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HUGO CHAVEZ SPEAKSChavez earned the wrath of the US by being the first head of state to visit Iraq since the Gulf war, and his visits to Cuba, where he and the old Stalinist warhorse got along famously, did not endear him to Republicans. But the idea that Chavez is sitting at Fidel's feet, imbibing Marxist-Leninist doctrine is the wish-fulfillment fantasy of hallucinating cold warriors who simply cannot believe in the death of their old adversary, Communism: they see its ghost everywhere, like the after-image of a lingering nightmare. What Chavez represents is something altogether new, at least in that part of the world, an ideology that is neither left nor right but firmly rooted in the concept of national sovereignty: a post-democratic nationalism, arisen largely in reaction to US economic and military domination of the region. But let Chavez speak for himself: there is not the space here to reproduce the entirety of the 1996 interview conducted in El Salvador, so I suggest you follow this link – and see if the following sounds like Fidelismo or even conventional caudillismo: "The Bolivarian Movement was born in the barracks some 15 years ago when a group of soldiers came to the conclusion that the enemy was not communism, but imperialism. For many years we worked carefully and gradually to develop a nationalist, patriotic movement with one hand in the barracks and another on the street. We developed a Bolivarian conception of revolution, which understands that we face a different empire to that confronted by [the leader of the movement for independence from Spain, General Símon] Bolívar. Bolívar, however, did foresee that North America was destined to plague us in the name of liberty. ". . . We pose the questions of independence and sovereignty by calling for a new continent-wide independence movement. The current political model is mortally wounded and no viable alternative can exist without breaking the bourgeois, neoliberal system that has operated in Venezuela since 1945. In our model of democracy, the people, civil society, are protagonists who participate in making political, even military, decisions. There are no half-measures on questions of sovereignty. There has to be direct democracy, people's government with popular assemblies and congresses where the people retain the right to remove, nominate, sanction, and recall their elected delegates and representatives." BOOMERANGWhile he mentions Cuba admiringly as an example of "a people in arms," this formulation is ambiguous and, given Chavez's well-known ability to adapt to the expectations of his audience, doubtless thrown in for the delectation of enthralled left-wing journalists. For, aside from what they might view as an attractive appeal to egalitarianism, Chavez goes on to describe a vision very different from the usual left-socialist workers paradise, what he calls "a new continental alliance of defense and security and independence." This is what really puts a scare into the US State Department, whose bankrupt South American policy is coming back to haunt them: "We know many currents within the defense forces of the continent, who, while not necessarily revolutionary, are at least nationalist. There is one question which unites military professionals from Mexico to Argentina, as reactionary as they may be. Every military graduate who loves their profession opposes the further reduction, let alone elimination of their national army. The United States would like to see all of our armies reduced to instruments solely to combat drug trafficking or, as has happened in Panama, converted into a mere police force." HE'S NO COMMIEThis is no Commie: that is a patriot talking. Not only a patriot, but a military man who bitterly resented the prospective decline of his nation's army into a narcotics squad for their imperial overlords in Washington. When he assumed power, Chavez defied the US and refused to allow the US government to conduct their phony "war on drugs" on Venezuelan territory, and more: Chavez has militarized the border with Colombia precisely because of his neighbor's inability to control drug trafficking and guerrilla incursions into Venezuela. THE PERILS OF SELF-HELPWhen floods led to widespread devastation in his country, Chavez demurred when offered 1,000 American troops to "help out." One would have thought that this development – a refusal of foreign aid – would have been welcomed in budget-conscious Washington, where Republicans are always complaining about the burden of bailing out Third World countries. But instead Chavez was derided in Washington as arrogant and self-defeating: how dare those Venezuelans refuse our largess! In today's Spotlight, Scott B. MacDonald of the Center for Strategic and International Studies sneers: "We see evidence of the great U.S. conspiracy behind almost every event. Even the US offer to provide help during the 1999 mudslides and flooding is taken as something to which the great revolutionary helmsman must respond." Yet this gesture played well at home, where a people newly awakened to the meaning of national sovereignty were proud of the fact that they could make it on their own. A SOLDIER'S SOLDIERA specter is haunting South and Central America, and it isn't Communism – it's Bolivarianism. Let the Americans and their satraps listen, and tremble: "It will be a challenge to create this continental military alliance and to start interchanges of technology and experiences at different levels of the military hierarchy. In Panama, for example, we know young army personnel, especially those who are now police officers, who are inspired by General Omar Torrijos. [Torrijos negotiated the treaty which binds the United States to return the Panama Canal.] They still consider themselves soldiers and are willing to fight for the reinstallation of Panama's own defense force. Recently, some retired colonels met with us and questioned the purpose of the anti-guerrilla war, which they had fought some 30 years ago in Venezuela. 'Who had been right?", they asked, "those who fought for the so-called democratic governments or the guerrillas who went to the mountains and raised the banner of communism?'" IN THE SHADOW OF THE LIBERATORThe Bolivarian answer: neither. Both were caught in the cold war trap of looking for models abroad, either in the US or the Soviet bloc. Chavez is not nationalizing industry: he is privatizing, albeit without handing the country over to a board of directors located in New York or somewhere in Europe. Not a single member of the opposition has been jailed or harassed, and hanging chads do not seem to be a part of the Venezuelan electoral process, which has been deemed perfectly transparent and fair by international observers. The recent elections to the National Assembly returned followers of Chavez by a resounding 90 percent-plus. Chavez isn't dreaming about the dictatorship of the proletariat, in spite of the ultra-left sympathies of some of his followers: instead, he dreams of "a confederation of Latin American states for the new century," one "joining the Caribbean basin though railways and linking them with the great rivers such as the Orinoco, the Amazon and the Plata," which he calls "the arteries of our continent." Like Bolivar, he dreams of a sovereign, independent, and prosperous South America: to the US State Department, this is a crime. To the people of Venezuela, and beyond, it is an ambition that may be worth fighting for. NOBODY MENTIONS GEORGE WASHINGTONChavez says that Castro told him, "There you call the struggle Bolvarianism, here we call it socialism." Chavez also reports Castro saying "something, which I never thought that I would hear from his lips, 'If you called your movement Christianity I would even be in agreement.'" Note that Castro is agreeing with Chavez, and not the other way around: this is the whole point, of course. Communism, which never really took root in South America, in spite of Che Guevara's best efforts, is dead in any event. But Bolivarianism? Venezuela has shown that it is very much alive, and the vitality of this new movement is summed up by what Chavez has to say to the decadent elites of North America and Europe: "Our movement is gaining strength and very soon the world will know about the Venezuelan people. In Washington nobody mentions George Washington, in France no one talks of Napoleon, but in Venezuela the image of Bolívar is painted on the walls and his image is worn on the T-shirts on the chests of young people." MAKING ENEMIESNationalism – the great enemy of the cosmopolitan elite that stands, or thinks it stands, at the "end of history" – is on the march in every region of the world. The blowback from the policy of US hegemonism, with it's triumphalist proclamation of a "New World Order," is gathering momentum, from South America to East Asia, from the Middle East to the Balkans. In addition to Russia, China, and a growing pan-Slavic sentiment in Eastern Europe, opposition to US hegemonism is rising in the most unlikely places and coalescing in the most unexpected forms: the Arab resistance to American dominance is now linking up with the Bolivarians in South America via OPEC, which is these days headed up by a Venezuelan. Clinton was reportedly on the phone to Chavez recently, begging for a break on oil prices – to no avail. DOUBLE STANDARDIt is yet another negative aspect of the Clinton foreign policy legacy that we have so alienated Chavez with "Plan Colombia" that Venezuela, once the major weak link in the OPEC cartel, is now the strongest advocate of keeping prices high. Before Venezuela's 1998 presidential election, the US State Department denied Chavez a visa to visit the United States on the grounds – according to Albright – that he had once been the leader of a coup, and therefore a criminal unworthy of entry. What Albright neglected to mention, as Steve Ellner points out, was that Chavez's chief rival, Francisco Arias Cárdenas, the number two man in the coup and now estranged from Chavez, was granted a visa: " In one respect," writes Ellner, "US flexibility paid off as the more tractable Arias broke with Chávez and was his main rival in special elections held on July 30. During the campaign, Arias criticized Chávez's defiant attitude toward the US and his kind words for Cuba. The rejection of Chávez's visa request boomeranged. Just after the request was denied, Chávez's popularity soared." THE UNFORGIVENWhen our own secretary of state preaches to American blacks that they must pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and praises the military as a character-building institution, this is hailed by everyone as the wisdom of the ages: but when a South American chief executive says the same thing, in the same tone – gee, they even look alike! – somehow this doesn't go over very well. The New York Times liberals discover that he is an incipient "fascist" and probably an anti-Semite; the conservatives uncover his Communist credentials. The reason for the confusion, and the angry denunciations, is because Chavez puts Venezuela first – not the "global community," or the transnational corporations, or the "New World Order," but the people and welfare of his own people. And that is a sin our ruling elite can neither understand nor forgive. Please Support Antiwar.comA contribution of $50 or more will get you a copy of Ronald Radosh's out-of-print classic study of the Old Right conservatives, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism. Send contributions to Antiwar.com or
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