Consortiumnews
Independent Investigative Journalism Since 1995
Demonizing Venezuelas Revolution
October 24, 2017
Venezuelas socialist experiment, which seeks to reduce the countrys
extreme income equality and alleviate widespread poverty, has upset U.S.
policymakers who now have new hopes for regime change, as Dennis J Bernstein
explains.
By Dennis J Bernstein
The U.S. government, backed by the U.S. mainstream media, has long desired
to destroy Venezuelas experiment with socialism, now including President
Trumps threats of war and one-sided reporting hostile to the countrys
recent elections.
Venezuelan flag (Wikipedia)
In August, Trump suggested military intervention, declaring: This is our
neighbor, were all over the world and we have troops all over the world in
places that are very, very far away. Venezuela is not very far away and the
people are suffering and theyre dying.
Meanwhile, the coverage of Venezuela in the U.S. corporate media marches in
lockstep with the P.R. pronouncements of the U.S. State Department, ignoring
any mitigating factors regarding Venezuelas economic troubles and
dismissing the support that many Venezuelans still show for the revolution
begun by the late President Hugo Chavez.
Law Professor Daniel Kovalik noted this U.S. media bias while serving as an
in-country observer to the recent Venezuelan elections.
The claims of fraud are groundless, and largely petty, asserts Kovalik. I
know this because I was one of nearly 70 election observers from all over
the world in Venezuela for the October 15 elections, and our group reached
very different conclusions about these elections than those being widely
peddled
We witnessed numerous polling stations throughout Venezuela in
which long lines of voters were able to cast their ballot freely, without
coercion and in an atmosphere of calm.
Kovalik is the author most recently of The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the
CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin. He is at work on a
book about Venezuela and he teaches International Human Rights Law at the
University of Pittsburgh School of Law.
Dennis Bernstein: You just got back from Venezuela. Why were you there?
Daniel Kovalik: I was invited as an election observer for the regional
elections that took place on October 15.
Dennis Bernstein: Jimmy Carter has said that these elections in Venezuela
were some of the fairest in the world.
Daniel Kovalik: Yes, he said they have the best election process in the
world. I agree with him. They have an incredible uniform process throughout
the country. As you know, the US does not. Every state chooses its own way
to vote. In Venezuela, they have the same machines throughout the country.
They are pretty much foolproof. You have to use a fingerprint to even
activate the machine. You get a paper receipt, which you put into a box
after you have cast an electronic vote. And if people are unhappy afterward,
they can ask for an audit.
Dennis Bernstein: How does that compare to the situation in other countries?
Daniel Kovalik: I would say it is better than in the United States. We know
from people like Greg Palast that something like a million people might have
been wrongfully thrown off the voter rolls through a process called cross
check. You see gerrymandering, which even the courts have found to be
racist. Venezuela is not affected by that sort of thing.
One thing the Bolivarian Revolution has done under Chavez was to create this
very tight, open democratic process. The people are very proud of their
system. It pains me to read the mainstream press, which is very critical of
Venezuela.
The late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Dennis Bernstein: Trump has even talked about going to war against
Venezuela. The US State Department has drawn up plans to attack the country.
What do you think are the real reasons behind such talk?
Daniel Kovalik: This is old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy, which the United
States has been using against many countries but particularly against Latin
America. With the election of Hugo Chavez in 1999, Venezuela decided that it
wanted to take a different path than other countries in the region. They
wanted to have a socialist economy, they wanted to use their oil revenue for
social services. Today 70% of their oil revenues are spent on social
services. That is anathema to the United States. You cannot decide to take
yourself out of the so-called free market system and not expect retaliation
from the United States.
Lets remember that the US supported a coup in 2002 against Chavez. They are
open about the fact that they want regime change. And they want it not
because they care about the people there but because they want to have
Venezuela open for business. They want more control over Venezuelas
oilfields. Venezuela has the largest oil reserves on earth. This is not
about democracy. The US couldnt care less about democracy. You see this in
Honduras, where we supported the coup [in 2009]. You see this in Colombia,
where we look away from countless human rights abuses.
Dennis Bernstein: You have compared and contrasted Venezuela and Puerto
Rico. Could you talk about that?
Daniel Kovalik: Puerto Ricans are citizens of the United States and what
have we done for them? Eighty percent of the country still does not have
electricity. It is a very dangerous situation. Meanwhile you have Trump
saying we cant be helping them forever! FEMA is still helping out in New
York with the effects of Hurricane Sandy! This was like five years ago. FEMA
people are still in New Orleans helping to clean up after Katrina. And now
Trump is saying we may be done in Puerto Rico when we have barely even
begun! And recall that, with the Jones Act, Puerto Rico cannot freely get
assistance from other countries.
Dennis Bernstein: If Im not mistaken, Venezuela stepped forward to offer
assistance after Katrina hit and the victims were being ignored by the
federal government.
Daniel Kovalik: And so did Cuba. Venezuela and Cuba do more for the world
than any other countries. They have been the first responders to the cholera
crisis in Haiti. With the help of Venezuela, Cuba has sent medical teams to
70 countries throughout the world. Even during their own difficult times
they offer help to others.
Dennis Bernstein: Why would the United States be so fearful of the
Bolivarian Revolution?
Daniel Kovalik: Noam Chomsky has said that Chavez helped liberate Latin
America from foreign control for the first time in 500 years. That is the
impact of the Bolivarian Revolution. For the first time, Latin America is
throwing off the chains of empire that the United States and Spain before
have had around that region.
[The United States] overthrew the democratic government in Guatemala in 1954
because United Fruit was afraid of land reform. We overthrew Allende in 1973
in Chile because ITT was worried about its business interests there. Time
and again we overthrow democratic governments and install fascist
dictatorships, and yet we are able to say with a straight face that we care
about democracy? What we care about is making countries like Venezuela open
for maximum exploitation by US companies and making their resources
available to us at will. We have now just sanctioned Nicaragua because they
are trying to build a canal through the country with the help of China. So
none of this hand wringing is about concerns for democracy.
Dennis Bernstein: What are people in Venezuela saying about the struggle?
There are significant shortages of important goods, medical goods.
Daniel Kovalik: People are honest and open about that. But they want to
solve their own problems. One man approached me at a polling place and asked
me to tell people back in the United States that this is what democracy
looks like. He said, Tell Donald Trump to leave us alone. A number of
people expressed similar sentiments. These are voices you never hear in the
mainstream press, you always hear the opposition.
Is there an opposition? Yes. Are there people who dont like the government?
Yes. Yet [61] percent of the electorate voted on Sunday and Maduros party
won 18 out of 23 governorships. People ask, How can that be, with all these
challenges, with all these economic woes? Well, it is not too surprising
that people take umbrage when the United States threatens to invade their
country.
Venezuelans are smart and they realize that the opposition forces are
aligned with the US in this. They associate the opposition with foreign
intervention. They associate them with a lot of the violence that has taken
place in Venezuela. That is another thing that is not discussed: how the
opposition has carried out brutal violence, particularly against people of
color. If you go to a pro-Maduro rally, what you are struck by is that the
people at that rally are poor and mostly black. This is the revolution in
Venezuela. The well-to-do and the United States resent that, that these
people are liberated for the first time in history.
You would think that progressive-minded people in the United States would be
excited and want to support that process. Yet the propaganda is so thick in
this country that people dont even realize which side is which. I can
guarantee you, the US is not on the right side. They are now setting up a
parallel government to the one in Caracas.
Dennis Bernstein: I remember when the United States under Reagan was trying
to destabilize and get rid of the Sandinistas. When they couldnt get Costa
Rica to go along, they essentially set up a shadow government in Costa Rica
to try to overthrow the government there.
Daniel Kovalik: And we invaded Panama in 1989. It is still not known how
many people died in the bombing. We claimed to be going after Noriega for
drug running but the real reason was that Noriega had refused to let the
country be used as a staging ground for the Contras. That was his sin, and
his people paid dearly for that.
This is a history that people forget, but this history is relevant because
we see it being played out right now with Venezuela. It is quite
heartbreaking. A lot of the left in America has abandoned Venezuela. I was
the only observer from either the US or Canada last Sunday. People have
bought into the prevailing narrative on Venezuela. They are struggling, they
are having problems, but every time things begin to look better, such as
after the July constituent assembly election, that is when the US ups the
sanctions. Because they dont want stability in Venezuela. They want enough
chaos to unseat President Maduro.
I think that the fact that people came out to vote like they did on Sunday
and that they voted largely for the Chavista Party shows to the United
States that they are not backing down. That they will not be bullied. I
think they should be applauded for that.
Dennis Bernstein: How should the United States be relating to the people of
Venezuela?
Daniel Kovalik: We should normalize relations with them, we should exchange
ambassadors, we should stop the sanctions. We should certainly stop
threatening military force. We need to let them make their own mistakes,
find their own solutions, and run their own lives. That is what democracy
is.
Dennis Bernstein: Where do you see this going?
A painting of Simon Bolivar by José Gil de Castro ca. 1823.
Daniel Kovalik: Unless there are alternative voices speaking, it could be
going in a very bad direction. Given the nature of the opposition and given
how long the Bolivarian Revolution has been in power, if the right wing
comes to powerand that could happen given the lack of resistance in this
country to US foreign policyyou will see a bloodbath. You will see another
Pinochet-type regime. You will see people being killed in the streets.
Remember that when Pinochet came to power in Chile, killing about 3,000
people and torturing about 30,000 others, the Allende government had only
been in power three years. The Bolivarian Revolution has been in power now
for eighteen years. To undo that will take a lot of bloodshed. I have
listened to NPR programs where commentators have been very clear that they
would welcome such bloodshed!
Dennis Bernstein: Remind us, before we conclude, of who Simon Bolivar was.
Daniel Kovalik: He was the great liberator. He liberated the Andean region
of South America from Spain. He had a dream of uniting Latin America into a
single nation that could compete with countries like the United States. That
was Chavezs dream too. When Chavez was elected in 1999, he took on the
mantle of Bolivar. And again, according to Noam Chomsky, he succeeded in
helping to liberate Latin America from US control. Unfortunately, we are
seeing attempts to impose that control again.
Dennis J Bernstein is a host of Flashpoints on the Pacifica radio network
and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access
the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.
