Stuart Munckton
In her February 16 budget speech to the US Senate, during which she singled out the government of Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez for attack, US Secretary of State and renowned neo-conservative Condoleezza Rice came out as a self-proclaimed supporter of workers' rights. According to a February 17 Venezuelanalysis.com article, Rice expressed her support for an alleged strike of transport workers in Venezuela, claiming it was a situation "where, I think, international labour could play a role in exposing the pressures on free trade union movements ... the way that international labor did with Solidarity in Poland".
Rice's comments revived memories of the early 1970s when the CIA helped organise and fund a strike of truck drivers as part of the campaign to destabilise the left-wing government of Salvador Allende in Chile. The strike played an important role in the events that led to Allende's overthrow in a bloody coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. The US is similarly determined to stop the revolutionary process led by Chavez in Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest supplier of oil, which is threatening the interests of US corporations by redistributing wealth to and organising Venezuela's poor majority.
However, the biggest problem for Rice's sudden "conversion" to the cause of international working-class struggle is that the strike, according to both Venezuelan government officials and the workers allegedly involved in the dispute, is entirely fictional.
The Venezuelan National Union of Workers released a statement posted on Venezuelanalysis.com on February 17 that rejected US aggression against Venezuela and said the supposed strike exists "only in the imagination and bad intentions of Bush's attacking government". The statement called on worker organisations in Latin America and workers inside the US to reject Rice's attempts to manipulate them and to prepare for international solidarity with Venezuela in case of a US attack.
The Venezuelan Transport Workers Federation issued a statement that expressed unconditional support for the Chavez government, according to a February 23 Prensa Latina article. The article reported that transport workers staged a demonstration outside the US embassy in Caracas in rejection of Rice's comments. The president of Bolivarian Cab Drivers, which covers the sector allegedly on strike, said: "We expect [the US ambassador] to make a statement on the matter, as he lives in Venezuela and is aware that there has been no strike here."
Prensa Latina reported that Venezuela's foreign ministry "expressed concern at Rice's words, as they reflect plans to foment social instability before the presidential elections scheduled for December".
The US government has continued its verbal attacks on Venezuela. US national intelligence director John Negroponte told a US Senate armed forces committee on February 28 that the Chavez government "seeks closer economic, military and diplomatic ties with Iran and North Korea ... I would say that it's clear that [Chavez] is spending hundreds of millions, if not more, for his very extravagant foreign policy" at the expense of the Venezuelan poor, according to a March 2 article posted on the website of the Caracas-based Daily Journal. Negroponte also claimed that if Chavez wins the presidential election in December, the opposition will be repressed.
Vheadline.com reported on March 2 that Venezuelan vice-president Jose Vincent Rangel claimed Negroponte's comments were a worrying sign that the Pentagon is taking over from the US State Department in directing US policy towards Venezuela. Rangel called the comments a "victory for the hawks and a hardening of bellicose positions".
Despite calls from Rice in her budget speech for a "united front" of nations against Venezuela, "the US is more isolated [in the region] than ever before in inter-American history", according to an opinion piece posted on the website of the Washington-based think-tank Council on Hemispheric Affairs on March 1.
Nelson Davila, the charge d'affaires at the Venezuelan embassy in Canberra, told Green Left Weekly that the US aggression "reflects an increasing desperation". Davila explained that "so far, apart from the deliberate and violent interventions of the US-backed internal opposition, the Bolivarian revolution has been a democratic and peaceful revolution".
"Venezuelans have been to the ballot boxes many times", Davila said. "And each time the opposition tries to strike a blow, it stumbles. President Chavez gains in popularity and the revolutionary process is strengthened, to the great frustration of the opposition forces."
Davila said that "the main tool of the old ruling parties — the oligarchy — is their domination of the private, mainstream media. But while their lies and propaganda may have some influence internationally in providing material for the international media campaign that the United States wages against Venezuela, inside Venezuela they have much less power than ever, as the alternative media has developed extensively with the revolution."
Davila pointed out that US taxpayers' money was being used to fund the opposition. The US Congress recently allocated US$9 million to opposition projects. "They have also launched a campaign of psychological operations against us headed by the Pentagon's special operations command in Tampa, Florida", he said.
Davila commented on an October US Army document "Doctrine of Asymmetric War Against Venezuela", which referred to the Bolivarian revolution as the "largest threat since the Soviet Union and communism". Davila claimed that this was evidence that the US has a "sinister back-up plan for direct intervention if needed", although this is not their preferred option because, while the revolution is peaceful, "it is not unarmed, and we will defend our sovereignty". Davila pointed out that resistance to a US military attack would be "won by popular support of the people, not by conventional military means, as such struggles from Vietnam to Iraq demonstrate".
"We will not turn back the clock in Venezuela", Davila insisted. "The revolution is not just for us, or just for Latin America — it is about the future of humanity and the planet. The current global system is unsustainable, based on permanent war and leading humanity to oblivion. The Bolivarian model shows what can be achieved with political will and mass participation. That is why it is such a threat to the empire."
From Green Left Weekly, March 8, 2006.
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