COUP AND COUNTER-COUP IN CARACAS
by Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 8/7/02]
For the people in Venezuela, and throughout Latin America, the events of last April are of such historic magnitude, that they will never be forgotten.
In that tumultuous month, Venezuela experienced mass protests, police shootings of protesters, the military removal of one president, the installation of another president by a coalition of big business interests and military elites, and the swearing-in of yet another candidate for the nation's highest post.
What made it most remarkable was the public and private roles played by the United States, the world's sole superpower which preaches democracy like a religion.
Publically, the U.S., speaking through the press spokesman for the President, seemed to condone the removal of Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, as a proper response for his government's firing upon unarmed demonstrators (Funny, I don't recall the White House, under Nixon, offering to resign when unarmed protesters were killed by troops of the National Guard, at Kent State on May 4th, 1970). Privately, reports from Venezuela indicate that the U.S. military was in close working contact with opposition to the Chavez government. Why, pray tell, does the U.S. military
need "contacts" among civilian dissenters? Mere weeks before the coup, the then-American ambassador, Donna Hrinak, "took the unusual step of asking the American military attache to cease contacts with the dissidents" (perhaps because she knew a coup was coming?). [See Los Angeles Times, 2/2/02].
The U.S. has viewed the rise of Chavez with profound disquiet, fearing the populist is a clone of the much-feared, much-dreaded (by capital) Castro of Cuba.
The anti-Chavez demonstration, which was routed to the capital, and the resultant shooting of demonstrators, led to President Chavez being removed from office, and imprisoned on a military base. The army heads swore in Pedro Carmona within minutes of the arrest of Chavez. Carmona was the head of the nation's business group, the Fedecamaras (The Chamber of Commerce). His first acts as president sent shock waves through the nation, and were a dark harbinger of things to come: the National Assembly was dissolved, popular reform laws were repealed, and all the justices of the Supreme Court were fired. The lovers of democracy in Washington, who were so critical of Chavez, did not condemn the acts of his illegitimate business- backed successor, Carmona.
But the people, especially the poor, of Venezuela did. The day after Carmona's early-morning swearing-in, the people converged, in a spontaneous mass pro-Chavez demonstration at Miraflores Palace, the Venezuelan White House. It grew and grew, and Carmona's quasi-government crumbled under it's weight. Carmona ruled Venezuela for 36 hours. In the interim, another faction tried to swear-in Chavez's vice-president, Diosdado Cabella. For a few hours, Venezuela had 3 presidents, Chavez, Carmona and Cabello!
Big Business tried a military-backed coup in a Latin American democracy, but the people didn't buy it. Of all the nations in the region, only one (the U.S.!) dared to support the Carmona dictatorship. When they next try to preach "democracy" to their Latin American neighbors, they'll know, from bitter experience, what "democracy" means = the dictatorship of big business.
Text © copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
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