[Mb-civic] Hugo Chavez: A Walk in the Footsteps of Arbenz, Allende

[Mike Blaxill]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/082905G.shtml 

Hugo Chavez: A Walk in the Footsteps of Arbenz,
Allende
    By Dr. Rosa Maria Pegueros
    Common Dreams


    Monday 29 August 2005


    For more than forty years, Cuban leader Fidel
Castro has been the target of countless United
States- and CIA-sponsored assassination attempts.
I shudder to think what might have happened if
Cuba had been endowed with large reserves of oil.
Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez may learn the
consequences of such a blessing very soon.


    If television evangelist Pat Robertson's
controversial statements suggesting that the U.S.
send in a covert operative to take out Chavez
were not just the words of a madman but a trial
balloon floated for the administration, the
firestorm that met them should stay the
president's hand even though, in the bellicose
preacher's words, "It is cheaper than starting
another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you
know, strong-arm dictator. . .and I don't think
any oil shipments will stop.


    We may have "the ability to take him out, and
I think the time has come that we exercise that
ability," as Robertson says, but with the
administration's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and
its saber-rattling towards Korea and Iran, one
would think Bush has his hands full.


    Hugo Chavez has set up medical clinics in the
poorest neighborhoods in his country, staffing
them with Cuban doctors, not that that United
States has offered any medical assistance. He has
created school music programs that have resulted
in lower street crime and a resurgence of
classical music: The would-be delinquents are
spending their time practicing the violin instead
of knocking over old ladies. The nerve of that
guy! Wasting our money-or at least the money we
pay for oil from Venezuela-on such effete
solutions to social problems!


    More to the point, his administration has
kept entrepreneurs from controlling the oil
industry and sucking out all the profits to make
themselves wealthy. Chavez has kept a tight rein
on it, reinvesting the money for the benefit of
the Venezuelan people. He has successfully
responded to the needs of its citizens in ways
that have made his socialist ideas very popular;
the people have elected him twice and overcome a
coup against him.


    The proper role of the government is to
protect and make the best use of a nation's
resources for its citizens. There is nothing in
our Constitution about making the most money for
a politician's supporters. In fact, the
Constitution specifically mandates that we
"promote the general Welfare." There's nothing
communist about it.


    The United States has a number of genuine
problems with Hugo Chavez. First of all,
government control of the oil industry shuts out
entrepreneurs and foreign investors-think of
Standard Oil, Gulf Oil, and Exxon. Secondly, it
has the second largest oil reserve in the
Americas. Canada, with 171 billion barrels of oil
is first, though second in the world to Saudi
Arabia. According to the U.S. Energy Information
Administration, Venezuela holds the ninth place
in oil reserves with 77 billion barrels of oil.
It is also extremely important to the U.S. in
part because of its proximity. Recently, we have
purchased more of Venezuela's oil than anyone
has.


    Chavez's trolling for other markets threatens
America's access to Venezuelan oil even more
though both he and his representatives have been
very clear that they are not planning to reduce
exports to the U.S. Considering the presumably
diminishing Saudi Arabian oil reserves, as well
as China's and our increasing demand for oil,
this is not an abstract threat except, he says,
if we attempt to assassinate or overthrow him.


    The Saudis, possessors of the largest oil
reserves in the world are extremely secretive
about the amount of oil still available in their
reserves. The U.S. government estimates that they
have 261 billion barrels of oil but we cannot
know for sure. They have good reason to play
their cards so close to the vest: If they were to
confirm that they are approaching their peak of
production, it might spur the west to serious
efforts to create alternative forms of fuel such
as solar, wind and nuclear power. If those forms
were to become widely available, it could cut
into the Saudi market. It makes one wonder if
Iran's claim that it is developing nuclear power
because it is an alternative form of power is
true. While Iran holds the world's fourth largest
reserve of oil, with 126 billion barrels of oil,
it would be exercising a rare form of prescience
in planning for a future when that oil will be
gone.


    Aside from America's concerns about oil,
Chavez has made a number of pronouncements that
have irritated the administration and its
friends. He has responded strongly to rumors that
the U.S. is planning to invade Venezuela saying
that he would stand up to any such invasion. Just
what would Bush expect him to say?


    Venezuela is right to publicize these rumors.
If Cuba's experience with the Bay of Pigs
invasion, the Cuban missile crisis and subsequent
assassination attempts on Castro; the
CIA-sponsored coups against Arbenz in Guatemala
in 1954 and against Allende in Chile in 1972 are
any measure of our government's willingness to
disregard international law for our own ends,
Chavez cannot take these rumors lightly
particularly with the trigger-happy Bush at the
helm.


    It is not just the history of American
state-sponsored terrorism about which Venezuela
is justified in worrying but the arrogant
expectation that any government or leader that
disagrees with us poses a risk to the American
way of life. Latin American leaders are
especially endangered.


    As Pat Robertson observed, "We have the
Monroe Doctrine, and we have other doctrines that
we have announced, and without question, this is
a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a
huge pool of oil that could hurt us very badly.


    President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
officially repudiated the Monroe Doctrine in 1934
ending U.S. interventionism in Latin America and
replacing it with his "Good Neighbor" policy.
Those damnable Democrats! But remember that
President Gerald Ford issued an Executive Order
that banned U.S. government agents from
assassinating foreign leaders.


    In September 2001, in the wake of the attacks
on the World Trade Center, President Bush
rescinded that order and lowered the standard of
proof for assassinations to those merely
"suspected" of being terrorists. But long before
George W. Bush became president the U.S had
disregarded its Good Neighbor policy with
interventions in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama,
and the Dominican Republic, to name a few.


    Golda Meir famously said, "Even paranoids
have enemies." Whatever mainstream America may
think of Hugo Chavez, he is right to be wary.


    --------

    Dr. Rosa Maria Pegueros is an associate
professor of history at the University of Rhode
Island. She may be reached at pegueros at uri.edu.