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Another CIA sponsored Coup D'Etat? Venezuela’s
D-Day
Democratic Socialism or Imperial
Counter-Revolution
By Prof James Petras
11/28/07 "ICH"
--- - On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government
broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy
to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine
operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday
(December 2, 2007).
The memo
sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was
addressed to the head of the CIA, Michael Hayden. The memo was
entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and
updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’
(Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to
destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil
military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The
Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57% of the voters approved of
the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also
predicted a 60% abstention.
The US
operatives emphasized their capacity to recruit former Chavez
supporters among the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former
Minister of Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the ‘yes’
vote by 6% from its original margin. Nevertheless the Embassy
operatives concede that they have reached their ceiling,
recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via the electoral
route.
The memo
then recommends that Operation Pincer (OP) [Operación Tenaza]
be operationalized. OP involves a two-pronged strategy of
impeding the referendum, rejecting the outcome at the same time
as calling for a ‘no’ vote. The run up to the referendum
includes running phony polls, attacking electoral officials and
running propaganda through the private media accusing the
government of fraud and calling for a ‘no’ vote. Contradictions,
the report cynically emphasizes, are of no matter.
The
CIA-Embassy reports internal division and recriminations among
the opponents of the amendments including several defections
from their ‘umbrella group’. The key and most dangerous threats
to democracy raised by the Embassy memo point to their success
in mobilizing the private university students (backed by top
administrators) to attack key government buildings including the
Presidential Palace, Supreme Court and the National Electoral
Council. The Embassy is especially praiseworthy of the ex-Maoist
‘Red Flag’ group for its violent street fighting
activity. Ironically, small Trotskyist sects and their trade
unionists join the ex-Maoists in opposing the constitutional
amendments. The Embassy, while discarding their ‘Marxist
rhetoric’, perceives their opposition as fitting in with their
overall strategy.
The
ultimate objective of ‘Operation Pincer’ is to seize a
territorial or institutional base with the ‘massive support’ of
the defeated electoral minority within three or four days
(before or after the elections – is not clear. JP) backed by an
uprising by oppositionist military officers principally in the
National Guard. The Embassy operative concede that the military
plotters have run into serous problems as key intelligence
operatives were detected, stores of arms were decommissioned and
several plotters are under tight surveillance.
Apart from
the deep involvement of the US, the primary organization of the
Venezuelan business elite (FEDECAMARAS), as well as all the
major private television, radio and newspaper outlets have been
engaged in a vicious fear and intimidation campaign. Food
producers, wholesale and retail distributors have created
artificial shortages of basic food items and have provoked large
scale capital flight to sow chaos in the hopes of reaping a ‘no’
vote.
President Chavez Counter-Attacks
In a
speech to pro-Chavez, pro-amendment nationalist business-people
(Entrepreneurs for Venezuela – EMPREVEN) Chavez warned the
President of FEDECAMARAS that if he continues to threaten the
government with a coup, he would nationalize all their business
affiliates. With the exception of the Trotskyist and other
sects, the vast majority of organized workers, peasants, small
farmers, poor neighborhood councils, informal self-employed and
public school students have mobilized and demonstrated in favor
of the constitutional amendments.
The reason
for the popular majority is found in a few of the key
amendments: One article expedites land expropriation
facilitating re-distribution to the landless and small
producers. Chavez has already settled over 150,000 landless
workers on 2 million acres of land. Another amendment provides
universal social security coverage for the entire informal
sector (street sellers, domestic workers, self-employed)
amounting to 40% of the labor force. Organized and unorganized
workers’ workweek will be reduced from 40 to 36 hours a week
(Monday to Friday noon) with no reduction in pay. Open admission
and universal free higher education will open greater
educational opportunities for lower class students. Amendments
will allow the government to by-pass current bureaucratic
blockage of the socialization of strategic industries, thus
creating greater employment and lower utility costs. Most
important, an amendment will increase the power and budget of
neighborhood councils to legislate and invest in their
communities.
The
electorate supporting the constitutional amendments is voting in
favor of their socio-economic and class interests; the issue of
extended re-election of the President is not high on their
priorities: And that is the issue that the Right has focused on
in calling Chavez a ‘dictator’ and the referendum a ‘coup’.
The Opposition
With
strong financial backing from the US Embassy ($8 million dollars
in propaganda alone according to the Embassy memo) and the
business elite and ‘free time’ by the right-wing media, the
Right has organized a majority of the upper middle class
students from the private universities, backed by the Catholic
Church hierarchy, large swaths of the affluent middle class
neighborhoods, entire sectors of the commercial, real estate and
financial middle classes and apparently sectors of the military,
especially officials in the National Guard. While the Right has
control over the major private media, public television and
radio back the constitutional reforms. While the Right has its
followers among some generals and the National Guard, Chavez has
the backing of the paratroops and legions of middle rank
officers and most other generals.
The
outcome of the Referendum of December 2 is a decisive historical
event first and foremost for Venezuela but also for the rest of
the Americas. A positive vote (Vota ‘Sí’) will provide the legal
framework for the democratization of the political system, the
socialization of strategic economic sectors, empower the poor
and provide the basis for a self-managed factory system. A
negative vote (or a successful US-backed civil-military
uprising) will reverse the most promising living experience of
popular self-rule, of advanced social welfare and democratically
based socialism. A reversal, especially a military dictated
outcome, will lead to a massive blood bath, such as we have not
seen since the days of the Indonesian Generals’ Coup of 1966,
which killed over a million workers and peasants or the
Argentine Coup of 1976 in which over 30,000 Argentines were
murdered by the US backed Generals.
A decisive
vote for ‘Sí’ will not end US military and political
destabilization campaigns but it will certainly undermine and
demoralize their collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the
Venezuelans have a rendezvous with history.
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