CARACAS, Venezuela–As noted previously, Venezuela, the hybrid home of fast-forwarding, sloppy socialism, is a land of contrasts. Rain forests and skyscrapers. Oil wealth and nasty slums. Spanish scions and African ancestors. Capitalists and campesinos.
There’s another contrast.
This one’s made in America. It’s a foreign policy artifact that’s at least at odds with the spirit of the Venezuelan law (not unlike the one in the U.S.) that proscribes outsiders from directly financing political parties and campaigns. That is, interfering. It’s a sovereignty thing.
Rather than rely on the CIA to reprise the bad old coup days of U.S. involvement in the likes of Guatemala (1954) or Chile (1973), the influencing now is more nuanced. Quasi-governmental organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Office of Transition Initiatives are charged with influencing events in countries — such as Venezuela — that can significantly impact the U.S. They do it in the obeisant name of “promoting democracy” and “supporting dialogue.” It’s a loophole a fleet of Hummers could drive through.
To many, this is certainly no revelation. In 1983, the NED was established via Congressional legislation, and Congressional funding was authorized. In 1990, it played a major role in Nicaragua by helping Violeta Chamorro defeat Sandinista President Daniel Ortega. It beat funding contra guerrillas.
More than a decade ago New York Times journalist John Broder famously referenced the intelligence morph when he wrote: “The National Endowment for Democracy, created 15 years ago to do in the open what the CIA has done surreptitiously for decades, spends $30 million a year to support things like political parties, labor unions, dissident movements and the news media in dozens of countries.” In fact, Allen Weinstein, the NED’s first president, was more than up front with the NED’s raison d’etre with this 1991 acknowledgement: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
So much for democratic ideals. Geopolitics is about winning and losing – not playing nice.
It’s no secret, for example, that the U.S. didn’t just anxiously hope for the best outcome when the abortive coup against President Hugo Chavez took place in 2002. Orchestration happens.
The U.S. mustered neither disapproval nor diplomatic concern. It certainly didn’t condemn the coup, as egregious an affront as there is to the concept of elected leadership. Consequently, it’s no surprise that the NED, for example, is helping Primero Justicia, a relatively new and key opposition party to President Chavez.
Mary Ponte, an articulate, 30-something spokeswoman for PJ, acknowledged the outside aid – but maintained the non-governmental semantics. PJ, she said, “does not receive money from the U.S. Government.” However, pointed out Ponte, it does receive NED “support for training, scholarships and workshops.”
Oh.
Not that PJ is nothing more than an “Anyone But Chavez” alternative. It has viability, if not political parity, and can make a case. It generally lambastes Chavez for “unfulfilled promises” as well as a revisionist-socialist school curriculum, “deteriorating hospitals,” unmet infrastructure needs, rising crime rates and a communication climate of “permanent confrontation.”
It also wants him weakened and defeated – not ousted.
The point is this. Not unlike any other country, America’s own self-interest is a legitimate priority, and the U.S. would obviously be remiss not to make its case in countries that matter. But that begs three questions: What is the U.S. “case”? “Does it represent what’s in this country’s ‘enlightened’ self-interest?” And “Can we make it without impinging on another country’s sovereignty?”
And how welcome would it be if such queries about how the U.S. comports itself in a complex world became high-profile issues during the upcoming, general-election presidential campaign?
This arguably goes to the core of America’s overarching foreign-policy questions: Where does the U.S. fit in a world too filled with countries that revile us? And what, if anything, could we – and should we – do about it?
We obviously don’t have to like how Venezuela, a country steeped in ethnic inequity and historically inured to massive poverty and indifferent politicians, is playing its self-determination card. We simply have to respect it. And maybe learn this seemingly self-evident lesson: If the leader of a country is removed by coup, we can at least not celebrate. It’s really poor democratic and diplomatic form – especially when the coup is quickly reversed.
Will the occasionally harsh exchanges between the Bush and Chavez administrations be escalating? Some think America’s presidential election and Venezuela’s gubernatorial and mayoral elections later this year will provide the perfect rhetorical storm for just that.
Count John Fredrikson among those who anticipate more confrontational positions by both sides.
“Let’s face it, political rhetoric stirs up the base in the U.S. – and the same here,” says the Caracas-based director of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. “Chavez can talk about cutting oil to the U.S., but he can’t. In the short term, he cannot afford to do that. There would be panic.” Expect “rhetorical confrontation,” underscored Fredrikson, but not “real” confrontation.
According to Phil Gunson, the Latin American correspondent for The Economist magazine, Chavez could try to play more than an oil card.
“Chavez will make increasingly desperate attempts to force a confrontation,” predicted Gunson. “The relationship with Iran and Hezbolla is one route he could use, if all else fails. That would make it very hard for Washington to hold out.”
The Economist’s Gunson said that to the extent people are supporting anyone, the right-wing opposition to Chavez would back (John) McCain for president, while the more moderate oposicionistas “would probably like (Barack) Obama to win, because that would take the wind out of Chavez’s ‘anti-imperialist’ campaign. It would be so much harder to make Obama a hate figure.”
Alex Correa is an Afro-Venzuelan instructor at the Bolivarian University in Caracas. He lectures on Venezuela’s multi-racial history and the vestiges of traditionalEurocentric models. He’s underwhelmed by the prospect that America might elect an African American president.
“You have Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell,” he noted. “But in the USA, you have a mindset. So, I don’t know that it would matter much. Color by itself doesn’t mean much. It’s PR.”
And then there is Maria Alejandra Escobar, a young print journalist. “Chavez,” she explained, “is the father figure for the continent. He takes positions; the people love him.” She also added that he “needs an enemy” not unlike the way Fidel needed one – and subsequently played the U.S.-as-scapegoat card.
And one other thing. She’s read “The Audacity of Hope.”
“I love Obama,” she giggled.
* Who would have thought? The heavyset guy with the buzz cut, T-shirt and casual jacket at the spacious health facility could have been an Ybor City bouncer. But he was Dr. Rafael Antonio Broche Morera, the director general of Salvador Allende Centro de Salud Integral. The Havana, Cuba native is a key component in Venezuela’s nationwide plan for better health care via a series of hierarchal clinics throughout the country.
And he had made it clear that he wanted to meet the (Latin American Working Group) delegation member who was from Tampa. As it turned out, Ybor City wasn’t far off. Dr. Broche was in Tampa earlier in the year.
“I like your city,” he said. “You know La Teresita ?”
“Of c
ourse,” I responded. “It’s on a street they call ‘Boliche Boulevard.'”
“I had the picadillo,” he informed. “Excellent.”
Small world – big geopolitical differences notwithstanding.
*While oil, security, FARC and narcotics dominate the often shrill exchanges that pass for dialogue between the U.S. and Venezuela, there’s one conversation that is refreshingly civil – albeit emotional. Baseball.
Imagine sitting at the La Buena Paella Restaurant Bar at the Hotel El Paseo in Caracas and throwing down Solera Lights with some colleagues and new-found, local friends. No talk of paramilitaries, the price of crude or Bolivarian anything — only observations about Johan Santana , who was pitching for the New York Mets against the Florida Marlins.
Venezuelans have been serious Major League Baseball fans since Luis Aparacio broke in with the Chicago White Sox in the 1950s. Now they have players, including Caracas’s own Dioner Navarro of the Rays , on virtually every MLB roster. (In fact, the Rays have a prospect academy in the small, northern Venezuelan town of Guacara.)
Courtesy of a FSN satellite feed, we continued to watch Venezuelan native Santana, who might be more lionized — especially by the poor — than Chavez. No one was suggesting he give his money away in the barrios – only that he get better control of his slider. He did.
There’s hope.