VENEZUELA: The threat of a good example
Stuart Munckton
“In another era, the alliance between an oil-rich joker in Venezuela, an ageing Cuban dictator and a jumper-wearing Bolivian peasant leader would hardly be worthy of superpower attention, but Latin America’s shift to the Left is presenting the US with one of its biggest political and security headaches.” So claimed a February 20 article in the Murdoch-owned Australian by Sarah Baxter entitled “Joker Chavez no laughing matter for Bush”. The article is an attack on the socialist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, and on the strengthening anti-imperialist alliance led by Cuba and Venezuela, which new Bolivian President Evo Morales has pledged to join.
The article drips with imperial arrogance as Baxter sneers at Morales and Chavez, both dark-skinned and from humble origins. Chavez, whose political movement has now won 10 elections in just seven years, is called a “clown” and a “buffoon”, while Baxter pokes fun at “former Llama herder” Morales’s dress sense. But behind the cheap jibes is a series of poisonous accusations aiming to justify the Bush administration’s increasing aggression towards Venezuela.
Baxter writes that the “Pentagon and the CIA did not see off the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 only to allow a fresh alliance of potentially nuclear-armed America-haters to form as close as 145km from the coast of Florida”. There is no evidence that Venezuela is pursuing nuclear weapons, let alone has plans to sell such weapons to Cuba. In fact, while supporting Iran’s right to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes, Venezuela has called for the global eradication of nuclear weapons.
The article also repeats the slanderous claim that Chavez made anti-Semitic remarks late last year, a slur that circulated in the US media based on selective quotations and that has been rejected by Jewish groups both inside and outside of Venezuela.
Forced to acknowledge Chavez’s repeated electoral victories, Baxter nonetheless labels Chavez an “authoritarian populist”, despite the fact that Chavez’s government has not cracked down on opposition, shut down media outlets or imprisoned anyone for simply opposing the government. Rather, Chavez has worked to extend democracy via attempts to directly involve the poor themselves in government.
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http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2006/658/658p15.htm
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