|
Think Guatemala 1954, for Hugo
Chavez’s Venezuela
By Council on Hemispheric Affairs
05/15/07 "ICH"
--- - In 1954, United Fruit, in concert with the CIA,
successfully orchestrated the overthrow of Guatemala’s
democratically-elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán,
charging that the Central American nation had fallen under
communist influence. The demise of Arbenz took time to
accomplish, with the fatal draught being a casual concoction of
miscommunication, corporate arrogance, misinformation, outright
deception, a naďve reform-minded government and arrogance on the
part of the Eisenhower administration. Arbenz was neither a
communist, nor was his government profoundly sympathetic to
extreme leftist ideas as charged at the time by U.S. government
officials and media outlets. Upon his election in 1951, Arbenz
took office in a country in which 70% of the arable land was
controlled by 2.2% of the population – only 12% of which was
being cultivated at the time of his overthrow in 1954. Like Hugo
Chavez of Venezuela, he wanted to reform what was palpably
neither a good nor just society.
Case Studies of Guatemala and Venezuela
The parallels between Guatemala in 1954 and present day
Venezuela are uncomfortably close, which is cause enough for
concern that the U.S. government and its compliant media have
predictably taken sides. It was of little surprise therefore
that land reform was one of the priorities chosen by the
democratically-elected Arbenz just as it has become for
President Chavez. Soon after taking office, both reformers
similarly instituted wide ranging agricultural reform policies
that sought to distribute uncultivated land to thousands of
poor, landless peasants. Arbenz’s plan, however modest it
initially was in scope, struck a raw nerve with the largest
landowning enterprise in Guatemala, the United Fruit Company.
The holdings of this agro-industrial giant in the country were
85% uncultivated, therefore facing heavy taxes under extant law.
A similar shock faced Venezuelan land holders when their fallow
and speculative land parcels were scheduled to be seized by the
government, to be redistributed to landless campesinos.
Bananas or Oil, the Process is the Same
Back in the early 1950’s, United Fruit, a major hemispheric
banana company with extensive ties to U.S. power brokers both
within and outside the government, had consistently undervalued
the worth of its land reserves for the purposes of evading heavy
property tax obligations. Yet, when Arbenz approached United
Fruit with a compensation plan for their land scheduled for
expropriation, the company balked at the $3 per acre validation
price. In fact, this was the artificially low figure which had
been previously designated by the company itself for tax
purposes. The Guatemalan government, for its part, claimed that
in fact the true assessed value of the land should have been
pegged at $75 per acre. The details of this squabble mattered
little, because ultimately ‘might made right’, a parable
regarding the articulation of U.S. hemispheric policy that Hugo
Chavez would be well advised to have on his mind without
interruption.
In fact, be it Guatemalan bananas or Venezuelan oil, the
differences were only in the details. The more recent round in
the endemic corruption of Venezuela’s legal and administrative
systems could be easily witnessed beginning in the early 1990s.
At the time, traditional Venezuelan venal practices chronically
engaged in by rotating the Social Democratic and Christian
Democratic governments, then traditionally ruling the country,
were very much in evidence. These resulted in sweetheart deals
for U.S. and other foreign oil companies then seeking prized
drilling rights in the Orinoco tar belt in return for shockingly
low taxes and royalties.
By 1954, United Fruit was in full gear to bring down the Arbenz
administration, claiming through its government and media
connections, that communist labor forces had overtaken the
Guatemalan government and were spreading their ideological
toxicity. It did not take long for United Fruit’s public
disinformation campaign to disseminate throughout the U.S. press
and then to Washington’s decision makers, which subsequently
resulted in the plot to rid Guatemala of Arbenz and his leftist
cabal before their noxious leftist reforms had sufficient time
to take root in the country. As a result of the staging of the
1954 CIA-orchestrated golpe, Arbenz was pushed out of the
presidency on June 27, 1954, giving way to a U.S.-backed
military regime that initiated two decades of oppressive rule in
Guatemala. This regime left a cumulative death toll of almost
200,000 lives and a legacy of violence that is still being
echoed today. Today, a similarly danger–fraught relationship is
ongoing between another Latin American nation and the U.S – this
time, Venezuela.
Defaming Venezuela
Increasingly malignant allegations of illegality and impropriety
have been volleyed between the two adversaries for several
years. Venezuelan relations with Washington have been
particularly strained since shortly after Hugo Chavez’s 1998
electoral victory and again with the U.S.-backed 2002 attempted
overthrow of the leftist regime. While these tensions have
persisted ever since, they have recently manifested themselves
in increasingly acidic comments made by Chavez and some of his
senior colleagues regarding Caracas’ potential expropriation of
the country’s banks as well as its largest steel producer, Sidor.
Additionally, comments from Venezuela also have broadly hinted
about the possible nationalization of the country’s private
medical facilities. As a result, a brief scan of the news
traffic now being run on the national and international media
outlets yields an abundance of coverage dedicated to the
lampooning, deprecation and disparagement of Venezuela by
President Chavez’s political foes. These have been triggered by
media reports which initially may have been based on pro-Chavez
accounts, but were almost immediately doctored into running
anti-Chavez schemes. These adroitly portray a distorted picture
of Chavez of pressing to nationalize every sector in sight, when
in actuality he may have had something quite different in mind.
Absent from the rampant speculation and rush to judgment by the
media regarding Chavez’s intentions are a set of facts
presenting a different story. More to the point, what seems to
be at work here is mainly a sustained attempt by anti-Chavez
elements to ridicule his government, rather than to accurately
spell out exactly what was being proposed by Venezuelan
government sources, as well as providing an active context in
which these statements were being made by he and his associates.
On the part of these Chavistas, such speculations were never
meant to be a hard agenda of things to come, but more akin to
blue sky thinking.
Immunizing Oneself from Coups
The ineffectiveness of Arbenz in demonstrating the intrinsic
fairness of his land reforms in the 1950’s brought on disastrous
consequences, when challenged by the wild misrepresentation of
an alleged communist threat that United Fruit falsely claimed
was being posed by the Arbenz government. In this instance, a
thoroughly responsible effort to enact land reform was vetoed by
an organized campaign of mockery and misinformation that played
off the main weaknesses of the Arbenz administration – its
chaotic nature and its shortage of effective administrative
skills. In a similar spirit, who is to blame for today’s
exchange between the incendiary words emanating from Caracas and
being answered by a mendacious press and the negative commentary
that it generates, with only rare attempts to accurately present
the government’s economic policy?
The New York Times has characterized Chavez’s recent words
regarding the potential nationalization of the country’s banks
as “saber rattling.” The implication here is that the Venezuelan
president’s words amount to nothing more than hollow boasts,
which is dramatized by speculative quotes offered up in a number
of Associated Press and other articles syndicated across the
U.S. The Wall Street Journal’s slashing sword went even further,
malevolently publishing a beggaring article on, “How Chávez Aims
to Weaken U.S.”, one of the many rants it has directed against
Chavez. The attack was severe enough to evoke a letter to the
editor from Bernardo Alvarez, the Venezuelan Ambassador to the
United States, who wrote the Journal in order, “to correct your
suggestion that the Venezuelan government’s purchase of oil
reserves along the Orinoco River is an affront to U.S. energy
interests.” While it may have been a question of time for the
Ambassador to respond to what is arguably the most reactionary
editorial page in the U.S., someone had to answer the brand of
jingoist journalistic bias that is to be found in that paper on
this subject, let alone in its more respectable media brethren,
including the New York Times and The Washington Post.
Though one is naturally hesitant to join in the hyperbole that
characterizes so much of the commentary featured in the
mainstream media regarding contemporary Venezuela, it is
becoming increasingly evident that the extreme disparity between
Chavez’s counter-hegemonic messages and what should be the
practice of responsible journalism in the U.S. media, may not
merely be a matter of random ex parte fulminations by Chavez’s
ideological foes.
President Chavez has always been ready to indulge himself in
rapid come-backs to malignant barbs featured in the U.S. major
media (at times even provoking them) even if it means
dispatching arrows in return, only to have them quickly
countered by the Ambassador’s reply. Such a process is meant to
cast grave doubts on the earnestness and authenticity of
Venezuela’s progressive reforms up to this point. Such harsh
polemics on the part of much of the U.S. media reflects an
unrelenting bias on the part of the anti-Chavez media. But, it
also exposes a needlessly random and often counterproductive
tone emanating from Caracas. The theme here is that Chavez has
every right to come forth with a nationalization program backed
by a majority of Venezuelans, but it should be done in a
responsible manner befitting the importance of his mission and
the need of an effective strategy to put his best foot forward
and not to needlessly arm his enemies.
Chavez’s Style
The often conflicted nature of Chavez’s message to the people of
Latin America and beyond has allowed the U.S. media to engage in
mischief making and to dismiss Caracas’ words in a derisive
manner – a dilemma that recently has allowed for the
transformation of the speculative musings of Chavez and some of
his senior colleagues regarding the banking, medical and steel
industries into a veritable road map for nationalization, as
depicted by his enemies. These, in turn, have been twisted into
miles of conjecture and disrespect in newspaper columns across
the globe, presenting a common, although largely unwarranted,
interpretation that Venezuela intends to go ahead with a
reckless nationalization policy heading in all directions, and
that there now is solid proof that Chavez is on his way to
emerge as an authoritarian figure who lacks an authentic
democratic vision of what is best for his country.
If there is anything for Venezuela to learn from United Fruit’s
fateful role in bringing down the Arbenz government, it is the
critical importance of the targeted victim (in this instance,
Venezuela) speaking with a single voice regarding the complex
matters associated with the country’s economy. To do otherwise
invites obfuscation and confusion. Today’s political climate
throughout Latin America is such that President Chavez’s words
reverberate to every corner of the hemisphere. Often, the
reactions to the leadership role he now plays and the visions he
now espouses are very positive, but sometimes they are not.
If Venezuela is to avoid having its message being bushwhacked by
the State Department as well as by a hostile and dismissive
Western media, the country would be wise to anticipate the
possible likelihood that its own ‘United Fruit’ saga may be
waiting in the wings to be played out against it. If Chavez’s
reform policies are to meet a different and kindlier fate than
those of Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán’s, it might be able to ward off
such bad fortune by effective coherence, fixity of purpose, the
amplitude of popular support and continuity of programs in order
to protect the revolution from the web of its own
miscommunication and self absorption, as well as the animus of
its own foes. What must be avoided is the present confusion
coming from different wings of the presidential palace and
ministerial offices that over half a century ago led to the
overthrow of the Guatemalan government.
This analysis was prepared by COHA Staff
Click here
to comment on this and other articles
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
