Hugo Chavez is President of
Venezuela again, having been deposed on 11 April 2002. He was first elected President in late 1998,
since when he has re-written Venezuela’s constitution, got it approved by
popular referendum and got himself re-elected under the new constitution for a
further six years with an impressive 60% of the popular vote.
When Chavez came to
power, crude oil prices were languishing at under $10 a barrel. Production quotas set by OPEC were not being
stuck to, not least by Venezuela itself.
Two years later crude oil prices were over $30 a barrel. Chavez was almost single-handedly
responsible by revitalising OPEC. He
undertook that Venezuela would stick to OPEC production quotas and under his
leadership OPEC set out to stabilise oil prices within the range $22 to $28 a
barrel. That objective has been
achieved.
It was no surprise therefore that
when Chavez was deposed by military coup on 11 April, the price of crude oil
dropped instantly by about $4 a barrel to around $24 a barrel.
The generals who deposed him took
advantage of an anti-Chavez demonstration on 11 April, which marched on the
presidential palace. Pro-Chavez
elements allegedly fired on demonstrators and killed and wounded a number of
them. This story has been widely
disseminated across the world and was the excuse for mounting the coup.
An alternative story is told by
Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Brien, who had spent the previous three months in
Venezuela making a documentary about Chavez for an independent Irish
company. They were close to the centre
of events in Caracas from 11 April when Chavez was deposed until 13 April when
he was reinstated. An interview with
them was published in the Irish Times on 16 April.
Ms Bartley says the shooting began
when they arrived in the centre of town on the evening of Thursday, 11
April. She goes on:
“I filmed a while then took cover in a doorway. Whoever was firing aimed directly at the crowd, which was pro-Chavez. I filmed two dead bodies, both of them beside the podium set up to rally Chavistas to defend the presidential palace. A woman working in the vice-president’s office identified the bodies as a legal secretary and an archivist, both working inside the building. A 10-year-old girl was then taken away, fatally injured.
“More
shots. We ran for cover like everyone
else. We made it to the palace through
back streets as the firing continued and as soon as we got in the gate another
sniper started aiming at the crowd. We were all thrown to the ground behind a
wall and later ran for cover into the building. Three of the snipers were arrested.”
According
to her, Chavez was about to explain what was happening in a live television
broadcast but the state channel’s signal was cut just as he began to
speak. Then, army generals arrived and
went off for a meeting with Chavez, who some time later emerged in the custody
of junta soldiers and was taken away.
At that point radio and television announced the resignation of Chavez
and began broadcasting upbeat messages: “Venezuela is finally free” was
the banner across all private TV channels.
That account doesn’t rule out the
possibility of anti-Chavez demonstrators having been shot, but it certainly
adds an additional dimension to the story.
It also confirms that the privately owned radio and TV are bitterly
anti-Chavez and played an active part in the coup.
In a telephone interview
carried out not long before his arrest and reprinted in the Mexican daily, La
Journada, on 12 April, Chavez said that the media had been reporting events
selectively and “giving a public voice to those who were calling for the
violent overthrow of the government regardless of how many deaths this would
cause”, which was why he had just suspended three TV stations from
broadcasting.
Ms Bartley’s account of the
restoration on Saturday, 13 April also confirms that the radio and TV were part
of the plot:
“The media
kept repeating footage of the swearing-in ceremony of the interim president
[Pedro Carmona] which was followed by images of empty streets, everything in
perfect tranquillity. We were about to
book a ticket to Panama when a well-dressed passer-by told us to get off the
streets. ‘The Chavistas are coming’, he
said. It was Saturday afternoon.
“We took a
taxi to the centre, where huge crowds had surrounded the palace, demanding the
return of Chavez. We managed to get
inside and found several Chavez deputies calling round the country to find out
what was going on. A dozen people who
were working for the interim government had been taken to a room in the
basement for their own safety.
“Reports
came in from around the country, barracks by barracks, like a Eurovision song
contest jury, that the military was rebelling against the coup. …
“The
television continued to broadcast a steady diet of soap operas, saying nothing
about the huge mobilisation, which was now making a deafening racket
outside. Then came the news that Chavez
had been freed and was taking a helicopter to [the presidential palace at]
Miraflores. The crowds went wild. The presidential guard made a tunnel from
the palace gates to a helicopter pad across the street. The sound of choppers buzzing overhead.
“Then he
was there, striding toward the palace, mobbed by supporters. It was like a dream, it's still hard to believe
it really happened.”
The US Government wanted to see
the back of Chavez and there is no doubt that they knew that a coup against
Chavez was in the offing. The leading
players in the conspiracy (including Pedro Carmona) had been to Washington in
the previous few months and had met members of the Bush administration. After the event, the President’s spokesman,
Ari Fleischer, made no secret of the fact the US officials knew a coup was
being planned but claimed that they warned against (see his press
briefing of 16 April).
At
his press
briefing on the Friday morning after the coup (12 April), far from
condemning it as an unconstitutional seizure of power, Fleischer had portrayed
the replacement of Chavez by Carmona as legitimate. He faithfully repeated the fable that the perpetrators of the
coup had told, the crucial element of which is that Chavez had resigned. Not only that, prior to resigning he
dismissed his vice-president, his constitutional successor. So, what else could be done but establish an
interim president prior to holding an election?
Fleischer began by saying that “yesterday's events in Venezuela resulted in a change in the government and the assumption of a transitional authority until new elections can be held”. He went on to indict the Chavez government for provoking the crisis by suppressing peaceful demonstrations. Government supporters, on orders from the Chavez government, fired on unarmed, peaceful protestors, resulting in 10 killed and 100 wounded, he said. The Venezuelan military and the police refused to fire on the peaceful demonstrators and refused to support the government's role in such human rights violations. The government also tried to prevent independent news media from reporting on these events.
He
concluded:
“The results of these events are now that President
Chavez has resigned the presidency. Before resigning, he dismissed the vice
president and the cabinet, and a transitional civilian government has been
installed. This government has promised early elections.”
This fable of a constitutional
handover of power to a civilian government committed to the democratic process
might have held, had the interim president and his associates not dissolved the
National Assembly and the Supreme Court a few hours later. That action made the fable unsustainable,
and though the US Government would have dearly liked to go along with the
overthrow of Chavez, it was no longer possible to maintain a democratic gloss
on what had happened in Caracas the night before.
That Friday afternoon, heads of
state of several Latin American countries – Mexico, Brazil, Argentina,
Paraguay, Costa Rica – spoke out against he illegal seizure of power, and so
did the General Secretary of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Cesar
Gaviria (who is a Columbian). The US
President did not and, to the credit of the White House press corps, over the
next few days Fleischer was tortured with questions about why, when all these
heads of state had condemned the coup, President Bush had not.
However, the next day – Saturday,
13 April – the Permanent Council of the OAS met to consider the situation in
Venezuela and was of a mind to condemn the coup. A resolution (811) was
drawn up, the first clause of which was “To condemn the alteration of
constitutional order in Venezuela”, and the US Government had no option to
support it.
Chavez was restored to power later
the same day. A number of factors
contributed to his restoration. One was
that by Friday afternoon it was clear that the OAS was not going to accept the
new government as legitimate, despite the US being happy to treat it as such. The others were the support for Chavez in
the Venezuelan population and in the lower ranks of the military that
manifested itself in Caracas that Saturday.
The US administration has yet to
condemn the military coup in Venezuela on 11 April or welcome the restoration
of Chavez on 13 April by way of public statement. They have directed, and continue to direct, much harsher words at
Chavez than at the people who overthrew him.
It’s a racing certainty that, had their friend President Pastrana next
door in Columbia been overthrown by FARC, we would have been blown away by
rhetoric about democracy coming out of Washington – and the US military machine
would have been deployed to put him back in power.
It is true that the US
supported the OAS resolution of 13 April, which explicitly condemned the coup,
but they had no option but to do that.
Likewise, they had no option but to support a resolution passed by the 29th
Special
Session of the General Assembly of OAS on 18 April, the first clause of
which was: “To express satisfaction at the restoration of the constitutional
order and the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chávez Frías
in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”.
It must have stuck in their craw.
Labour & Trade Union Review
May 2002