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Chavez's Speech
"Go
ahead, make my day."
By Joaquin Bustelo
11/30/07 "ICH"
-- -- Chavez spoke to a huge crowd in Caracas on Friday. It
was by a significant amount the hardest speech I've ever heard
from him, mostly to the effect of "Go ahead, make my day." (No,
I'm not in Venezuela. I listened to it -- most of it at any rate
-- at work, where we have access to the satellite signals of the
government VTV and the opposition Globo channel).
Chavez has ordered the military to protect the oilfields and
other installations and warned that if there is any sabotage,
any US-inspired disturbances Sunday night, oil shipments to the
U.S. will be cut off immediately. He singled out the bourgeois
media and said that any attempt to violate the law --which
forbids publishing polls in the week before the election and
(alleged) election results before polls close-- will lead to
their immediate shutdown. He warned international broadcasters
--and CNN by name, and repeatedly-- that this or any other sort
of shenanigans will be met with the expulsion of their staff
from the country.
He's also expressed very clearly the line he has taken
especially since coming back from abroad, that this referendum
is an up-and-down, yes-or-no vote on the revolution and his
presidency. I'm sure the ultralefts will go, "Aha! Bonapartist
plebiscite!" But sometimes you've just got to call things by
their right name. That is what the fight is about -- not whether
the subordinate clause in article 53 is infelicitously worded.
And he made very clear what being with the revolution means --
it means going against the oligarchs, against Uribe, against the
American imperialists, against the King of Spain, against the
European imperialists, and being in solidarity with progressive
and revolutionary forces throughout the world in general and
with Fidel in particular.
He read and commented on Fidel's latest column, which Walter I'm
sure has already forwarded to the list.
The rally was at the same place where the opposition held its
event yesterday, which CNN described as having been "hundreds of
thousands." Without having been there and knowing the area, it
is hard to judge, but VTV had no problem yesterday finding areas
of this avenue with very few people, even though the main area
of the rally was full for what looked like several blocks. VTV
today made a point of scanning from what seemed to be the same
vantage point to show there were people much further back, and
Chavez highlighted it also. I did not see the opposition channel
I have access to try to show that the crowd thinned out after a
few blocks; but I wasn't monitoring them all the time.
Since Chavez came back from abroad and mounted what's been in
essence a ferocious counter-offensive against the opposition, it
seems to have wilted a fair deal. An adventurist attempt to
disrupt major traffic arteries a couple of days ago (they were
going to leaflet motorists was the claim ...) was dispersed with
vigor, dispatch, and a good deal of tear gas. Some of the
students came with their own tear gas masks and tried to provoke
an escalation by pelting the police with rocks, but the police
responded only with more tear gas. "Strangely," an opposition TV
mobile unit just "happened" to be nearby and filmed the events,
but it did not appear to have evoked the hoped-for outrage when
it was broadcast, perhaps because any idiot could see it was the
opposition forces that provoked the incident and tried to
escalate it (unsuccessfully).
So now it is a question of waiting for the next right wing
provocation. Chavez has promised a no-holds-barred response and
seemed to go way out of his way to make sure everyone understood
there was no wiggle room, he was consciously painting himself
into a corner. The deployment of army and other military units
to guard oil fields and other strategic installations has the
added advantage of making a coup by some disloyal officers much
harder to carry out.
But the opposition has also painted itself into a corner. The
impression I get is that they've depicted this as the final, now
or never, effort to turn back the revolution, and it won't be
easy to get their hotheads to change course. Although Chavez and
his supporters tend to present this all as a conscious,
coordinated plot, the truth is that there is a law of social
struggles that applies here to the opposition especially: when
you set controlled forces into motion, you also set uncontrolled
forces into motion.
The next couple of days will tell the tale.
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