.”  Her paring of democracy with free-markets provides a particular contrast to Venezuela, given that perhaps the most fundamental conflict between the US and Venezuela is over the neoliberal model.

"The last time the OAS met in the US in 1974," noted Rice, "10 of 23 members were dictators."  "For seven days leaders of non-democratic countries waxed hypocritically on the ideals of 'democracy,'" she said, criticizing the 'old OAS' for being “long on talk and short on action.”

At the time, many of the military dictators Rice referred to were the US government’s closest allies in the region.  The meeting in 1976, when the OAS held its 5th General Assembly in Santiago, Chile, was home of the US-supported Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Rice also reiterated a now common statement, generally understood as a reference to Venezuela, saying, “Governments that are elected democratically, must govern democratically.  And as Secretary-General Insulza has rightly declared: governments that fail to reach this crucial standard must be accountable to the OAS.”  When Insulza made this statement, it was, according to an aide to Secretary Rice, insisted upon word-for-word by Secretary Rice as the condition for US support for Insulza’s leadership bid at the OAS.

"We at the OAS must be impatient, we must replace excessive talk with action,” said Rice.  “We must never accept that democracy is merely an ideal to be admired instead of a purpose to be realized.”

OAS Interventionism

In a press briefing given on the plane to Florida this morning, Secretary Rice did not mince words on what she sees as the necessary teeth the OAS must develop.  Rice responded to a question regarding the adverse reaction of a number of Latin American ambassadors to US proposals to create a mechanism for OAS intervention, saying “let me say again the OAS has intervened in the past…this is not a matter of intervening to punish; it is a matter of intervening to try and sustain the development of democratic institutions across the region.”

For his part, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said “if any member-government of the OAS should be monitored, it’s the government of the United States.”  “A government that supports terrorists, invades countries, that tramples its own people, that is trying to impose a global dictatorship,” said the Venezuelan President, “is the government that should be monitored for human rights violations.”

According to PdVSA president Ramírez, 90% of the transnationals participating in operating agreements, have committed tax evasion, cheating the Venezuelan state out of $3 billion in taxes and $1 billion in royalties. Credit: Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias (ABN

Venezuela’s Minister of Energy and Mines, Rafael Ramírez, appeared before the Venezuelan National Assembly today in order to expose the abuses committed by transnational corporations in Venezuela's oil sector and to inform the Venezuelan people that with the opening of the petroleum industry to foreign companies, during the 1990’s, "a true assault was carried out against Venezuelan petroleum."

Ramírez explained that over the course of the past decade and a half, foreign investment amounted to an assault "coordinated by international institutions of oil consuming nations and the large transnationals, who in complicity of the oligarchy and their political representatives conspired against the Venezuelan state, causing their subsequent economic and social crisis."

Ramírez, who is also the President of Venezuela's state owned petroleum company, PdVSA, offered his testimony before a Special Commission that has been formed to investigate the irregularities detected by the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum in the drawing up and the execution of service agreements.  These service agreements, signed between the former management of PdVSA and transnational oil companies, such as Chevron Texaco, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and Repsol, were signed between 1992 and 1997, the years of years of the so-called "petroleum opening."

Currently transnational oil companies produce about 500,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd) via these service agreements and another 600,000 bpd of extra-heavy oil as part of joint ventures with PdVSA, in the Orinoco Oil Belt. According to the Ministry of Energy and Mines, PdVSA produces the remaining 2 million bpd, for a Venezuelan total of about 3.2 million bpd. However, analysts opposed to the government and its oil policy, contend that PdVSA produces only 1.4 million bpd or 600,000 less than the government claims.

In the course of renegotiating the 32 service agreements, it has come to light that, according to Ramírez, 90% of the transnationals have committed tax evasion, cheating the Venezuelan state out of $3 billion in taxes and $1 billion in royalties. “Some of these companies haven't paid taxes for years,” said Ramirez, adding, “They are mocking our laws. This is an unacceptable situation. We can't permit this.”

“As we will see, this is not about isolated or fortuitous incidents,” Ramírez assured, affirming that on the contrary, “this is a strategy that unfolded since the nationalization of PdVSA in 1976 and is oriented towards taking control over PdVSA for transnational interests.” Ramirez summarized the essence of the "well planned and designed," petroleum opening as a "Trojan Horse." 

In October of last year, the Chavez government announced that transnational oil companies that had service agreements with PdVSA that were signed in the 1990’s, must now be converted into joint ventures, in which foreign companies are limited to a 49% stake in any project, reserving the majority share for PdVSA. Also, in April of this year, the Venezuelan government raised the royalties that companies in the Orinoco Oil Belt must pay, from 1% to 16%. So far all oil companies operating in Venezuela, except for ExxonMobil, have accepted the new terms.

Ramírez asserted that "with the petroleum opening, the transnational capital tried to expropriate the handling and the sovereign use of our main natural resource: petroleum," converting it from a natural resource of the Venezuelan state into a natural resource at the disposal of the consumer countries of the world.

According to the PdVSA president, the collapse of Venezuela’s oil revenue in the 1990’s is attributable to earlier government efforts to sweep away state control over the oil industry.  “They were prepared to turn over our energy resources to transnational capital and to yield it to privatization and those who wanted to impose their version of globalization on Venezuela,” he said.

New attacks

In reference to the recent opposition media’s reporting of supposed problems in the oil industry, Ramírez testified that Venezuela's oil industry is now being attacked by the same people who initiated the economic sabotage of December 2002 to February 2003, which effectively shutdown the oil industry for that time and caused losses of over $14 billion. Ramirez said that the former oil industry managers are resisting the control Venezuela’s government is exerting over its own industry by engaging in a disinformation campaign. 

Ramírez requested that an investigation be carried out in order to determine who is responsible for undermining PdVSA's independence and recommended that the National Assembly adopt a firm and united position with respect to the scandal.

“The game is over with the 32 contracts and now the truth will be made known," said Ramirez. He left the revising of the 32 service agreements and the actions of the transnational companies in the hands of the National Assembly, stating that "this is an affair that the National Assembly must rule on and propose pertinent actions to take."  He also recommended that other state entities such as the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) and Venezuela's tax agency Seniat should be involved in the evaluation. According to Ramirez, half of the 32 service agreements are money losing ventures for Venezuela, where PdVSA pays more to transnationals for oil production than it can recoup from the sales of that oil.

Ramirez also highlighted irregularities in the extra-heavy oil production joint ventures, saying that Sincor, which is a joint venture with France’s Total, has violated its contract repeatedly, exploiting a far larger area than it is supposed to. Currently there are five extra-heavy oil joint ventures, about which Ramirez said, “We have found irregularities in all.” The other four companies involved in the joint ventures are Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron, British Petroleum, and ConocoPhillips.

Ramirez also pointed out that Citgo Corp, the subsidiary of PdVSA operating in the United States, had overpaid taxes in that country, and that PdVSA would work to recuperate these taxes in accordance with the U.S.-Venezuelan Double Taxation Treaty.

If Washington refuses to extradite Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles Venezuela could severe diplomatic ties between the two nations, said Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez yesterday.  “We can't rush things, but if the United States does not extradite [Posada] we will be forced to reconsider our diplomatic ties,” affirmed Chávez during his weekly Sunday television address Aló Presidente.

Last week Caracas invoked a 1922 US-Venezuela extradition treaty to request that the US deport Posada—who has dual Cuban-Venezuelan citizenship—to Venezuela to stand trial for masterminding the 1976 bombing of a civilian Cuban airliner that killed all 73 people on board.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shows the audience documented evidence of Posada's terrorist activities and of the CIA's knowledge during last Sunday's "Alo Presidente."

Although Posada, a former CIA agent, illegally entered the US through the Mexican border in mid-March, US officials repeatedly denied that they were able to verify his whereabouts.  But Posada, a self-described “freedom fighter,” forced Washington's hand last week by holding a press conference outside Miami.  Shortly after Posada affirmed that he would "not denounce violence," he was arrested by US immigration officials.  Facing charges of illegal entry rather than terrorism, Posada is being detained in a federal detention center in El Paso, Texas without bail until his June 13th trial.

“If they don't extradite him in the time allowed in our agreement,” warned Chávez, “we will have to consider whether it's worth having an embassy there, and whether it's worth the United States having an embassy here.”

Until Chávez came to power in 1998, Venezuela and the US had a cozy relationship.  Posada and the CIA cooperated regularly in the oil-rich nation until Posada’s arrest in 1976 for the airplane bombing.  After he escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, Posada surfaced in Central America where he worked with Oliver North’s illegal mission to supply the Contras with weapons in Nicaragua’s US-fueled civil war.

But with Chávez’s election, US-Venezuelan relations have gone from close to hostile. The Venezuelan government has aggressively pursued a path of sovereignty and social justice, fiercely attacking what Chávez describes as the US’ economic and political exploitation of Latin American countries.  For their part, the Bush administration refers to Chávez as a "negative force in the region" and a "democratically elected leader who governs in an illiberal way,”—just a few of the more vaguely-worded, recycled "concerns" about Chávez emitted by US spokespeople on an almost daily basis.

Chávez' statements on Sunday eluded that already poor bilateral relations might very well take a sharp turn for the worse if Washington decides to blatantly and hypocritically ignore its own "war on terror" rhetoric. After emphasizing that "now there is proof that the US protects terrorism because in there territory is one of the greatest terrorists in the history of America and of the world," Chávez put the option of taking the dispute to an international tribunal on the table.

Luis Posada Carriles is wanted in Venezuela and Cuba for his involvement in a 1976 bombing that killed 73. The US has so far refused Venezuela's extradition request.

"We have sufficient material to go to an international tribunal and accuse the US government of protecting a terrorist; we will go to the United Nations, we will invite all of the people to denounce this,” said Chávez.  “[This is] a government that invades a country using terrorism as an excuse, that attacks Iraq only to take out one man in that government…now they have him in prison and they publish a photo of him in his underwear.  At the US Army prison in Guantanamo Bay, “they have been so disrespectful to the Koran that they have provoked a dignified response from the Islamic people of the world," added the Venezuelan President.

Chávez went on to add that the Venezuelan government has evidence that Posada, along with his contacts in Venezuela and Central America, "participated in preparations for the April, 2002 coup" that abolished all democratic institutions in Venezuela before being reversed 48 hours later.

“It is difficult, very difficult, to maintain ties with a government that so shamelessly hides and protects international terrorism,” said Chávez.

The decision to charge Posada with illegal entry and ignore his resume of terrorist activities has enraged the majority of Venezuelans. Thousands of Venezuelans signed a petition in favor of the extradition request on Friday and then marched on Saturday in the squares of major cities in protest.

This observation has also been noted by several US politicians.

"While I'm glad that the Department of Homeland Security finally arrested Posada, it's amazing that he almost had to goad them into doing it," stated José Serrano (D-NY) adding that, "Here is a guy who has admitted to committing terrorist attacks who escaped justice by bribing his guards and hightailing it out of prison, and we're not willing to extradite him to face justice.  73 people died in that airliner, many of them children. How can we with any credibility ask other nations to help us out with our global struggle against terror when we won't cooperate with others' anti-terror proceedings? There is a two-way street here…Posada was a wanted man in Venezuela long before Hugo Chávez was elected President there.”

Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and a group of twenty legislators sent a letter to President Bush recommending that international laws be followed and Posada be turned over to Venezuela.  And in a letter to the US Congress, Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) called upon her colleagues to "uphold the principles we espouse, refrain from keeping double standards," and "extradite [Posada] to the governments with jurisdiction."  McKinney argued that "for the Department of Homeland Security to say it would not deport Posada to Cuba or Venezuela is counterproductive to our efforts in the War on Terror."

April 13th marked the third anniversary of the defeat of a coup against the democratically elected presidency of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. In honor of the event there were massive local celebrations and an international solidarity conference: “Encuentro Mundial de Solidaridad con la Revolution Bolivariana”. Solidarity activists came from over 20 countries. The majority were from other Latin American countries. Canada had a strong delegation. The delegation from the U.S was quite small; A few from California, a strong delegation from Boston, some from Florida and Chicago. It is not clear if this small turnout is due to lack of publicity or lack of awareness of the importance of the Venezuelan revolution in the U.S. Participants chose one of eight workshops: Agrarian reform, housing, worker management, citizen participation, alternative media, indigenous people, women or education. Each workshop was held in a different part of the country. There were also hundreds of Venezuelan activists participating in the conference who were able to use the conference for a discussion of their current challenges. The following observations are mainly a reflection of the citizen participation workshop which I attended.

The revolution that is unfolding in Venezuela today is the leading edge of a massive social and political shift to the left that is happening throughout Latin America from Chile right up through Mexico. The past decade of globalization (what they call “neoliberalism”) has brought increased poverty and economic decline throughout the region. The result has been a shift away from governments beholden to the free market towards leaders and parties representing the poor and working people who are the overwhelming majority.

This process has gone the furthest in Venezuela. In the early years of his presidency Chavez was a supporter of the “third way”, a reference to attempts to build an alternative to both the capitalist and the old Stalinist economic models. He and others in the leadership now speak openly and often about their conclusion that the capitalist model is a dead end (sometimes quoting the pope) with no future in Latin America and that socialism is the only road forward.

How this new direction towards socialism will unfold remains to be seen but there are some indications that it will be a dynamic new road that may be a model for all of the Americas. What is most often discussed is desire to build a socialist society marked by a massive increase in popular democratic involvement. The forms of this new democracy are still being worked out. There has been a massive increase in local community councils and cooperatives to address economic and social organization at the local level. The conference was a forum for activists throughout Latin America who are involved in similar efforts to increase democratic participation under more difficult circumstances.

Education is a primary weapon in raising the cultural and political awareness in the poorest communities. There is a literacy campaign along with a series of “missions” aimed at enabling people to return to school and finish high school. A whole new university; “Universidad Simon Bolivar” has been built to massively expand college opportunities for students who had no access to the privileged university system before the revolution.

Local democratic participation is woven through the new national constitution that was enacted in the wake of Chavez’s election in 1999. In order to get many new services a local community has to organize itself, discuss and vote on its priorities and often form local cooperatives to carry out the work. They speak openly about the limitations of classic representative democracy where one can only hope that an elected official remains honest and does the work for the people. As another local leader put it, “Sometimes laws are not the answer, we have to empower people”. This is in contrast to the historical culture of Venezuela that was marked by passive complaining and demanding the government do something for you.

Part of the impetus for this massive expansion of democratic institutions is the fact that when Chavez was elected in 1999 he did it with a weak newly created party called the MVR- Movement for the Fifth Republic. While popular, the party is underdeveloped. Some fear it is used by many to get elected or to get jobs. The old state apparatus, with thousands of functionaries used to the old ways of doing little is still intact and a major obstacle to social change. As one activist put it, “We have won the government but not the state”. Rather than a purge, the strategy has been to set up a parallel government that provides direct social services to the poor (social service “missions”, clinics, food distribution, schools, microcredits, etc.). Community councils that provide organization and representation down to the level of block committees are being set up to take over aspects of local administration. Through this process two very important things are taking place: Whole new layers of the population are learning what it means to be active empowered citizens and a new layer of leaders in the government and the economy is being trained.

In addition, there are now increasing efforts to turn major workplaces over to workers management. This effort began in some industries that had gone bankrupt (a major paper mill). It is now spreading to major state owned industries. In addition to nationalized oil the country has major aluminum, mining and iron ore industries owned by the state. These industries were run poorly and often corruptly even during the past 6 years of the Chavez presidency. A “revolution within the revolution” is now underway to eat away at the old corrupt modes of management and turn these industries into dynamic producers of wealth, jobs and resources that can profit the whole society. The road chosen has not been to simply choose better managers or better bureaucrats. In the major aluminum factory - Venalum there has been discussion, debate and elections to choose a new leadership of the plant from the ranks of the workers in the past month. The goal is for a workers management that will revive production, efficiency and integrity in the plant. Most importantly a new model of plant management and new layer of leadership from the shop floor has a chance to emerge. This process is complex, difficult and being done with few healthy precedents. There will be many mistakes along the way. The key is to have the time needed for such a major transformation to develop.

Che Guevara spoke often about the problems of a bureaucratically planned economy in the model of the old Soviet Union. He advocated the development of a conscious and politically active population. Through the conference discussion and in projects around Venezuela you can see this process unfolding. Often the major players are women. Chavez makes it a point to highlight the development of women as leaders when he speaks. The Venezuelans do not feel they are reinventing the wheel. They are openly looking to the experience of others for examples. When the mayor of the mountain city of Merida was discussing the multiple problems they were facing he stated “If we have a problem, it has probably been solved somewhere else in Latin America”. In his opening speech to the conference, Chavez called the Bolivarian revolution, “A humble daughter of the great revolutions of the world.” When talking of deeper cultural change you often heard of the need to change from a mentality of “me” to one of “we”.

The issue of how the leadership of this revolution is organized and how it is developing a coherent theory to lead is complex and challenging. It is clear that the role of Chavez is significant. His popularity is rising. His image is seen often. He has a regular 5 hour television variety show called “Alo Presidente” that is used to educate the country about the challenges and prospects of the political process.

This is not just a cult of personality around a strong man/caudillo in the model of Juan Peron. There are thousands of dedicated politically revolutionary activists who are advancing the ideas and organization of the revolution throughout all sectors of society (except the wealthy). The organizational forms are diverse. There are “Bolivarian Circles” which are loose groupings of activist with modest organizational success. There are activists in the missions doing community organizing day in and day out. There are students who have their organizations. There are two other left parties that support Chavez that do not appear to have much of a mass base. There are activists in the workplace, the best of which have built a whole new pro-revolutionary national union federation. So when one asks, where do people go for political organization and discussion, the answer is most often that they go to work organizing.

The opposition held a rally to commemorate the coup on April 13th. There were fewer than a thousand present. By all reports the opposition appears demoralized. They have played their strongest cards and lost. Chavez predicts they will attempt to distort next years’ election. For that reason he is campaigning for 10 million votes as a goal to gain a mandate to continue the revolution.

There are a number of features of the revolution in Venezuela that can work to enhance the potential for this revolution to survive both internally and against what will be rising pressure from the United States:

1) This is a deep thorough ongoing revolution that is in progress. This is not simply the election of another left populist government. There is a mobilization of a significant part of the population to fight for its class interest. It could be defined as a “Workers and Farmers Government”.

2) The Chavez leadership is a break from the models of Social Democracy and Stalinism that could set an example of a revolutionary direction for the rest of the continent. It is typical to see posters of Chavez flanked by Bolivar on one side and Che on the other. Because of the position of Venezuela geographically and economically Chavez can play a role in the region that is more significant that that of Fidel and the Cubans.

3) The presence of oil at such a price has resulted in the immediate rise in living standards. The size of the nationalized industries inherited by the revolution means that they have the economic base to fund social programs and build broader support for the revolution. This power allowed them to withstand a massive capitalist strike in 2002 (similar to the strike that sank Allende in Chile). The government can also set up parallel economic institutions that undercut the capitalists such as the state owned food stores.

4) This economic base means that there is the potential to buy time desperately needed to develop a new revolutionary layer of society capable of administration of the state. There is less of a need to prematurely nationalize industries or collectivize land that outpaces the ability of the new society to effectively build a new administration of the economy.

5) The defeat of the coup provided the opportunity to purge the army of a substantial amount of its counterrevolutionary currents. The fact that the army can now be expanded to defend the revolution and at the same time help in social and economic development makes this a radically different road than Chile where the army led the counterrevolution. Plans are to increase the reserves from 200,000 to 500,000.

6) This revolution is embedded in a rising tide of left political movement from Chile to the Rio Grande. This is its most powerful defense and major impediment to imperialist intervention as the Bush administration openly bemoans.

7) This revolution has happened without a bloodbath, without mass public executions, without the need for a repressive state that curbs civil liberties and with massive democratic election victories. This robs the opposition and the Bush administration of cannon fodder in the propaganda war against the revolution. Many spurious charges have and will be invented by the opposition of course.

8) There are sectors that want to push the revolution forward at a faster pace. This is true among farmers wanting land frustrated by the slow pace of land reform. It is true among workers in the fight for workers control in a variety of industries. But the frustration appears to be correctly focused on the obstacles of the old state apparatus and the rich. This avoids the problem of a rise of ultra-left pressure that can then provoke a crack down from the new state.

9) The popularity of Chavez within the unique history of the Venezuelan left appears to be a gravitational force for political unity that is holding down splits and sectarian battles that can hamper leadership development (as in Nicaragua).

10) The oil wealth is allowing Venezuela to do what Che advocated which is trade based on human need rather than the market. Chavez has signed a trade agreement favorable to Cuba. He is trading oil for pregnant cows with Argentina, etc. This along with efforts to build a Pan-American trading bloc is building a regional political and economic bulwark against future U.S. intervention.

11) For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union a new model of socialism is emerging that has the potential to be an example and an inspiration for all of the Americas.

For further analysis of the Bolivarian revolution the Monthly Review articles by Marta Harnecker and others are excellent. Richard Gott’s “In the Shadow of the Liberator” is an extensive history of Chavez’s political development. He is soon to come out with a new history of the revolution. www.Venezuelanalysis.com  and www.Handsoffvenezuela.org provide current news and analysis from the perspective of defenders of the revolutionary process..

After two long years of struggle at long last the expropriation of the CNV was put into practice. The CNV had been taken over by the workers throughout this time.

The Constructora Nacional de Valvulas is a factory which was owned by the coup plotter Andres Sosa Pietri, a former president of PDVSA. After the coup he refused to restart the operations and the workers decided to take over the installations.

Jorge Paredes, one of the main leaders of the factory said: "this is a new experience for the workers, a new model of development which will be at the service of the workers and the community. This process of co-management that we now start must be taken to other companies and other workers."

The company at one point supplied 22% of the national market for valves. It is calculated that this year PDVSA has to invest 148 million Bolivars in valves.

The workers estimate that in three months they will have the company ready to start producing. 

See also:

• Workers of the Constructora Nacional de Valvulas continue their struggle!
• The struggle of the workers at the CNV - a new Venepal?
• Support the Workers of the CNV in Venezuela

On the eve of Condoleeza Rice's tour of Latin America, an extremely provocative article appeared yesterday in The New York Times. Under the title of "U.S. Considers Toughening Stance Toward Venezuela" and signed by Juan Forero, the article quotes a number of unnamed "American officials" basically saying that "the Bush administration is weighing a tougher approach, including funnelling more money to foundations and business and political groups opposed to his leftist government".

Forero claims in his article that a "multiagency task force in Washington has been working on shaping a new approach, one that high-ranking American policy makers say would most likely veer toward a harder line". The article quotes another unnamed American official as saying: "The conclusion that is increasingly being drawn in Washington is that a realistic, pragmatic relationship, in which we can agree to disagree on some issues but make progress on others, does not seem to be in the cards (...) We offered them a more pragmatic relationship, but obviously if they do not want it, we can move to a more confrontational approach."

Another "high-ranking Republican aide on Capitol Hill who works on Latin America policy" (also unnamed) explains: "What's happening here is they realize this thing is deteriorating rapidly and it's going to require some more attention (...) The current look-the-other-way policy is not working."

The truth of the matter, however, is that the US administration has always had a "tough" stance towards Venezuela. High-ranking United States officials met with Venezuelan opposition leaders in the weeks and days before the military coup that ousted Chavez for 47 hours on April 11, 2002. There is now hard evidence that the CIA knew that the coup was being plotted, and Washington was the first capital in the world to recognise the illegitimate government of Pedro Carmona which was installed by the coup.

The Bush administration supplied funds to opposition groups that organised the coup in 2002. It also funded the sabotage of the oil industry in December 2002 and January 2003, which cost the country's economy some 10,000 million dollars. It financed the attempt to remove Chavez through a recall referendum. It is difficult to see how Washington's stance towards the democratically elected government of Venezuela could actually get "tougher" - short of direct military intervention.

Since the beginning of this year the barrage of accusations against the Venezuelan government by US officials has certainly increased in volume and intensity. The US has actively tried to stop the sale of weapons to Venezuela by Spain, Brazil and Russia (after the US itself refused to supply spare parts for Venezuela's ageing fleet of F16s), and has accused Venezuela of being a "negative force in the region" (Condoleeza Rice). The US administration and media have stepped up a belligerent campaign against Venezuela.

The democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez has been accused of everything from linking up with North Korea, supplying arms to the Colombian FARC guerrillas and funding the "subversive" MAS in Bolivia, to forming an axis of evil with Cuba's Castro, starting an arms race in Latin America, and harbouring Al-Qaeda terrorists. A recent article in the National Review (which appeared on April 11, the day of the third anniversary of the coup in Venezuela), carried the title "Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez constitute an axis of evil". In this extremely belligerent article, Otto Reich, until recently Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, openly advocated a policy of "confronting" the "emerging axis of subversion".

There is no substance to any of these accusations, for which not the slightest shred of proof is offered. They are just meant to create an impression – the kind of impression that can be used to justify an act of aggression. As we learned long ago from Josef Goebbels, even the most blatant lie, if it is repeated often enough, is taken to be the truth. In the same way, the lie that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction was used as an excuse for the criminal invasion of Iraq. Everybody now knows that it was a lie, but at the time enough people believed it to permit a naked act of aggression to be presented as an act of national self-defence. Now history is being repeated.

When pressed for more details on the allegations about "Venezuelan shortcomings with respect to the counter narcotics issue", Adam Ereli, Deputy Spokesman for the US Department of State, on March 30th, could not think of anything coherent to say. He merely mumbled: "Not really. I'll look and see what we've said on the past, but off the top of my head I can't give you a detailed answer." On such flimsy “evidence” is the case for armed aggression against Venezuela being constructed in Washington.

There is no doubt that all these newspaper articles and statements do not appear just by chance. One has the feeling that they are part of an orchestrated propaganda campaign aimed not only at isolating Venezuela, but also at preparing US public opinion for more direct forms of intervention against the Bolivarian Revolution. The self-same methods were used in the past to justify US interventions against the Cuban Revolution, the Arbenz government in Guatemala, the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and more recently in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada and Haiti. The hired press pours out a stream of abuse and calumnies in order to soften up public opinion. Then the heavy squad moves in. In some circles, this is known as the “freedom of the press”.

Otto Reich would know about this. In the 1980s he was at the head of the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (OPD). This was nothing less than a propaganda outfit, which amongst other tasks coordinated the planting of editorial articles in newspapers openly backing the Contras and attacking those who criticised Washington's support for the murderous cut-throat gangs of thugs of the Contras in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra investigation found that Reich, a Cuban exile, had carried out "prohibited, covert propaganda” on behalf of the Contras (the full declassified record of Otto Reich while involved in the OPD can be found at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB40/).

But let's go back to Juan Forero's article. The only "sources" he gives for this toughening of US policy towards Venezuela are all "unnamed officials". The day after the article was published in The New York Times, Washington issued a denial of its contents, but in fact it was a “denial” that denied nothing. He said "“those are not reports that reflect any reality in terms of decisions by the United States to change its policy.” So, in fact what he means is that there is no change in the US policy, which was already very confrontational before Forero was briefed by his famous “unnamed officials".

Forero's journalistic record in relation to Venezuela is at best shaky. On the day after the military coup in Venezuela he wrote an article for The New York Times which did not mention the word "coup" once and had the amazing headline "Venezuela Chief Forced to Resign; Civilian Installed". This sounds like a well-rehearsed pantomime and it works like this: Washington leaks some disinformation it would like published to a friendly journalist. The material is published but no sources are quoted. Once the "news" is already in the public domain and has been picked up by the major news agencies and outlets, then the State Department issues a "denial" which is not reported anywhere. The damage has already been done.

It is clear that the US administration is increasingly hostile towards the Bolivarian revolution, which is standing firm against US imperialism. George Bush is frustrated because all the attempts to smash it have failed. But the strategy of isolating Venezuela from other Latin American governments has also failed so far. Donald Rumsfeld's recent tour of the region was not at all successful in this respect. But these failures do not mean that Washington will abandon its aggressive stance towards Venezuela. On the contrary, it means that its aggression will be stepped up and acquire dangerous proportions if it is not halted by a massive movement of protest from below.

This renewed campaign against the Venezuelan revolution represents a serious threat, which the world labour movement will neglect at its peril. In all previous occasions in which this kind of language has been used, it has always been the preparation for military intervention. Such interventions do not necessarily take the form of an actual invasion. The fact that the US army is bogged down in an unwinnable war in Iraq makes this a problematical option at this stage. But the examples of Chile and Nicaragua indicate that there are other options: a dirty war of terrorism and subversion, the assassination of President Chavez, provocations leading to war with Colombia, which the Pentagon has already turned into an armed camp. These and many other weapons are at the disposal of Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice.

All the warnings are present. The only force that can defeat the planned aggression against the Venezuelan Revolution is the international Labour Movement and the workers and the youth of the United States. It is time to sound the alarm! Venezuela is in danger! It is imperative that the workers, trade unionists, youth and students, intellectuals and artists, black and white, should unite to organize a protest movement so powerful that George Bush and the right wing gang in the White House are compelled to think again.

Let us not wait until it is too late. Let us act now to forestall this act of naked aggression of a powerful imperialist state against a South American country that is fighting for its most elementary rights: the right to national self-determination, the right to live its life in peace and to determine its own future without foreign interference, the right to build a society based on the principles of freedom, justice and equality.

This is the real reason why the most reactionary circles in the USA wish to destroy the Venezuelan Revolution: because it sets an example to the millions of poor and exploited people in the whole of Latin America. Furthermore, this is the path that the Venezuelan people have democratically chosen. Chavez and his policies have been ratified in more than 7 electoral contests and referenda since he was first elected in 1998. This example is dangerous, not to the ordinary citizens of the United States, the workers and the poor, but to Wall Street, to the banks, the big corporations and the oil barons who are the real constituents of George W. Bush.

This right wing administration, which is trying to depict Venezuela as a “danger to peace” because it is purchasing some rifles from Russia, is spending a staggering $500,000 million on arms every year. It is spending at least $6,000 million every month on the occupation of Iraq while slashing public expenditure on pensions and Medicare.

Let us act now! Reproduce this article, translate it and pass it on to as many people as possible. Pass resolutions of protest in your local trade union branch. Organize pickets, lobbies, rallies and demonstrations. The Hands Off Venezuela Campaign is preparing a major initiative for the First of May. Contact us now and join our fight against these criminal actions of the imperialists.

During his weekly Alo Presidente broadcast Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave an explanation of the reasons for the suspension of the bilateral military exchange programme with the United States. According to Chavez, US military advisors "were carrying out their own campaign within the military institution and this cannot be allowed". He added that they were "talking ill of the [Venezuelan] president to our boys", which is something that goes against the country's stability and sovereignty.

Hugo Chavez argued that this measure was also taken in order to protect the physical integrity of US military personnel. He reminded the audience that in the build up to the US invasion of Panama, a number of US military personnel were attacked in the streets. It was later found out that these attacks had been carried out by the US intelligence services in order to prepare a "justification" for the invasion.

Last year, Venezuela had also suspended the military mission that the US had kept within Fuerte Tiuna, the main military garrison in the capital. Chavez accused the US officers of being CIA agents and there is suspicion that they participated in the failed military coup against Chavez on April 11, 2002. The first place Chavez was taken after being deposed by reactionary military officers was precisely the Fuerte Tiuna barracks.

In the same programme Chavez explained that the desperation of the US in relation to Venezuela is because of its oil. The "United States want to continue to get hold of that oil, but it is now ours (...) and it is being used for the welfare of all Venezuelans, and not of a privileged minority" he added.

A video of the US organised Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba in 1961 was shown during the weekly programme. President Chavez said that a similar strategy had been planned in relation to the 100 Colombian paramilitaries arrested on a ranch in El Hatillo, near the capital Caracas, in May 2004. Chavez also announced that a US military officer had been found taking pictures of the Command of the Armoured Army Brigade in Maracay, and a number of US citizens, who later identified themselves as journalists, had been found taking pictures of the El Palito refinery in Moron. He warned that "if any officer of the US military repeats these kind of activities again, they are going to be arrested and tried in Venezuela."

To combat these threats, Chavez argued, it is necessary to organise the reserve forces of the army, which he wants to increase to 2 million people, and to "strengthen the mobilisation of the people ... to defend the country in any circumstance"

Since the beginning of the year, the US administration and media have stepped up a belligerent campaign against Venezuela. The democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez has been accused of everything from linking up with North Korea, supplying arms to the Colombian FARC guerrillas, funding the "subversive" MAS in Bolivia, forming an axis of evil with Cuba's Castro, starting an arms race in Latin America, to harbouring Al-Qaeda terrorists.

On March 13, an article in the Financial Times quoted US Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere, Roger Pardo-Maurer, who accused Chavez of "picking on the countries whose social fabric is the weakest. In some cases, it’s downright subversion." This is in fact the key to the belligerent attitude of the US. Translated into plain English, what Roger Pardo-Maurer is saying is that the Venezuelan revolution is seen as an example by the workers and peasants throughout Latin America. The policies of privatisation, de-regulation, the opening up of markets, and the free trade agreements pursued by Washington in the whole of Latin America for the last two decades have plunged these countries into deep economic crises. The number of poor and unemployed have gone up, while multinational companies have plundered these countries' natural resources.

The policies of the Chavez government of opposing privatization, using large amounts of the country's oil revenues, his stance against the policies of US imperialism and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, are obviously seen as an alternative. Furthermore the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela has proven that the diktats of Washington can be defied and that the attempts of the oligarchy and imperialism to put an end to this defiance can be overcome through mass mobilisation. Venezuela is indeed a very "dangerous" example from the point of view of the White House. For them, anything that threatens the rule of big business is "downright subversion".

Many in the current US administration know a lot about “subversion”. Rogelio “Roger” Pardo-Maurer himself was the political officer in the Washington office of the Nicaraguan contras from 1986 to 1989. Other prominent figures in the US administration are also well versed in “subversion”, having been involved in the counter-insurgency operations in Central America in the 1980s (Elliot Abrams, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Roger Noriega, etc). Several of them also met the Venezuelan April 2002 coup organizers in Washington in the weeks prior to the “subversive” ousting of Chavez. As for “picking on weak countries” Roger Pardo-Maurer, Otto Reich, and other US officials, intervened directly in El Salvador last year to prevent a victory of the left-wing FMLN in the elections. They hinted that this would put at risk the remittances of Salvadorian immigrants in the US (one of the country’s main sources of income). The FMLN lost the election by a very small margin.

President Chavez and the Bolivarian revolutionary movement are right to take measures to defend themselves from the threat of intervention by the US. To act in any other way, taking into account the long history of US participating in the crushing of revolutionary movements in Latin America, would be downright irresponsible.

Three of the five Colombian paramilitary fighters that were captured in Venezuela. Credit: VTV

Sunday morning Venezuelan security forces captured five Colombians in Venezuela’s Amazon state, who presumably belong to the United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC). Commissar Victor Bolivar, of Venezuela’s national police, the DISIP, reported that the presumed paramilitary soldiers were apparently extorting local indigenous people of the Amazon, who they were forcing to mine for gold. The fighters were captured in a national forest preserve, where mining is prohibited.

The captured fighters were carrying seven AK-47s and over 2,400 rounds of ammunition, among other military equipment. They were detained without resistance.

“The first investigations and declarations of the captured indicate that these individuals were safe-guarding the area for the subsequent smuggling of drugs,” said Bolivar.

Minister of the Interior and Justice, Jesse Chacon, said today that Venezuelan police are now in the process of identifying the captured irregular fighters. Chacon explained that there is a growing problem of illegal mining in Amazonas state, which borders both Brazil and Colombia.

This incident coincided with separate incident, a day earlier, when eight soldiers of Colombia’s regular military force were captured, who were dressed in civilian clothes. According to Colombian officials, it is common that Colombian soldiers temporarily cross the border with Venezuela, only to take a shortcut to another location in Colombia. However, Colombia’s ambassador to Venezuela, Enrique Vargas Ramirez, said that these soldiers had no permission to enter into Venezuela. Venezuela's foreign minister Ali Rodriguez, said that the Colombian soldiers would probably be soon released to Colombia.

Border incursions of Colombian soldiers, paramilitary fighters, and rebels into Venezuela have been a relatively common occurrence over the years. On various occasions fights have broken out between Venezuelan military forces and armed fighters coming from Colombia. U.S. government officials have repeatedly claimed that Venezuela allows Colombian rebels to camp out on Venezuelan territory, but Venezuelan officials deny this.

Minister of Energy and Petroleum and PdVSA President Rafael Ramirez Credit: ABN

According to Venezuela’s minister of Energy and Petroleum, Rafael Ramirez, the operating agreements that exist between the state oil company PDVSA and various transnational oil companies caused $260 million of losses for PDVSA and will thus be revised. During a press conference yesterday, Ramirez said that the goal would be to change the operating agreements into joint ventures with PDVSA, where PDVSA would have a majority stake.

Ramirez, who also serves as president PDVSA, explained that there are 32 operating agreements with companies such as ChevronTexaco, Royal Dutch Shell, France’s Total, and Spain’s Repsol, which produce about 500,000 barrels of oil per day, mostly from marginal oil fields. The contracts were signed in the between 1992 and 1997, when the price of oil was very low and the government at the time was interested in opening up the country’s oil industry to foreign investors.

The operating agreements are service agreements, in which the Venezuelan state pays a fee for the production of the oil. According to Ramirez, in many cases the fees the state paid for this extraction service cost more than could be earned by the sale of the oil, thus leading to losses in many cases for the state-owned oil company. Ramirez says that it costs $14 per barrel to extract oil under the service agreements, while in other oil fields the PDVSA operates it costs only $4 per barrel.

The Energy Ministry’s new requirement is to have all operating agreements changed into joint ventures in the next six months, under which they would pay 30% royalties, as well as taxes of 50%. A royalty is the percentage of the extracted oil’s market value that an oil company must pay directly to the government, before it subtracts any of its expenses. The taxes are then applied to the profits that the oil company makes on the sale of the remaining oil (i.e., after subtracting its expenses).

According to the new law on hydrocarbons, which went into effect in late 2001, international investment project in the oil sector would take the form of joint ventures, with PDVSA maintaining a 51% stake in these ventures. The new law also raised royalties from 16.6% to 30% and lowered taxes from 67% to 50%.

A day earlier, on Wednesday, President Chavez had said during a speech that many of these oil companies declared losses in Venezuela and were thus not paying any taxes at all. Chavez announced that the state’s tax collection agency, SENIAT, would investigate these companies. “In some cases, and we already have the proof, that there are transnational companies that have not paid the taxes that they should have paid, so we will charge them,” said Chavez. “A country cannot allow itself to be looted in this way,” he added. Ramirez said that the back taxes could amount to as much as $2 billion.

The oil companies affected by this move have yet to comment on it. Industry analysts, however, say that it is unlikely that the companies will challenge the changes, since the oil price is expected to remain high and profits can still be made.

Last year, in a surprise announcement, the Chavez government had increased royalties that extra-heavy crude production projects pay in the Orinoco oil belt, from 1% to 16.6%. These extra-heavy crude production projects contribute another 500,000 barrels per day to Venezuela’s overall output. The extraction of extra-heavy crude is particularly difficult because the oil is so thick and thus needs to be processed with lighter forms of crude so it can be transported. The royalty rate for these projects was kept so low because when the contracts were signed, the price of oil was very low. However, the Chavez government says that the oil companies can afford to pay more, now that the price has reached new highs.

When the announcement of the royalty increase in the extra-heavy crude projects was made, all companies except for ExxonMobil accepted the change. ExxonMobil is currently engaging in negotiations over the increased royalties.

Venezuela formally asked U.S. authorities to extradite an escaped prisoner who was responsible for the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, in which 73 persons were killed. The former prisoner, Luis Posada Carriles, is a Cuban exile who had escaped a Venezuelan prison in 1985. For a while he lived in Panama, where he was also captured for planning an assassination of Cuba’s President Fidel Castro in 2000. He was then pardoned in Panama, though, and entered the U.S. about a month ago.

Venezuela’s Vice-President, José Vicente Rangel, said, “We going to step up our demands for extradition.” “I hope Mr. Bush will take note of his own anti-terrorism policies and hand over Posada Carriles,” added Rangel.

Posada Carriles’ attorney says that the U.S. should deny the extradition request because he was acquitted in Venezuela of the bombing of the Cuban airliner. Also, if deported to Cuba, he would face possible execution.

Rangel pointed out that it is no wonder that Posada Carriles is requesting asylum in the U.S., “because during all of the acts that he participated in he did so while he was an employee of the CIA.”

On Monday, Cuba’s Castro said that if the U.S. denies the extradition request, then it would effectively be backing international terrorism. He also noted that Bush once said that whoever harbors a terrorist is as guilty of terrorism as the terrorist himself.

According to Associated Press, an unidentified U.S. official said that Posada is “excludable” from the U.S. because of his involvement in the plane bombing.

Carriles Posada, who is 77 years old and dual Venezuelan-Cuban citizenship, is a veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and has also been connected to a string of bombings in Cuban tourist locations in 1997. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985, disguised as a priest, while prosecutors appealed his acquittal.

The extradition request is one of several that Venezuela has pending in the U.S. Two other requests involve Venezuelan citizens who are wanted for the bombing of the Colombian and Spanish consulates in Venezuela in February 2003.

The decree of expropriation of Venepal in January this year was a major turning point in the Venezuelan revolution. When Chavez announced the decree, in the Ayacucho room of the presidential palace, the same place where the coup organisers swore in their “president” Pedro Carmona on April 12th, 2002, he made an appeal to "workers' leaders to follow this path". He added, “any factories closed or abandoned, we are going to take them over. All of them.”

CNV workers in struggle, August 2003 Photo : Frédéric Lévêque

The decision to nationalise Venepal and put it under the administration of the workers, and the very high profile way in which the decision was taken, was bound to have an impact amongst other groups of workers in the same situation. As part of the relentless campaign of the Venezuelan capitalists against the Chavez government they became engaged in a campaign of economic sabotage. This campaign reached its peak during the bosses’ lockout in December 2002 and January 2003. Some factories were closed for up to two months. After the failure of the lockout, soundly defeated by the action of the workers and the massive Bolivarian demonstration on January 23, the bosses tried to make the workers pay the price for the lockout, by not paying their wages, delaying their payment, etc. Some factories were declared bankrupt. In some cases the bankruptcy was genuine (the companies having been ruined by the reckless two month long lockout), in some other cases it was a tool of the economic sabotage against the government.

This created a situation in the spring and summer of 2003 of heightened class struggle. In many factories workers organised democratic unions and fought for recognition. The bosses replied with repression, making union organisers redundant, etc. In a number of cases the bosses just declared bankruptcy and abandoned the premises, forcing the workers to occupy them and take them over in order to demand payment of their wages and to defend their jobs and livelihoods. Venepal was the highest profile case, where the workers were better organised. They occupied the factory in July 2003 and ran Venepal under workers’ control for 77 days. After an uneasy truce, the bosses abandoned production again in September 2004. The workers occupied again and after more than 4 months of struggle Chavez decreed the expropriation of Venepal under joint management of the workers' and the state (in which the workers' have a majority of representatives in the company's board).

But at the time of the occupation of Venepal in the summer of 2003 there were a number of other factories that were also occupied: Industrial de Perfumes, a perfume making company in Caracas; the textile plant Fenix in Guarico; and the Constructora Nacional de Valvulas in Los Teques, Miranda, a factory that used to produce valves for the state owned oil company PDVSA. There were other similar conflicts at the time, but the workers in these three, together with the Venepal workers, achieved a degree of unity. There were joint meetings and declarations, and two joint demonstrations in Caracas in October 1. Unfortunately, by the time a certain amount of coordination between these different struggles was reached, the conflict in Venepal, which had the largest number of workers, had already been settled. The movement, in some cases after 4 months of occupation, progressively fizzled out. Tiredness, the need to look for other sources of income, the lack of a clear perspective of a way out of the struggle – with all these factors combined, the number of workers effectively occupying these factories declined, and the struggle basically died out. The leadership of the newly created UNT trade union confederation never put forward a clear plan of struggle. Though solidarity was forthcoming from other unions to the strike fund, there was never a well-organised national campaign in support of the occupied factories.

The nationalisation of Venepal in January this year had the effect of reviving some of these struggles. The first group of workers to re-occupy their factories again was at the CNV in the working class city of Los Teques, in the state of Miranda, right next to Caracas. On February 17, a group of 63 CNV workers decided to take over the installation, and unlike in 2003, when they just set up a picket line outside the installation, this time they occupied the premises (against the advice of a representative of the Ministry of Labour present).

The Constructora Nacional de Valvulas has been producing high-pressure valves for the state owned oil company PDVSA for more than 30 years. The CNV had a monopoly in the sector and was selling overpriced valves to PDVSA, sometimes in unnecessary amounts. This was possible because of the close relationship between the owner of the CNV, Andres Sosa Pietri and the managers and directors in PDVSA. In fact the relationship was so close (and corrupt) that Sosa Pietri himself in the 1990s became a director of PDVSA. From his position he was awarding his company PDVSA exclusive contracts for the making and maintenance of the industry's high pressure valves.

Photo : Frédéric Lévêque

Sosa Pietri belongs to one of the traditional families of the Venezuelan oligarchy, popularly known as "Los Amos del Valle" ("The Owners of the Valley"). His policy advice for the oil industry was clear. He advocated PDVSA to become a private company, to adopt a "market friendly strategy, withdraw from OPEC, and ally ourselves with our main commercial partners [i.e. the oil multinationals]". It is therefore no surprise that he actively campaigned against the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998, because one of his main promises was to maintain the state owned character of the oil industry and to pursue a policy of strengthening of OPEC in order to achieve higher oil prices. At the head of his own right wing Liberal Party he joined the Democratic Coordinator, the umbrella group of the Venezuelan opposition which went on to organise the coup against Chavez in April 2002, which he wholeheartedly supported.

After the defeat of the coup, he formed yet another political party, called Alliance for Freedom. On December 9th, 2002, as part of the bosses’ lockout to overthrow Chavez, he closed down the installations of the CNV, leaving more than 100 working class families without any income. After the failure of the bosses’ lockout he refused to pay wages to the workers. After months of struggle and negotiations, in May 2003 a group of workers decided to occupy the entrance to the factory in order to prevent any finished products or machinery from being taken out of the premises. Sosa Pietri went to the tribunals which ruled in his favour. In August 2003 there was an attempt to remove the workers, but thanks to the solidarity of the labour movement and community organisations from the town this was prevented.

The workers have now set up a solidarity committee, and a meeting took place in Los Teques in order to organise solidarity with the struggle. The CNV workers are pointing out that CNV has a strategic importance from the point of view of the oil industry and that therefore it should be expropriated and put under workers' control and management, so that it can produce valves for PDVSA. The case is clear, the owner of the factory is a participant in the coup in 2002, he closed down the factory during the bosses lockout and has consistently refused to pay the workers the wages they are owed. As with many other workers' struggles taking place in Venezuela today, this is not only a matter of a fight between the workers and the bosses, but it has also a clear political character, of a struggle between the Bolivarian Revolution and the oligarchy, the owners of industry, the land and the banks, that use all possible means at their disposal to sabotage it.

Following the example of Venepal, the CNV should be expropriated under workers' control and management. This is the way forward towards the socialism of the 21st century of which Chavez has been talking about.

We appeal to the trade union movement of the world and all those who support the Bolivarian revolution to show their solidarity with the workers of the CNV (in struggle for nearly 2 years now), and to ask the Venezuelan authorities to act decisively to fulfil the just demands of the workers.

Send messages of solidarity to:  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

and messages to the Venezuelan President This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , and the Ministry of Labour This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it (you can use the model resolution proposed by the workers themselves: http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/support_cnv_workers.htm )

If you can make a financial donation to the strike fund, please send it to the following account 0039-01-0100309746 Banco Industrial de Venezuela under the name of Jorge Paredes y Rosalio Castro for the Resistance Fund, or contact the Hands Off Venezuela campaign for more details.

Since we already know that this letter will not be published by the Miami Herald, we have decided to send it as an open letter, so that the public in general get to know about it, as well as relevant authorities and human rights organizations.

Translated by Carlos Herrera

1 ­ We are defenders and sympathizers of a political cause and we are not committing any crime in manifesting our support for the Bolivarian Revolution, which is peaceful and promotes understanding and union amongst the Peoples of Latin America.

2 ­ We are citizens of this country, we pay taxes, we vote in elections, we elect those who represent us, we exercise our right to democracy, we have the same rights as any other US citizen; we obey the law and no one has the right to demonize us for being Bolivarians.

3 ­ Above all, we exercise our right to manifest our ideas and defend them, such as is established in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. No one can take away our right to think and we promote the fact that our ideas are totally alien to all forms of violence and respect the laws. The want to emphasize that they foster understanding and benefit the peoples from whence we came, since it is there where our family roots lie.

4 ­ Our actions are transparent and public, we are transparent before the law, we act on our own initiative, we have ideals. Everyone who wants to come and expound their ideas is welcome, providing they respect the liberty of others who think differently, and in the same way they will receive respect and tolerance on our part. We do not impose ourselves, we debate and reason, and for this reason the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has triumphed and it will begin to do so in all of Latin America. We want and promote a peaceful revolution, of understanding, leading to more well being for the majority of the population of America. We promote its diffusion because that is how we feel and that is what we want. We are agents of no one, we do not receive funds or money from anyone, we are idealists, democrats and representatives of our own feelings and thoughts.

5 ­ We invite the media and public opinion in general to share, to debate, to cause controversy, always in the framework of mutual respect, not imposing or demonizing, but by reasoning. With intelligence, which is all we possess. We suggest to the Miami Herald and the relevant authorities to concern themselves with those making threats on TV channels calling for the assassination of President Chavez and inciting violence and terror.

6 ­ We will now close our clarification and invitation to debate with a thought of the Liberator of the Gran Colombia, who, for being the Liberator of five countries, deserves our admiration and respect, as does Washington and the founding fathers of our Homeland who liberated this nation from the British.

"The veil is open and we have seen the light, and they want to cast us back into the darkness. The chains have been broken, we have already been free and our enemies want to enslave us again" ­ Simon Bolivar

To be Bolivarian is an honor, just as it is an honor to be Christian, or Protestant, as it is to be honored; but above all, to be Bolivarian is to possess humanity.

To be Bolivarian is to be American, since we were all born in America, in Our America.

Pedro Rojas
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Circulo Bolivariano de Miami

Washington’s efforts to discredit the Venezuelan Government have increased over the past few weeks. Tactics and strategies applied in prior years attempting to overthrow the Chávez administration through a coup d’etat, an illegal oil industry strike that crippled the Venezuelan economy and a constitutional recall referendum on Chávez’s mandate infused with illegal campaign contributions by the U.S. government to the Venezuelan opposition, all failed miserably. After a brief period of reevaluation, the Bush Administration has recently launched a new strategy intended to isolate and eventually topple the Venezuelan Government. The new aggression towards Venezuela is direct, open, public and hostile. The Bush Administration, through its Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and her spokesmen, its Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his spokesmen, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Porter Goss, has made clear that Venezuela is a target for Washington this year.

This time around, the strategy is clear: turn President Chávez into an international pariah in the world media and justify an intervention to save democracy. Even more transparent are the mechanisms utilized to implement the strategy. Since early January 2005, major U.S. publications and television stations, including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Fox News Network and CSNBC, to name a few, have published or broadcast well over 60 articles and programs regurgitating State Department accusations that President Chávez presents a “negative force in the region,”[1] is a “threat to democracy,” a “semi-dictator,” or that the Venezuela Government provides refuge and collaborates with “terrorist” groups, such as the Colombian FARC and ELN. Such accusations are dangerous in today’s world, where the Bush Administration is omnipotent to act preemptively to “spread liberty” and implement “regime change” where and when it sees fit.

The new strategy applied towards Venezuela represents a major policy shift for the Bush Administration. While prior actions were more subtle, clandestine and low profile, the revised plan is confrontational. Washington is now trying to openly intervene in Venezuela to remove Chávez from power, but attempts to excuse such actions by branding Chávez as a dictator and a major threat to U.S. national security. Several recent articles in U.S. media have demonstrated such objectives.

The April 11, 2005 edition of The National Review, an ultraconservative magazine representing right-wing views similar to those of Washington’s ultraconservative right-wing government, presents a cover image of President Chávez, in military fatigues, a red beret and a face ten years younger, alongside President Fidel Castro of Cuba, with the byline, “The Axis of Evil…Western Hemisphere Version”. The feature article, by rabidly anti-Castro Cuban-American Otto Reich, former Special Advisor to George W. Bush on Latin American Affairs and former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, along with a list of other top positions in the Reagan, Bush I and II administrations, presents an attempt to terrorize readers into believing Venezuela has become the primary threat to U.S. national security in the region. Reich also claims that the U.S.’s most “pressing specific challenge is neutralizing or defeating the Cuba-Venezuela axis.”[2]

The terms “neutralizing” and “defeating” are not friendly. They imply hostility, violence and dominance. These are not terms used within the sphere of diplomacy, they are expressions used in the context of armed conflict. Such statements by Reich, who now works in the private sector as a U.S. Government Consultant, may seem laughable to many, but in the context of an administration that shares Reich’s extremist views on Latin America and in light of the recent augment in public aggression towards the Venezuelan Government by high-level Bush officials, these remarks may not be far off. In fact, Reich’s recent article falls perfectly in line with the onslaught of Chávez-bashing commentaries and “news stories” published in U.S. papers since January.

Over the past two weeks, the Spanish-language version of the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, has run a three-part series on the growing threat of organizations and individuals that support the Venezuelan Government from within the United States.[3]  The articles, written by right-wing Cuban-American journalist Casto Ocando, who has written dozens of fervently anti-Chávez articles for that same paper, pretend to expose a network of Chávez supporters in universities and progressive groups that, at the appeal of the journalist, should be considered “foreign agents” or almost “terrorist” by the U.S. Government and public. One of the articles even includes a map of where such pro-Chávez groups are located in the U.S., with a large image of President Chávez in military fatigues imposed on top, as though the author were exposing some clandestine terrorist network secretly operating within the United States.

The groups and institutions mentioned by the Herald that form part of the “sinister” pro-Chávez network in the U.S. include Harvard University, New York University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Global Exchange, Global Women’s Strike, San Romero de las Americas Church in New York and its Pastor, Luis Barrios, the catholic missionary Maryknoll group, the author of this article (yes, me), and several Bolivarian Circles, small community-based organizations that support Chávez modeled from the Venezuelan grassroots organizations that carry the same name. Sounds like a scary group!

I am sure that thoughts of Maryknoll missioners, prestigious university professors, Harlem-based Pastors and the environmentally-friendly Global Exchange all lauding a foreign government that is investing its oil wealth in improving health care, education, housing and raising salaries, has driven fear into the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans.[4]

Media-CIA Relationship Exposed

But maybe the author’s intent and not the content of the article should cause alarm. During the publishing of the three-part series on the growing threat of pro-Chávez supporters in the U.S., journalist Casto Ocando appeared on a local Miami television show on Channel 22, discussing such “threats” in detail alongside fellow Cuban-American Félix Rodríguez, ex-CIA Officer responsible for the assassination of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and who was also an Iran-Contra operative.[5] Just days earlier, this expert in CIA assassination techniques used against foreign leaders, Félix Rodríguez, was interviewed on that same program, “Maria Elvira Confronta” (Maria Elvira Confronts), providing details about an assassination plot in motion against President Hugo Chávez.[6] Ocando and Rodríguez’s association merely points to a collaborative effort between CIA and news media, a relationship established decades ago by the United States Government.

On that same Miami program in October 2004, the anti-Chávez Venezuelan actor, and coup participant, Orlando Urdaneta, appeared ordering the assassination of President Chávez and other “top figures” in the Venezuelan Government.[7] Just weeks later, on November 18, 2004, lead government Prosecutor Danilo Anderson was assassinated by a powerful car bomb. At that time, Anderson was in charge of several high profile cases, including the prosecution of coup leaders and participants. His death marked the first political assassination in recent Venezuelan history.

The Venezuelan Government has repeatedly requested the State Department investigate these threats of violence against President Chávez coming from within the United States, yet no formal response has been issued and no actions have been taken.

Despite initial denials from State Department spokesmen regarding accusations from the Venezuelan Government that Washington was engaging in a coordinated effort with the media to discredit President Chávez, facilitate expressions of violence against the Venezuelan head of state and spread unsubstantiated rumors about terrorist connections and human rights violations, in early March 2005, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega, confirmed to the press that the United States had launched a “campaign” to raise consciousness in the region about “the growing threat of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.”[8] And what better way to publicize a campaign than through the mass media?

The Office of Public Diplomacy Revived

In 1983, the United States Government, by direct order of President Ronald Reagan’s White House, established the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (LPD) under the authority of the Department of State. The LPD was staffed by personnel from the United States military, the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the government’s primary propaganda office, and the Agency for International Development (USAID). Its primary advisor was the National Security Council, the most elite intelligence advisory committee in the U.S., reporting directly to the President. The notorious Otto Reich was chosen to direct the Office of Public Diplomacy, in order to spearhead the campaign to oust the Sandinista Government of Nicaragua.

Declassified documents from the U.S. Government, obtained by the National Security Archives, evidence the covert and illegal use of news media to promote U.S. foreign policy.[9] Reich employed the personnel from U.S. military “Psyops” (Psychological Operations Group) to produce different kinds of propaganda and information for the LPD Office. “Psyop” job duties included preparing “daily summaries of exploitable information”, “analyzing media trends and highlighting areas of concern” and “suggesting themes and media for use” by the Office of Public Diplomacy.[10]  The media used by the Office of Public Diplomacy to promulgate U.S. foreign policy on Nicaragua included The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, USA Today, CBS News, NBC News and Newsweek Magazine, amongst others.

The types of messages disseminated through Reich’s office, as developed by the National Security Council and the Psyops, were intended to encourage the perception that U.S. aid to the contras, labeled “freedom fighters” by the U.S., was a vital national interest of the United States. To achieve that goal, Reich’s office was to convince the U.S. public that the contras were fighters for freedom in the American tradition of democracy and the Sandinistas were “evil”. The themes invoked in the psychological propaganda attempted to convince the public that the Sandinistas were engaging in a “military build-up”, had a “communist connection” and were “human rights violators” repressing “freedom of the press”, “right of assembly”, “freedom of speech”, responsible for the “destruction of the economy” and were “linked to worldwide terrorism.”

In 1987, the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) determined that the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean had engaged in illegal and unethical practices and had violated government regulations.[11] GAO and the Congress subsequently shut down the Office permanently. But Otto Reich, instead of receiving punishment for his illegal actions throughout the years he headed the LPD was promoted to the position of U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and stationed in Caracas. During that period, he helped liberate Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, responsible for blowing up a Cubana de Aviación airplane flying from Barbados, killing all of the more than 65 people aboard the flight. Reich later helped facilitate the entry of Bosch into the United States, where he roams free today.[12]

Otto Reich’s Misinformation Campaign

Otto Reich was the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, the position Roger Noriega holds today, during the April 2002 coup d’état against President Chávez. This author has disclosed numerous documents from the Department of State and the CIA that evidence U.S. involvement in that coup.[13] Amongst these documents is a heavily censured cable marked “confidential”, drafted by Otto Reich, laying out the State Department’s position on the coup. Despite the fact that the U.S. Government was well aware of the detailed coup plans, as revealed in a CIA Senior Executive Intelligence Brief dated April 6, 2002[14], Reich, the master of mis-information, told all diplomatic representatives of the U.S. that they were to promote this false version of events:

“On April 11, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans gathered to seek redress of their grievances. Chávez supporters fired on anti-government protestors resulting in more than 100 wounded or killed….The government prevented five independent television stations from reporting on events. After meeting with senior military officers, Chávez allegedly resigned the presidency. A provisional civilian government, led by Pedro Carmona, assumed power and promised early elections.”[15]

The intent of the U.S. Government was to misinform the world of the events giving rise to the illegal coup d’état that briefly overthrew President Chávez, therefore justifying its own participation in such actions and reinforcing its strategy to “legitimately” remove Chávez from power. The fact that the U.S. Government had clear knowledge of the coup plans and actors in the weeks before the coup provides undisputed evidence of this fact. The CIA intelligence brief of April 6, 2002 unmistakably informed top level U.S. Government officials that, “Dissident military factions…are stepping up efforts to organize a coup against President Chávez…the level of detail in the reported plans…targets Chávez and 10 other senior officials for arrest…To provoke military action, the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition demonstrations…”

The CIA briefs from the weeks before also claimed knowledge of the coup’s organizers: “…the private sector, the media, the Catholic Church and opposition political parties…. [along with] disgruntled military officers…still planning a coup, possibly early this month…”[16]

Reich’s efforts at the time of the coup against President Chávez in Venezuela were merely to continue what he was best at, disseminating false information – propaganda – intended to promote U.S. foreign policy, just as he had done fifteen years early in Nicaragua.

Today’s campaign against Venezuela starkly parallels those tactics used back in the eighties by the Office of Public Diplomacy. Though Reich no longer maintains an official position within the Bush Administration, his capacity as a private sector U.S. Government Consultant on International Affairs clearly shows his ties and influence remain. And others in powerful positions within the U.S. Government are his colleagues from the low intensity conflict years in Central America during the Reagan-Bush administrations. John Negroponte, former U.S. Ambassador in Honduras during the eighties is soon-to-be the new Director of National Intelligence, the highest capacity in the intelligence community, Charles Shapiro, ex-Ambassador to Venezuela during the coup who previously was a State Department diplomat in Central America during the eighties is now Under-Secretary of State for the Andean Region (covering Venezuela), Reich’s old buddy Roger Noriega took his place as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Porter Goss, ex-CIA Official and member of the Operation 40 assassination squad in the 1960s, alongside Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch, is now Director of the CIA.

Such relationships and backgrounds make it no surprise to see that today’s campaign against Venezuela employs the same themes used, successfully, against the Sandinistas in the eighties. In addition to the similar use of the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID to funnel millions into Venezuelan opposition parties and NGOs, the U.S. Government attempts to portray Chávez in the same exact light as the Sandinistas. Repeated declarations from the State and Defense Departments, recycled in major U.S. media, claim the Chávez Government is engaging in a “military build-up” or “arms race” with its recent purchase of new weaponry from Russia (note that the U.S. Government is the ONLY government to express such concerns. None of Venezuela’s neighbors have even raised an eyebrow. And Brazil has publicly stated they have no concerns whatsoever with Venezuela’s recent arms purchase); that Chávez is a “communist” in the likes of Fidel Castro; that his government “violates human rights” including “freedom of the press”, the “right to assembly”, “freedom of speech”, “persecution of opposition groups and actors” and that his administration is responsible for the “poverty” and “economic devastation” that has affected the country in recent years.

If you read a few paragraphs above in this commentary, you will find the same identical themes were used to discredit the Nicaraguan government by Reich’s Office of Public Diplomacy. Note that all of these claims against President Chávez and the Venezuelan Government are false. There is more freedom of the press and freedom of speech in Venezuela than under any prior government. The Chávez administration has never suspended any constitutional rights and in fact has expanded human rights under the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution that was promoted by President Chávez himself and ratified by an unprecedented national referendum.

In The Us, Telling the President He “Sucks” Can Land You in Jail

Recently, The Washington Post, published yet another article attempting to reinforce the false accusations repeated over and over again by State Department officials. The Post has been the media most frequently utilized to reiterate U.S. foreign policy towards Venezuela and its editorial board is unquestionably anti-Chávez. Remember, The Post figured prominently on the list of media utilized by Reich’s Office of Public Diplomacy to disseminate “black propaganda” attempting to smear the Nicaraguan Government’s reputation in the 1980s. It appears as though such efforts have been revived in the case of Venezuela.

An article by Jackson Diehl, “Chávez’s Censorship: Where Disrespect Can Land You in Jail” (Washington Post, Monday, March 28, 2005, p.A17), attempts to convince readers that a reformed Penal Code in Venezuela is somehow a repressive tool of an authoritarian regime. Diehl references Article 147: "Anyone who offends with his words or in writing or in any other way disrespects the President of the Republic or whomever is fulfilling his duties will be punished with prison of 6 to 30 months if the offense is serious and half of that if it is light." Yet this journalist fails to mention U.S. laws on the same subject matter, which are actually much stricter and truly repressive. Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 871, “Threats Against the President or his Successors” provides for up to five years of prison for any kind of “threat” against a U.S. President, Vice-President, his spouse or any one in the succession line who could become President, which includes a grand portion of Congress. Section 871 has been used to jail individuals for telling a U.S. President he “sucks”[17], informing a President that, "God will hold you to account, Mr. President”[18] or for wearing “anti-war” or “anti-Bush” t-shirts.[19] And lest we forget the more than 1800 protestors jailed during the August 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City for the crime of…protesting the president.

Moreover, by an Executive Order of the President of the United States and under the Patriot Act, a highly repressive law passed after September 11, 2001 by the U.S. Congress, any non-U.S. citizen “ who has been deemed by the president to have been or have harbored a member of the al Qaeda organization, or anyone who has engaged in, aided, abetted, or conspired to commit acts of international terrorism, or acts that “threaten to cause, or have as their aim to cause injury to or adverse effects on the United States,” is subject to trial in a military tribunal in accordance with rules and procedures to be established by the secretary of defense.”[20] This means that the more than 18 million immigrants living in the United States, many of them legally, can be deemed by the President of the United States to have “aided and abetted” or somehow collaborated with “terrorists”, which is under the sole discretion of the President, and detained indefinitely with no rights and subject to a military tribunal. Military tribunals do not respect rights to due process or even minimal civil or human rights.

So, basically, telling a U.S. President he “sucks” could end you in Guantánamo, dressed in orange, with no rights.

But remember, the U.S. holds a double standard when it comes to threatening the President. The laws only apply to the U.S. President, and close allies of course. Discussing in detail plans to assassinate the Venezuelan President on U.S. television carry no consequence. Even maintaining armed militia training camps in Miami led by ex-Venezuelan military officers who claim to be preparing to overthrow Chávez is encouraged by the U.S. Government.[21] Such terrorists operate and live freely within U.S. territory, and some even receive financing from the U.S. Government.[22]

Attacks against Venezuela Continue

The attacks against the Venezuelan Government have only increased since January, and there is no expectation that they will cease at this point. Just days ago, the State Department released a report entitled “Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2004 - 2005", lauding its own efforts to promote democracy around the world, including efforts to invoke regime changes in some cases. The report condemns Venezuela as a human rights abuser, detrimental to democracy in the region. Its presenter, Michael Kozak, gave an ultimatum to the Venezuelan Government in his press conference, stating “If you wish to have a decent relationship with us, you will have to reorient aspects of your governance towards the right direction.”[23]

Sounds like a threat, one that surely will not be heeded by the Venezuelan Government. But what is clear is that the bully tactics continue and finally, after the calls of many anti-Chávez groups in the U.S. and Venezuela combined with the powerful lobby of the anti-Castro Cuban-American community in Miami, the Bush Administration has finally decided to look south. Venezuela, one of the top exporters of oil to the United States, may become the next target of a unilateral, preemptive strike. Hopefully, the country will be able to fend off U.S. aggression, as it has successfully done in the past. Venezuela has regional support from Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Cuba and even neighboring Colombia, despite the heavy U.S. influence and military presence in that nation. Any type of conflict provoked by the Bush Administration against Venezuela would not be looked at favorably in the region, and surely would force a multilateral defense.

South America is more united today than ever before in history, and that is the true threat to the United States. As the Venezuelan Vice President, José Vicente Rangel, confirmed recently, “Latin America is no longer the backyard of the United States.”

Eva Golinger, a Venezuelan-American attorney, is the author of “The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela”, soon to be available through Amazon.com or directly through the author.

In historical retrospective, very often it is sane and healing for us revolutionaries to recollect, to re-assess, to deepen that what we have done, what we have said, and to see whether our actions and thoughts were within the main stream of human emancipation.

In many commentaries, over the past six years, we have followed the revolutionary sparks and trails of the Bolivarian Revolution toward a still possible Socialism, towards real Human Emancipation.

In fact, since 25 years already, here in Venezuela, as university professor of political science and philosophy, having taught numerous active Bolivarians today in key positions, I am doing precisely this in revolutionary deed and emancipatory word. Already in 1986, at the University of The Andes, Mérida, Venezuela, in my text-book, Teoría-Práxis de la Revolución-Emancipación, I taught my students about the socialist basics of the coming Bolivarian Revolution.  (See: http://www.geocities.com/juschmi/teopind.html )

To demonstrate how near we are to the audacious drums of the Bolivarian Revolution, allow me just to quote some encouraging thoughts that already haunted many a counter-revolutionary in Venezuela, on Internet and elsewhere. On August 15, 2003, I explained:

"Exactly because of the desperation of the national 'golpistas', of the urgency for the USA to have "regime change" here, and officially trying to connect Chávez to 'terrorists', to the guerrilla forces in Colombia, and even to 'Arab terrorists', and probably having supplied the golpistas with all the necessary funds, arms and technological equipment, this time, the correlation of forces spells a fierce, violent confrontation, that will verge on civil war, exactly what the USA and the 'opposition' need for foreign military intervention."

Already then sensing the historic current of the Bolivarian Revolution, I continued:

"Until now, the government intelligently has evaded this scenario, this trap, however, when full spectrum dominance is hell bent on annihilating a most dangerous opponent, a paradigm for the oppressed world, then, the enemy himself chooses the weapons of "peace", the forms of violence, and the only thing left for Venezuela is full spectrum self-defense, with its democratic constitution in the hands of millions of people. Thus, friends, beware, we are entering a decisive era of Venezuelan and Latin American history. Jacta alea est, the fascist dice are cast. " ( http://www.aporrea.org/dameletra.php?docid=4277)

Already a few months before, on Labor Day, May 1, 2003, in "A specter is haunting the Fourth Reich -- the specter of Chávez!", I urged that we should "learn to act and think the revolution", in other words that we should develop our own revolutionary praxis and theory:

"Creatively, the Bolivarian Revolution has to be acted, be thought, be formulated transhistorically, it needs a Práxis-Theory, that considers political economy, social class differences, the labor struggle, its internal, intensive "class struggle", a philosophy that surpasses all forms of global lies, ideology and mind control". http://www.trinicenter.com/selfnews/arc4-2003.html

That the USA has planned long ago to intervene in Venezuela and Latin America, with military power, should it be necessary for its own economic, imperialist survival and struggle to retain world hegemony, is scientifically sure, there should not be any doubts about this issue. Within the very Bolivarian movement, it is counter-revolutionary to use this threat as an instrument to brake the deepening of the revolutionary process.

As Simon Bolivar had warned already, this Yankee plague is simply there, it is our daily bread; as long as the Bolivarian Revolution exists, and is advancing towards global emancipation, so long the Damocles Sword of North American Fascism will hover over our revolutionary heads.

On August 8, 2004, in a VHeadline commentary, I explained this reality, that is, "The Emancipatory Quintessence of the Bolivarian Revolution", as follows:

"In the short term, before the total world economic collapse, the brutal conquest of the remaining reserves of oil, water, oxygen and biodiversity is a top priority for the well-being of the Super Power, for the USA; also this is relevant with reference to its possible competitors for world hegemony, Europe, China, India, etc."

We explained that all these, reflected in Bush's current global economic and military "new wars", directly accelerate the Bolivarian Revolution toward higher dimensions of armed self-defense and popular resistance:

"All these affect the Bolivarian Revolution, are globalizing its revolutionary efforts, make it an emancipatory paradigm for the world. Its praxis becomes the totality of global workers' resistance, its theory is permanent revolution.

This can be verified in its educational, political, economical and social projects, can be seen in the ferocious attacks of the global mass media, in the conspiracies, in the danger of violent US intervention."

Logically, I concluded:

"However, global fascism will have to annihilate the whole iceberg, in order to stop its "NO" on August 15, 2004 .... and all that what will follow thereafter: the still possible Emancipation of Humanity." (http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=22333)

In his new book, "The Venezuelan Revolution: A Marxist Perspective". Alan Woods, introduced by Rob Sewell, confirms the above analyses, indicating that currently the Bolivarian Revolution finds itself at the crossroads.

He writes: “Right from the beginning we have pointed out that the Venezuelan revolution has begun, but it is not finished, and it cannot be finished until the power of the Venezuelan oligarchy is broken”, states Alan Woods. “This means the expropriation of the land, banks and big industry under workers’ control and management. It means the arming of the people. It means the setting up of action committees linked up on a local, regional and national basis. It means that the working class must organize independently and strive to place itself at the head of the nation. And it means that the Marxist tendency must strive to win over the majority of the revolutionary movement.” (See: http://www.marxist.com/Latinam/venezuela_revolution_book.htm )

Rob Sewell describes that what we have called the Bolivarian tip of the global ice-berg of permanent revolution, as follows:

"However, without doubt Latin America is currently in the vanguard of world revolution, and within the Latin American continent, Venezuela stands out sharply as the country most affected by this process. It would be no exaggeration to say that Venezuela is now the key to the international situation and the developing world revolution."

Yes, indeed, in agreement with Woods and Sewell, we are crossing the bourgeois, national, democratic revolutionary Rubicon, as vanguard of the exodus out of capitalism and imperialism, via our own socialism, toward global, human emancipation.

However, this path does not exist as yet, as we near our emancipatory goal, the path is being created, gradually our socialism comes into being and existence.

This President Hugo Chavez Frias formulated as follows: “I am convinced, and I think that this conviction will be for the rest of my life, that the path to a new, better and possible world, is not capitalism, the path is socialism, that is the path: socialism, socialism.” (Also see:
http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/german_easter_marches_venezuela.htm )

However, there is no easy walk to freedom, the serpentine path toward Socialism, how to make and think the revolution, how to get rid of private property of the means of production and of communication, how to realize world socialism, Marx and Engels already have explained to us in 1850:

“... it is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent, until all more or less possessing classes have been forced out of their position of dominance, until the proletariat has conquered state power, and the association of proletarians, not only in one country but in all the dominant countries of the world, has advanced so far that competition among the proletarians of these countries has ceased and that at least the decisive productive forces are concentrated in the hands of the proletarians. For us the issue cannot be the alteration of private property but only its annihilation, not the smoothing over of class antagonisms but the abolition of classes, not the improvement of existing society but the foundation of a new one.”
(Address to the Central Committee to the Communist League, March 1850).

No more impunity. They have to give us guns to defend ourselves. Another peasant is murdered in Venezuela!

On Saturday March 19, in Barinas State in Santa Barbara Luis Enrique Perez was murdered with machete blows. This companero was member of the "Agualinda 6" Cooperative that was expecting this week a final decree which would give legalitiy to lands they have been fighting for years to get.

The lands requested from the Agrarian Reform institute are in the "Agualinda" ranch of 18 thousand hectacres owned by the murderer, Aramando Javier Mogollon. He has changed the name from "Agualinda" to "Becerras" to confuse the land that is in production with the land that is idle and in that way ignore the law.

Hired hands of the landlord killed Luis Enrique Perez while he was working on the edge of the Caparo River. A few minutes afer comrades found the body, a plane with paramilitaries left the ranch. This landlord is known for his connections with the drug cartels and the Colombian paramilitaries.

Venezuelan peasants are living in a critical situation which has worsened since the Law on Land was promulgated. There has been a wave of murders, threats, and persecution which the Law has opened up given the absence of protection from the State. The peasantry form an integral part of the Venezuelan people in building the revolutionary process. It is impossible for us to accept being abandoned or accept impunity when faced with those which are attempting to prevent carrying out the Law on Land.

How many Venezuelan peasants have to die before before the Venezuelan State does something really? Unfortunately, the Venezuelan National Guard has not acted as it should and is covering up the real murderer: Armando Javier Mogollon.

We wish to thank VIVETV, which was the only means of communication present in this place until now. We call on the peoples organizations, alternative media, and all those who will spread information and search for solidarity for the peasant men and women of Venezuela.

The funeral of Luis Enrique Perez, member of the Peasant Front Ezequiel Zamora, will take place today in Capitanejo. Because of the history of impunity in our country, the peasants will be blocking the principal roads in the zone.

It is shameful to speak of a revolutionary process where no one is protected nor is there any attempt to assure there is justice for the revolutionary people.

My Dear Mr. Ocando:

Really - we had a jolly good laugh here in Canada over your article which describes our Bolivarian Circles as engaging in '"intelligence gathering". We were left puzzling over where we would find "intelligence" data and then how or to whom we would be giving it to!

Now, let us be completely honest. You are against Hugo Chávez and we are for him. That is fine in any democratic country, to freely support or not political positions. I do not quarrel with you on that account, you have every right as so do we. That is not the reason I am writing to you. I am writing on the issue of ethical and quality standards in journalism. You are out of your league when writing about Canada and the Bolivarian Circles that operate here and by engaging in "armchair" journalism you have misled your reader and spread an ugly untruth about us.

I will not talk about the Bolivarian Circles in the USA, because they can assuredly defend themselves from your innuendos. But I do think I must speak up for Canadian Bolivarian Circles.

It may be hard for you, as an American, to understand that in Canada we have a very free and dynamic political system that includes ironclad guarantees of our civil, political, and social rights. At election time, you can see political parties of all stripes competing for votes: Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic, Green, Communists, Marxists, Anarchists, and we even have a Marijuana party.

 The Canadian government and the RCMP have the greatest respect for the peaceful non-governmental organizations that operate here, of which the Bolivarian Circles form part. Bolivarian Circles here have never, never had any kind of a quarrel or run-in with any authority in this country.
Canada has the most cordial relationship with Venezuela. Canada has never broken relationships with Cuba or China for that matter and there are many organizations here in this multicultural country that have been created to foster the friendship between Canada and other countries, such as Cuba, China, Italy, France, Russia, Germany, Jamaica, etc, etc.

At the Bolivarian Circles, we are all proud Canadian citizens who believe that the government of Hugo Chávez is trying its best to give to the Venezuelan people some of the rights that we hold dear: the rule of law, a public health system, quality public education and public housing. You may not quite share these values, but none the less, I assure you that groups such as ours do not give our government any cause at all for concern or worry, nor are we under any kind of surveillance.

So, I would like to invite you, quite seriously, to come to Toronto, where you could do some real investigative journalism for a change, and inspect our Bolivarian Circle. I can assure you that you will be treated with respect and courtesy. You may come to our meetings, see our plan of action, and meet all the members whom you can interview. Furthermore, I will undertake to put in a good word for you at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ottawa so you may speak with them and be assured personally by them that we are in no way in their bad books.
 
This is a serious invitation. We demand a retraction from you over an unfair and untruthful article and we feel that by coming to meet us you will be able to write an ethical and quality piece that would meet journalistic standards.
Of course, you may decline, this invitation, which would clearly indicate, sadly, that you are not up to the challenge.

Most sincerely,
Dr. Maria Páez Victor
Member of the Canadian Bolivarian Circle Louis Riel
Toronto, Canada

An earlier version of this letter was sent to the editors of El Nuevo Herald and the Miami Herald in response to an article by Casto Ocando entitled “Redes chavistas penetran en EEUU”. So far, that letter has not been printed.  Since then, they have published 2 more articles by the same author on the same topic.  We have therefore decided to make this an open letter, have updated it to reflect the new articles, and have also added more examples of anti-Venezuelan activities taking place in the U.S. 

We object to the tone and intention of this series of articles, which is clearly part of the intensifying effort to demonize the Bolivarian revolutionary process and isolate the various solidarity groups active in the U.S. and Canada. Now more than ever, those who oppose U.S. intervention in Venezuela must stand together to reject these provocations.  Hands Off Venezuela! An injury to one is an injury to all! 

Please publicize this widely and join the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign in saying “No!” to U.S. intervention in Venezuela and around the world!

The email for El Nuevo Herald is:

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Open letter to El Nuevo Herald and The Miami Herald:

We, the U.S. Hands Off Venezuela Campaign condemn and deplore your March 20 article, “Redes chavistas penetran en EEUU”, the subsequent two articles, and .pdf file illustrating pro-Chavez organizations in the U.S. This is nothing but yellow journalism in an effort to undermine the U.S. and Canadian Bolivarian Circles, the Hands Off Venezuela Campaign, and others who support the Venezuelan revolutionary process. 

(See also: Redes chavistas chocan con leyes de EEUU, Chavistas cautivan a académicos de Estados Unidos, Gráfico de las organizaciones Chavistas en Estados Unidos (PDF))

Your so-called investigation is nothing more than a witch-hunt intended to scare and intimidate supporters of the Venezuelan revolutionary process. Your effort to “expose” these groups, which mixes publicly available facts with half-truths, and journalistic hyperbole, is a transparent effort to discredit the Venezuelan solidarity movement being built in the U.S., Canada, and internationally. Attacks such as these are reminiscent of the days of McCarthyism, when people and organizations were accused without evidence in order to suppress opposition to U.S. government policies.

In addition, it is the height of hypocrisy that your paper supports the “War on Terror” while terrorist acts are being planned and discussed right under your noses without a word of condemnation.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal on January 29, 2003, right-wing Cuban groups based in Florida are planning the overthrow of Venezuela’s democratically-elected government. According to the Journal and Vheadline.com, Capt. Luis Eduardo García, the leader of the Venezuelan Patriotic Junta, is providing military training for some 50 members of the “F-4 Commandos”, 30 of them Cuban-Americans, the rest Venezuelans, in a shooting range close to the Everglades. He was reported as saying, “We are preparing for war.”

This is surely in violation of U.S. and International laws.

Other leaders of the U.S.-backed April 2002 coup against Chavez have taken refuge in Miami.*  Many of them have openly called for the violent overthrow of Chavez.  Former Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez, who is wanted by Venezuelan authorities in connection with the massacre of Venezuelan civilians in 1989, spends much of his time in Miami.  In past interviews he has declared that he is “working to remove Chavez [from power]… “Violence will allow us to remove him… [Chavez] must die like a dog, because he deserves it.”  

Local Miami TV stations Canal 22 and Channel 41 have on various occasions shown individuals calling for the violent overthrow of the Bolivarian government and assassination of President Chavez. As reported by Inter Press Service, Venezuelan actor and host Orlando Urdaneta said the following last year in relation to Venezuelan President Chavez on a local Miami station: “Venezuela's biggest problem can be solved with a rifle with a telescopic sight.”  When asked who would give the order, his reply was, “The order has already been given.”

Most recently, ex-CIA agent, Felix Rodriguez, speaking to channel 22 in Miami, confirmed that Washington would take economic and military actions against Venezuela, including assassination. Rodriguez said that he expected to participate in a CIA command to end with the life of the Venezuelan president. According to Rodriguez, U.S. military forces could launch a pre-emptive air strike to assassinate Chavez. (Reported on www.Venezuelanalysis.com)

As far as we know, all of this goes against FCC regulations to say the least.

Instead, your paper focuses on “exposing” those active in the broad-based Venezuelan solidarity movement. Perhaps your writers’ time would be better spent investigating terroristic comments made on local television. Or perhaps they should investigate the legality of U.S. funding of opposition and terrorist groups within Venezuela, and the destabilization program currently being carried out in that country by groups such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the American Center of International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) of the AFL-CIO, and the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).**

Cort Greene for the U.S. Hands Off Venezuela Campaign

     * Documents incontrovertibly proving U.S. involvement in the April 2002 coup have been made public through the Freedom of Information Act and are available at: http://www.venezuelafoia.info/

     ** The role played by these and other groups is outlined in the following interview with Philip Agee, formerly of the CIA: http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1403

Former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez talked about Venezuela on the talk show "Maria Elvira Confronta." Credit: Channel 22, Miami

In an interview on Miami’s Spanish-language channel 22, the former CIA agent Felix Rodriguez said that the U.S. government has plans to “bring about a change in Venezuela.” When pressed as to what type of plans these might be, Rodriguez responded that the Bush administration “could do it with a military strike, with a plane.”

The former CIA agent’s comments were made last week, on Thursday, during the talk show of a well-known supporter of the anti-Castro movement, Maria Elvira Salazar. Rodriguez affirmed during the program, “According to information I have about what is happening in Venezuela, it is possible that at some moment they [the Bush administration] will see itself obliged, for national security reasons and because of problems they have in Colombia, to implement a series of measures that will bring about a change in Venezuela.”

The moderator, not satisfied with his vague answer, asked Rodriguez what kind of measures these might be and he responded, “They could be economic measures and at some point they could be military measures.” He then added, “If at some point they are going to do it, they will do it openly.” As an example, Rodriguez gave the Reagan administration’s strike against Khadafi, whose residence was bombed and whose adoptive daughter was killed in the process.

Felix Rodriguez is presumed to have been one of the CIA agents who captured Ernesto “Ché” Guevara in Bolivia and who was involved in his assassination in 1962.

For the past several weeks, President Chavez has been saying that he has evidence that the Bush administration is planning his assassination. Bush spokespersons, such as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have dismissed the charge, calling it “absurd.” Chavez and officials from his government, however, have insisted that they have intelligence information about a possible assassination, but that they cannot reveal their sources, as this would ruin their investigations.

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez has also pointed out that the U.S. denied for a long time its involvement in the overthrow of the governments of Chile in 1973 or of Guatemala in 1954, but that their involvement was eventually proven.

Yesterday, the British newspaper Financial Times reported that, "Senior US administration officials are working on a policy to 'contain' President Hugo Chavez." the report went on to say, "A strategy aimed at fencing in the Chávez government is being prepared at the behest of President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, senior US officials say."

The Financial Times quoted Roger Pardo-Maurer, deputy assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs, as saying that, "Chavez is a problem because he is clearly using his oil money and influence to introduce his conflictive style into the politics of other countries."

Roger Pardo-Mauro became known during the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra scandal, when he was a spokesperson for the Nicaraguan Contras. He is also said to have met with Venezuela's top general, Lucas Rincon Romero, in the weeks prior to the April 2002 coup.

(Available as a single-sided leaflet or a double-sided leaflet)

Most people know that the corporate newspapers, radio, and television exist to serve the interests of the big businesses that own them. In recent weeks, they have opened an all-out assault on the Venezuelan revolution. The U.S. media is flooded with negative appraisals of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolutionary process. Right-wing pundit Robert Novak recently referred to “Latin America’s infection.” At her confirmation hearing, Bush’s secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Chavez a “negative force” in the region. Chavez is often described as “anti-American”, and is accused of “meddling” in neighboring states, harboring “terrorists” and “starting an arms race”. The Financial Times recently reported that a “containment policy” is being formulated by the Bush Administration, aimed at “fencing in” the world’s 5th largest oil exporter. Roger Pardo-Maurer, current deputy assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs at the U.S. Department of Defense, and former political officer for the right-wing Nicaraguan Contras is at the heart of this renewed attention on Latin America.       

The reason for these attacks is clear: the Venezuelan Revolution is incompatible with U.S. corporate interests in the region and with the capitalist system as a whole. The fact is, the constant slanders and distortions of the truth reflect the growing fear of the U.S. ruling class in relation to the international repercussions of the developing Venezuelan revolution. What is at stake is the very existence of the capitalist system in Venezuela, Latin America, and ultimately, the world. Due to the quagmire in Iraq and their reliance on Venezuelan oil (providing 15 percent to the U.S.), Bush’s hands are tied for the moment. But they are moving might and main to mobilize public opinion in the U.S. as well as in Latin America in order to strangle the Bolivarian revolution as soon as the opportunity arises.

Venezuela has some of the world’s largest known oil reserves and is rich in other natural resources. Yet despite this wealth, 80 percent of Venezuela’s population has lived in abject misery for decades. The Venezuelan oligarchy and their multi-national corporate pals used the country’s wealth to line their own pockets with profits, instead of improving the conditions of life of ordinary Venezuelans - the ones who actually produce all the wealth. This continued for decades, until the International Monetary Fund and the Venezuelan millionaires went too far: in February of 1989 they imposed intolerably harsh economic conditions on the already destitute population. The resulting “Caracazo” popular uprising was finally put down in blood by the state security forces, resulting in hundreds if not thousands of people killed. This was the beginning of a chain of events that continues today.

As a result of this brutality, left-wing paratrooper Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chavez led a failed military coup in 1992 against the right-wing government. Despite being sent to prison, he instantly became a popular hero. After mass support led to his early release from prison, he formed a new political movement and wiped the floor with the long-standing corporate political duopoly in the presidential elections of 1998. A new, far more democratic constitution was adopted by popular referendum, and Chavez was overwhelmingly re-elected in 2000.

His initial goal was simply to improve the conditions of life of the long-suffering Venezuelan people. But even the most modest measures on land reform, taxing the profits of the multi-nationals, and increasing spending on health care, education, food programs and housing brought him into a direct confrontation with the Venezuelan oligarchy and their allies in the U.S. In April of 2002, the Venezuelan media, the country's business organization, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and a handful of reactionary generals helped orchestrate a coup d'etat against Chavez. This new "democratic" government, proceeded to abolish the Bolivarian Constitution and dissolve the National Assembly, Supreme Court, and the National Electoral Board. Not surprisingly, it was immediately recognized as legitimate by Washington. There is now clear proof that the U.S.  administration knew about the preparations for the coup and collaborated
with the plotters. But in an unprecedented uprising, the Venezuelan masses rose up against this illegitimate government and reinstated Chavez.

Since then, the revolutionary process has accelerated - but so have U.S. efforts to put a halt to it. The key to the Venezuelan revolution is the truly mass, democratic, grass roots participation of the Venezuelan workers, peasants, and urban poor. Time and again, they have mobilized and organized to defend the revolution, and it is on their continued participation that the fate of the revolution depends. Hugo Chavez himself has become increasingly radicalized in recent months. He has said that capitalism must be transcended, he nationalized an important paper mill under workers’ control, and called for the “socialism of the 21st century”. This reflects the pressure of the masses from below. The hopes and dreams of millions of Venezuelans are really quite simple and are very similar to the hopes and dreams of working people in the U.S. and around the world. They are fighting for quality jobs, housing, education, transportation, health care, safe working conditions, a decent pension, and a bright future for their families and loved ones. Is it too much to ask that the vast wealth created by working people around the world be used to improve their lives?        

Despite the repeated provocations by the U.S. government, Chavez and the Venezuelan people are far from being “anti-American”. Chavez always distinguishes carefully between the American people and their rulers. As he declared recently in a speech: “One day the decay inside U.S. imperialism will end up toppling it, and the great people of Martin Luther King will be set free. The great people of the United States are our brothers, my salute to them ... The U.S. people, with whom we share dreams and ideals, must free themselves... A country of heroes, dreamers, and fighters, the people of Martin Luther King, and Cesar Chavez.”

It is vital that we counteract the lies and distortions of the corporate media. They are not interested in the truth about Venezuela - they will stop at nothing to demonize the struggle of the Venezuelan people in order to justify the crushing of the revolutionary process. Having been defeated during the coup, during the oil sabotage and repeatedly at the polls, the Venezuelan oligarchy and their friends in Washington are now threatening to resort to terrorism and even the assassination of Chavez himself. It is therefore urgent to mobilize and demand U.S. Hands Off Venezuela!

The heroic efforts of millions of Venezuelan men and women to improve their lives proves in practice that it is possible to build a better world. Their struggle is our struggle! This summer, the World Festival of Students and Youth will be held in Caracas, Venezuela. This will be a perfect opportunity for thousands of young people around the world to visit Venezuela and see the revolution up close. This isn’t ancient history, this is a living, vibrant, developing revolution in our own hemisphere in the 21st century. We must defend and spread the Venezuelan revolution internationally!   

(Available as a single-sided leaflet or a double-sided leaflet)

A little later, it shifts once again, to an intrepid melodrama, intermixing looting, holdups, political blackmail, mercenaries, violence.

When you get to the last page, the reader might well ask if what he has read hasn't been, after all, a novel of impossible adventures, a game of imagination unattached to real life, says the Cuban youth newspaper.

However, not a single line is fiction.

A good part of this book is comprised of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act of the United States, and plenty of time and doggedness was required of Eva to obtain this material for readers, and as confirmed in the first page, put her at enormous risk, including death threats.

Still, the reader shouldn't lose sight that this seminal testimony documents not only what perseverance is required of investigators, but the capricious behavior of those who control the secret American archives, who declassify what they feel like and hide whatever is most compromising.

Eva predicts scores of years will pass before the opening of these other archives.

And for sure, much more terrifying things remain censored and maybe we will never know the most secret evidence from the plans against Venezuela: as we know, we had to wait more than 30 years for the "mea culpa" of Robert McNamara, to know the evil plans to provoke an invasion of Cuba by the United States, contained in the plan named Operation Mongoose.

When will we know what really happened in Dallas, the day Kennedy was killed? When will we learn what is being hatched at this very moment against Cuba, Venezuela and the world? Ask Elizalde and Polanco.

Thanks to this sample, that Eva was able to dig up from the American government, it's possible to prove what the United States denied repeatedly: it was involved in bringing to fruition the details of the coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April of 2002, which included plans to generate violence during demonstrations, the arrest of the leader, and its active participation in the coup.

For whoever sees it, The Chavez Code is an instructive book. Her testimony brings forth a series of documents that illuminate the truth behind these works, truth that has shocked Venezuelan public opinion over the last three years.

Details appear in this book about how the United States executed its Plan A for intervention and subversion in Latin America.

What failed this time doesn't necessarily mean that the aggressor intends to admit defeat. A little after Eva Golinger put her final touches on this book, evidence began to appear on the public scene that the government of George Bush is already applying Plan B: a barrage of dirty propaganda and actions in international organizations to isolate the Venezuelan government, without ruling out the assassination or kidnapping of the chief of state, the foreword to a military intervention.

The denunciations against Venezuela have begun: in the first weeks of 2005, more than 50 press articles appeared in U.S. newspapers and television programs, where more than 85% of the "experts" consulted were affiliated with opposition institutions and publications. So much for proverbial objectivity of the press.

The most slanderous allegations come from "unnamed sources" in the Bush administration, adding fuel to the fire of the latest definition, begun this year by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "Hugo Chávez is a negative force in the region."

From this cry for war, the United States has let loose the dogs of prey from the CIA and the media at its service, including the press and institutions like the Organization of American States, with which they heat up the scene, and scattered signs, but very perceptible ones, begin to appear of the new crusade.

As a result, it's likely that within one year, maybe sooner, we will see a new book from Eva or from other audacious investigators, where they weave this new chapter in the saga of this sinister soap opera that we Cubans have suffered for more than 40 years and that has recently begun for the Venezuelans.

The Chavez Code alludes to an experience that intimately concerns every society in the world. An experience that brings us to the simple question: can any government in this world elude the "liberating" desires of the CIA and the NED, if it takes a road different from that selected by Emperor Bush for everyone on the planet?

The English edition of The Chavez Code will be available shortly on Amazon.com or directly through the author, Eva Golinger: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

English Translation by Sue Ashdown

"What message do you have for my country?" General Rafael Oropeza had no answer for the military official from the United States standing before him on April 11, 2002 in the military barracks of Fort Tiuna in Caracas. Colonel James Rodgers, military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, repeated the question. In the moment of the coup d'etat against President Hugo Chávez Frías, General Oropeza was charged with registering everyone who entered and exited Fort Tiuna, the base for the Venezuelan Defense Ministry and the premier military installation in the country. Photographs of Rodgers driving a vehicle around the perimeter of the Fort during the coup were published afterwards in the Venezuelan daily Ultima Noticias.

The State Department denied the existence of any James Rodgers, even though he was registered as a military attaché of the Embassy in Caracas. But the most compromising moment for the U.S. military in Venezuela during the period surrounding the April 2002 coup against President Chávez happened April 8, at a goodbye party for a Chinese military attaché, held in the luxury Hotel Melía in Caracas. It was that night, exactly, that an official of the U.S. Marine Corps, David Cazares, confused General Roberto González Cárdenas with General Néstor González Gonzáles. It was an understandable error. Both men were bald, approximately the same height and both dressed in Venezuelan Army uniforms, complete with medals and an i.d. tag that said simply, "González".

Cazares sidled up to General González and, accusingly, asked, "Why haven't you contacted the ships we have off the coast or our submarine submerged in La Guaira? What's going on? Why hasn't anyone called me? What are you waiting for?"

General González hadn't the remotest idea what the U.S. Marine officer was talking about, but before he could respond, a military attaché from Brazil approached to say goodbye. Cazares took advantage of the distraction to ask the Marine captain, Moreno Leal, standing nearby, if this was indeed General González, "the one who was stationed on the border". Moreno answered: "That is General González, but I don't know if he was stationed at the border." Cazares continued interrogating General González Cardenas, demanding to know why no-one had yet made contact with him or with the three boats and the submarine located off the Venezuelan coast. Prudently, González Cárdenas limited his responses to a simple "We'll inquire." On leaving the party, the two met again in the elevator. "This has an operative cost. I'm waiting for your answer," said Cazares firmly.

The Venezuelan general Néstor González González was a secret participant in the coup d'etat of April 2002 against President Chávez. April 10, the general appeared on national television and demanded the resignation of the president, "or we shall see". On April 12, after the failed coup, a television program aired which revealed that González González made this statement with the simple goal of preventing Chávez from traveling to Costa Rica, where he was to participate in a meeting of the OAS General Assembly that same day. The plot worked. Chávez remained in Venezuela and the coup began to unfold according to plan.

However, the erroneous exchange between Cazares and González Cárdenas that April 8 was passed to a higher level and uncovered by Venezuelan investigators after Chávez's brief demotion, while the United States simply ignored it. Cazares's term in Venezuela was reduced afterwards, and he was re-posted to Chile when the amazing article appeared in �ltimas Noticias.

Another Piece in Place

On March 5, 2002, something pleasant happened for the United States. A cable sent from the U.S. Embassy in Caracas to Washington, to the CIA, the DIA
(Defense Intelligence Agency) the NSC (National Security Council) and others, arrived with the following heading: THE UNIONS, THE BUSINESS SECTOR AND THE CHURCH ANNOUNCE A TRANSITION AGREEMENT.

The body of the cable said: "With great fanfare, Venezuela's best gathered on March 5 to listen to representatives of the Venezuelan Workers' Union, the Chamber of Commerce and the Catholic Church present their combined democratic agreement, with ten principles to guide a transitional government. This accord constitutes an important step for the opposition, which has never wavered in its condemnation of Chávez, but until this moment had not offered a comprehensive vision of its own."

The U.S. government appeared pleased with the agreement reached by the opposition on March 5, taking into account that it had brought an investment of nearly two million dollars in an effort to strengthen and unify the opposition parties. A comment in a cable from the Embassy revealed this satisfaction: "Another piece in place," wrote Cook, an embassy staffer, "this agreement could well constitute a reference point in the code of conduct for a transition government."

The remark "another piece in place" should have caught the attention of some, more than just a little. If the opposition accord for a post-Chávez transition government was another "piece" of the plan, then the overthrow of Chávez should have been the final piece in the conspiracy. The United States, continually complaining of the lack of opposition unity, reasoned that this called for an investment of some two million dollars through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in order to strengthen the political parties and help them unite around a strategy. The accord of March 5 confirmed that this investment had brought results: "another piece" had been placed correctly and the day of the final objective was approaching.

On March 11, 2002, the government of the United States was convinced that the coup had been organized.

The CIA in Venezuela sent another urgent notice to the five intelligence agencies in Washington, this time in the form of an alert. The alert was prepared for the Strategic Alert Committee of the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), a strictly confidential and high level group governed by the National Intelligence Office to alert and integrate the director's representatives in the National Security Agency, the DIA, and the National Mapping Agency, as well as for the undersecretary of State for Intelligence and Investigation, and the vice-director of Intelligence for the CIA. The strictly confidential alert was more specific: "There are growing signals that the Venezuelan business leaders and officials are feeling dissatisfied with President Chávez.the military could try to overthrow him."

Absolutely not!

The American ambassador in Caracas, Charles Shapiro, visited (Pedro) Carmona several times during the coup. He claimed that his visits on April 12 were to try to convince him to reinstitute the Congress and other institutions he had dissolved, but Shapiro's answers to questions about his relationships with the leaders of the opposition and the participants in the resulting coup were prefabricated and well planned. Not by him, however.

April 16, 2002, Shapiro received a cable from the State Department in Washington, with a Press Guide for Western Hemispheric Affairs, prepared by an L.S. Hamilton in the State Department, and approved by Richard Boucher, State Department spokesperson.

If they ask "Did U.S. officials meet with Venezuelan opposition officials prior to the April 11 removal of President Chávez from power," he was to memorize the following response: "U.S. officials have met with a broad spectrum of Venezuelans over the past several months both in Caracas and in Washington. U.S. officials met with business community representatives, labor union officials, Catholic church leaders, opposition political leaders, and a wide array of Venezuelan government officials."

In reference to questions about the meetings with Carmona, the Press Guide said: "If asked" - that is, don't offer information if not asked - the proper response would be: "In the course of normal diplomatic contacts, U.S. officials met with Pedro Carmona, the President of the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce (Fedecamaras). Our message to all Venezuelan contacts has been consistent. The political situation in Venezuela is one for Venezuelans to resolve peacefully, democratically and constitutionally. We explicitly told all of our Venezuelan interlocutors on numerous occasions and at many levels that under no circumstances would the United States support any unconstitutional, undemocratic effort, such as coup (sic), to remove President Chávez from power.

A message of "zero coups" was categorically sent, meanwhile the government of the United States was filling the pockets of coup conspirators with millions of dollars, and meeting with them from time to time to discuss their plans.

Hardly surprising then, that the response to the question "Was the United States involved in the effort to remove Venezuelan President Chávez from power?" should be "Absolutely not." 

[See also the Venezuela Freedom of Information Act web site (www.venezuelafoia.info) where all the documents regarding US meddling in Venezuela are published]

A group of almost 400 hundred Venezuelan journalists issued a statement today denouncing what they consider is a "campaign" from the United States against Venezuela.

The journalists argue that negative and frequent media coverage of Venezuela in the U.S., as well as the frequent comments by high ranking officials at the State Department, CIA, and White House, amount to a "campaign" similar to those applied against countries which were later invaded by the U.S.

"As it was done in the past to Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada, and Haiti, the government of the United States today targets the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela with all its media and propaganda power. In those brother nations, such campaigns served as the preamble for an armed invasion by the main global military power," the statement says.

The conservative U.S. Fox News network recently ran a news series titled "The Iron Fist of Hugo Chavez," in which the twice-elected leader is portrayed as an authoritarian dictator. Last January, the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) featured a report from Venezuela in which a family described fears of buying a new car for fear of having it confiscated by the Venezuelan government.

The explosive 17% GDP growth experienced by the Venezuelan economy and news such as a vehicles sales growth of 47% last year, are often ignored by the media when reporting on Venezuela, including both the NPR and Fox News reports.

"The intervention by the George W. Bush administration, as witnessed during the 2002 coup d'état and the oil strike, lost all subtlety and pretense during the recent conflict between Venezuela and Colombia over the abduction of Rodrigo Granda in Caracas. The State Department called South American nations to pressure the Hugo Chavez administration, failing to garner a single echo in the region," the statement continues.

Relationships beteween the government of leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and the Unites States government, have deteriorated in 2005. The kidnapping and arrest of a Colombian guerilla leader in Venezuela sparked a brief, but tense stand-off between Venezuela and Colombia, with the US siding clearly with the latter. Chavez often cites evidence of of U.S. support for the 2002 coup d'etat against him and has complained of funds for groups that oppose him coming from the U.S. Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy.

Recent U.S. military presence near Venezuela caused concern and was taken as an act of provocation by several Venezuelan officials.

A non-official translation of the journalists' statement is reproduced below:

Code of Ethics for Venezuelan Journalists

Article 40 – The journalist has the unavoidable duty of defending National Sovereignty and territorial integrity. Consequently, he/she must contribute to this patriotic task through trade union actions, opposing any practice or campaign that contradicts national interests, as well as peace and friendship among the people.

As it was done in the past to Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada, and Haiti, the government of the United States today targets the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela with all its media and propaganda power. In those brother nations, such campaigns served as the preamble for an armed invasion by the main global military power.

The media campaign against Venezuela and its government worsened in 2005. In addition to the daily comments by high officials at the State Department, CIA, and White House, a campaign full of lies and distortions through major newspapers and news channels was initiated.

The intervention by the George W. Bush administration, as witnessed during the 2002 coup d'état and the oil strike, lost all subtlety and pretense during the recent conflict between Venezuela and Colombia over the abduction of Rodrigo Granda in Caracas. The State Department called South American nations to pressure the Hugo Chavez administration, failing to garner a single echo in the region.

In addition to this foreign campaign, several sectors within the national [Venezuelan] media have lost all scruples and joined this initiative. Under the hypocritical title of non-governmental organizations, several organisms, financed by the United States, have supported these dark objectives.

The end result is to overthrow President Hugo Chavez Frias' democratic government, one legitimated by eight electoral processes and a presidential recall referendum.

The Venezuel