Saul Landau
Someone once asked Mahatma Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization. "It would be a good idea", he replied.
Democracy in Latin America might also prove nice if the United States would allow it to occur.
Traditionally, when Latin Americans elect governments that show even vague intentions of redistributing the lopsided national wealth toward the poor, US officials get their knickers in a twist and force new elections: the pro-US candidate then emerges.
Washington's rhetorically concealed fusion between popular elections and imperial appointments hardly assures Latin American stability.
In October, four months before US and French officials dispatched Haiti's elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozado fled to Miami after massive popular protests had erupted against his pro-US economic policies. Similarly, Paraguay's Raul Cubas had to quit when faced with heavy opposition.
Ecuador's pro-free-trade President Jamil Mahuad has also been ejected. Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, who replaced the disgraced Alberto Fujimori, followed US dictates on free trade and has created deep unrest. In December 2001, Argentina's economy collapsed and Fernando De la Rua resigned in the face of popular revolts against neoliberal policies. All these candidates were punished for pro-US policies.
The current target of a US destabilisation campaign is Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez. In 1998, the 49-year-old former paratrooper won the presidency with massive support. Chavez was elected again in 2000 for a six-year term. Chavez is accused of trying to convert Venezuela to a Cuban-style government.
Having botched a 2002 coup attempt, anti-Chavez plotters in Washington and Caracas launched a recall referendum to force a new vote. (If 2.4 million people sign to demand one, a recall election must be held for president in Venezuela).
On March 9, the Venezuelan election council announced that only 1,830,000 signatures passed muster. This decision was challenged by the electoral division of the Supreme Court, but was promptly reaffirmed by a higher Supreme Court body.
Paradoxically, some of those who helped rig the 2000 US presidential election to enable George Bush to win the presidency, have now accused Chavez of electoral hanky panky.
The wealthy, their politicians, media owners and top executives and former managers at the state oil company, along with their partners from the elite oil workers union, all tried and failed to dispatch Chavez in the April 2002 coup. These former coup makers and their Washington backers have the chutzpah to claim that Chavez — not they — has undermined democracy.
Imagine US officials daring to charge others with undermining democracy as they keep their contaminated hands in Haiti following their overthrow of Aristide!
In recent speeches, Chavez quoted from documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act that show US agencies funded the efforts of former coup makers. Chavez demanded that the US "get its hands off Venezuela".
The documents he cited show that "Sumate", the group directing the signature collection for Chavez's recall, received US$53,400 from the Congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), whose mandate is to fund causes that strengthen democracy.
The recall campaign organisers have also fomented vehement street rallies that have cost at least eight lives. Members of the elite bang pots and pans in their own neighbourhoods — only servants use them in their homes — but some of Venezuela's massive poor get paid by US-backed operatives to do more violent protesting.
These tactics resonate with memories of tested CIA formulas, like the one used to foment revolt against the government of Salvador Allende in Chile 1970-3.
The NED targets foreign leaders who believe insufficiently in free trade and privatisation or who want the government to play an active role in the economy.
For example, the NED targeted Aristide for his refusal to comply 100% with the demands of the privatisers, like the International Monetary Fund and the US government. It sent money to his opponents while the US government cut off loans, credit and aid to the Haitian government.
Washington can't very well try these tactics with Venezuela without fear of a retaliatory oil policy by Chavez. But it did enlist its old Cold War ally, the foreign policy wing of the US AFL-CIO union federation, the American Centre for International Labor Solidarity.
The AFL-CIO, losing membership at home, nevertheless spent workers' money to train and advise opposition anti-Chavez forces. The US government acts as a loose organiser to bring together the anti-Chavez unions and discredited political parties like Democratic Action and Copei, whose past governments have looted their nation's treasury over some four decades.
Chris Sabatini, NED's Latin America director, claimed in the March 13 Independent that his agency only wants to "build political space". Such statements seem laughable. In Chile in the early 1970s and in Venezuela today, the wealthy chant "democracy" only when tax policies designed to help the poor threaten their fortunes.
The media, owned by the rich, don't report how past "democratic" governments routinely looted Venezuela's treasury. But they have spread panic about Chavez's budget, which prioritises public health and education — areas the rich don't use.
US troops routinely intervened in Latin America throughout the 20th century. The "world's greatest democracy" overthrew elected governments in Guatemala and Iran in the 1950s.
In the 1960s, US covert operations helped depose reformist President Joao Goulart in Brazil. In response to the Cuban Revolution, US-backed counterinsurgency campaigns funded undemocratic organisations throughout Latin America while US presidents extolled the virtues of the Alliance for Progress to build democracy. The Alliance For Progress received far less funding than the military in Latin America.
US President Richard Nixon authorised the 1973 overthrow of the elected socialist coalition of Salvador Allende in Chile. In the 1980s, Reagan's UN ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick distinguished between "authoritarian" governments, which the US could support, and the truly evil "totalitarian" ones. Authoritarian regimes could change, she opined, while totalitarian ones remained immutable.
Kirkpatrick maintained that "Central America is the most important place in the world". However ideologically bizarre, Kirkpatrick and her ilk proved coldly calculating in backing covert wars to overthrow the Sandinistas in Nicaragua (1979-90) and supporting military coups (authoritarian) against elected governments in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the 21st century, Washington shows its evolution by ousting Aristide, citing his antipathy to democracy as the reason. US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice explained to NBC's Meet The Press on March 14: "We believe that President Aristide forfeited his ability to lead his people because he did not govern democratically."
The Chavistas watched the Haitian drama with the understanding that they are next on the Bush hit list.
As hysteria mounts, Chavez's followers — mostly among the 80% of Venezuelans who are poor — gain greater understanding of both their enemies and their own roles in changing their history. They elected their president, and democracy demands that their will, the majority will, prevail. The day George W. Bush believes in such a simple formulation, grass will grow on my palm. So stay alert, Compa¤ero Hugo and members of the Bolivarian Circles!
[Landau's new book is The Pre-emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom (Pluto Press, 2004). He teaches at Cal Poly Pomona University and is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. The article was abridged from Progreso Weekly, .]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, April 7, 2004.
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