Venezuela’s Chavez Seeks to Reshape Latin America
By Jerry Brewer
In October 2000, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela
signed a pact with Fidel Castro, agreeing to supply a third of Cuba’s petroleum needs in return for Cuban help in training
teachers and developing curricula for “Bolivarian” schools. Even
with Venezuela’s high unemployment rate, reports indicate that Chavez gave jobs to Cuban doctors, sports coaches, and
intelligence officers.
History shows that Cuba’s past dependence on
Soviet markets and military aid allowed Castro to build a formidable military force.
The Soviet KGB helped Castro with tight Communist Party control over all levels of government, media, and education. All this resulting in a ruthless Soviet-style internal police force.
Chavez has merged his security and intelligence services
with those of Cuba. Too, a Venezuelan treaty with Cuba grants Cuban judges and
members of the Cuban state security apparatus jurisdiction inside Venezuela. These
forces have trained and staffed Bolivarian security forces.
So what is the significance of this to the
region? It is about control but not freedom.
During the 1980s, Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union
supported guerrilla wars throughout Central America. The result however was that
millions of people were displaced, and approximately one million Central Americans migrated to the United States seeking safety
and freedom. This migration, legally and illegally, continues today. A fact that rebukes those who claim Latin America is rejecting the Washington consensus, for people are
obviously not climbing fences and walls to migrate to a leftist ideology.
Many leftist leaders, who profess to lead the poor
and indigent by thinking outside the box, are essentially boxing in those most in need of help, and silencing their right
to speak out against their governments. Strategies of Chavez, in bringing the
oil managers of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qadhafi to reorganize the Venezuelan state oil monopoly and place it under Chavez’s
political control, and placing the company in the hands of Ali Rodriguez, a former Maoist guerrilla, are not good signs for
the welfare of the populace. Too, Rodriguez has openly identified with extreme
Islamic causes in the past.
Have we ignored Venezuelan cries in opposition to
Chavez and calls for a return to democracy? Have we ignored the seizing of virtually
all predominant power by the Chavez regime?
The social revolution of Hugo Chavez in 2001 used
presidential decrees to confiscate property and take control of the education of Venezuela’s youth, along a “rigid
ideological line.” Does an international community see through rational
eyes the stripping of the regime’s critics of basic human rights, and the erosion of the remaining pro-democratic opposition
movements?
The United States seems to have ignored two years
of cries for help from Venezuela. During this time Venezuelan citizens, businessmen,
political leaders, military officers, clergymen, and others have made their issues known to Washington. Moreover, many believe that the coup attempt against Chavez on April 11, 2002 was a genuine Venezuelan
action, for there was virtually no evidence of implicit U.S. action or encouragement – and quite frankly an absence
of any overt policy or diplomatic initiatives to further the opposition movement.
The warnings to the U.S. Executive Branch by Congress
in 2002 were apparently also ignored. Congressman Henry Hyde wrote a letter to
President George W. Bush stating his opposition to Chavez, and left-leaning presidential candidates at the time in Brazil
and Ecuador. Hyde wrote, “There is a real prospect that Castro, Chavez, and Lula da Silva could constitute an axis of evil
in the Americas which might soon have nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.”
This implying that people who campaigned for office
on promises of economic equality posed a threat to world safety. And no hunts
for weapons of mass destruction in Latin America have ensued on the basis of the claims as far as public reports show.
There is a current dubious distinction and
contrast differentiating Chavez from the leftist leaders of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. To date they have not behaved as dictators, although watchful eyes continue to search for extremism. As for Venezuela, its people, right’s organizations and neighboring countries
have a right to show concern for Chavez’s regime of increased repression, militarization, and weapons imports.
A free international community knows that it is in
its best interests to encourage a stable and democratic Latin America. And Latin
American nations, as well as the United States, should not seek an accommodation with Venezuela’s current regime –
but rather ask for and work towards reform agendas that will insure a peaceful hemisphere.
Second of two parts.
Jerry Brewer, the Vice President of Criminal Justice International Associates, a global risk mitigation firm headquartered
in Montgomery, Alabama, is also a columnist with MexiData.info. He can be reached via e-mail
at Cjiaincusa@aol.com
