Another Political Confrontation Looming in Venezuela
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service Saturday, July 6, 2002; Page A16
CARACAS, Venezuela, July 5 – A half-dozen men in business suits hunched over the glass display case at the Perfect Shot gun store during a recent lunch hour, gazing at the Glocks, Walthers and Smith & Wessons arrayed inside. Armando Carvajal, the store's 32-year-old manager, looked on delightedly.
Business has been very, very good.
"Mostly it's been shotguns," Carvajal said, gesturing to the pump- action and pistol-grip versions hanging from hooks behind him. "I'd say we've sold double the number of last year. That's something for the home, the best way to protect property."
In this jittery country, gun sales are up, the currency is down, the military is restless, and the media run a repeating loop of rumors that a sequel to the coup Venezuelans experienced less than three months ago is in the works. After a brief cooling- down period following four days of political violence in April that left an estimated 80 people dead, a new confrontation between populist President Hugo Chavez and a recalcitrant opposition is taking shape, this time with both sides pledging to defend their positions with force.
The Bush administration, which initially blamed Chavez for his own brief ouster on April 11, has watched with alarm as tensions again build in the third-leading oil-supplying nation to the United States. A Bush administration official who follows developments here said there has been "intense [anti- government] activity" within the military, which played a decisive role in the April coup, and warned that unless Chavez and his mostly middle-class opposition begin a "meaningful national dialogue," more violence is likely.
At the Venezuelan government's invitation, former president Jimmy Carter is scheduled to arrive here Saturday to establish a framework for talks between Chavez and the opposition aimed at achieving a measure of political reconciliation. But leaders of a largely formless opposition movement are already dismissing Carter's claim to be an honest broker in their conflict after his recent visit with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a close ally of Chavez, possibly dooming the talks before they begin.
"The non-constitutional, non-democratic forces are gathering," the Bush administration official said. "The worry is not that we are moving toward a repeat of April, but a bloodier repeat of April and, beyond that, a crisis of governability in Venezuela for the long term."
Since his election in 1998 on a pledge to use Venezuela's vast natural wealth on behalf of a disenfranchised poor majority, Chavez has fostered an atmosphere of political confrontation in this country of 23 million people to serve his own self-declared revolution. But the passions unleashed by his class-based rhetoric and his foreign policy shift away from the United States and toward such U.S. adversaries as Libya, Iraq and Cuba have largely evaded his control, resulting in the violence that removed him briefly from the presidency earlier this year.
On April 11, a march by hundreds of thousands of anti-Chavez protesters ended with gunfire in the streets outside Miraflores, the presidential palace in downtown Caracas. When the smoke cleared, 18 people were dead and Chavez had been ousted by a handful of senior military officers. The Bush administration, which had previously met with several opposition members who then took part in the coup, blamed Chavez for his own ouster – in contrast to the condemnation expressed by almost every Latin America leader.
The interim government, led by the head of the country's leading business group, Pedro Carmona, was sworn in the following day. Carmona swiftly dissolved the country's National Assembly, the Supreme Court and the 1999 constitution, drawing a warning from U.S. officials to quickly correct his undemocratic start as president.
Carmona's heavy-handed approach also alienated many of the military coup leaders, who were themselves squabbling over their own roles within the new government. The government collapsed before its ministers were sworn in, and Chavez arrived back in the palace on the morning of April 14 after days of street rioting in the capital's poor neighborhoods that left between 60 and 70 people dead.
Promising a more inclusive government, Chavez made several changes upon his return that generated some momentary goodwill. He shuffled his cabinet, bringing in an economic team more acceptable to Venezuelan business leaders, and stopped taking over national television stations during weeknights for stem-winding speeches against what he once described as "the rotten oligarchy."
Since then, however, the country has been mired in a ceaseless debate over who bears responsibility for the April violence. The National Assembly has yet to decide whether to form a "truth commission" to investigate the events, and amateur video footage of the shootings in the streets that day still plays over and over on opposition- controlled television stations.
Leopoldo Lopez, mayor of the upscale Chacao district of the capital, has hung a poster on his office wall that captures the opposition sentiment. It shows the body of an April 11 shooting victim covered with a Venezuelan flag under the words: "To forget is prohibited. A peaceful march for freedom and democracy ended in a massacre. Justice now."
Lopez, a member of the opposition Justice First party, said his police force has seen a surge in upper-middle class residents wanting to learn how to use two-way radios to form watch groups. Apartment complexes have begun to inventory firearms owned by residents in case of attack, a response to the pro- Chavez community groups known as Bolivarian Circles that allegedly have their own weapons.
"For the first time in Venezuelan history, we had civilians firing on civilians for political reasons," said Lopez, whose armored car was hit with two 9mm bullets during a visit he made last month to Central University for an opposition political event. "It wasn't just 18 dead, but 18 dead for political reasons. This has deeply radicalized the situation."
A recent mission to Venezuela by the New York-based Human Rights Watch concluded that "both sides bear responsibility for the shootings." The findings, based on interviews with Venezuelan human rights groups, government officials and opposition members, said 11 civilians fired weapons on the streets that day, most of them former or current government employees.
The report also said that two members of the metropolitan police force, controlled by Mayor Alfredo Pena, a onetime Chavez ally who is now his chief political rival, fired during the melee. "Of those killed, most were members of the opposition," the report concluded. "However, supporters of the official [Chavez] party, as well as one member of the press, were also killed."
Jose Miguel Vivanco, head of the Americas division of Human Rights Watch, said neither Chavez nor the opposition appears willing to give ground in their political confrontation. He characterized Chavez "as one of the most stubborn leaders I have ever met," and said the opposition continues to focus on removing the twice-elected president by force.
"They [opponents] are not willing to rule out extra-constitutional methods," said Vivanco, who concluded a four-day visit on June 21. "They are spending most of their time identifying sympathetic generals who could represent their next opportunity" to topple Chavez.
Chavez, who as an army lieutenant colonel staged an unsuccessful coup a decade ago, has removed dozens of military officers since April. But Bush administration officials and others here say dissident factions remain within the ranks, upset by Chavez's leftist leanings, programs that have put soldiers to work on social projects and the president's alleged sympathy for neighboring Colombia's Marxist guerrillas.
A senior military intelligence officer said that a protest march scheduled for July 11 – perhaps to be preceded by a national strike called by the country's largest labor group – has alarmed security officials for its similarity to the fateful April 11 event.
"We are very worried about it," the officer said. "It looks just the same as before."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company