Can Venezuela’s elite and the
CIA contain their fury over
Chavez,
asks alexander cockburn |
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Amid daily prophecies that President Bush will order an attack on Iran, there's demure silence in the US about the fact that Venezuela and its president Hugo Chavez are facing their most serious crisis since Chavez nearly lost power and his life in the military coup of 2002. An overthrow, even a defeat at the ballot box for Chavez, would have huge consequences across Latin America and in the United States.
During Bush's two terms Hugo Chavez's presidency has symbolised America's decline. In decades past, Chavez would have been finished off by a consortium of Venezuelan generals and the CIA, the same way Salvador Allende and his moderate-left government were toppled by Pinochet, the Chilean Army and the CIA in 1973. Even Bush Sr managed to put Panama's Noriega in prison.
But Chavez has gone from strength to strength, supplying cheap home heating oil |
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Chavez has gone from strength to strength, even supplying cheap oil to the poor in American cities
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to poor people in US cities, denouncing Bush Jr as "the devil" in the UN, and forging a close alliance with the US Public Enemy Number One, Fidel Castro.
From the point of view of the US government, Chavez's menace stems not only from the high price of oil, which has given him unexpected leverage, but also from his desire for major radical reforms - land for peasants, education, housing and opportunity for the poor. For the rest of the continent, Venezuela presents the threat of a good example.
Chavez's proposed constitutional reforms have provoked the current confrontation, and the overall political temperature has been sharply raised by unprecedented verbal brawling between the volcanic Chavez and the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, last Saturday at an Ibero-American summit.
Chavez's denunciations of former Spanish president Jose Maria Aznar as a "fascist" culminated in a spat where Juan Carlos shouted "Why don't you shut up" and temporarily quit the conference room. Chavez's ire stemmed from the  |
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