According to the majority media reports in the West, Venezuela is witnessing a wave of popular protest against its totalitarian government, by students and citizens tired of crime, corruption and food shortages. However, a closer look the history of US imperialism in Venezuela and Latin America, reports from independent journalists and activists on the ground, and the US State Department cables released by Wikileaks, a wholly darker and more complex picture emerges.
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela sits on the Northern Coast of South America. It has a population of just over 29 million people, a GDP of $382bn a year and a land mass roughly the size of Germany and England combined. It borders Colombia to the West, Guyana to the East, Brazil to the South and has a long Caribbean coastline across the North.
The nation became a republic in the early 19th century, with the revolution of Bolivarian revolution that threw out the Spanish imperialists. Ever since, there has been a power struggle between the small elite and middle class of Venezuela and the mass working class. The former are fully backed by the US, with funds and arms.
The US has a long history of Latin American imperialism, much of it centred on Venezuela. I cannot detail that in full here, but Noam Chomsky does a great job of detailing the history and intent of US imperialism in Latin America here.
Throughout the latter half of the 20th century the Venezuelan democratic system was dominated by two political parties that handed power between themselves, while implementing essentially the same policies. AsJohn Pilger writes:
“When Chávez was first elected in 1998, Venezuela was not an archetypical Latin American tyranny, but a liberal democracy with certain freedoms, run by and for its elite, which had plundered the oil revenue and let crumbs fall to the invisible millions in the barrios. A pact between the two main parties, known aspuntofijismo, resembled the convergence of new Labour and the Tories in Britain and Republicans and Democrats in the US. For them, the idea of popular sovereignty was anathema, and still is.”
[product id=”” sku=”js07″]Hugo Chavez promised to bring an end to this corruption, open up the political system, and reduce poverty. He won the 1998 presidential election with 56% of the vote — against a hostile media owned by the pro-US elite. This made him a marked man, Pilger continues:
“With Colombia as its front line, the war on democracy in Latin America has Chávez as its main target. It is not difficult to understand why. One of Chávez’s first acts was to revitalise the oil producers’ organisation Opec and force the oil price to record levels. At the same time he reduced the price of oil for the poorest countries in the Caribbean region and central America, and used Venezuela’s new wealth to pay off debt, notably Argentina’s, and, in effect, expelled the International Monetary Fund from a continent over which it once ruled. He has cut poverty by half — while GDP has risen dramatically. Above all, he gave poor people the confidence to believe that their lives would improve.”
In 2002, members of the Opposition, funded and supported by the United States, launched a failed coup on the democratically elected Chavez government, in efforts to oust him and protect their privilege.
As expert on US imperialism in Latin America Ed Vulliamy wrote for The Observer at the time:
Officials at the Organisation of American States and other diplomatic sources, talking to The Observer, assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.
The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, ‘several months ago’, and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.
It remains the conviction of current President Nicolas Maduro and other Latin America observers that Chavez’s untimely death from cancer, was likely a case of assassination by the CIA, the US State Department of through Opposition forces. This theory gained favour when Chavez ally, Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has also had a series of health scares. The US has attempted to assassinate no fewer than 50 foreign leaders in efforts to impose regimes more favourable to US interests. Does that mean they assassinated Chavez? No. Does it mean it is possible that they tried? Yes.
Nicolas Maduro succeeded Chavez in two subsequent elections (2012, and December 2013) endorsed as free and fair by the National Electoral Council of Venezuela.