Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution in the Crosshairs of US Imperialism

by ROGER HARRIs

Photograph Source: Cancillería del Ecuador – CC BY-SA 2.0

With the likes of John Bolton and Elliot Abrams directing US foreign policy, the US government has abandoned all pretense of “plausible denial” for its illegal regime-change initiatives. The “humanitarian” bombs may not be falling but, make no mistake, the US is waging a full-bore war against the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

Back in 1998, Venezuela had had nearly a half a century of two-party rule. A duopoly, not unlike the Republican and Democratic parties in the US, alternated in power imposing a neoliberal order. Poor and working people experienced deteriorating conditions of austerity regardless of which party was in power.

Then third-party candidate Hugo Chávez was elected president. HeH He initiated what has become known as the Bolivarian Revolution, which has inspired the peoples of the world while engendering the enmity of both the US imperialists and the Venezuelan elites.

This article explores the contributions, shortcomings, and lessons of the Bolivarian Revolution’s two decades, in the context of the US regime-change efforts from its inception to current attempts by the US to install the unelected Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s president.

Forging a new national identity based on a people’s history.

History, it is said, is written by the victors. The historical narrative typically reflects the class that enslaved the Africans, dispossessed the Indigenous, and exploited the workers. There are exceptions. In the US, we have the legacy of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.

In Venezuela, Chávez revised his country’s history and thereby wrought a sea change of national consciousness. Prior to Chávez, Venezuela was arguably the most sycophantically pro-US country in South America. Miami was looked to for cultural affirmation; baseball was the national pastime.

Chávez took special inspiration from the leader of the South American struggle against Spanish colonialism and named his project after Simón Bolívar, known as the “Liberator.” Bolívar was not merely a national leader, but a true internationalist. The Bolivarian project is about the integration of nations based on mutual respect and sovereignty. Bolívar presciently declared in 1829: “The United States appears to be destined by Providence to plague Latin America with misery in the name of liberty.”

This new Venezuelan national identity and consciousness, based on their history told from the bottom up, may prove to be the most lasting legacy of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Inclusive society.

Fundamental to the Bolivarian project has been the inclusion of the formerly dispossessed: especially women, people of color, and youth.

As professor of Latin American history at NYU Greg Grandin observed, this inclusiveness has awakened “a deep fear of the primal hatred, racism, and fury of the opposition, which for now is directed at the agents of Maduro’s state but really springs from Chávez’s expansion of the public sphere to include Venezuela’s poor.”

For example, when an opposition demonstration came upon an Afro-descendent street peddler, he was presumed to be a chavista because he was dark-skinned and poor. The opposition demonstrators poured gasoline over him and set him on fire. Then the horrific image was posted on social media.

A less gruesome example occurred at the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, DC. North American activists in solidarity with the Bolivarian government protected the embassy in accordance with international law from being usurped by representatives of US-backed Juan Guaidó for 36 days. Before the protectors were evicted by the US Secret Service on May 16, counter-protesting opposition expatriate Venezuelans would wave bananas at African American solidarity activists, chanting “go back to the zoo.” Such is the racist loathing that fuels the Venezuelan opposition.

Special option for poor and working people.

Why should a state of all the people have a special option for those who are poor and working? Because these are the people who most need the social welfare services of the state. Billionaires don’t need government schools, hospitals, and housing, but the masses of Venezuelan people do.

The Bolivarian project had halved poverty and cut extreme poverty by two-thirds, while providing free health care and education. On May 27, the United Nations cited Venezuela as one of the top countries for guaranteeing the right to housing, recognizing the over 2.5 million public housing units built.

Democracy promotion.

The role of a state aspiring to be socialist is not simply to provide social welfare, but to empower the people.

The Bolivarian project has experimented in what is called “protagonistic democracy”: cooperatives, citizens councils, and communes. Some succeeded; others did not. One of the first priorities was to eradicate illiteracy. The Bolivarian state has promoted community radio stations, low-cost computers, internet cafés for senior citizens, and other venues for popular expression. Venezuela now has one of the highest rates of higher education attendance in the world. These are not the hallmarks of a dictatorship.

21^st century socialism.

More than even Bernie Sanders, the Bolivarian Revolution put socialism on the agenda for the 21^st century. For this we owe the Venezuelans a debt of gratitude, not for providing us with a playbook to be copied, but for demonstrating that the creation of a better world is principally a process.

This was not the primary transgression placing Venezuela in the crosshairs of US imperialism. Promoting socialism may be regarded as blasphemy, but the original sin is the following.

Multi-polar world and regional integration.

The greatest challenge to the Empire, to the world’s sole superpower, is a multi-polar world based on regional integration. In 1999, Chávez helped strengthen OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries). In 2004, he helped initiate ALBA (Alliance for Our Peoples of America), followed by PetroCaribe in 2005, UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) in 2008, and CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) in 2011. Venezuela has consistently demonstrated solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and other oppressed peoples.

When the small fish organize, the big fish gets nasty. Above all, this is why the world’s hegemon has targeted Venezuela.

The traumatic transition from Chávez to Maduro

Chávez, suffering from cancer, died on March 5, 2013. The reaction in Venezuela was polarized. The elites danced in the street. The majority, composed mainly of poor and working people, were traumatized.

The bully to the north, smelling blood, saw an opportunity. The US had conspired to overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution from the beginning, backing a short-lived coup in 2002 followed by a boss’s strike. With the passing of Chávez, the imperialist offensive doubled down.

A snap election was called according to the Venezuelan Constitution for April 14 to replace the deceased president. Chávez, anticipating his demise, had designated Nicolás Maduro as his successor. Although polls had shown Maduro with a 10% lead going into the election campaign, he won with a narrow 1.5% margin.

I was in Caracas as an election observer when Maduro won. My observation of the election was like that of former US President Jimmy Carter, who had declared a year before that of the 92 elections the Carter Center had observed, “The election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”

Within minutes of the announcement of Maduro’s victory, the main opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles, came on TV to denounce the election as fraudulent and call on the people to “show their rage.” Thus began the opposition’s violent offensive, the guarimbas, to achieve by violence what they could not achieve in democratic elections.

The opposition charges of fraud were investigated by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) and found groundless, based on a 100% audit of the electronic vote backed up with paper receipts. Capriles still maintained the charge of fraud, and the US became the sole nation to refuse to recognize the Maduro presidency. The opposition violence continued, taking over 40 lives.

Upon assuming the presidency, Maduro inherited existing problems of crime, inefficiency, corruption, inflation, and a dysfunctional currency exchange system. These were problems that existed during the Chávez period and even prior to that. These problems persist in varying degrees to the present, despite concerted programs to address them.

President Maduro has had his feet held to the fire by the imperialists from the get-go. Far from having a respite, shortly into his presidency, Venezuela was hit with petroleum prices plummeting from a high of nearly $125/barrel to a low of close to $25/barrel. Despite efforts to diversify the economy, Venezuela remains dependent on oil exports for most of its foreign exchange, which is used to fund the social programs.

US regime-change war intensifies

The US regime-change war continues to intensify with increasingly harsh sanctions. These unilateral measures are illegal under the charters of the United Nations and the Organization of American States, because they constitute collective punishment. Trump’s security advisor, John Bolton, elucidates: “It’s like in Star Wars, when Darth Vader grips someone. That’s what we’re doing economically with the (Venezuelan) regime.”

In 2013, the US waited until after the presidential election in Venezuela to declare it fraudulent. Taking no chances, the US declared the 2018 election fraudulent four months before it was held. Joining Trump in this rush to pre-judgement were eleven Democratic senators including Bernie Sanders.

The charges of fraud were based on three issues: setting the date of the election, disqualifying opposition parties, and barring opposition candidates. Maduro had continually called for dialogue with the opposition to set the election date. But each time a date was mutually agreed upon, the opposition backed out after their US handlers intervened. As for the disqualified parties, they had lost their ballot status because they had boycotted past elections. They then refused to reapply for ballot status, because their intention was not to participate in the electoral process.

Opposition candidates, namely Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles, were barred from running, because they had committed criminal acts that warranted their exclusion. López clearly incited violence that resulted in deaths and would have received far harsher treatment had he committed such acts in the US. Capriles was convicted of economic fraud, “administrative irregularities,” during his tenure as a state governor. While the courts found Capriles guilty, this action against a political opponent damaged the Maduro government’s international image.

Overall, the charges of fraud by the radical right opposition were mainly pretenses to delegitimize the upcoming election. However, several moderate opposition candidates did run, defying the US demand that the election be boycotted.

Henri Falcón was the leading opposition candidate to run in 2018, championing a neoliberal platform of privatization, austerity for workers, and subservience to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The US, which would ordinarily gleefully embrace such a platform, instead threatened Falcón with sanctions for breaking the election boycott.

The explanation for this seemingly anomalous behavior by the US government is that the stakes in Venezuela are much higher than just the presidency. The regime-change project is to exterminate the Bolivarian Revolution, reverse its social gains, and return Venezuela to a subservient client state where the world’s largest oil reserves would be freely exploited by US corporations.

Orwellian world of US foreign policy

As CEO of the capitalist world order (that is what is meant by exercising “American world leadership”), then US President Obama declared in 2015 that Venezuela constituted an imminent and extraordinary threat to US national security. He didn’t mean a military or even an economic threat. That would have been preposterous. What Obama was implicitly confirming is that Venezuela poses a “threat of a good example.” Venezuela is at the top of US imperialism’s hit list because of the good things, not for its faults.

President Trump has intensified Obama’s regime-change policies aimed at Venezuela. Condemning the Bolivarian Revolution, Trump opined: “Socialism is not about justice, it’s not about equality, it’s not about lifting up the poor.” Might he have been really thinking of capitalism? His national security advisor John Bolton tweeted that removing the democratically elected President Maduro by violent coup and installing the US-anointed and unelected Guaidó is protecting the Venezuelan constitution.

On the other side of the aisle, Senator Sanders accused Chávez of being a “dead communist dictator.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the US regime-change war as a contest of “authoritarian regime versus democracy,” with the questionable presumption that the US is the democracy.

In the Orwellian terminology of US politicians and corporate media, a fraudulent election is one where the people vote their choice. A dictatoris the democratically elected choice of the people. And the so-called dictator is an authoritarian if he resists rather than surrenders to the bullying power.

Surrender does not appear to be on the agenda for the Bolivarian Revolution, with US asset Guaidó forced to negotiate in Norway after his failed coup attempts. Despite the suffocating sanctions and threats of military action, the poor and working people in Venezuela who are most adversely affected by the US war against them remain the strongest supporters of their elected government.

Make Orwell fiction again!

ROGER HARRIS

Roger Harris is on the board of the Task Force on the Americas, a 32-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization.

The CIA’s View of Venezuela: What We Learn From the Archives

by T.J. COLES

Illustration by Nathaniel St. Clair

In 2017, then-U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo said: “we are very hopeful that there can be a [political] transition in Venezuela and we the CIA is doing its best to understand the dynamic there [sic], so that we can communicate to our State Department and to others.” CIA monitoring of the political situation and interference in Venezuela is, of course, nothing new. Back in April 2002, just days before the coup that temporarily ousted President Hugo Chávez, a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief anticipated the removal of Chávez by the Venezuelan military.

With the current crisis in Venezuela intensifying, thanks in no small part to the U.S. intelligence apparatus, it is worth examining the CIA’s declassified and partly-declassified Venezuela archives. The archives include memos, briefing notes, and reports from the Agency itself, as well as from the National Intelligence Estimate. The records on Venezuela date back to the founding of the CIA in the late-1940s. With the exception of more recent records obtained under Freedom of Information Act requests, many of them filed by Eva Golinger, the records dry up in the 1980s. Those released so far reveal much about the deeply entrenched attitudes of Cold War planners.

The CIA records reveal that: 1) The main U.S. interest in Venezuela from the 1940s until at least the ‘80s is not just oil but the Venezuela’s role in the region as a symbol of the success of “constitutional democracy,” i.e., U.S. power; 2) The kind of “constitutional democracy” supported by the U.S. was a façade because the records also acknowledge that the military, not the Congress, retained the real political power; 3) The CIA and the wealthy business elites of Venezuela shared the conflation of mild state-socialism with “communism”; and 4) Intelligence analysts held two, contradictory beliefs, that Venezuelans were prosperous under U.S. patronage, but they also acknowledged that half the population lived in poverty.

The historical records reinforce the evidence that, like the policymakers of all empires, U.S. elites think of sovereign nation-states in terms of their exploitability.

After the Second World War, victorious U.S. planners drew up maps of areas of the world most beneficial to U.S. corporations. During this period, Venezuela (in the Western Hemisphere) exported two-thirds of its oil to the West Indies for refining. A declassified intelligence report from mid-1948 notes that “Political conditions are generally favorable” to U.S. interests in the West Indies and in the Western Hemisphere, but concludes that oil pipelines are vulnerable to sabotage by “trained agents.” Giving the U.S. Department of Defense’s reliance on petroleum for its vehicles, “such agents could seriously affect U.S. capacity either to prepare for or to wage war.” The report notes that the ruling regime of Rómulo Betancourt (1945-48) moved away from the Soviet sphere of influence. However, labor “strikes for wages” in the oil sector “could get out of hand and result in considerable reduction of output, even if there were no deliberate intention to sabotage.”

It is significant that the CIA considered labor strikes an act of industrial sabotage. “Strikes of other unions in allied industries furthermore (transportation for example) from which Communist control may not yet have been eliminated could have similar adverse effects.”

It should be noted that “Communist” with a big C was a catch-all term employed by the CIA to describe a largely non-existent demographic. In the literal sense, there was the Communist Party of Venezuela, but the word was used by the CIA to describe the population more generally. The report concludes that so-called Slavic migration to Venezuela continued into the post-War years and that “it is quite possible that well trained agents may have been included among the almost 3,000 migrants,” such was the level of paranoia of the time.

We can draw ominous parallels to the present. Just as the U.S. supported Betancourt, who became increasingly right-wing, U.S. President Trump supports leaders like Brazil’s Bolsonaro, the bane of trade unions. We can also find similarities between the planners post-War who assumed that Russian immigrants in Venezuela were Soviet sleeper cells and those who, today, believe that Russia is significantly influencing U.S. politics.

Given U.S. corporations’ interests in undermining labor unions, it is important to note that a December 1948 CIA report acknowledges that “a serious split existed in the Venezuelan labor movement as a result of intrigues instigated by foreign oil companies.” It concludes that, “as a result of the workers not being united, the recent military coup was made much easier.” In May 1950, the Venezuelan government issued a decree outlawing the Communist Party. The election of Betancourt (1959-64) followed the overthrow of dictator Pérez Jiménez. “Venezuela has a record of close ties the U.S., based in large part on the mutual interest of the two countries in the development of Venezuela’s oil industry.” So says a National Intelligence Estimate report from 1961. Evidence that Cuba supplied anti-Betancourt communists with weapons was “largely circumstantial” says another report.

The documents reiterate the interests of U.S. corporations in Venezuela, not only oil but the banks that profit from the oil revenues. The Catholic-majority population could be manipulated to believe that the secular communists and broader left were a threat to their religion and thus ways of life.

A report on U.S. President Kennedy’s visit to Venezuela in late-1961, including its  “propaganda impact,” lauds the visit as a “decisive victory over Communist extremists and other leftist groups.” The propaganda effort included Kennedy’s support for the Catholic Church against the godless commies. Hinting at where the real power could be found, the report notes: “Special credit is due civilian authorities and even more so to military.” Hinting also at U.S. opposition to political diversity in Venezuela, the report further notes that “Venezuelan visit showed importance of keeping down size Presidential parties thereby making it easier for his government and our diplomatic missions to take care of them most efficiently.”

By 1963, the CIA was describing Venezuela as “a prime example of a country attempting rapid social and economic progress through constitutional democracy.” This was assisted by the U.S. AID Mission, which involved police training. Later, we shall see how other documents confirm that the poorest Venezuelans considered the U.S.-trained police forces to be worse than the communist terrorists that attacked U.S. interests. The constitutional democracy of which the analysts were so proud also involved the imprisonment by Betancourt of half a dozen left-wing congressmen during the elections. The report notes that Betancourt “used a broad interpretation of his executive powers.”

Referring to the Christian, mildly socialistic Partido Social Cristiano Copei, it concludes that “Betancourt will also probably enjoy the support of the COPEI leadership and the business community while his crackdown against the terrorists continues.” In July 1963, CIA director John McCone advised the U.S. Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, that in the past there had been “serious deficiencies in the internal security services of the Venezuelan government” led by the U.S. ally, Pérez Jiménez. If the extradited Jiménez returned, “it would certainly be difficult … to give him adequate protection in any normal prison situation,” hence it was best for the U.S. to continue to support Betancourt.

A CIA report describes Betancourt as “a former Communist who turned strongly anti-Communist.” Many communists were “eliminated” from the military after the revolts of 1962. The Communist Party of Venezuela, says the CIA, had “infiltrat[ed]” education, labor movements, the media and youth groups. In other words, the CIA believed that “communists” meant the entire civil society. The Jiménez dictatorship “tended to tolerate a limited amount of Communist activity.” By the 1960s, communist involvement in the parliamentary politics of Venezuela “was more the responsibility of [Jiménez]” than Betancourt.

A secret, part-redacted CIA memo on terrorism in Venezuela in 1963 states that terrorists, “primarily the Communist-dominated Armed Force of National Liberation” (FALN), wanted to tempt the military into overthrowing government in the hope that they could ride the wave of the coup. The FALN attacked energy pipelines, police, military and, mainly, “American targets.” It also notes that “The major subversive threat is from the extreme left, from Communist and Castroist forces hoping to reshape Venezuela along the lines of Castro’s Cuba.” But the so-called extremists, says the report, “are limited in numbers.”

A National Intelligencence Estimate (NIE) report cites the desire for “orderly social and economic reform” in Venezuela under the government of Betancourt or a successor. The report notes that Venezuela is “an extraordinarily wealthy country in terms of its natural and financial resources.” The economic strains, says the NIE report, can be traced to the tension between the military infrastructure of the country’s political system and the transition towards “a democratic welfare state.” Betancourt, says the NIE, was opposed by “extreme leftists” (i.e., political Communists with a big C) and “extreme rightist elements.” It describes U.S. relations with Betancourt as “cordial.”

Aiding our understanding of whom the elites on all sides considered to be communists, the report goes on to say that “The wealthy … do exert substantial political influence … In the view of many of them, the democratic socialism of [Betancourt’s Acción Democrática (AD) party] is equivalent to communism.” Again, we can draw ominous parallels, with Trump’s Republicans today being so far to the right that they see the center-right neoliberals of the Democratic Party as raving socialists. Returning to Venezuela, as the so-called extreme left oppose the AD government for its slow reforms, “some rightists will continue to conspire with reactionary military elements to overthrow the regime,” leaving Betancourt at risk from both the left and right. However, “[i]n world affairs, Venezuela will continue to support the West against the Communist Bloc on most issues in the UN and elsewhere.”

The reports also confirm that so-called constitutional democracy in Venezuela was a façade. “The military will continue to be the ultimate arbiter of political power in Venezuela,” says a NIE report from early-1964. President-elect Raul Leoni’s (1964-69) “success or failure in office will be of great importance to the US.” Hinting at U.S. acquiescence in potential state-violence against the broad public (“communists”), it notes that Leoni “probably will have to resort at times to extraordinary measures such as suspension of constitutional guarantees to contain the insurgency threat within tolerable limits (by Venezuelan standards).”

The same report notes that by the mid-1960s, U.S. capital investments in Venezuela totalled $3bn, “exceeded only by our investments in Canada and in the UK.” In addition to the “strategic importance” of Venezuela “as the world’s largest exporter of oil,” Venezuela “holds great symbolic value for our policy in Latin America.” But the problem was that Venezuela remained “the only Latin American country in which leftist extremists … have been able to sustain an impressive level of insurgency.” Half the population lived in poverty, says the report, adding that the 300,000 slum-dwellers of the capital, Caracas, “regarded the government and the police–not the terrorists–as its main antagonists [sic].” It’s an interesting comment on exactly who the population considered the main terrorists.

By the mid-1970s, Venezuela had nationalized its oil and iron ore industries. By 1977, the CIA was concerned about “the rise in influence and assertiveness among developing countries … whose ambitions and activities seem likely increasingly to complicate the efforts of the United States to cope with global and, especially, regional issues.” With windfall oil revenues but a predicted economic downturn or even crash, Venezuela wanted to “replace a heavy dependence on the United States with a growing regionalism and Third World interdependence.” The CIA noted President Carlos Andrés Pérez’s (1974-79) efforts to “reintegrate Cuba into the American system,” efforts which they predicted would be slow and largely unsuccessful.

In the 1980s, with collapsing oil revenues and International Monetary Fund-imposed “structural adjustment programs” Venezuela unleashed austerity on its people; or “bring[ing] public sector spending and borrowing under control, and … improving the country’s sagging reputation,” as an intelligence report describes it. In 1982, the CIA noted that Venezuela was supplying “aid” to neighbouring El Salvador, whose U.S.-backed forces were engaged in a brutal counterinsurgency war (1979-92). With regards to Cuba, “We believe [Venezuela’s Herrera government (1979-84)] … sees Cuba as a threat to its long-term interests in the Caribbean Basin.” As with its Cuba relations, Venezuela’s integration into the Non-Aligned Movement didn’t seem to alarm the CIA: “we expect this to cause little change in Venezuela’s basically pro-Western foreign policy.” They were right, until a certain Hugo Chávez came along…

We shall have to wait for more records to be declassified under the often-violated30-year rule. But the ones already available demonstrate that whichever political party controls both the White House and the Congress, the objective of U.S. policymakers is to monitor the activities of foreign nations, particularly resource-rich ones in which U.S. corporations have a great deal of investment. Hugo Chávez’s presidential victory in 1999 was a shock for the U.S. policymaking establishment. A nation with such long-term and predictable pro-U.S. policies was suddenly transformed into an economy that served the interests of its people.

Dr. T. J. Coles is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research and the author of several books, including Voices for Peace (with Noam Chomsky and others) and the forthcoming Fire and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks Nuclear War in Asia (both Clairview Books).