chávez vs. the corporacracy

Having spent the entire day hopping between links to jump-start my education regarding the policies of populist Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez - which seem (at least on the surface) to be a promising model of successful social democracy - I have the unfortunate task of attempting to narrow the topic sufficiently for a single blog entry. I think it is crucial to get a good handle on the recent history of Venezuela, which sets the context for the current situation, before we can begin to come to a consensus concerning its politics.

I have settled on the topic of the Venezuelan media, which was so pivotal to the 2002 coup attempt, and the ensuing people's counter-coup which returned Chávez to power. Let's first describe that coup attempt. On December 6, 1998, Chávez and his Fifth Republican Movement party were elected with ~56% of the popular vote. On July 31, 2000, he maintained his presidential status, attaining ~59% of the vote. Chávez ran on a platform of socializing the state, promising improvement for the roughly 80% of the Venezuelan population that lives in poverty, despite that country's impressive oil and agricultural resources.

In accordance with this platform, Chávez has (mainly in a package of 49 laws enacted in November, 2001; see this, this, and this):

• Organized referenda on writing a new constitution for Venezuela, obtaining the authority to form a "Constitutional Assembly", with the authority to suspend Congress and institute law while it reorganized the state apparatus (this was, according to its proponents, an unfortunate but necessary step in the process of uprooting a thoroughly corrupt system). The resulting constitution, which renamed Venezuela to the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela", was passed in a December, 1999, referendum
• Instituted public programs for immunization and food distribution (which did not exist before)
• Instituted state-funded health care and education programs
• Required wealthy businesses to pay taxes (!)
• Implemented a land reform policy called Ley de Tierras ("Land Law"), which included "taxing unused landholdings, expropriating unused private lands (with compensation), and giving inheritable, unsellable land grants to small farmers and farm collectives"
• Made moves to reorganize labour unions in Venezuela, which some see as having entrenched capital-driven interests
• Implemented oil nationalization reforms, including mandating "state possession of a majority of stocks in all mixed companies engaged in primary activity in the oil industry"

Of course, these reforms were a horror story for those in the Western world who had claimed a victory for the Washington Consensus (as well as the big players such as Conoco and ExxonMobil), as it was essentially a revival of the policy reforms of the democratically-elected Chilean socialist leader Salvatore Allende. Such nationalization is a slap in the face to corporate interests who - in direct terms - profit by shamelessly pillaging a country's resources. It also carries a more subtle threat to corporate imperialism, in that it manifests the possibility of an authentically democratic socialist state (but see this), which, in the words of Henry Kissinger (in this memo from 1970):

..would surely have an impact on -- and even precedent value for -- other parts of the world, especially in Italy; the imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it.

The U.S. responded to this threat in 1973 by backing a coup d'etat (see the actual unclassified documents) by General Augusto Pinochet, which resulted in the murder of Allende, the kidnapping, torture, and murder of thousands of his supporters, and a radical reversal of publicly-supported social measures resulting in a mass privatization of Chile's entire society. All of the elements of the 1973 Chilean coup are present in modern-day Venezuela, with the threat of "narco-terrorism" replacing that of the communist scourge as the fear-based public relations spin. Of course, old dogs dislike new tricks, and the old dogs who pull the strings decided a Pinochet-type approach was in order for Venezuela.

The (predictable) coup d'etat attempt on Chávez's administration arrived on April 11, 2002. There are of course countless variables involved in this event (including the issue of whether or not the U.S. was involved), but as stated, my present focus will be the central role of the media in both the coup itself, and the counter-coup that followed, as it highlights the true power of media to influence the outcomes of world events. Discussed in detail here and here, mainstream Venezuelan media sources were central to the execution of the coup (there are also suggestions of corporate media complicity in events leading up to the coup, but I'll leave that for now).

The coup itself was triggered by resistence to Chávez's attempts to nationalize the country's largest oil concern, PDVSA, which resulted in his firing of top executives and middle managers on April 8. On April 9, the country's largest union federation, CTV, held a two-day strike, which was joined by a strike/lockout by its largest commerce organization, Fedecámaras. On April 11, a march of 100,000 - 200,000 protesters clashed with a pro-Chavez demonstration, resulting in 18 dead and over 100 wounded. During this initial violence, Chávez began to issue public appeals for calm, while the four main commercial media outlets (each outspoken opponents of Chávez's policies) began to broadcast these messages alongside images of the violence, meanwhile reporting that the violence was incited by pro-Chávez gunmen (detailed here).

Simultaneously, there are reports (see here) that the Caracas police, controlled by the anti-Chávez mayor Alfredo Peña, forcibly shut down a number of independent "community media" radio and television stations during the coup, while forcing another to play nothing but music during the period. These forces also took over the state-run television network, Channel 8. Clearly, controlling the airwaves was a critical aspect of the coup's chances for success, and while independent community-based sources were gagged (but not completely), it is evident that the commercial stations were on-board from the start (see here, here, and here). For instance, in a quote attributed to PROVEA, a Venezuelan human rights NGO, on April 13, 2002:

A journalist who asked not to be identified, the Production Chief of one of the principal TV channels in the country, denounced that the directors of the company impeded the journalists from transmitting information about the current events.

One particularly controversial piece of footage which was looped constantly by private stations during the coup attempt showed a group of Chávez supporters firing guns from an overpass, allegedly at a crowd of demonstrators below. This footage, however, was very brief, and as documented in the Irish film Will Not Be Televised, alternative footage indicates that the street below was actually empty at the time it was shot.



On April 12/13, top military officers arrested Chávez and allegedly forced his resignation, replacing him as an interim measure with the president of Fedecámaras, Pedro Carmona, whose first acts were to dissolve the National Assembly, Supreme Court, and Constitution. During this time, foreign and media agencies, including the New York Times, Reuters, and CNN, were reporting - without substantiation - that Chávez had resigned and/or fled the country. The official reaction of the U.S. was to pin the blame squarely on Chávez (from New York Times):

Hours after Mr. Chávez was overthrown, Ari Fleischer, then the White House spokesman, said, "the Chávez government provoked the crisis," while Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said that "undemocratic actions committed or encouraged by the Chávez administration provoked yesterday's crisis."

The U.S. media, including the Times, played right along with this official story (see here and here):

In an April 13 editorial, the New York Times triumphantly declared that Chávez's "resignation" meant that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." Conspicuously avoiding the word "coup," the Times explained that Chávez "stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader."

Prompting an apologetic editorial a couple of days later:

In his three years in office, Mr. Chávez has been such a divisive and demagogic leader that his forced departure last week drew applause at home and in Washington. That reaction, which we shared, overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed. Forcibly unseating a democratically elected leader, no matter how badly he has performed, is never something to cheer.

Due in no small part to the work of independent media sources, massive pro-Chávez rallies were recruited from the barrios which constitute his electoral base, and Chávez was eventually reinstated. During this time, none of the major private stations covered these rallies, preferring instead to pretend that the coup had succeeded and playing cartoons and cooking shows while some of the most momentous events in Venezuela's history were unfolding.

The story continues. However, I think it's time for this entry to wrap up. I won't leave you with any opinions on the success of Chávez's policies in attaining the mandate for which he was elected, nor the recent developments which have seen him consolidate power and lose his popularity. These topics are for future entries. One development that is of relevance is the changes to media freedom that have occurred in the aftermath of this coup. While the major private stations continue to broadcast, human rights groups (particularly the Human Rights Watch, but see this and this), have begun to criticize the means with which Chávez's government has acted to control private media, particularly the larger outlets which continue to strongly oppose him. This being said, the fact that these clearly corporate-controlled operations are allowed to broadcast at all after their roles in the coup attempt (and further acts of sedition, including involvement in a mass-strike/lockout in December 2002-January 2003, aimed at crippling state oil production) suggests that Chávez is not the tyrant he is commonly portrayed as in mainstream Western media.

Last year, the government of Venezuela decided not to renew the license of the major television network RCTV, one of those stations who participated in the coup. This evoked condemnation from various organizations (from here):

Several NGOs of note also voiced baseless and disingenuous criticism claiming Chavez violated standards of free speech and freedom of the press. They know better and acted shamelessly doing it. They include Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and Peruvian-based Press and Society Institute monitoring Andean region free press attacks and funded by the US National Endowment of Democracy (NED) that only supports media allied with its neoliberal right wing agenda.

It seems to be quite a mild penalty, however, for its previous and ongoing behaviour, which far exceeds the role of a critical and independent media agency and is very clearly motivated by a partisan agenda. Secondly, if Chávez were truly intent on censoring his opposition, he is doing a horrible job, given that vocal opposition to him is a common and tolerated occurrence. This appears more to me to be in line with his policy of replacing corporate interests with community interests, i.e., the increasingly popular "Community Media movement" of the small radio and television broadcasters which were targeted in the coup attempt and in general by opposition forces which still hold sway in Venezuela (see here).

The result is not such a clear picture. Indeed, in doing research for this it was exceedingly difficult to find information from mainstream media sources. Perhaps this is a strategy by - umm, them - to obscure the fact that Venezuela's economy is healthy and growing, and that the corporacracy might actually be losing to Hugo Chávez...? More to come.