> Call me paranoid, but
> I'm guessing Chavez will soon be experiencing trouble designed &
> executed by our friends in Langley.
Op-ed from today's Post. The CIA's "International Communist Conspiracy (tm)" rides again.
mark
http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58965-2000Jul27.html
A Disguised Dictatorship? By Brian Latell Friday, July 28, 2000; Page A25
Venezuelans go to the polls on Sunday for elections whose main effect will, unfortunately, be to give new legitimacy and momentum to their president's dismantling of South America's oldest democracy. Running for a six-year term in the fifth national voting since he was first elected president in December 1998, Hugo Chavez is ahead of his main challenger, Francisco Arias Cardenas, by 15 to 20 points. But as Chavez has campaigned to maintain his popularity with the poor and working-class majority, it has become increasingly clear that his "peaceful revolution" is inspired to an alarming extent by authoritarian principles and models.
Chavez was first elected with 56 percent of the vote. He then tallied 92 percent and 72 percent in the subsequent referendums that charted the demise of the old two-party system. In its place, the former lieutenant colonel is creating a more centralized regime in which the military has greater involvement and legislative authority will be wielded by a single chamber. For many Venezuelans, the real issue is whether Chavez plans to impose an ingeniously disguised personal dictatorship.
They have ample reason to worry. Chavez's proclivities, beginning with the violent coup attempt he led in 1992, have been manifestly autocratic and demagogic. He has employed swaggering rhetoric to mobilize his followers while intimidating real and imagined foes. Recent detentions of critics in the press and the military have had a particularly chilling effect. He has also antagonized many Catholics.
Most alarmingly, Chavez has churned class antagonisms by demonizing the "ran cid oligarchy" and "rotten elites" of the old political order. His rhetoric--in a country where unemployment, crime and poverty are among the worst in Latin America--as well as his warning that the "revolution" may turn violent, have occasionally brought precisely such results.
In contrast to his main opponent, who favors moderate, pro-business policies, Chavez has pursued populist ones. Following up on earlier public-sector wage increases, he recently decreed retroactive raises for private-sector workers, along with a two-month moratorium on firings. Massive capital flight, escalating foreign investor fears and profound economic uncertainties have resulted, despite this year's windfall earnings from higher oil prices.
Chavez has promised that, once reelected, he will shift the focus of his government from the political reforms that have preoccupied him to "economic and social revolution." But the private sector and foreign investors will only be further estranged if, as seems likely, he feels compelled to assuage his followers through augmented social spending and populist projects.
In these and other important respects, many Venezuelans fear that Chavez is following a script proffered by Fidel Castro. In fact, there appears to be little doubt that he is in thrall to the Cuban dictator. Since Chavez's inauguration, the two leaders are known to have conferred at least five times. In one visit to Havana late last year, Chavez trilled that his "revolution is sailing in the same direction and on the same sea" as Cuba's.
Given Castro's extensive history of advising friendly leaders of Latin American and other countries, it is not difficult to postulate what Chavez is probably hearing:
"Give them (referring to the United States) lots of elections so they cannot mobilize international opposition against you. Consolidate your bases of mass support. Don't give the opposition any mercy or room to maneuver."
But Castro is probably also urging Chavez to proceed cautiously, to avoid grievously antagonizing the United States or Venezuela's neighbors. Castro remembers too well the painful losses of other adoring allies in Latin America in the past: Salvador Allende, overthrown by the Chilean military in 1973, and the Ortega brothers in Nicaragua who overconfidently scheduled elections (which Castro deplored) and lost. Castro hopes that Chavez will rule for at least the dozen more years the new constitution would permit and that Venezuelan petroleum and other largess will bolster Cuba's struggling economy.
Finally, it is likely that Castro and Chavez have developed an extensive secret intelligence-sharing relationship. If so, skilled Cuban operatives already are providing presidential security, counseling Venezuelan foreign and internal security organs in tradecraft and political controls, and assisting in covert operations. And if a Cuban operative who recently defected in Caracas can be believed, Castro has also organized massive intelligence networks in Venezuela, some probably without Chavez's knowledge, to promote revolutionary and anti-American sentiment.
U.S. policy, rightly, has so far been essentially one of patient, mostly muted waiting. Strong criticism of Chavez in the heat of the various national votes he has conducted would have opened new wounds and stoked his anti-American suspicions and antagonisms. But the likelihood is that U.S. policymakers will soon have to acknowledge and deal more vigorously with the many troubling developments and trends in Chavez's Venezuela.
The elections Sunday could be democratic Venezuela's watershed. Chavez may win such a strong personal mandate that he will confidently go forward proclaiming ever more explicit revolutionary programs. The problems he poses for U.S. policymakers committed to genuine democratic processes throughout Latin America will be enormous.
The writer, a former Latin America specialist at the CIA, teaches at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company