The Chavez Code: Deciphering the intervention of the United States in Venezuela
By Eva Golinger
Editorial de Ciencias Sociales
330 pages
Copies can be obtained via the author at <evagolinger@hotmail.com>
The Chavez Code by Eva Golinger cracks the code of intervention by the United States in Venezuela, Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Rogelio Polanco said in Juventud Rebelde's March 13 edition.
The book starts with an almost detective-like description about how Golinger, with the help of investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood, found certain documents in the attics of the US State Department, the US Defense Department, and other little kitchens where US foreign policy is cooked up. Later, the book becomes a meticulous essay about the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
A little later, it shifts once again, to an intrepid melodrama, intermixing looting, hold-ups, political blackmail, mercenaries and violence. When you get to the last page, the reader might well ask if what she or he has read hasn't been, after all, a novel of impossible adventures; a game of imagination unattached to real life. However, not a single line is fiction.
A good part of this book is comprised of documents obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act. Plenty of time and doggedness was required of Golinger to obtain this material for readers, and she faced enormous risks, including death threats.
Still, the reader shouldn't lose sight that this seminal testimony documents not only what perseverance is required of investigators, but the capricious behaviour of those who control the secret US archives, who declassify what they feel like and hide whatever is most compromising. Golinger predicts that many years will pass before the opening of these other archives.
And much more terrifying things certainly remain censored. Maybe we will never know the most secret evidence from the plans against Venezuela — we had to wait more than 30 years for the mea culpa of Robert McNamara, to know the evil plans to provoke an invasion of Cuba by the US, contained in the plan named Operation Mongoose.
When will we know what really happened in Dallas, the day former US President John F. Kennedy was killed? When will we learn what is being hatched at this very moment against Cuba, Venezuela and the world? Elizalde and Polanco ask these questions in the Cuban youth newspaper.
Thanks to this sample that Golinger was able to dig up from the US government, it's possible to prove what the US denied repeatedly: it was involved in bringing to fruition the coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in April 2002. This included plans to generate violence during demonstrations, the arrest of the leader, and the active participation in the coup by the US.
For whoever reads it, The Chavez Code is an instructive book. Golinger's testimony brings forth a series of documents that illuminate the truth behind them, truth that has shocked Venezuelan public opinion over the last three years.
Details appear in this book about how the US executed its Plan A for intervention and subversion in Latin America.
That it failed this time doesn't necessarily mean the aggressor intends to admit defeat. A little after Golinger put her final touches on this book, evidence began to appear on the public scene that the government of US President George Bush is already applying Plan B: a barrage of dirty propaganda and actions in international organisations to isolate the Venezuelan government, without ruling out the assassination or kidnapping of the chief of state, the foreword to a military intervention.
The denunciations against Venezuela have begun: in the first weeks of 2005, more than 50 press articles appeared in US newspapers and television programs, where more than 85% of the "experts" consulted were affiliated with opposition institutions and publications. So much for proverbial objectivity of the press.
The most slanderous allegations come from "unnamed sources" in the Bush administration, adding fuel to the fire of the latest definition, begun this year by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: "Hugo Chavez is a negative force in the region."
From this cry for war, the US has let loose the dogs of prey from the CIA and the media at its service, including the press and institutions like the Organization of American States, with which they heat up the scene. Scattered signs, but very perceptible ones, begin to appear of the new crusade.
As a result, it's likely that within one year, maybe sooner, we will see a new book from Golinger or from other audacious investigators, where they weave this new chapter in the saga of this sinister soap opera that we Cubans have suffered for more than 40 years and that has recently begun for the Venezuelans.
The Chavez Code alludes to an experience that intimately concerns every society in the world. An experience that brings us to the simple question: can any government in this world elude the "liberating" desires of the CIA and the NED, if it takes a road different to that selected by Emperor Bush for everyone on the planet?
[Abridged from Prensa Latina. Visit <http://www.plenglish.com>.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 27, 2005.
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