n April 2002 there was a brief military coup of the democratically-elected president of Venezuela.  What made it interesting to comment about was the fact that the US government was one the only one in the Western Hemisphere to not immediately condemn the military take over. The new military leaders immediately removed the business regulations and dissolved the parliament and supreme court.  With their rightfully-elected president in jail, the people who had voted for him revolted.  There were massive protest marches and the entire country shut down in a general strike.  And they won, the coup plotters were ousted, the president was freed from jail and regained control. US Administration spokesmen were unhappy with this triumph of democracy.

April 19, 2002

Fascinating article by Ted Rall about the Venezuelan coup.  Rall is usually a nutcase, running absurd allegations and insinuations that are rumor at best, but this article doesn't have his usual number of absurd allegations.  It has several, of course, but there are facts to go with things.  It will be interesting to see if Spinsanity can shoot this one full of holes, as it did his last editorial.

A few more things on the Venezuelan coup.  Article here about how the media in Venezuela self-censored themselves, to keep from reporting about the massive public outrage at the coup, and attempt to keep word of it from spreading.  They were of course unsuccessful.  Anyway, based on my reading of a few websites and news reports, here's my capsule history of the coup, which happened last week, and was over by Sunday.

In Venezuela, the elected president, Chavez, is essentially a socialist. He was elected by the teeming, impoverished masses a couple of years ago, and has heavily taxed the magnates, broken up monopolies, not allowed the oil companies to continue their profiteering and environmental destruction, etc. The US gets like 15% of our oil from Venezuela, so "we" have a vested interest in their economic output, mainly in the oil continuing to flow.  US businesses make enormous profits off of it, of course.  And if you don't know of the heavy oil-industry bias in our current presidential administration, you've not been paying attention.  The administration is composed largely of ex, current, and future oilmen, and this shows up in policy in such things as cutting research into alternative energy sources, reviving nuclear power strategies, trying to drill in the Alaskan wildlife refuge, blocking laws that would force auto-makers to increase fuel efficiency and cut our dependence on terrorist-financing foreign oil, etc.

Anyway, there was a coup by the military in Venezuela.  They jailed the democratically-elected president, and installed their own dictator.  Keep in mind this isn't some revolt in Cuba; Chavez was the winner in a fair, popular vote, despite most of the media and establishment opposing him at the time.  Which is more than the US can say, you'll note. Anyway, last week the military, with their allies in big business, overthrew the head of the country, threw out all of the congress, immediately overturned most of the laws regulating the oil companies and other big businesses, repealed the higher taxes on the rich, etc.

Newspapers (there and in the US) and other media gave this glowing coverage, totally approving the change, ignoring the fact it was a military take over.  The public was a lot less happy that their elected leader had been jailed, and massive demonstrations broke out immediately, and continued for two days until the people triumphed. They threw the dictator into jail, freed their president, and made merry.

As the coup fell apart the Venezuelan media did everything they could to cover up the fact, and didn't report on the democratic forces marching.  The article gives numerous details:

Globovision, the country's top 24-hour news station and CNN affiliate, spent much of the day rebroadcasting upbeat footage of Chavez's ouster. An announcer repeatedly cautioned viewers, "We are living in times of political change." Viewers were urged to be "prudent" and avoid spreading "false alarms" and "rumors."

The media's Saturday blackout contrasted sharply with the blanket coverage of events Thursday leading up to the coup. That included dramatic footage of the repression of a massive antigovernment march in which at least 15 people, including one photographer, were killed and hundreds injured.

Furthermore:

Venezuelan journalists from several media outlets say news desks stopped taking their stories. Citing concerns over job reprisals, they agreed to speak on condition that their names not be used.

"Unless there is a serious internal investigation of what went on," said one reporter, "professional journalism in Venezuela is finished."

There is a much longer article about the coup and events leading up to it, as well as analysis of the country and forces in it here.

Where it gets interesting is that the US state dept was obviously involved with the coup plotters.  They of course deny this:

Washington denies having anything to do with the coup, and we probably won't know for some time what role, if any, was played by the U.S. government. It took a couple of years and a congressional investigation to declassify the details of the United States' massive involvement in the overthrow of Chile's elected government in 1973.

But the Bush administration's support for the Venezuelan coup was unqualified – in fact it tried to deny that this was a military coup at all. This was a ridiculous position: the country's elected president was arrested and replaced by the military, and his replacement dissolved the elected National Assembly and Supreme Court. If that is not a military coup, then there is no such thing.

What I find interesting about this is how clearly it shows the US government's real priorities.  Another quote from the above linked article:

In El Salvador and Guatemala in the 1970s and '80s, when the United States supported governments and militaries that slaughtered civilians by the tens of thousands, our leaders maintained the fiction that the governments were not responsible for the killings. When Washington tried to overthrow the government of Nicaragua in the 1980s, it pretended that this government was not legitimate. When military officers who were paid by the CIA overthrew Haiti's first democratically elected government in 1991, the Bush (senior) administration said that it was against the coup.

Keep this in mind the next time you hear someone in the US leadership decrying the terrible repression and lack of democracy in whatever country we're opposing at the moment.  We're all for democracy when the current leadership isn't democratic, and opposes our goals.  Iraq is horrible, Ghadafi in Libya is horrible, the Taliban in Afghanistan was horrible, etc.  I wouldn't disagree with those assessments, but where is our official condemnation of the repressive tyrants ruling Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait?  Where the citizens and media have as little or less freedom than they do in Iraq or Libya?  As long as those countries are more or less in line with what we want them to be in line with, we're fine with their repression.

This is a realistic viewpoint; foreign policy is no place for idealism.  Our vested interests are more important than the quality of life or degree of freedom people in other countries across the world may or may not enjoy.  My objection is the hypocrisy that the US government shows about this sort of thing, the 1984ish lying and backtracking and denying of the obvious.  If some Bush spokesman came out and said, "Yes, Chavez was elected, but his policies are raising oil prices and he's kind of a dick, so we tried to get him booted."  I'd have a lot more respect for the administration.

Instead we see a coup that was exactly in US policy interests, taking out a leader they very much dislike, the coup leadership having contact with the US Embassy, and once it happens the US is very supportive, virtually the only country in the Americas to recognize the coup government.  But no, of course they had nothing to do with it!  The very idea!

All site content copyright "Flux" (Eric Bruce), 2002-2007.