Towards another coup in Venezuela?
Towards another coup in Venezuela?
Protests are initiated by ultra-right factions of the opposition in the hope of an eventual systemic overhaul.
Last updated: 19 Feb 2014 08:50
Belen Fernandez
Five days after violent anti-government incitement in Venezuela led to the deaths of three people, the US State Department issued a press statement declaring: "The allegations [by President Nicolas Maduro] that the United States is helping to organise protestors… is baseless and false. We support human rights and fundamental freedoms - including freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly - in Venezuela as we do in countries around the world."
Of course, US commitment to such freedoms is called into question by its own operating procedures, which have included police beatings of peaceful protesters and the incarceration and torture of whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
Maduro might - meanwhile - be forgiven for associating the US with efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government given said country's intimate involvement in the 2002 coup d'etat against Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez - not to mention its general history of fomenting opposition to less-than-obsequious Latin American regimes.
George Ciccariello-Maher, a professor at Drexel University and the author of "We Created Chavez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution", remarked to me yesterday that, although "there's no reason to think that the US is directly involved in organising or calling these protests… we need to bear in mind that [it] continues to fund the very same opposition groups that have participated in violent, anti-democratic actions before and that continue to do so".
~snip~
However, pinning the blame for all of Venezuela's ills on chavismo - the left-wing political ideology developed by Chavez and continued by Maduro - is transparently disingenuous. Or rather, it would be transparently disingenuous if the dominant international media were not intent on parroting opposition propaganda.
In 2010, for example, the New York Times horrified the world with the news that Venezuela under Chavez was deadlier than Iraq. As noted in Richard Gott's Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, "much of the violence stemmed from the police itself (the highest crime rates were registered in the states of Miranda, Tachira and Zulia, where opposition governors ruled and controlled the local police forces)".
More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/02/towards-another-coup-venezuela-201421952658348169.html