Nikolas Kozloff

Initially, it seemed as if Chavez was perfectly poised to capitalize on a wave of anti-American discontent felt throughout the hemisphere. But then, a series of dramatic reversals cast doubt on Chavez's ambitions to become a truly hemispheric leader and a lightning rod against U.S. influence.

 

Over the last few months, I had begun to doubt whether Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez would indeed have the kind of political staying power that I described in my book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the U.S. (recently released by St. Martin's Press).

Initially, it seemed as if Chavez was perfectly poised to capitalize on a wave of anti-American discontent felt throughout the hemisphere. Throughout South America, Chavez exchanged oil for political influence with newly emerging leftist regimes in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil; the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia, a key Chavez ally, seemed to underscore Venezuela's rising influence.

 

But then, a series of dramatic reversals cast doubt on Chavez's ambitions to become a truly hemispheric leader and a lightning rod against U.S. influence.

Chavez's Reversals, from Peru to the United Nations

 

In Peru, Chavez openly endorsed the nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala in the country's presidential election. But Chavez's strategy backfired when Humala's opponent, Alan Garcia, charged that the Venezuelan leader was interfering in Peru's internal politics. Garcia successfully exploited the issue to his advantage and went on to beat Humala in last April's election.

 

In Mexico, pro-business PAN candidate Felipe Calderon ran a negative campaign against his leftist challenger Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. In his TV ads, Calderon linked Obrador to Hugo Chavez, proclaiming "Lopez Obrador is a danger to Mexico." Though Lopez Obrador cried fraud in Mexico's July presidential election, the Electoral Tribunal ruled that Calderon had won the election and rejected Obrador's allegations. Calderon is set to assume office in December.

 

The next set back for Chavez came in Ecuador, where the Venezuelan leader's would be protégé, Rafael Correa, went down in defeat in the first round of the country's presidential election last month. A Correa win would have added another oil-rich country to Chavez's anti-American alliance.

 

Correa, a leftist economics professor, denied that Chavez had funded his campaign and the Venezuelan leader, chastened by his defeats in Mexico and Peru, was uncharacteristically quiet about the Ecuador election.

 

However, it's no secret that the two had a personal rapport. Correa in fact visited Chavez's home state of Barinas in August, where he met with the Venezuelan leader and spent the night with Chavez's parents. Correa, who opposes an extension of the U.S. lease at an air base in Manta, which serves as a staging ground for drug surveillance flights, has nothing but contempt for George Bush.

 

When he was recently asked about Chavez's "devil" diatribe against the U.S. president at the United Nations, Correa remarked amusingly, "Calling Bush the devil offends the devil. Bush is a tremendously dimwitted President who has done great damage to the world."

 

But Correa was shocked by a strong last minute showing by his challenger, pro-U.S. banana magnate Alvaro Noboa. Like Lopez Obrador, Correa has cried foul and declared that his campaign might have fallen victim to electronic fraud on the country's voting machines. He will face off with Noboa in another runoff election in November.

 

Then there was Venezuela's failed bid to secure a non permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. When the United States proposed its own candidate, Guatemala, things turned ugly. Chavez characterized the race as a struggle against U.S. domination throughout Latin America; Venezuelan diplomats went so far as to describe Guatemala as a U.S. stooge.

But in the end, Venezuela failed to come up with the requisite votes. Chavez could take some satisfaction that Guatemala too failed to come up with the necessary votes at the United Nations, and had to withdraw in favor of Panama.

 

The reality, however, is that despite Chavez's frenetic shuttle diplomacy throughout Africa and calls for Third World solidarity, he could not muster more votes than a small Central American country with very little regional influence and an appalling human rights record.

It was hardly an impressive showing.

The Chavez-Ortega Alliance

 

Events in Nicaragua, however, suggest that it won't be so easy for the Bush administration to roll back Chavez's ambitions. It now seems as if the Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega will cruise to victory in the country's presidential election and avoid a run off. As of Monday night, preliminary results show Ortega with about 40 percent of the vote, more than enough to avoid a future runoff.

 

For the White House, it's a nightmare that officials had long sought to avoid.

 

Though Ortega, who was president from 1985 to 1990 during the U.S.-fueled Contra War, is a pale shadow of his former self, having jettisoned his leftist rhetoric and hostility towards his northern neighbor, nevertheless Washington must now recognize that it has patently failed to isolate Chavez diplomatically. Nicaragua now seems poised to join the wave of left leaning regimes throughout the hemisphere inspired by Chavez.

 

When Ortega traveled to Venezuela for a meeting with Chavez last year, the friendship between the two began to bear fruit. During the meeting at Miraflores, the presidential palace, Ortega remarked that Latin American unity was necessary to confront globalization. He added that Chavez's electoral victory convinced him that revolutionary change could be achieved through the ballot box. "I thought that they were going to overthrow Chavez," Ortega remarked, "and that he would meet the same fate as Salvador Allende."

 

Ortega later alarmed Washington by remarking that if he won the election he would make sure that Nicaragua would join ALBA, Chavez's Bolivarian Alternative for The Americas. Chavez's trading plan, which is designed to sideline traditional corporate interests and Bush's Free Trade Agreement of The Americas (FTAA), is based on barter agreements between Latin American countries. Recently, to the chagrin of U.S. policymakers, Bolivia joined Venezuela and Cuba in ALBA.

 

Chavez, Ortega and ALBA

 

"Without a doubt," Ortega declared during a Cuban summit meeting with Morales, Castro and Chavez, "we have to look towards the south, we have to look towards integration, and ALBA is an open door, it is Latin American and Caribbean integration."

 

Ortega later added that he opposed U.S.-backed trade deals. "Central America's trading future lies not with the U.S. but with Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina," he said.

 

Ortega, smarting from three successive electoral defeats after the fall of the Sandinistas from power, added that he was "convinced after 16 years of neo liberal policies in Nicaragua that the conditions are ripe for the Sandinista Front to retake power, now via the ballot box."

In the Plaza de La Revolucion in Havana, Chavez approached Ortega and remarked, "Daniel, we are inviting you next year to come here as the president of Nicaragua."

 

According to Ortega, Chavez followed up on his promising words by offering to help Nicaragua join in ALBA. Speaking before hundreds of workers in Managua, Ortega said that Chavez and the president of the Venezuelan Economic and Social Development Bank (known by its Spanish acronym Bandes) had pledged to help open a development bank in Nicaragua. "Venezuela is willing to provide support so that this bank will become a reality and campesinos will have credits and a secure market," Ortega told supporters.  According to Ortega the Venezuelan aid formed part of ALBA.

Chavez, Ortega and CAFTA

 

In seeking to recruit Ortega for his ALBA scheme, Chavez found a willing ally in Ortega. Indeed, Nicaragua's experiment in "neo-liberal" economics since the fall of the Sandinistas in 1990 has not been a very happy one. Like Venezuela, which experienced political unrest as a result of neo liberal policies pushed by Washington, Nicaragua has been buffeted by "savage capitalism," as Ortega has put it.

 

Today, Nicaragua is a bleak place. Per capita income is a paltry $700 and more than 70% of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Successive governments have failed to restore Managua from a 1972 earthquake. Within yards of the presidential palace lie slums and empty buildings; beggars and barefoot children splash around in the gutters of Managua instead of heading to class.

 

Like Chavez, Ortega has spent a lot of time over the past years criticizing U.S.-led free trade deals. For example, the Sandinista led the charge against CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Ortega pledged to pull Nicaragua out of CAFTA and "end savage capitalism when we win." CAFTA, Ortega argued, was an effort by the U.S. to exploit poor countries in a rush to the bottom and cheap labor.

 

"Bush is taking up CAFTA," Ortega remarked in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor, "because it is his way of keeping Central America from looking south." Ortega furthermore suggested that Washington was seeking to splinter Nicaragua's solidarity with the Left in Latin America such as Chavez's regime.

 

CAFTA was pushed ruthlessly by U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick over the objections of labor, environmentalists and human rights groups [for more on Zoellick, see my profile of the diplomat in my book].

 

"CAFTA is the opportunity of a lifetime," Zoellick remarked in an address given at the Heritage Foundation. "If we retreat into isolationism, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez and others like them, leftist autocratswill advance."

 

Zoellick's efforts to link Ortega and Chavez in order to ram through CAFTA were echoed by paranoid, red baiting Republicans in the House and Senate. Oklahoma Republican James Inhofe warned his fellow Senators: "These Communists, these enemies of the United States, Chavez, Ortega, and Castro, are all in opposition to CAFTA. If you want to be on their side, you would vote against CAFTA."

 

In the House, Republican Rep. Mike Kirk of Illinois took the fear mongering prize by arguing that Chavez was "Venezuela's Mussolini." Chavez, claimed Kirk, was purchasing weapons in order to fight a new war in Central America. "Let us enact a free trade agreement with Central America to lock in democratic growth and stability," Kirk exclaimed, "and let us make sure that President Hugo Chavez's Venezuelan agents find no fertile ground in America's back yard."

 

In the end CAFTA passed narrowly in Congress. In Nicaragua, CAFTA was opposed by the Sandinistas in the National Assembly as well as key figures in civil society, including the president of the country's largest agricultural organization, who warned that the agreement would give rise to greater poverty in the countryside.

 

According to experts, CAFTA stood to encourage the growth of more maquiladora assembly plants, but any positive benefit would be offset by the loss in farm jobs as a result of the influx of cheap U.S. agricultural goods. Despite domestic opposition, Nicaragua passed CAFTA in October 2005.

Efforts to Demonize Ortega and Chavez

 

Despite its CAFTA public relations victory, the Bush administration was clearly still worried and kept up the pressure on Ortega during the run up to the presidential election. Paul Trivelli, the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, warned that Ortega's victory would signify "the introduction of a Chavez model" in Nicaragua.

 

Meanwhile the conservative press flew into a tirade against Ortega, with the Washington Times remarking that "Ortega will take Nicaragua out of CAFTA and into Mr. Chavez's Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, and almost synonymous with this is a move to nationalize industry, much like Evo Morales did in Bolivia."

 

The Washington Post was similarly hostile, remarking in an editorial that Ortega "is about to return to power and increase the alliance with non-democratic countries [such as] Venezuela." The Post, interestingly criticized the Bush administration for reacting too slow to the Chavez and Ortega threat.

 

On the pages of National Review, Otto Reich, a former State Department official who dealt with Venezuelan opposition conspirators in the run up to the coup against Chavez in 2002, remarked that "The emerging axis of subversion forming between Cuba and Venezuela must be confronted before it can undermine democracy in Nicaragua."

 

As per the case in Peru, the Nicaraguan right sought to link its Sandinista opposition to Chavez in an effort to instill fear in voters. Presidential candidate Jose Rizo remarked that Chavez and Ortega were "a threat to regional and hemispheric stability," and claimed that the Venezuelan leader was financing Ortega's campaign [both Venezuela and Ortega deny the accusation]. "Ortega will become Chavez's lieutenant in Central America and the Caribbean in the same way that he represented the extinct and failed Soviet Bloc," Rizo added.

Ortega Unlikely to Radicalize

 

Unlike Peru however the opposition's strategy of trying to scare Nicaraguan voters proved unsuccessful and at long last Ortega has prevailed in his drive to reach the presidency. Despite the hyperbolic claims by the U.S. and conservative politicians in Nicaragua however, Ortega is hardly in a position to become Chavez's steward overnight. Unlike Venezuela, Nicaragua is poor and foreign investment and aid accounts for 35 percent of the budget. That money could disappear if Ortega started to radicalize the country and expropriate industry.

 

In an effort to appease jittery investors, Ortega recently signed a pro-business pact in which he pledged to promote the private sector. Though he has spoken about the need to renegotiate aspects of CAFTA, Ortega now says he will build on free trade agreements. Ortega will have to tread lightly: the U.S. is Nicaragua's largest trading partner and accounts for about one fifth of the country's imports and approximately a third of its exports. About 25 wholly or partially owned subsidiaries of U.S. corporations operate in Nicaragua.

 

With so much at stake, Ortega has predictably moderated his rhetoric by stating that he would work with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and Inter American Development Bank.

 

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, son of former president Violeta Chamorro and editor of the weekly Confidencial newspaper, is not too concerned about a radical Ortega agenda. He argues that Ortega is a pragmatist and will try to appease the United States. Observers believe that the right wing Liberal Constitutionalist Party (known by its Spanish acronym PLC), the main opposition to the Sandinistas, will hold onto its many seats in the National Assembly following this election, which would further complicate any radical agenda.

 

But, Chavez's Oil Diplomacy in Central America Could Be a Factor

 

Nevertheless, Chavez seems to be trying hard to bring Nicaragua into its political orbit. Chavez has enhanced his stature in South America by trading oil for other goods, and seems to be pursuing a similar strategy in Nicaragua. Venezuela has in fact already provided cheap fuel to Nicaragua through Sandinista mayors. Speaking on his television and radio program Alo, Presidente!, Chavez told Ortega that Nicaragua could pay for Venezuelan oil with meat, milk, cheese and other goods.

 

Ortega and Chavez have held personal discussions about setting up a mixed Venezuelan-Nicaraguan company that would import the cheap oil. Chavez is apparently willing to invest in Nicaragua to set up necessary oil infrastructure. Best of all, Chavez's offer could prove politically beneficial to Ortega since restive students have protested any move to raise transportation costs. Farmers meanwhile would not have to increase their production costs.

What does it all add up to? Despite some setbacks, Chavez stands to at least gain some diplomatic and political leverage in Central America. Ortega will be hampered in bringing about radical change, but will at least look upon Venezuela as an important regional ally and friend. Try as it might, the Bush administration has not been able to isolate Chavez. To the contrary, the U.S., through its efforts to demonize both Chavez and Ortega, has unwittingly brought them together.

Located within the western provincial state of Zulia, Lake Maracaibo has long been a center of the petroleum industry.  Historically, the lake has been plagued by oil spills and pollution. 

Most recently, the lake has witnessed a profound catastrophe with the arrival of duckweed, a freshwater weed which has spread out across the surface of the water. Experts say that duckweed contributes to Lake Maracaibo's pollution.  Significantly, the weed could seriously change the habitat of various species of fish as it exhausts their oxygen supply and cuts off light from the depths of the lake. 

 

In Maracaibo, I interviewed Jorge Hinestroza, a sociologist at the University of Zulia and former General Coordinator of the Federation of Zulia Ecologists.  During the insightful hour long interview, Hinestroza illuminated many of the contradictions within the Chavez government's environmental policy. 

 

ICLAM and Lake Maracaibo

 

NK: Jorge, I have just been attending an environmental conference here in Maracaibo sponsored by the ICLAM (Institute For The Conservation of Lake Maracaibo, a government agency).  However, I see that some environmentalists in Zulia have been critical of the conference.  Why?

 

JH:  We could cite the case of Elio Rios, a doctor and veteran environmentalist.  Recently he sent out an e mail which accused ICLAM of excluding poor communities from the conference.  Rios is the Vice President of Azul (Environmentalists of Zulia).  Their group has been around for a long time, and probably has a couple of dozen active members.  Azul has made a name for itself by resisting coal exploitation in the Sierra of Perija [a mountainous area near the Colombian border]. 

 

Azul has undergone a very interesting evolution from the point of view of environmental politics.  Rios is himself a fervent follower and supporter of Hugo Chavez.  As a matter of fact, he participates in meetings of the Bolivarian Circles [pro-Chavez groups organized at the local level which carry out community projects with government assistance].  However, he has been one of the most vocal critics of the regime when it comes to the environment. 

 

When Elio says in the e mail that the ICLAM conference is elitist he's telling the truth.  The ICLAM conference was comprised solely of experts.  It is all rather ironic because supposedly in Venezuela we are living in an era which has opened the doors of science to the community.  But as this event makes clear, there is no link between the people and science. 

 

Environmentalism in The Chavez Era

 

NK: How have local environmentalists fared during the Chavez era?

 

JH:  As a result of the "Bolivarian Revolution," popular struggles have been frozen.  The expectation for change amongst the people has risen, and there is a great hope that the regime will resolve social problems.  Environmental concerns have practically been abandoned by popular struggles here.

 

NK: Could you comment specifically about communities within Lake Maracaibo and local environmental struggles? 

 

JH: The Chavez regime has sought to provide the immediate necessities of life for the people.  That is to say, the government offers large quantities of food and services, which in one way or another satisfies the most critical necessities of the people.  Government programs have dampened social tensions.  In various communities that I have visited, local struggles which confronted the great forces of transnational capital have been derailed. 

 

We might cite for example the case of the Olivitos Marsh, where a transnational company [Produsal, S.A., a company whose capital has been provided through Cargill and the state-run Pequiven or Petrochemical of Venezuela], produced salt [necessary for producing petrochemical products].  Produsal's arrival in Olivitos resulted in habitat fragmentation in the area.  The company also displaced fishing communities that were linked to the natural ecosystem. 

 

In response, local communities mobilized against the petrochemical transnational.  Local residents also struggled against the Ministry of Environment which for many years supported the company.  The Ministry handed out all the permits and supported big business, notwithstanding that it's a ministry pledged to protecting the environment. 

 

But with Chavez's political triumph, local communities practically halted their struggle.  The majority of the local fishermen were Chavistas.  They hoped that they would reclaim the waters that they had had traditionally used for fishing.  There was a lot of commotion when Chavez proclaimed the new Constitution which had important provisions favoring fishermen's rights.  However, local leadership later abandoned the struggle.

 

PDVSA and the Case of Lagunillas

 

NK: During the environmental conference, I participated in ICLAM visits to various companies around Lake Maracaibo.  During our visits, the managers presented a very clean corporate environmental image.  To what extent have they have really changed their environmental policies for the better? 

 

JH: As a result of industrial sabotage during the oil lockout of 2002-3, the government has spoken of the need for local communities to find out more about security and environmental risks within the oil industry.  Unfortunately, the government's promise to make the oil industry more transparent has not been met.  When we environmentalists complain about oil slicks for example, we get the same executives and environmental employees from PDVSA [Petroleos de Venezuela, the state run Venezuelan oil company] with the same rhetoric and discourse from the previous era before Chavez.

 

Another example of PDVSA indifference has to do with the actual sinking of coastal lands as a result of oil drilling around the town of Lagunillas [located along the east bank of Lake Maracaibo].  While I am sure there are new PDVSA executives with good intentions, basically environmental management is the same and the ideological orientation continues to be opaque. 

 

NK: That's interesting, I recently went on a tour of PDVSA installations in Lagunillas, but I didn't know anything about a relocation program.  What's it all about?

 

JH:  There are more than 60,000 people living along the east bank of Lake Maracaibo who are at risk from a serious disaster.  In the event of a large tremor, the Lagunillas protection wall could break and expose the people to dangerous flooding.  A relocation plan was developed more than 15 years ago.  The plan involved preparation of the community for an eventual disaster and evacuation contingencies.  As a matter of fact the authorities developed an alarm system and they had organized predetermined evacuation routes and secure relocation sites. 

Up to now, however, the authorities have only relocated between 10,000 and 15,000 people.  It seems to me that the relocation could have been carried out better in both quantitative and qualitative terms.  The point is that a technocratic vision still predominates when it comes to dealing with communities.  There should be more attention paid to social and environmental concerns, so that the relocation is carried out with a human face and not just in accordance with economic criteria. 

 

Moreover, through my discussions with local inhabitants I understand that the disaster contingency plans and alarm system was abandoned three years ago.  I have spoken with some PDVSA staff and they seem surprisingly uninformed about this serious matter.  A little while ago I spoke to a woman engineer from PDVSA.  When I brought up the issue of the Lagunillas protection wall and security risks she said no, that wall is not a risk, this wall is completely safe. This attitude indicates to me that something is gravely wrong. 

 

I believe that greater popular participation could minimize the risk of an eventual disaster.  If the Chavez government really takes its rhetoric seriously and promotes popular participation, this is the moment for greater dialogue on safety issues.

 

NK:  Through ICLAM, I was able to tour the PDVSA installations at Lagunillas and the control room which monitors seismic activity.  Outside of actually relocating people, is there anything else that PDVSA could do to protect the population? 

 

JH:  From a technical standpoint there's not much you can do.  We as environmentalists however pose the question of whether all this oil exploration along the east coast of Lake Maracaibo, which has affected 60,000 people and put communities at risk, has been worthwhile in a human sense.  We ask if the costs have been lesser or greater than the benefits.

 

Mining and The Sierra of Perija

 

NK:  What has been the situation within the Sierra of Perija and coal mining?

 

JH:  President Chavez once offered to halt coal production in light of the environmental disaster that would result.  Venezuelan coal production certainly pales beside domestic oil production in economic terms.  What is the advantage that coal mining brings for the Venezuelan economy and the Venezuelan people? 

 

Coal mining, from the outset, has caused considerable environmental destruction.  Not just that, but it's also affected the miners.  Workers have fallen sick with lung disease as a result of their work in the mines.  These workers have spent practically their entire lives in the mines and they are going to die young. 

 

I have also observed that around the mines, the rivers and forests have been destroyed.  Mining doesn't benefit the people nor the indigenous communities in the vicinity which have lost their agricultural way of life as a result of harmful ecological destruction. 

 

While it is true that the money from coal extraction has been used by Chavez for positive social works, the problem has to do with cost and benefit.  I wonder whether it is legitimate to destroy nature to favor a majority which is socially marginalized.  One must consider the plight of the next generation, the sons and daughters of the people who may benefit today.  What will they do when they find that the natural resource base has been destroyed?

 

NK: During my time at the ICLAM conference, I heard someone from the local development agency CORPOZULIA give a talk about ambitious new port facilities in the state of Zulia.  Could you comment about it and explain how it ties into the question of mining?

 

JH:  Currently we confront another environmental threat in the form of a newly proposed project, Bolivar Port.  Corpozulia and Bolivar Port are both linked to coal exploitation.  As a matter of fact, Corpozulia actually owns mining concessions.  This port which has been proposed for the mouth of Lake Maracaibo and the Gulf of Venezuela would prove catastrophic for mangrove vegetation in the area.  Suspiciously, we environmentalists have observed that many figures from the pre-Chavez era are pushing this project.  Investors and officials who are in favor of the port project sit on the government commission.  That is to say the same people who are interested in exploiting coal, which contributed to the displacement of Indians in the Sierra of Perija and the pollution of the soil and rivers, now proclaim that they are brothers of the Bolivarian Revolution. 

 

Lake Maracaibo and Duckweed

 

NK: What is the cause of the proliferating duckweed vegetation which has become a major environmental hazard in Lake Maracaibo? 

 

JH:  I believe that duckweed is not a chronic problem, because it abruptly emerged in 2003 and this points to sudden causes.  Sudden in the sense of an enormous deposit of nutrients in the lake, and a new economic component.  I believe that the new source of nutrients is the shrimp companies which proliferated in Lake Maracaibo starting in 2000.  Half the shrimp companies that exist in Venezuela operate in Lake Maracaibo.  Shrimp farming is sufficiently prolific to give rise to excess nutrients and the duckweed phenomenon.  I believe that ICLAM has sufficient data to prove this to be the case but doesn't pursue the matter for economic and political reasons.

 

NK: How has the Chavez government handled the duckweed problem?

 

JH: I think the official policy in relation to duckweed has been far from desirable.  We are dealing with a government that has revolutionary pretensions, but the Ministry of Environment adopts classic political posturing from the Fourth Republic [prior to Chavez's election] period.  In other words, only the experts know about this problem, while the communities are passive observers, assigned to pick up duckweed which provides employment for the community. 

 

The Chavez government says that environmental damage is inevitable and results from progress.  The government has even claimed that duckweed is beneficial, that it is good news for us.  Chavez, in 2003, said that the duckweed was benign.  The government said that duckweed would be very good for the population because it was going to serve as food for animals, and that it was almost a gift.

 

Fishermen, who number about 10,000-12,000 in Zulia, have been most affected by the duckweed phenomena.  Every year, every time that we go into the rainy season, duckweed invades the beaches.  Duckweed affects people living on the banks of the lake.  It is always the poorest fishermen who are most adversely affected, not the investors in the fish industry. 

 

Paradox of the Petro State

 

NK: Chavez constantly denounces the U.S. for wasteful consumerism and has warned of the green house effect.  But the irony is that Venezuela continues to be a major world oil producer.  Do you think Venezuela should be moving away from oil, in sync with the growing rhetoric?

 

JH:  I don't believe the peak oil theory is a fantasy; I think that by 2050 we will have exhausted oil as a viable energy resource and we will have to rely on new sources of energy.  What will happen to Venezuela, if we are not prepared to live from anything else besides oil?  In the next fifty years we should be going through a process of transition, to substitute oil for another source of energy.  I think from a scientific and technical standpoint we are not doing sufficiently enough to look for oil alternatives.  But the U.S. and its European partners are heading towards the substitution of oil.  And I believe the new energy paradigm will be hydrogen. 

 

In Venezuela we have developed a technological innovation.  It's a new way to take advantage of oil, in the sense of producing energy with less resulting pollution.  Venezuela could be a great producer of orimulsion, a product resulting from the mixture of water and heavy oil.  Orimulsion is less polluting than coal.  I don't understand why we produce coal, which is destroying the Sierra of Perija and the indigenous communities there, when we could develop orimulsion production plants.  We could develop orimulsion, which could compete with coal on the world market.  I am saddened that within the Chavez government officials have not chosen to sufficiently take advantage of orimulsion.

 

Jorge Hinestroza is professor of sociology at the University of Zulia.

Articles touting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's political successes and social programs are a dime a dozen on left wing Web sites these days.  When I was researching my own book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and The Challenge To The U.S. (recently released by St. Martin's Press), I read a lot of these accounts and began to develop an exceedingly idealistic idea of what was happening in Venezuela.  Having just returned from an extended six week trip to the country, however, I feel that the political and social landscape is a lot murkier and more ambiguous than many have suggested.

 

As an admittedly "left wing tourist," I had the fortunate opportunity to participate in a delegation organized by Witness For Peace, a Washington, D.C. based group which has been working for more than twenty years to halt U.S. interventionism in Latin America.  As a member or our delegation, I had the rare privilege to interview figures from across the political spectrum.  After the delegation left, I stayed and conducted more interviews on my own. 

 

Housing: A Mixed Picture

 

One of the most daunting issues facing the Chavez government has been the dire shortage of housing in the country.  All over surrounding Caracas, brick houses lean precariously off the side of steep and eroded hillsides. 

 

To really get a sense of the magnitude of the problem one must first travel to the state of Vargas.  Located about an hour from Caracas by car, Vargas spans the coast and has a brutal tropical climate.  Today, the state is still reeling from a tragic natural disaster which occurred years ago.

 

On December 14, 1999 intense rains fell across the state.  For four days, the rains continued.  On the 17th, massive landslides shook the area, with rivers of dirt and mud falling down the mountain slopes.  The avalanche brought with it collapsed houses, creating a human catastrophe of epic proportions. 

 

Traveling with my delegation to the site of the devastation, we saw a gully where the landslide had washed out houses, mud and earth.  A group of construction workers were laboring in the torrid heat.  They were removing rocks from the area and building a dike further down below. 

We spoke to a middle aged Afro-Colombian woman whose house was severely damaged by the landslide.  "When the landslide arrived," she told us, "it took everything away and anything that was left we had to sell in order to eat." 

 

To the side of the gully, there were still people living in rudimentary cinder block houses with no access to public services.  There was no garbage pick up, forcing local residents to burn their refuse in a gigantic pile.  Looking up the side of the hill, I feared that the earth might collapse on top of the houses in the event of further heavy rains.

 

Seven years later, local residents in the area complained that the government still had not processed their paperwork so they might relocate to safer housing away from the disaster area.  One young man with three children said that he and his family were ready to relocate, but that the authorities had delayed and delayed. 

 

"Chavez has never come here to see what's going on," he complained bitterly.

To be fair, the housing problem predates Chavez's arrival as president.  Prior to his election, there was a great scarcity of housing in the country.  The Vargas tragedy, which occurred scarcely a year into Chavez's first term, compounded the housing situation yet further. 

Nevertheless, the government has brought some relief and has enjoyed some notable successes.

 

Traveling in a blue van rented by our delegation, we traveled to the state of Miranda near Caracas.  There, we saw a model housing program called Ciudad Miranda, consisting of dozens of tall apartment blocks and smaller houses.  A local guide explained that people had been relocated to Ciudad Miranda from unsafe housing in Caracas and Vargas.  Once residents were ensconced in Ciudad Miranda and had been awarded an apartment, they would have twenty years to pay back government housing loans. 

 

As I walked up to the apartment blocks, I noticed that on the first floor many residents had set up cooperative businesses.  According to our local guide, the government had provided start up money for the new cooperatives.  What is more, on one corner the authorities had almost finished constructing a local school.

 

I spoke with the owners of one local grocery who had been refugees from Vargas.  They told me of their harrowing tale of escape, and how their entire house had been swept away by the landslide.  The residents were pleased to have left Vargas behind, but Ciudad Miranda was not immune from social problems. 

 

Store owners told us that some people had moved into Ciudad Miranda without proper documentation and there was little security in the housing complex.  Additionally, from a purely aesthetic point of view Ciudad Miranda left something to be desired: the apartment blocks were unattractive, and the small houses were not much more appealing.

 

On the other hand, in the hills surrounding the town of Charallave in the state of Miranda, the government has tried a different approach.  There, the authorities have built housing on a much smaller, human scale.  Local residents had traded in their ranchitos or rudimentary shacks for charming looking houses. 

 

I admired one house, freshly painted on the outside in red and white.  Walking inside I observed a modern kitchen and bathroom.  The local woman who was set to move in to the house beamed proudly as she guided us around the premises.  She denied that there had been any favoritism in the allocation of housing and that members of the Chavez opposition would be able to acquire a house. 

 

On the other hand, it had been a battle to get the authorities to construct the housing.  According to our guide, the authorities had only been spurred to construct the new houses after local residents mobilized and successfully lobbied the media to draw attention to their plight.      

 

Back in Caracas, I asked Rafael Uzcategui, the media coordinator of the human rights group Provea, what he made of the government housing program.  My old acquaintance was critical of the authorities for what he called an overly quantitative approach.  "The government says it will build, say 100,000 houses.  But more thought needs to go into planning.  New housing needs to be more conveniently located to services, employment, and medical facilities." 

Rafael was also critical of government inefficiency.  Recently, he said, the housing minister was sacked after only one year.  Whenever a fresh minister was appointed the new official would bring a different agenda and separate programs, thus encouraging bureaucratic inefficiency and waste.

 

Seven Years After: Chavez's Mixed Record

 

During a meeting with our delegation, Marino Alvarado, the coordinator at Provea, soberly evaluated Chavez's tenure in office.  While Chavez's victory in 1998 held out the possibility of overcoming traditional social problems, after seven years of the Chavez regime many hopes had not been satisfied. 

 

"There are some policies that are very positive," Marino remarked.  However, he added, "in other areas things are pretty much the same." 

 

Marino conceded that there was a great willingness within the government to help the poorest and historically most marginalized sectors of society.  On the other hand, there was great government inefficiency and "the willingness on the government's part to carry out policies is not enough to make the policies happen."

 

Marino explained that the country was awash in oil money, and people's expectations were high.  However, due to inefficiency public discontent was mounting.

 

"There's a lot of social protest," Marino told us, "calling on the government to comply with promises that haven't been met.  These are not opposition protests against Chavez, we're talking about sectors of the population that are supportive of the government.  They are calling for the authorities to actually implement programs.  They are calling for the right to health care, the right to housing, the right to work."

 

Leaning forward, Marino confided to us, "if you go to the presidential palace right now I'm sure you'll find people there.  Every day there is another protest."

 

Chavez had been fortunate in that he'd enjoyed a kind of cult of personality.  When something went wrong, Marino said, the poor tended to blame inefficient government bureaucrats and not the president.  The problem was that cases of corruption were mounting at the highest levels of government. 

 

Politically, Marino said, Chavez would win the December presidential election. 

 

However, he added, "there could be a moment when people start to point to Chavez as the figure that's responsible for government inefficiency.  If there aren't solutions to social problems very soon, it would not be strange to think that there might be a popular uprising against the president."

To read the article, click here.

Here in New York, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has been causing a sensation. With a recent speech at the United Nations during which he called George Bush "the devil," Chavez turned up his rhetorical bombast on the White House. "I can still smell sulfur in the room," Chavez added, referring to Bush's earlier address at the United Nations. Yesterday, while touring Harlem, Chavez went even further, calling Bush a "sick man" and an alcoholic.

 

It's not the first time that Chavez has relied on such mud slinging.

 

Personally, I preferred Chavez's prior characterization of Bush as "Mr. Danger," a more droll term than the devil.

 

But beyond the mere rhetoric, what does Chavez hope to achieve through this verbal assault? By bashing the White House, Chavez surely shores up his domestic constituency, the Venezuelan poor. And he may enhance his stature world wide as a combative, hemispheric leader.

 

However, the long term impact of Chavez's remarks upon the domestic U.S. political scene is unclear. While many on the liberal left in New York will not disagree with Chavez's opposition to Bush (U.S. interference in Venezuelan affairs, documented in meticulous detail in my recent book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and The Challenge To The U.S., has been a longstanding concern of political activists here), the rest of the country is another matter.

They're watching the likes of CNN, which yesterday spent much of the afternoon deriding Chavez. On one segment, anchor Wolf Blitzer interviewed Republican William Bennett and Democrat Donna Brazzille about Chavez's visit. Both lambasted Chavez for his imprudence. From there it was on to pundit Jack Cafferty who suggested that we immediately deport Chavez back to Venezuela.

 

With the media getting whipped up into a frenzy over Chavez's effrontery, what is worrying is that the Venezuelan president might actually have a political impact on the upcoming Congressional elections in November and tip the scale towards the Republicans. While the GOP looks vulnerable, Bush has recently been surging in the polls by stoking the public's fear of terrorism. He's also been doing a fair amount of saber rattling towards Iran, a nation that Chavez has warmly embraced.

 

Will Chavez play into Bush and Republican hands? The Democrats have been momentarily cast off balance by Chavez's visit. Even liberal Congressman Charlie Rangel of Harlem criticized Chavez for his rhetorical excesses. House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi went even farther, calling Chavez "a thug." The Democrats, it seems, fear that close identification with Chavez could cost them politically.

 

In a very cutthroat sense, they might be right.

 

During the recent presidential election in Peru, the more nationalist candidate Ollanta Humala embraced Chavez. Meanwhile, the Venezuelan leader made no secret of his antipathy towards Humala's challenger, Alan Garcia.

 

Chavez taunted Garcia in much the same way that he is doing now with Bush.

 

The tactic backfired: Garcia exploited the issue, charging that Chavez was blatantly interfering in Peru's domestic politics. Garcia went on to beat Humala in the general election and Chavez was discredited.

 

Does Chavez know what he is doing? The Venezuelan leader likes the limelight, but his actions may have unforseen consequences.

Articles touting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's political successes and social programs are a dime a dozen on left wing Web sites these days.  When I was researching my own book, Hugo Chávez: Oil, Politics, and The Challenge To The U.S. (recently released by St. Martin's Press), I read a lot of these accounts and began to develop an exceedingly idealistic idea of what was happening in Venezuela.  Having just returned from an extended six week trip to the country, however, I feel that the political and social landscape is a lot murkier and more ambiguous than many have suggested.

 

As an admittedly "left wing tourist," I had the fortunate opportunity to participate in a delegation organized by Witness For Peace, a Washington, D.C. based group which has been working for more than twenty years to halt U.S. interventionism in Latin America.  As a member or our delegation, I had the rare privilege to interview figures from across the political spectrum.  After the delegation left, I stayed and conducted more interviews on my own. 

 

Feeding the Poor: Chavez Scores Some Gains

 

In our meeting with Marino Alvarado, the cautious Provea human rights advocate praised government programs to bring food to the Venezuelan poor.  After meeting with him in downtown Caracas, our delegation went across town to a so-called "Endogenous Center of Development" housing workers' cooperatives and a government sponsored market or Mercal.  The space had formerly been a pumping station belonging to the state oil company, PdVSA, and was located within the working class district of Catia.

 

Within the market, local residents could buy discounted items including cooking oil, beans, ice cream and shampoo. Jeff Cohen, a media critic and member of our delegation, bought some pasta in the store. Our young guide said that shoppers could save up to 50% on discounted high quality items. Nevertheless, the Chavez opposition claimed that the market served only "dogs." 

 

At another Mercal in the countryside, a package of sugar only cost 750 bolivares, half the price that consumers would pay in a normal supermarket; chicken too was half as expensive.  Discounted pasta had a message on the back of the package: "When the people are in need, its revolutionary government responds!" 

 

Rafael Uzcategui, the media coordinator at Provea, remarked that Chavez's popular markets were "well done."  Rafael argued however that more thought should be put into the planning of popular markets.  Most of the products there were imported, he told me, while the government wrote catchy propagandistic slogans on the packaging.  In the long term, Rafael said, Venezuela would have to develop greater food self sufficiency to feed the neediest.

 

The government had also put a great deal of effort into promoting soup kitchens.  I had the opportunity to observe one of the kitchens, located within a Mennonite church which worked closely with Witness For Peace.  Working class Protestants comprise a chief base of support for the Chavez regime, and the government provided raw food to the church. 

 

The church was run by Pedro, a wiry and hardworking black man, and his wife America.  Their family, including children and a Siberian Husky puppy, lived in the church.  Upstairs, women prepared the food that had been donated by the government in large vats and pots.  On one day, the church staff provided lunch to the poor waiting outside in the street.  The meal consisted of juice, rice, patacones (fried and mashed plantains), and sausage.

 

Workers' Cooperatives: Advancements and Criticisms

 

One example of the government's determination to eradicate poverty is the Women's Bank.  Housed along pollution clogged Urdaneta Avenue in downtown Caracas, the bank has extended credit to working class women so that they might form small businesses. 

 

To get a better sense of how the Women's Bank had affected working class women, our delegation traveled to Charallave, a town outside of Caracas.  After a rather hair raising ride through the mountains, we arrived at a house which housed a women's baking cooperative and Mercal. 

 

After completing a quick baking course, the women had applied for credit from the Women's Bank and set up their thriving bakery.  Spread out on the tables were pastries that looked much more tempting than the usual fare served up in most Caracas bakeries. 

 

According to Ercilia Seijas, one of the workers, the cooperative started initially with 27 women.  This number subsequently went down however to 14.  This was so, she explained, because the women's husbands fiercely resisted their spouses growing economic independence. 

 

The women worked in two shifts: the morning crew arrived at 6 A.M. and finished at mid-day.  The others worked from noon until 6 P.M.

 

"Our lives have improved," Seijas remarked.  "We were taking care of the house before the subsidized market and cooperative.  Now we can make money."     

 

We also visited cooperatives at the "Endogenous Center of Development." Within the complex in Catia, workers had set up a textile and shoe manufacturing cooperative.  The textile facility had two male workers but otherwise was staffed solely by women. 

 

In Venezuela, explained a young woman guide, poverty affected women hardest.  It was they, she added, who had to shoulder the responsibility of raising children when men abandoned the family. 

 

On the other hand, our guide remarked, the women had undergone a profound psychological shift working in the cooperative.  Before, they had always been ordered around, but now they had all become part owners in the cooperative and took great pride in the Che Guevara T-shirts produced at the plant. 

 

Later, Jeff Cohen and I walked outside into the street, where we were greeted by huge murals depicting Simon Bolivar.  Jeff remarked that the cooperative model of development at Catia bore striking similarities to the classic anarchist vision emphasizing democratic and decentralized workers' control.

 

To get a more critical perspective on the cooperative issue, I asked my old acquaintance Rafael Uzcategui what he thought.  In the conference room back at Provea, we discussed Chavez's many social programs. 

 

Five years previously when I'd met him Rafael was a student at the Central University of Caracas, writing his thesis about the anti-globalization movement and the significance of the Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization. 

 

He'd been a frequent contributor to El Libertario, an anarchist newspaper published in Caracas.  He'd now cut his hair but still wore his trademark high top canvas sneakers.  Rafael said that his work now took up much of his time but he still managed to write for the paper.

I'd read numerous columns appearing in El Libertario over the years, and sometimes grew frustrated with the newspaper's seemingly relentless criticism of the Chavez government. What, if anything would satisfy the writers? 

 

"Isn't Catia an anarchist idea?" I prodded.

 

Rafael said that in theory the cooperatives were a good idea, but in practice the government would hire cooperatives to sweep the street or carry out other work without extending adequate labor protections.  He added that in some cooperatives, but not all, there was no right to social security.  What's more, the authorities had been derelict by extending credit to groups of workers who would then take advantage of government largesse and set up fictitious or ghost cooperatives.

Articles touting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez's political successes and social programs are a dime a dozen on left wing Web sites these days.  When I was researching my own book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and The Challenge To The U.S. (recently released by St. Martin's Press), I read a lot of these accounts and began to develop an exceedingly idealistic idea of what was happening in Venezuela.  Having just returned from an extended six week trip to the country, however, I feel that the political and social landscape is a lot murkier and more ambiguous than many have suggested.

 

As an admittedly "left wing tourist," I had the fortunate opportunity to participate in a delegation organized by Witness For Peace, a Washington, D.C. based group which has been working for more than twenty years to halt U.S. interventionism in Latin America.  As a member or our delegation, I had the rare privilege to interview figures from across the political spectrum.  After the delegation left, I stayed and conducted more interviews on my own. 

 

Education: Some Significant Successes

 

Without a doubt the Chavez regime has scored important victories which have improved the lot of the Venezuelan poor, which make up 70% of the population.  Not even members of the middle class opposition that I spoke with deny the government's numerous accomplishments. 

Mariño Alvarado, the coordinator of Provea, an important Caracas-based human rights organization, explained to our delegation that in education the government had achieved some successes.  A lawyer by profession, Mariño had been working with Provea for ten years.  Hardly a tool of the right wing opposition, Provea provides rigorous and objective human rights analysis, as well as important information about social, cultural and economic conditions in Venezuela.

 

A solemn man with indigenous features, Mariño spoke to us in a deliberate, serious tone.  At the Provea headquarters located in downtown Caracas, he remarked that the authorities had been able to increase the number of school age children studying at all educational levels.  What's more, he added, "the government has carried out a very successful literacy campaign, and built an impressive number of schools." 

 

After my delegation left for the States, I stayed in Caracas and caught up with Rafael Uzcategui, who had just recently started working with Provea as the organization's media coordinator.  Five years earlier I'd met Rafael in Caracas.  At that time he had been a student at the Central University and I was pursuing field work on my doctoral dissertation dealing with the oil industry. 

 

To be fair, Rafael said, Chavez was not the first Venezuelan president to deliver massive state support for education.  "In previous periods when the price of oil was high," he explained, "various governments were able to enact social policies as there was money floating around."  Even Acción Democrática, a corrupt party derided by Chavez, had funded the massification of education through oil revenue prior to Chavez's election in 1998.

 

Nevertheless, one cannot deny the government's successes.  Piling into a blue van, our delegation paid a visit to one of the government's many "Bolivarian" schools near to the town of Charallave.  An immaculately clean, pleasant, and orderly facility, the school had a computer room and a newly constructed basketball court outside.  Outside a girl swung happily from a swing. 

 

Unfortunately, school was not in session and we did not observe class.  I do not doubt for a moment however that most any parent would have been proud to have his or her children in that school, surely superior to many dilapidated schools within inner cities of the United States.

 

Health Care: Successes and Shortcomings

 

For Marino, one of the other hallmark accomplishments of the Chavez government has been health care.  Across Venezuela, the government has set up so-called Barrio Adentro clinics administering primary care to marginalized sectors of society.  Cuban doctors, whose presence in Venezuela has stoked political controversy, staff the Barrio Adentro clinics. 

One day we had the opportunity, purely by chance, to speak with one of the Cuban doctors.  During a visit to a poor slum in the Caracas area one of the members of our delegation, a young college student, fell into conversation on the street with a strapping man in his forties with a moustache.  He explained that he was a doctor working in the local Barrio Adentro clinic.

 

Inside his clinic, there was a photo of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, as well as a picture of Simon Bolivar, an independence leader who fought against Spain. The doctor, who seemed leery of talking with us on the record, said that the community had accepted him and that he frequently played baseball with local residents.  He had seemingly adapted to life in Venezuela, though the serious drug addiction problem in the country had startled him. 

Inside the makeshift facility, the doctor had a cabinet stocked with basic medicines.  The doctor admitted that Cuba had a much better health system than Venezuela.  He said that though he was pleased to oblige and provide his services in Venezuela, the Cuban presence was a mere band aid.

 

During a visit to the working class district of Catia, we had the opportunity to observe another, more specialized clinic.  Within the clinic we observed separate departments specializing in gynecology, pathology, dentistry and pediatrics.  According to our guide, doctors attended 400 people daily in the clinic, principally from Catia.  If patients had more serious ailments, they were referred in turn to local hospitals.

 

It's undeniable that the Barrio Adentro clinics and the new facility at Catia have made a difference for poor Venezuelans who historically had negligible access to health care.  However, according to Mariño, though programs like Barrio Adentro have been a signal success the full health care system is still very deficient and has not improved substantially under Chavez.

 

"Cuban doctors can treat certain problems," remarked my old acquaintance Rafael.  "But what happens if someone has to go to the hospital, get an operation, and the hospital doesn't work?"

On the surface, Venezuela seemed to have become much more independent and combative towards its northern neighbor. However, on closer inspection, one senses a much more ambiguous and contradictory attitude.

 

I have just returned from a fruitful six week trip to Venezuela, where I interviewed people from across the political spectrum.  The country is in the midst of cultural and political ferment and in many ways is trying to seek greater autonomy from the United States.

Though I spent almost a year in Venezuela in 2000-2001, I had not returned to the country since that time and physically Caracas looked quite different from what I remembered.

Walking around Caracas, I was struck by the anti-imperialist murals which had proliferated throughout the city.  One particularly jarring mural depicts an image of Uncle Sam wielding a dagger reading "CIA."

 

There is no face underneath the hat, just a bare skull.

 

Later, as I walked inside the Venezuelan National Assembly, I spotted an interesting exhibit: a series of billboards, each one displaying a key, separate date in the history of U.S. interventions in Latin America.

 

One billboard discussed the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 under George Bush Senior and the bombing of the civilian population in El Chorrillo, a poor district of Panama City.

 

On a separate trip I visited Catia, a district located on the outskirts of Caracas.  There, I toured a so-called "Endogenous Center of Development," where working class women had organized themselves into a cooperative. The women were busily working on sewing machines, producing red T-shirts.

 

Peering closer, I glimpsed an image on the shirts: a profile of the famous Communist revolutionary and arch nemesis of the United States, Che Guevara.

 

Back in my Caracas hotel room, I was struck by the stridently anti-U.S. tone on state run media.  On my last trip several years ago, state TV routinely aired Chavez's anti-imperialist broadsides against the United States.

 

But since then, in response to Washington's support for the Venezuelan opposition and the neo-conservatives' relentless demonization of Chavez, which has gone so far as to label Chavez a modern day Adolf Hitler, the tone on state TV had become more shrill.

Again and again on ViveTV, a state run station, the channel would broadcast a short segment showing stark, bombed out images of Iraq. "Imagine if your city was invaded and destroyed by a foreign army," intoned a solemn voiceover.

 

Vive TV is designed to instill a sense of cultural pride in ordinary Venezuelans.  Under Chavez, there has been a great drive towards cultural autonomy as a means of counterbalancing the pervasive influence of U.S. media (for a more in depth discussion of the issue, see my recently released book from St. Martin's Press, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and The Challenge To the U.S.).

 

On Vive, I watched intellectual round table discussions on such themes as Venezuela's cultural and political relationship to the African continent. But the station also specialized in cinema verité style footage of rural life in the Venezuelan plain or llano.

 

At one point I saw a long segment with no narration showing poor farmers making blocks of cheese.  During another segment, I watched as young Venezuelans danced the joropo, a traditional dance common in the plain.

 

On the surface, Venezuela seemed to have become much more independent and combative towards its northern neighbor.  However, on closer inspection, one senses a much more ambiguous and contradictory attitude.

 

Venezuelans have strong cultural ties to the United States, and one is struck by the gigantic U.S. style shopping malls in the capital of Caracas. Centro Comercial Sambil, a shopping complex in the area of Chacao, boasted several floors chock full of U.S. fast food chains such as Pizza Hut, Wendy's and KFC.

 

There were two movie theaters screening the latest summer fare from Hollywood, including The Da Vinci Code and The Poseidon Adventure.  During my stay in Caracas, I visited Sambil several times and the entrance to the mall was frequently so clogged with people that it was difficult to walk.

 

Compared to other Latin American countries that I have traveled to, Venezuela seems to have more of an insatiable desire for the trappings of U.S. consumerism.  On the crass private TV stations, which provide a bizarre daily contrast to Chavez's state TV, commercials advertise the latest U.S.-style consumer products.

 

In the Andean city of Mérida, I interviewed one state politician from Chavez's MVR (Movimiento Quinta República, or Fifth Republic Movement) party. A flamboyant former guerilla fighter during the 1960s, he tried to get me to come to a Chavista meeting where I could acquire a red beret.  He insisted that Venezuela was becoming less culturally dependent on the United States.

 

"Now we don't drink so much Pepsi Cola, we're drinking more guarapo!" he exclaimed, referring to a delicious Venezuelan drink made from sugar cane juice.

 

On the other hand, during my entire six week stay I did not see anyone drinking guarapo, though many drank soda pop from the United States.  In Caracas, I used to buy guarapo from a street vendor.  He had a special machine that would grind up the sugar cane.  When I returned he was no longer there.

 

Billboards throughout Caracas display cosmetic ads depicting European and white looking women.  One hears American pop music everywhere and I found Venezuelan youth to be very knowledgeable about the latest musical trends from the U.S.

 

Meanwhile, commercial ties with the U.S. could not be better.  Though the oil companies may grouse about higher royalty taxes and the government's move to create "mixed companies" in which the state company, PdVSA, holds a majority stake, the vast majority of companies do not wish to be frozen out of one of the most lucrative oil markets in the world.  Accordingly they have chosen to stay and do business in Venezuela.

 

Given the acrimonious war of words between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the Bush administration, I expected to encounter a high degree of anti-Americanism.  Some hard core Chavez supporters still decried the Bush administration's funding of the opposition and Washington's alleged role in the April 2002 coup.  Surprisingly however, many others who I spoke with seemed unconcerned about the prospect of further U.S. meddling.

 

As an American, I never felt any hostility from the population, even in poor urban areas where Chavez's support was strongest.

 

On the other hand, it's clear that opposition and antipathy to Washington is spreading. One manifestation of this is the growing number of anti-U.S. protests in Caracas.

 

Chavez has been a vocal critic of the recent Israeli assault on Lebanon and U.S. support for Israel.  Recently, anti-war demonstrators marched through the capital, protesting the war in Lebanon.

 

Caracas has also been the frequent scene of protests against the U.S. war in Iraq.  The demonstrations have been organized by Chavez supporters. However, even within the opposition antipathy towards the war in Iraq is growing.

 

In the offices of the anti-Chavez political party Primero Justicia, located conveniently at the Chacaito metro stop in Caracas, I interviewed the general secretary, Gerardo Blyde.  At party headquarters the situation was chaotic, as the opposition was in the midst of trying to select a candidate to run against Chavez in the December presidential election.

 

Primero Justica has received U.S. financial support through the National Endowment for Democracy, and I expected Blyde to unconditionally support U.S. foreign policy.  But when I pried, Blyde, who had slicked back hair and was dressed in a dapper blazer, was very circumspect about the war in Iraq.

 

"I'm not a Republican," he told me, "we don't like the war."

 

Though Blyde derided Chavez for frontally attacking the U.S. on the Iraq issue (he personally would have preferred to bring up the issue in a more diplomatic and collective fashion at such international bodies as the United Nations), nevertheless he declared that his party's official policy was against the war.

 

Given the long standing political, economic, and cultural ties between the United States and Venezuela, my guess is that Chavez's anti-imperialist speeches and state media will have little impact on most Venezuelans' views of their northern neighbor.

 

However, one cannot discount the possibility that the neo-conservatives in Washington will succeed in squandering much of the historic goodwill that has existed between the two nations through bluster, misguided policies, and sheer ineptitude.

An academic article published in Bulletin of Latin American Research, Volume 25, Number 2 (April 2006), 282-300.  No online link but click here to go to the journal.

An academic article published in Estudios Interdisciplinarios de America Latina y el Caribe (Volume 17-2, 2007), 7-33.  Click here to go to the link.