Vol. 71/No. 26      July 2, 2007

The pot-banging—a traditional middle-class protest method in Latin America—is the latest in a series of actions in recent weeks in which thousands of Venezuelans, largely divided along class lines, have faced off in the streets of Caracas.

Sections of Venezuela’s capitalist class have seized on the RCTV dispute to accuse the government headed by President Hugo Chávez of undermining press freedom to retaliate against political opponents. Thousands of students, overwhelmingly from Caracas’s private universities, and many workers have joined street protests against the move. One of the main chants at these actions has been, “Listen Chávez, I want my soap opera, I want my [variety show] Rochela, I don’t want a dictatorship.”

Government supporters, in their majority workers and peasants, have countered these protests with their own mobilizations, pointing to RCTV’s active efforts to destabilize the Chávez administration. But the move is less popular than other recent government decisions, such as bringing the oil industry under greater state control, which opened up political space for working people to strengthen their hand against the interests of local capitalists and their U.S. allies.

“A lot of people, including Chavistas, do not agree with this,” Aijeah Valderama, a taxi driver in Caracas, told the Militant in a June 15 phone interview. “It’s like Chávez is forcing you to watch things you don’t want to watch.”

The U.S. Senate issued a statement against the closure in May, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi warned the Venezuelan government that “efforts to suppress the media will … ultimately fail.” U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice called for an investigation by the Organization of American States. Liberal groups like Reporters Without Borders have condemned the decision. The Georgia-based Carter Center issued a statement of concern over the RCTV dispute.

“President Chávez is totally right,” Angel Sarmiento, a peasant who has been involved in land occupations in the rural state of Cojedes, told the Militant in a June 11 phone interview. “To me, this channel just represents the exploiters. To watch it you would never know about our struggles for land, or the realities that we live. For them, freedom of expression is the freedom to exploit.”

While the decision effectively closed RCTV, the station has continued to broadcast through satellite and on the Internet via major Spanish-language stations in Colombia and Miami. The public frequency that used to belong to RCTV is now broadcasting a state-funded channel, Venezuelan Social Television (TVes). Pro-government community councils are organizing discussions in factories and working-class neighborhoods to discuss the character of programming on TVes.

Government officials have called the decision “a simple regulatory matter” and accused the opposition of using the student protests to prepare a “soft coup.” At a May 30 press conference, members of the National Assembly released tapes of phone conversations between opposition leaders and RCTV officials, discussing their behind-the-scenes involvement in the student protests.

RCTV is one of several privately owned media that has been used consistently by the pro-imperialist opposition over the last five years in their efforts to oust the Chávez administration. Leading up to a short-lived U.S.-backed coup in 2002, such channels broadcast opposition calls for protests to topple the government.

When working people poured into the streets of Caracas to demand the return of Chávez and his ministers, who had been arrested by the top military brass, the private stations refused to carry any coverage of the popular mobilizations. They broadcast old movies and cartoons instead. The day after the coup, the morning show on the Venevision channel featured leaders of the coup effort and journalists congratulating each other.

Of the four major private TV stations in Venezuela, only RCTV and Globovision have maintained their level of anti-government programming. Another station, Venevision, toned down its anti-government slant after a 2004 meeting brokered by former U.S. president James Carter between Chávez and the owner of the station. The day RCTV’s license expired, the government renewed Venevision’s permit, but for five years instead of the 25 it sought.

“For decades these people have kidnapped the airwaves,” Orlando Rafael Leon, a warehouse worker in the state of Anzoátegui, said in a June 15 phone interview. “What do they expect?” Leon passed the phone around to several of his coworkers, who all expressed similar opinions.

“This has opened a debate and discussion in which workers are discussing what kind of television we should have,” María Cristina Martínez, a social communications student at the Bolivarian University in Caracas, told the Militant June 11.

Proceeding with such discussions, however, isn’t so easy, according to Carlos Enrique Rangel, one of Leon’s coworkers. “The supervisor here won’t let us take the time at work to discuss the new station like we’re supposed to,” he said.  
 
 
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