Talk About A Revolution

If you believe U.S. media coverage, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a nutcase dictator and a “negative force” in Latin America, as Condoleeza Rice put it. But most U.S. media exhibit little independence from the official U.S. government line these days. And Bush-Cheney officials, including Rice, have proven highly unreliable, to put it politely, about, well, almost everything. Most media stories about Venezuela and Chavez repeat the same negative clichés, without offering much evidence. So I decided to go and see for myself.

To help prepare for my trip, I watched the DVD documentary, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” Two Irish filmmakers went to have a look at the Chavez regime in 2002, for the same reason I did, to try to find the reality behind all the hype. Kim Bartley and Donnacha O Briain [sic] had been filming Hugo Chavez for months when the April 11 coup ousted him from power. Remarkably, they kept filming as Chavez was arrested and taken away and the grinning coup plotters announced their plans for a new order. They began by dissolving the legislature and the courts.

Even more remarkably, within two days Hugo Chavez was back in power. His loyal soldiers and palace guards had rebelled against their own mutinous commanders and helped him return to office. Huge crowds of demonstrators had surrounded the palace, demanding the return of their elected president. The pretenders fled, except for the formerly jubilant would-be Attorney General, now sulking in a palace cell. It astonished me that Chavez had even survived the coup, let alone reversed it.

The United States does not come off well in the film. Most other nations condemned the illegal usurpation of power. A televised clip shows Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer recognizing the new government, though their time in office had the lifespan of a mayfly. Fleischer said: “We know the action encouraged by the Chavez government provoked this crisis.” But before rumors of the truth had achieved coherence, Bush announced his support for the new regime. Hmm.

One of the first people I met in Caracas clarified some of the mystery about that coup and that lightning U.S. response. Eva Golinger is a lawyer and a citizen of both the United States and Venezuela. She outlined the U.S. government complicity in the coup. They knew about it beforehand and supplied financial support to the coup plotters, before and after the event. Golinger wrote a book about the U.S. involvement, The Chavez Code, based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information act. She also wrote a sequel, Bush Versus Chavez, about the ongoing U.S. efforts since the coup to destabilize the Chavez regime, up to the present moment.

U.S. intervention in Venezuelan internal affairs is nothing new, as Golinger points out. The CIA has long influenced policy in the country. The United States military traditionally enjoyed a cozy “integration” with the Venezuelan armed forces. Chavez ended that “special” military relationship. He also stopped the enrollment of Venezuelan military officers in the notorious Fort Benning-based School of the Americas, the alma mater of many Latin American tyrants and torturers. But the United States continues to fund anti-Chavez organizations in Venezuela through the National Endowment for Democracy. The U.S. also rewards the dissident media. Almost all private media in Venezuela – and their wealthy owners – vocally oppose the Chavez presidency. Private media also colluded in the 2002 coup, blacking out some televised events and distorting others to help get rid of Chavez.

The U.S. obsession with Venezuela is not mysterious. Venezuela has one of the largest oil reserves of any country in the world and has long been a major supplier of oil to the United States, a close reliable source. But when Bush and Cheney came into office, they began to doubt the reliability of Chavez. He supplied oil to Castro’s Cuba. He revived the semi-moribund Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), and helped raise the price of a barrel from nine dollars to nearly thirty. And he visited countries the U.S. found objectionable, like Libya, Iraq and Iran.

Bush and company accused Chavez of consorting with terrorists, though Iraq and Iran were among the founding members of OPEC in 1960 along with Venezuela. Chavez was merely continuing longstanding relations, not suddenly acquiring sinister new friends. And raising the price of oil was good for the Venezuelan economy. But if Chavez is not conspiring with enemies of the United States to mess with the U.S. oil supply or support anti-U.S. terror, then what exactly is his game?

Over at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, officials in the North America section met these kinds of questions with a mixture of smiles and consternation. They find the paranoid suspicions of the Bush government absurd. But the United States is the eight hundred pound gorilla. You don’t want it rolling over on you. These diplomats had to take seriously the U.S. charges of a Chavez conspiracy against the Yankee Empire. First of all, as these young officials pointed out, Chavez did not nationalize the Venezuelan oil industry. That happened in 1976. He simply reorganized it for greater efficiency, getting rid of unnecessary administrators and creating a system of greater accountability to eliminate waste and increase profits.

The new 1999 constitution, approved by 70 percent of Venezuelans, puts the national oil industry firmly under government control. This needed to be stated explicitly because the president who preceded Chavez wanted to privatize oil. The idea now is to accumulate as much capital as possible in the treasury in order to create a new model of government, dedicated to resolve the 80 to 85 percent poverty rate that has persisted in Venezuela for many generations, despite the country’s oil wealth.

Chavez was indeed preparing for war: on poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease. The oil Venezuela sends to Cuba yields a huge medical return. About fifteen thousand Cuban doctors are working in Venezuela, many in farflung villages and neighborhood clinics where no medical help has ever been seen before. Venezuelan students are enrolling in Cuban medical schools in growing numbers.

That national health initiative is one of twenty-one “missions” aimed at transforming the lives of impoverished Venezuelans. Basic food subsidies help meet the nutritional needs of the poor. And after two years of an all-out assault on illiteracy, UNESCO declared Venezuela free of that disability, according to my Ministry sources. That gives greater meaning to the government pledge of a free education for all Venezuelans. A 21-year-old woman named Luz Marina, whom I met later in a small northwestern Venezuela town, said she was among the first graduates of a high school in her town that did not exist ten years ago. And she claimed that the rate of university entrance for her classmates was 98 percent.

For Luz Marina, the best part of what the Chavez government calls its “Bolivarian Revolution,” is that women, children and poor country folk, who have traditionally been powerless and voiceless in society, are now included in the vision of a society for all. So the idealistic sentiments I first heard at the Ministry in Caracas – where of course I expected the official line – I heard repeated in one form or another in urban barrios and rural communities wherever I traveled.

Driving out of Caracas I was struck by several things that I would notice over and over again. One was the sheer amount of construction going on. Many buildings are going up and many new roads are being built. Venezuelan highways are modern and well-marked. But they are overwhelmed with traffic. Venezuelans enjoy the cheapest gas in the world, thanks to their government’s subsidy. The price at the pump is about twelve cents a gallon. Talk about reverse sticker shock! The good news: it’s cheap and easy to get around by car and truck in Venezuela. The bad news: everybody’s doing it. Rickety gas-guzzling dinosaurs that would have been junked in the U.S. years or decades ago share the road with mega-trucks and busses old and new. Why take public transport when you can blast around this huge gorgeous country on great roads for almost nothing? The traffic nightmare poses a challenge for Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution.

At the city hall in Carora, a city of just over one hundred thousand in the northwest state of Lara, Mayor Julio Chavez, no relation to the president, explained the revolutionary new system of government that Carora pioneered and the rest of Venezuela has now begun to emulate. Instead of a traditional top-down system, the decision-making power comes from the bottom up, through community councils. Every neighborhood, rural and urban, in the extended municipality, can form these councils. More than five hundred exist in the Carora area alone and roughly 28,000 nationwide.

“One of my objectives from Day One was how to reduce the role of the mayor,” said Mayor Chavez. Funds are made available for local projects from the national and state governments. “I as mayor do not decide how to use these funds. One hundred percent of these budget allocations are decided by community councils.” The mayor must submit his budget requests to the councils.” One road-paving project he asked for was delayed by other priorities the council deemed more urgent.

Through an assembly made up of representatives from the community councils, a new municipal constitution was written, placing the power for political decisions with the grassroots members from all social segments. This is part of what Carora assembly president Miguel Medina called “the new geometry of power.” Another city official said, “We want the people to be the government, not to receive government decisions.” Community Councils set up committees to deal with the issues most important to them, such as building, education, health or culture. All this sounded as idealistic as Frank Capra’s movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And as revolutionary as the musings of those who wrote the U.S. Constitution.

The “process” many Venezuelans refer to, of transforming a nearly feudal state into a truly egalitarian participatory democracy, has energized much of the country with real hope. There is a sense of fluidity and improvisation in Venezuela right now, as barrio by barrio and city by city an entire population struggles to reinvent itself. In the urban neighborhood of Carolita, part of Carora, Community Council President Maricrespo, 66, spoke excitedly of “building this future for our children and grandchildren.” She spoke of fixing up dilapidated homes and building new ones. We met at the local school, which is no longer locked when the children leave and segregated from the community, but has become a hub of activity, hosting cultural programs, a clinic run by a Cuban doctor and a community bank, as well as the community council meetings.

“Our whole municipality has become a school…” said Maricrespo. Besides the ubiquitous building in Venezuela, many citizens did seem to be dedicating their new literacy skills to study. Luz Marina later confirmed that a lot of people were studying these days, especially the women. Out of town, the tiny desert community of San Felix is home to only one hundred fifteen people, but their community council has fifteen committees. The people there raise goats and run a tile-making cooperative, producing roof tiles from mud and water and a large kiln. They had not had any government projects here in forty years. Their first council priority was to build a fence around their school to keep the goats out. San Felix one of several cooperatives I visited, including a cacao co-op on the Caribbean coast that had begun to process the raw materials into chocolate themselves, instead of sending it abroad for others to make the biggest profit.

Creating worker-owned and -run cooperatives of all sorts – bakeries, coffee plantations, farms, factories – is another goal of the Bolivarian Revolution. There is no hierarchy and no boss. Everyone receives the same wage and participates in the business decisions. Like any other business, co-ops that are well managed succeed. Those that aren’t fail. My Venezuelan youth guru, Luz Marina, said the hope was “to incorporate young people intro cooperatives, not into exploitative jobs for Pepsi and McDonald’s. We want to be truly free, not slaves of the transnational corporations, where a few get rich and the majority go nowhere.”
Well…

Okay, by now the infectious enthusiasm of the co-op workers and the giddy hopefulness of the many community council members I’d met, sampling the heady wine of participatory democracy for the first time, had really gotten to me. This so-called Bolivarian Revolution, funded by oil revenue that had suddenly gone bananas, seemed to have real legs. A spirit of hope and possibility appeared to be percolating in the most obscure corners of the republic. I needed to sober up from the intoxicating visions my travels had conjured. It was time to find the biggest naysayer possible, the pragmatic skeptic who could throw cold water on this fevered dream of an inclusive society dedicated to the common good, someone who could reveal the raw, cynical truth behind these naïve longings. And who better to rain on the Chavez parade than the man he beat for the presidency back in 1998?

Henrique Salas Romer, who ran unsuccessfully against Chavez, is the former two-term governor of the prosperous state of Carabobo. He was succeeded in this office by his son, who has served four terms. Officially retired from business and from politics, Salas Romer still maintains a suite of offices in downtown Valencia, another city undergoing a building boom. Born in Venezuela, he attended high school and university (Yale) in the United States. He speaks impeccable English.
Salas Romer began his reality check rather strangely, by comparing Venezuela to Iraq. The two countries were “very similar” in terms of their populations, poverty levels and oil reserves, he said. “Venezuela is a major buyer of arms from Russia,” he added. Then he revealed that he was going to speak at a conference in the United States on the topic: “Hugo Chavez: A Daring Pawn in the New Cold War.” Salas Romer flashed a smile he appears to have worn since his first campaign for governor. My mind raced. Was this man suggesting that the U.S. should invade Venezuela as it had invaded Iraq? Whose “pawn” was Chavez? What “cold war” did he mean?

As I took dutiful, disbelieving notes, this man who might have been president said a number of things I am not sure whether he actually believed, or simply wanted me to believe. For instance, he said that in Venezuela struggles between rich and poor, black and white and left and right simply don’t exist. Now, I haven’t been to every country in the world, but I’ve been to quite a few. And if he’s right, Venezuela would be the only country I’ve ever heard of without class, racial or political tensions.

His more outrageous assertions aside, Salas Romer said the richest people in Venezuela are backing Chavez now, though they won’t admit it, because they are making so much money. Chavez “is no longer the real ruler here, no longer in control of decisions. Despite his control of government institutions, Chavez is a weak ruler…” He said if the price of oil drops, Chavez will not be able to keep the armed forces, the business interests and the poor on his side. About the 2012 elections, in which Chavez is not eligible to run, Salas Romer said: “I don’t think he gets there.” Considering the events of 2002, and the ongoing U.S. machinations, this is a fairly ominous remark.

He spoke at length about the strengthening alliance between Venezuela and the Middle East, and Castro’s search for new allies there after the demise of the Soviet Union. But much of it seemed like a retro Cold War fantasy, unrelated to what was happening in the streets. Salas Romer seemed literally above it all, sequestered in his air conditioned aerie, with pictures of himself on horseback on the walls, perhaps imagining what might have been, or what may someday be for his son, whom he described as having more charisma that he did. Perhaps I’d have found more substantive opposition to Chavez inside the U.S. embassy.

So I left Venezuela extremely impressed by the Bolivarian Revolution and with the strong hope that it may succeed. It is indeed a process, still far from achieving its goals. But the effort and the optimism of many people I met in many places could make it happen. Formidable obstacles remain. Because this is a peaceful revolution, none of the traditional political structures have been dismantled. So the Bolivarian Revolutionary Mayor Chavez and his community councils co-exist in what must be an awkward relationship with the old Carora City Council. Are the landlords and the oligarchs just going to stand by and put up with all these changes? How will old and new be reconciled? Only time will tell.

None of what I saw in Venezuela appears in U.S. media. Are there no reporters who could take a hard look at Venezuela and tell us what’s really going on there? It’s a big story, an important story, about a country trying to remake itself into a more equitable, more rational society while much of the world is blowing each other to bits. The lack of substantive coverage about Venezuela allows a vacuum where the false and outrageous charges of the Bush administration about conditions there go unchallenged.

Those Bush lies have serious consequences for regional stability and U.S. taxpayers, just as they did in Iraq. The U.S. government wastes millions of our dollars every year to fund opposition groups in Venezuela, with the purpose of deposing Chavez, legally or not. When religious bigot Pat Robertson advocated assassinating Chavez, the Bush-Cheney junta failed to condemn his remarks.

In 2005 a right-wing Washington think tank – Center for Security Policy – published an accusatory, threatening document entitled: “What to do about Venezuela?” The answer, then as now, is keep your bloody hands off the place. The participatory democracy taking root in Venezuela is a beautiful, fragile experiment that may serve as an inspiration for other countries in Latin America and beyond. The United States must not, as one general said about Vietnam, “destroy the country in order to save it.”
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My heartfelt thanks to Lisa Sullivan and to the Marin Interfaith Task Force on the Americas, who made my time in Venezuela fruitful and fascinating.