People's Democracy

FEW coup attempts fail. This one succeeded for several hours, only to be reversed. On April 12, sections of the Venezuelan business community, some generals in the armed forces and a major trade union rushed the President's seat (Miraflores), arrested Hugo Chavez and installed Pedro Carmona Estanga to the presidency. South and Central American countries unanimously condemned the abrogation of democracy and demanded that no one recognize the new government. From Washington, DC, the tone was different. The US government welcomed the new administration and hoped that it would reverse the populist nationalism of Chavez. In many ways, the US government's action belied its constant refrain about the necessity for electoral democracy.

Admittedly Chavez attempted a coup in February 1992, but when he eventually came to power in February 1999 it was after a landslide election in November 1998 (almost sixty per cent of the vote in a fractured electorate went for him and for his allies, such as the Communist Party and other leftist groups). "A left-wing revolutionary might seem to be an anachronistic concept at the beginning of the twenty-first century," wrote journalist Richard Gott in the best full length study of Chavez, "yet Chavez is just that, a Cromwellian-style soldier who aims to reconstruct his country on new lines" ("In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela," London, 2000). Not only is Chavez a proponent of extensive land reform, but he has also attempted to chart a new politics of oil on the international scene. Venezuela is one of the leading exporters of oil to the US and Chavez' rebuff to US attempts to control the price of oil raised the ire of the petro-cabinet headed by George Bush.

When the coup was reversed, it became clear that its architects, such as Carmona, had met extensively with US officials in the months before April to sketch out a plan as well as to ensure US support once they took power. In many ways, Venezuela in 2002 would have been Chile in 1973. The main pretext for the coup was that Chavez' troops and supporters opened fire at a large demonstration along Avenida Bolivar in the centre of Caracus on April 11. Seventeen people died and a hundred more had been wounded in the incident. Investigation into film footage of the gunmen on Carmelitas Bridge indicated that the gunmen did not wear uniforms and that they did not carry sniper guns. The snipers worked from places such as Hotel Eden, and according to one investigator, "There were people who knew how to shoot long arms. It is not easy to fire from 50 to 100 meters and hit someone in the head." In other words, the pro-Chavez irregulars were not the only ones with guns; someone more professional had participated in the carnage. Who they might be is left to speculation, but if we can take a page out of Chile, 1973, they may have been well-trained instigators put in place to create a pretext for the coup.

The main surprise of the entire attempted coup was the extensive support given to the business community, led by Carmona, by the Venezuelan Labour Federation (CTV) which represents ninety per cent of the organised workforce. The coup appeared to have popular support because CTV mobilised its activists onto the streets on April 11. But, if Chavez is indeed a popular president among the working-class and peasantry, why did the CTV oppose him? Part of Chavez' programme is to restructure the Venezuelan state oil company, the Petroleos de Venezuela (Pvsa), and one part of that has been to challenge the conservative parties' control over the workers' union. In its drive to replace the management of the Pvsa and to dislodge the leadership of the union, pro-Chavez workers formed the Bolivarian Workers' Force (FBT), and they succeeded in the passage of a December 2000 referendum for direct election of union leaders.

But all this is insufficient for a coup. The missing part of the story in the days after the coup was the encouragement the CTV leaders received from the American Federation of Labour-Coalition of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) and the US government funded National Endowment of Democracy (NED). These two US agencies attempted to pull off a Guyana style coup. In the early 1960s, the AFL-CIO funneled money into its affiliate, the American Institute of Free Labour Development (AIFLD) to overthrow President Cheddi Jagan who had become very close to Castro. In 1966, the AFL-CIO (and its international allies, the Inter-American Regional Labour Organisation and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions) initiated an eighty-day general strike that put an end to Jagan's rule.

The AFL's field officer, Serafino Romualdi said in humble retrospection, "I simply put at the disposal of the strike committee the services of six graduates of [AIFLD] who were working as interns with various local unions. They performed so well that one of them, David Persaud, later was elected President of the British Guyana Trade Union Congress." Money and assistance via the labor movement engineered the coup in Guyana, 1966, and the AFL and NED attempted a sequel against Castro's new ally, Hugo Chavez.

In 1983, the US Congress passed a law that authorised funds for Project Democracy, for "aid, training and organisational support for foreign governments and private groups to encourage the growth of democratic political institutions and practices." In other words, the US government would intervene via "private groups" to create "political institutions" that suit its interests. The central agency for Project Democracy was the private foundation (but funded by the government), the NED. (The NED has set up its office in India in 2000. It is engaged in activities to promote "democracy", with the full patronage of the Vajpayee government- Ed)

In January 2002, the NED privately circulated its "Draft Strategy Document" which offered a definition of "semi-authoritarian countries," like Venezuela, where US intervention may be justified. In these countries, "elections are not free and fair," there are human rights violations, there are "residual authoritarian laws even where there is a new democratic constitution," and finally, where there is a "high level of corruption and inequality." Of course a perverse mind might say that the US qualifies by this vague list as a semi-authoritarian country, but that is a separate issue. "As many transitions stalled, hopes for an inexorable forward movement toward democracy gave way to the realisation that democratisation is a slow and arduous process, subject to reversals, and that some variation of semi-authoritarianism, more or less harsh, is likely to persist in many former dictatorships for some time to come." Given this, the NED must "work simultaneously in different areas, strengthening not just civil society and independent media, but also political parties that can build effective governing coalitions, and business associations, trade unions, and policy institutes that can mediate between the state and the market and effect real economic reform."

The coalition of Carmona and the CTV followed this theory. Then, the NED must "Develop practical strategies with feasible objectives, focusing on building up subcultures of democratic activism that try to achieve incremental gains, but that can also provide leadership if and when opportunities arise for more substantial breakthroughs."

Since late 2000, when Chavez went on his oil offensive, NED quadrupled its funds to its Venezuelan allies -- 155,377 dollars from the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (the international arm of the AFL-CIO), 210,500 dollars from the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (the international arm of the Democratic Party), 339,998 dollars from the International Republican Institute (the international arm of the Republican Party), and 171,125 dollars from the Centre for International Private Enterprise. These four legs of the NED provided almost a million dollars for the coup attempt, for the "substantial breakthrough."

The New York Times reported, "The Bush administration, which has made no secret of its disdain for Mr Chavez - and his warm relations with nations like Cuba and Iraq - has turned to the Endowment to help the opposition to Mr Chavez." The NED's programme officer for Latin America, Chris Sabatini, agreed that the NED had increased its activities in Venezuela during the year prior to the coup. Indeed, on February 12, 2002, for instance, the NED and the AFL-CIO hosted a closed forum with the CTV to discuss the possibility of a coup in Venezuela. This forum came only days after CIA director Tenet told the US Congress that Venezuela is an area of concern for the US and that "measures" must be taken there.

In a statement released on April 26, the AFL-CIO argued that it did not support the coup, that it backed the CTV leadership against Chavez' attack on the freedom of association and that, "all of the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Centre's funding for Venezuela went for this purpose." Nevertheless, the AFL-CIO forms one of the four legs of the US government's overt-covert operations in places like Venezuela. Even as the government denies its role, even as Carmona and others refuse to be painted as US puppets, the evidence suggests that they acted with US orders. If the military wanted a reenactment of Chile, 1973 and the AFL-CIO attempted Guyana, 1966, Carmona and his allies found themselves playing the part of the Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs, 1961. They secured the bridgehead, hoped that the people would follow them, prayed for US air power, but got nothing because the Chavez' populism drew his supporters onto the streets to reinstate him to power.

In a wonderful letter from Caracus, Gregory Wilpert offers a reflection of the coup that is worth an extensive quotation:

"While Chavez' many progressive achievements should not be forgotten, neither should his failures be overlooked, most of which have important lessons for progressives everywhere.

The first lesson is to keep the eyes on the prize. Chavez has become so bogged-down with small day-to-day conflicts that many people are no longer sure if he remembers his original platform, which was to abolish corruption and to make Venezuelan society more egalitarian. While greater social equality is extremely difficult to achieve in a capitalist society, it is fair to say that Chavez' plans have not had enough time to bear fruit. He has a six-year social and economic development plan for 2001-2007, of which only a small fraction has so far been implemented. However, on the corruption front, he has fallen seriously behind.

The second lesson is that the neglect of one's social base, which provides the cultural underpinnings for desired changes, will provide an opening for opponents to redefine the situation and to make policy implementation nearly impossible. By not involving his natural base, the progressive and grassroots civil society, Chavez allowed the conservative civil society, the conservative unions, the business sector, the church, and the media to determine the discourse as to what the 'Bolivarian revolution' was really all about.

The third lesson is that a good programme alone is not good enough if one does not have the skillful means for implementing it. Chavez has some terrific plans, but through his incendiary rhetoric he manages to draw all attention away from his actual proposals and focuses attention on how he presents them or how he cuts his critics down to size.

Finally, while it is tempting to streamline policy-implementation by working only with individuals who will not criticize the programme, creates a dangerous ideological monoculture, which will not be able to resist the diverse challenges even the best plans eventually have to face. Chavez has consistently dismissed from his inner circle those who criticised him, making his leadership base, which used to be quite broad, smaller and smaller. Such a narrow leadership base made it much easier for the opposition to challenge Chavez and to mount the coup."

The old guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo told Richard Gott much the same thing in 1999. "Chavez did not want civilians to participate as a concrete force. He wanted civil society to applaud but not to participate." Given a lease of life despite the strong US antipathy to his reign, Chavez' survival consists on his ability to move from a top-down populist to a bottom-up socialist. Or else, Venezuela may yet become Chile or Guyana.