-Caveat Lector-
--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], NY Transfer News <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
People's Weekly World Newspaper - July 27, 2002
Coup-making in Venezuela: the Bush and oil factors
by Karen Talbot <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
As efforts to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Ch�vez intensify,
two facts are inescapable: the power elite in the United States has
never been happy with democratically-elected Ch�vez, but it took the
Bush administration, with its corporate oil and energy connections,
to turn up the heat against him.
Matters reached a boiling point with the April coup d'etat against
Ch�vez, which lasted only two days as millions of Venezuelan poor
rose up in his defense. Many of the details about the ousting of
Ch�vez and his 48-hour replacement by corporate mogul Pedro Carmona
Estanga have yet to be sleuthed out, but evidence implicating Bush
and his cohorts has already accumulated.
The primary clues are Washington's repeated criticisms of Ch�vez and
its immediate virtual endorsement of Carmona by failing to condemn
the coup. The backdrop is Venezuela's status as the fourth largest
oil-exporting country in the world, and the third largest source of
U.S. oil imports.
U.S. complaints against Ch�vez, who was elected in record landslide
votes in 1998 and 2000, include his Bolivarian reforms to "take from
the rich and give to the poor;" his refusal to allow U.S. planes to
fly over Venezuela for Washington's war in Colombia; his opposition
to the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); and his leadership in
OPEC in working for a fairer deal for Venezuela and other
oil-producing countries.
Also rankling the Bush administration, with its abundance of
right-wing Cubans, is Ch�vez's oil sales to Cuba in exchange for
medical care.
About half of Venezuela's revenues come from state-owned Petr�leos de
Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Providing more for the country's millions of
poor necessarily means maximizing the gains from oil, so Ch�vez
sought to stanch the hemorrhaging of profits out of Venezuela into
the coffers of banks and corporations largely based in the north.
This entailed altering the 60-year-old agreement with foreign oil
companies that charged them as little as one percent in royalties,
and handed them huge tax breaks. But the giant transnational oil
corporations and business interests had different plans.
"Opposition business leaders have said openly that they want to
depose Ch�vez so they can boost oil production or even privatize the
country's cash cow [PDVSA]. ... [T]hey have been enraged ... over
Ch�vez's efforts to take resources from the rich to aid the poor, who
represent 80 percent of the population," Letta Tayler wrote in
Newsday April 24.
During Carmona's 48 hours in power, he moved instantaneously to
reverse Ch�vez's Bolivarian policies and consolidate what amounts to
an "oiligarchy." He dissolved the parliament and the supreme court,
dismissed all mayors and governors, stopped the shipment of oil to
Cuba, and started a wave of repression across the country.
The goal: privatization of Venezuela's oil
A May 1 article in Mexico's Proceso says one of the aims of the coup
leaders was "the privatization of PDVSA, turning it over to a U.S.
company linked to President George Bush and the Spanish company
Repsol; plus the sale of CITGO, the U.S. subsidiary of PDVSA, to
Gustavo Cisneros and his partners in the north, as well as an end to
the Venezuelan government's exclusive subsoil rights."
Cisneros, a longtime friend of former President George Bush, heads up
a corporate empire stretching from the U.S. to Patagonia, the British
Economist reports.
PDVSA is Latin America's largest company -- a lucrative prize
awaiting the eager fingers of the privatizers. The maneuvers to
achieve privatization of PDVSA began in earnest after Ch�vez became
president. Though we are told that it was the workers who reacted
against Ch�vez's changes, a March 2001 Wall Street Journal article
disclosed a different picture, speaking of "top management and
white-collar workers" at PDVSA "in open revolt against the government
of President Hugo Ch�vez."
The WSJ reported: "[T]hey have participated in ... noisy
demonstrations and work stoppages to protest the recent appointment
of three Ch�vez loyalists to PDVSA's board. ... Leaders of a newly
organized PDVSA ?management union' aren't saying when or if they
would strike. However, after holding a companywide meeting last
weekend, they announced plans to carry out a series of gradual
escalations of the conflict that could culminate in an indefinite
strike ... The controversy quickly exploded when thousands of PDVSA
executives signed full-page newspaper ads denouncing the new
appointees as ?incompetent.'" On April 4, 2002, "PDVSA executives
declared a work stoppage," the WSJ reported. In the lexicon of U.S.
labor, these "strike" actions would be considered "lockouts" by
management.
The leadership of the oil workers union, which operated in close
alliance with the two political parties that ran Venezuela for 40
years before Ch�vez, also became involved. And information continues
to surface about the role played by the Confederation of Venezuelan
Workers (CTV) leadership, especially its president, Carlos Ortega, in
the coup attempt and his ongoing role in efforts to bring down
Ch�vez. Tayler notes that former Venezuelan president Carlos Andres
Perez, currently living in Miami, who is wanted on corruption charges
in Venezuela and has been accused of involvement in the plot, is a
mentor of both Ortega and Carmona.
The WSJ says conflict between top PDVSA administrators and Ch�vez had
been building since Ch�vez pushed through a law doubling most
production royalties on both PDVSA and international oil companies.
The law also requires PDVSA to own a majority stake in all joint
ventures with foreign companies. Ch�vez appointed a new PDVSA
president, economist Gast�n Parra, who was attacked by critics, the
WSJ says, as "a 1960s-era big-government leftist, dispatched to PDVSA
on a mission to tie the company more closely to the state."
The previous PDVSA president is quoted as saying the company had been
"efficiently run as a profit-making company that pays dividends to
its shareholder, the state. It shouldn't be delegated to the inferior
status of being a mere appendage of the oil ministry, subject to the
president's interference." But the state is not merely a
"shareholder" and PDVSA is not a "mere appendage of the oil
ministry." PDVSA is owned by Venezuela, not a fiefdom of board
members appointed by the previous corrupt Venezuelan oligarchy.
Clearly the oil ministry has jurisdiction over the government-owned
enterprise. The government has every right to appoint the board
members and to "tie the company more closely to the state."
The New York Times reported April 24, "When Venezuela nationalized
its oil industry in the 1970's, the management at the local
operations of Royal Dutch/Shell and other foreign companies that
eventually became Petroleos de Venezuela remained." Ch�vez endeavored
to wrest control of the company from these former oil company
executives, who had engendered popular revulsion for corruption and
high living.
Bush administration's role
Last fall, "a stream of prominent Venezuelans opposed to Ch�vez's
populism...began visiting U.S. officials...to float ideas about his
ouster," Tayler reported. "In some meetings, including one this year
at the U.S. Embassy that was attended by Pedro Carmona ... a coup was
specifically proposed, participants in those talks said... Some
Ch�vez opponents left the meetings believing that 'all the United
States really cared about was that it was done neatly, with a
resignation letter or something to show for it,' said a Venezuelan
source familiar with some of the discussions."
Further, Tayler wrote, "pro-Ch�vez Venezuelan officials have said two
members of the U.S. Embassy's military attach�s were briefly inside
the coup-makers' military headquarters at Fort Tiuna on April 13 ...
One of the U.S. officers held an hour-long closed-door meeting with
Gen. Efrain Vasquez Velasco, the army commander, one Venezuelan
official said."
Bush appointees dealing with this region got their start in the dirty
wars under President Reagan. One of them, Elliot Abrams, who was
convicted for misleading Congress over the infamous Iran-Contra
affair, is Senior Director of the National Security Council for
"democracy, human rights and international operations." He is a
leading theoretician of "hemispherism," which seeks to counter
Marxism in the Americas, spawning the 1973 Chile coup and backing
death squads in Argentina, El Salvador and elsewhere. Abrams "gave
the nod for the coup" in Venezuela, the Observer reported.
Another key player is Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America
Otto Reich, a right-wing Cuban exile and former Mobil Oil lobbyist,
who was Reagan's ambassador to Venezuela. Reich received Venezuelan
coup plotters, including Carmona, at the White House, the Observer
said. In these meetings, "the coup was discussed ... right down to
its timing and chances of success," the Observer reported.
The London Guardian reported that American military attach�s were in
touch with members of the Venezuelan military in June 2001 to examine
the possibility of a coup. It quoted a former naval and National
Security Agency intelligence officer as saying that U.S. Navy ships
"provided signals intelligence and communications jamming support" to
Venezuelan military personnel participating in the coup.
"The perfect crime"
Since the aborted coup, the campaign to topple Chavez has been
redoubled. Le Monde diplomatique described the likely scenario for
overthrowing Chavez:
"[T]here will be a coalition of the well-to-do, bringing together the
Catholic Church..., the financial oligarchy, the employers'
organizations, the bourgeoisie and corrupt trade union leaderships --
all repackaged as 'civil society.' The owners of major media will
collude ... to support the campaigns that they will each launch
against the president, in the name of defending that 'civil
society.'...
"The press and TV will brandish terms 'the people, democracy,
liberty,' etc. They will mobilize street demonstrations and any
attempt by the government to criticize them will be immediately
described as 'a serious assault on freedom of expression,' ... they
will revive the insurrectional strike and encourage ideas of a coup
and an assault on the presidential palace....
"The Venezuelan media currently uses lies and disinformation in the
biggest ever destabilization campaign against a democratically
elected government. Since the world hardly seems to care, the media
hopes that this time it will succeed in committing the perfect
crime."
Seeing the disturbing similarities to the 1973 U.S.-instigated
Chilean coup -- which occurred after one failed coup attempt -- the
majority of Venezuelan people are remaining vigilant about further
moves to oust Ch�vez. The people of the United States have the
responsibility and the possibility to put an end to the Bush
administration's anti-democratic covert operations and military
interventions in Venezuela.
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