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by Gerry Foley – February,
2005
Since the defeat of the third pro-imperialist campaign to oust the
government of Hugo Chavez in the last two years, with the Chavista victory
in the August 2004 recall referendum, the confrontation within Venezuela and
between the Venezuelan government and U.S. imperialism has been sharpening.
On Dec. 5, Chavez addressed the International Conference of Intellectuals
and Artists in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas. The meeting issued a ringing
denunciation of U.S. imperialism. “The city of Falluja, today in ruins,”
said Chavez, “will remain as a symbol of heroic resistance in a tragic
moment of
human history. It is our duty to denounce such atrocities.”
Chavez began his speech, the Mexico City daily La Jornada noted, by
quoting Fidel Castro: “Tomorrow may be too late. We have to save humanity
today.” The Venezuelan leader’s theme was “a different world is possible.”
On Dec. 15, Chavez signed a pact with Cuba that provided for
expanding economic relations between the two countries, the stationing of
15,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela, and forms of financial collaboration. It
also offered 2000 scholarships for Venezuelans to study in Cuba.
The treaty granted Venezuela the right to hold 100 percent of the
stock in Venezuelan state companies established in Cuba, in contradiction
to the
established rule that the Cuban state must hold a majority of the
stock in mixed companies. The agreement was a daring defiance of the U.S.
embargo
against Cuba, even though it contained a reference to the
“asymmetry” of the social systems in the two countries, which implicitly
assured that Venezuela
would continue to be capitalist, despite its collaboration with
socialist-oriented Cuba.
At his meeting with Fidel Castro, Chavez projected his answer to the
U.S. project of a Latin American Free Trade Area, his Alternativa Boliviana
para las
Americas (ALBA), basically a scheme for a Latin America trading block
capable of achieving some economic integration of Latin America even under
capitalism: “real Latin American and Caribbean integration based on
justice.”
Chavez has talked about a new axis in the region among the populist
governments elected on the basis of rebellion against neoliberal economic
policies (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay).
Pursuant to this policy, the Dec. 20 Christian Science Monitor
reported:
“Another way Chavez has used his oil resources is by working to
create a continent-wide petroleum corporation called PetroAmerica, in which
the region’s state-owned oil companies would participate. The idea has
generated interest in Brazil and other energy-hungry neighbors.
“The Venezuelan government says PetroAmerica would enable Latin America
to end exploitation by huge petroleum corporations, but some analysts see
it as a mechanism to leverage Venezuela’s oil resources into
greater regional influence.”
The Venezuelan government, like the Cuban, has been making steps to
increase economic collaboration with China in order to gain more
maneuvering room vis-ŕ-vis the United States. The growing Chinese economy
is oil hungry and increasing the demand for oil worldwide.
Chavez has threatened to cut off oil supplies to the U.S., if it
tries to oust his regime. The
British Financial Times reported in a Jan. 13 article reprinted Jan.
14 by The New York Times that Washington
has begun a study to estimate the effects of the loss of oil from
Venezuela, which currently provides about 15 percent of U.S. demand.
The Dec. 20 Christian Science Monitor noted a provocative
statement by a U.S. official regarding arms purchases by Chavez from
Russia: “A third Chavez announcement, that Venezuela will purchase 100,000 Russian
assault rifles and 33 military helicopters, suggested to some observers
that Chavez is investing his oil wealth in a different kind of muscle. The announcement
followed reports, denied by Venezuelan authorities, that Venezuela is
negotiating the purchase of 50 Russian MiG-29 fighter jets.
“The arms purchases generated concerns in both Washington and Colombia.
An unidentified Bush administration official accompanying the president in
Canada recently told reporters: ‘Millions of dollars are going to be
spent on Russian weapons for ill-defined purposes,’ and added: ‘We shoot
down
MiGs.’”
Chavez has said that the arms purchases are needed to enable
Venezuela to reinforce its security on the Colombian border to prevent the
civil war in that
country from spreading across the border. But the right-wing regime
in Colombia accuses Chavez of collusion with the Colombian guerrilla
movement, which the U.S. is heavily involved in trying to crush.
Chavez has good reason to fear that Colombia may be a staging ground
for an attack against his regime. Relations
between the two Latin American countries have recently sharply deteriorated
with the kidnapping of a political spokesperson of the Colombian guerrillas
on Venezuelan territory. Chavez has accused the United States of being
involved in the crime. Chavez
supporters have marched to protest the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty.
Following his victory in the Aug. 15 recall referendum, Chavez has
moved to widen prosecutions against those involved in the April 2002
attempted military coup against him. In an apparent reprisal by the right,
Danilo Andersen, a prosecutor, was assassinated by a car bomb in
mid-November.
In the last weeks, the class confrontation in Venezuela has been sharp
in the agricultural sector. On Jan.
10 Chavez issued a decree accelerating the
agrarian reform. New action was needed, he said because the agrarian
reform adopted in 2001, which called for the distribution of unused land to
small farmers, had been frustrated by the sabotage of the big landowners.
(About 5 percent of landowners own 80 percent of the land.)
A few days later, the authorities sent troops to support peasants who
had occupied the El Charcote ranch, owned by British agrobusiness. In a
Jan. 13
article, the British Economist, using the poison tongue with which
this bard of British business specializes, excoriated the expropriation.
But it did indicate the context.
The Chavez regime’s promise of agrarian reform, The Economist wrote,
“has also prompted hundreds of land invasions and the killing of dozens of
peasant
activists by opponents. But very little land has been awarded.
‘That’s a self-criticism the revolution has to make,” says Rafael Aleman,
the official in charge
of the review at El Charcote. ‘We have not pushed this process
forward.’”
In other words, the hopes aroused by the Chavez regime led to a
confrontation on the land, which finally forced the government to intervene
on the side of the
peasants, despite the very limited nature of the agrarian reform it
actually adopted.
A similar process may have started to occur in the industrial sector.
On Jan. 19, the Chavez government nationalized the Venepal paper company, a
bankrupt enterprise that had been taken over by its workers.
The Venezuelan president was quoted in a Jan. 20 article on the Resist.Ca
web page as saying: “The expropriation of Venepal is an exception, not a
political measure, nor a government one. We won’t take land; if it’s
yours, it’s yours. But the company that is closed and abandoned, we’ll go
for them. For all of them.”
This is a principle similar to the one that is supposed to preside
over the agrarian reform—that is, only unused land can be taken over. But
it unleashes a dynamic that tends to challenge the rules of capitalism.
The capitalists obviously do not trust Chavez. The result has been a
slowdown of business since he came into office. By threatening to increase
unemployment, the capitalist slowdown or strike endangers Chavez’s
reforms. But what if the workers respond to the slowdown by seizing
their enterprises and then force the government to nationalize them?
It is clear that an escalation of the class struggle has been
unleashed by Chavez’s defiance of imperialism and his populist reforms. He
will have to take sides.
If he sides with the workers and small peasants, as he did in the
cases of Venepal and the el Charcote ranch, he is not going to be able to
continue to respect the rules of capitalism.
But there is so far no indication that Chavez is prepared to take
the consequences of a full break from capitalism. A movement that leads to
this kind of struggle can only come from the independent mobilization of
the workers and small peasants.
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