“‘Let me put it this way: we shoot down Migs,’ a senior administration official said when asked whether the intended purchase concerned the U.S. government,” the Financial Times reported on December 1.

Sean McCormack, the National Security Council spokesman at the White House, told the British daily that the comment meant this “is an issue that we monitor closely.”

During a visit to Moscow at the end of November, Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, announced that his government will soon take delivery of 40 helicopters from Russia and has agreed to buy 100,000 semi-automatic rifles. Chávez noted that these weapons are defensive. “Venezuela is not going to attack anyone,” he told the press.

Reports in the big-business media have also speculated that Venezuela is planning to acquire 50 Mig-29 fighter jets, the most advanced model of the Russian plane. The Venezuelan government has so far made no such announcement.

In addition to belligerent statements by U.S. officials, Washington’s closest ally in Latin America, the right-wing regime of Colombia’s president Alvaro Uribe, has joined the chorus of alleged concerns about an “arms buildup” in neighboring Venezuela. Helicopters and rifles are no big deal, said Alfredo Rángel, whom the Financial Times described as a “defense analyst based in Bogotá,” according to an article in the November 30 edition of the daily. “But the Mig-29s would be of major concern. Their acquisition would be seen as virtually a hostile act towards Colombia.”

According to the Financial Times, Venezuela’s air force has about 20 U.S.-made F-16 jets, purchased years ago, most of which are today in disrepair.

Bogotá is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid outside the Middle East. The U.S. government has sent $3.3 billion to the Colombian regime since the year 2000 under the Plan Colombia program initiated by the Clinton administration. The program was expanded by the Bush White House into the Andean Regional Initiative. Under the cover of fighting “narcoterrorism,” Washington has used Plan Colombia to step up its military intervention in the region in anticipation of sharper resistance by workers and peasants to imperialist domination and the resulting economic depression gripping Latin America and the Caribbean.  
 
U.S. involvement in 2002 coup
Washington’s “concerns” over arms purchases from Russia by Caracas are at best hypocritical. In fact, it is the U.S. government that’s the aggressor in Venezuela, having aided repeated attempts by sections of Venezuela’s capitalist class to overthrow the country’s democratically elected government. These include a military coup in April 2002, an employers’ lockout in December of that year and January 2003, and a presidential recall referendum last August. All three attempts failed because of massive mobilizations by working people who divided the military and forced Chávez’s return to power two days after the coup, quickly restarted production during the bosses’ “strike,” and ensured the resounding defeat of the recall vote.

Jeremy Bigwood, a freelance investigative reporter in Washington, recently uncovered, through the Freedom of Information Act, previously classified CIA documents that show Washington’s full knowledge of the plans for a military coup in early 2002.

“Dissident military factions, including some disgruntled senior officers and a group of radical junior officers, are stepping up efforts to organize a coup against President Chavez, possibly as early as this month,” says the secret CIA memo (which is posted on www.venezuelafoia.info). It is dated April 6, 2002—five days before the coup. The document indicates a plan by the pro-imperialist opposition forces to instigate unrest and blame it on the government to rationalize the coup. “To provoke military action, the plotters may try to exploit unrest stemming from opposition demonstrations slated for later this month or ongoing strikes at the state-owned oil company PDVSA.”

This is what did happen. During an anti-government march on April 11, 2002, more than a dozen people died from gunshots fired by individuals who Venezuelan authorities say were organized by forces aligned with the Coordinadora Democrática opposition coalition. Army generals then used the bloodshed as the pretext to remove Chávez from power. The coup plotters swore in as president Pedro Carmona, a wealthy oil man and leader of Fedecámaras, the country’s main business association. The new regime dissolved the National Assembly, dismissed the Supreme Court, and abolished the constitution. But it was short lived. Chávez returned to Miraflores, the presidential palace, within two days on the crest of huge popular mobilizations against the coup.

At the time, Bush administration officials denied prior knowledge of the plans for the coup, blamed the elected government for the crisis, repeated the lies of the generals who claimed Chávez had resigned, and initially recognized Carmona’s regime. Hours after the coup, for example, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said “the Chávez government provoked the crisis” and “Chávez has resigned the presidency.” Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, chimed in that “undemocratic actions committed or encouraged by the Chávez administration provoked yesterday’s crisis.”  
 
Murder of Danilo Anderson
Tensions have continued between Washington and Caracas. According to a December 9 report by the Chinese news agency Xinhua, the Venezuelan government will ask Washington to extradite Johan Peña to Venezuela. The country’s Justice Minister Jesse Chacón said his government’s intelligence indicates that Peña, a suspect in the recent murder of Venezuelan prosecutor Danilo Anderson, is now in the United States.

Anderson was killed November 19 from two blasts caused by bombs planted under his car. He was in charge of a government investigation of those who carried out the April 2002 coup. Cuba’s National Information Agency said at the end of November that Venezuelan authorities had discovered an arms cache and explosives in Caracas that implicate individuals now residing in the United States in Anderson’s murder.

Since it took office in 1998, the Chávez administration has angered many among Venezuela’s wealthy ruling families and their allies in Washington by passing measures such as an agrarian reform law, bills strengthening state control of oil—the country’s main source of income—and other natural resources, and legislation protecting small fishermen from super exploitation by large capitalist operations. Workers and farmers have frequently mobilized to implement these and other measures that are in their class interests, gaining self-confidence and higher expectations in the process. These mobilizations have caused the wealthy to fear that working people may push for even more radical steps that would threaten capitalist property relations.

The government’s normalization of trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba has also drawn the ire of many Venezuelan capitalists and their backers in the United States. More than 15,000 volunteers from Cuba have been working in Venezuela for several years now. The majority of them are doctors who provide medical care through top-quality, free neighborhood clinics to millions who did not have access to health care before. Cuban volunteers have also aided Venezuela’s massive literacy campaigns and agricultural and other programs. In addition, thousands of students from Venezuela have attended courses in Cuba on scholarships, and more than 7,000 Venezuelan patients have been treated in Cuba free of charge, based on agreements between the two countries.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home