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Support for Chavez Unwavering in Slums of Venezuelan Capital    •

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  Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton's Band
  By Greg Palast
  gregpalast.com

  Monday 16 August 2004

Why Venezuela has voted again for their 'Negro e Indio' president.

  There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.'

  I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

  That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

  This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.

  But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a "negro e indio" -- a "Black and Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the Jaguar.

  So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in elections and today with a nearly two-to-one landslide victory in a recall referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with our democracy-promoting White House?

  Maybe it's the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the White House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of oil. It was a 'Goldilocks' plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel.

  But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three top oil industry lobbyists.

  Why should Chavez worry about what Dick thinks? Because, said one of the oil men, the Veep in his Bunker, not the pretzel-chewer in the White House, "runs energy policy in the United States."

  And what seems to have gotten our Veep's knickers in a twist is not the price of oil, but who keeps the loot from the current band-busting spurt in prices. Chavez had his Congress pass another oil law, the "Law of Hydrocarbons," which changes the split. Right now, the oil majors - like PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of the proceeds of the sale of Venezuela oil; the nation gets only 16%.

  Chavez wanted to double his Treasury's take to 30%. And for good reason. Landless, hungry peasants have, over decades, drifted into Caracas and other cities, building million-person ghettos of cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez promised to do something about that.

  And he did. "Chavez gives them bread and bricks," one Venezuelan TV reporter told me. The blonde TV newscaster, in the middle of a publicity shoot, said the words "pan y ladrillos" with disdain, making it clear that she never touched bricks and certainly never waited in a bread line.

  But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton's ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- enemy.

  So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will of the Venezuela electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez' government "legitimate." Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

  A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez' supposed unpopularity and "dictatorial" manner seized US news and op-ed pages, ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times.

  But some facts just can't be smothered in propaganda ink. While George Bush can appoint the government of Iraq and call it "sovereign," the government of Venezuela is appointed by its people. And the fact is that most people in this slum-choked land don't drive Jaguars or have their hair tinted in Miami. Most look in the mirror and see someone "negro e indio," as dark as their President Hugo.

  The official CIA handbook on Venezuela says that half the nation's farmers own only 1% of the land. They are the lucky ones, as more peasants owned nothing. That is, until their man Chavez took office. Even under Chavez, land redistribution remains more a promise than an accomplishment. But today, the landless and homeless voted their hopes, knowing that their man may not, against the armed axis of local oligarchs and Dick Cheney, succeed for them. But they are convinced he would never forget them.

  And that's a fact.

  ------

  Greg Palast's reports from Venezuela for BBC Television's Newsnight and the Guardian papers of Britain earned a California State University Journalism School "Project Censored" award for 2002. View photos and Palast's reports on Venezuela at www.GregPalast.com.

  

  

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  Support for Chavez Unwavering in Slums of Venezuelan Capital
  By Ken Silverstein
  Los Angles Times

  Monday 16 August 2004

  CARACAS, Venezuela - The rich hate him, saying he has stirred up class warfare. The privately owned media, closely aligned with his political opponents, pillory him daily as an enemy of democracy. And the Bush administration, which supported those who briefly overthrew him in 2002, describes him as a dangerous leftist.

  But in the shantytowns here in the capital, President Hugo Chavez is revered as a national savior.

  "Our hope is with Chavez," said Carlos Contreras, who urged residents to support the president in Sunday's recall vote. "All of our other presidents promised to help the poor, but he's the first one who has kept his word."

  Chavez's support is concentrated among the poor, who make up a majority of this country's 25 million people. The soaring price of oil, a major export, has flooded the national treasury, allowing the government to spend heavily on social programs and fund what Chavez calls a "Revolution for the Poor."

  Like many in the winding, hillside shantytown of brick-and-tin shacks in Catia district, Contreras has no steady work. He owns a truck and occasionally is hired as a mover or for other odd jobs.

  Even so, he said life had improved dramatically since Chavez was elected in 1998. From a spot that offers a sweeping view of the neighborhood, Contreras pointed to a new health clinic staffed by Cuban doctors. The government has also opened several nearby markets that sell subsidized food to the poor.

  There are new literacy programs, and Contreras, who is 47 and hadn't studied beyond third grade, now attends a school built by the government. He hopes to earn a high school degree.

  If the opposition has support here, it does not readily show its face other than a handful of "Yes" signs scattered about the neighborhood. The walls of the shantytown and windows in homes are covered with red signs urging a "No" vote in the recall referendum.

  "This whole street is Chavista," Contreras said as he led a tour through the neighborhood. "Maybe one in a hundred is for the opposition."

  Nationwide, voters are divided over the recall, but in poor neighborhoods like this one, the president appears to have overwhelming support.

  The opposition and the Bush administration have attacked Chavez for his close friendship with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, but that relationship doesn't bother poor Venezuelans who receive free treatment at government health clinics from Cuban doctors. Before, the poor had, at best, little access to healthcare.

  "Chavez has love for the people," Contreras said. "He was poor and he understands the needs of the poor."

  Chavez also benefits from poor Venezuelans' skepticism of his opponents, whom they see as remnants of the country's discarded political past.

  Before Chavez won power, two elite parties exchanged power for four decades. Those governments were widely considered corrupt and squandered much of the country's oil wealth.

  Nelson Ortiz, a stocky man standing in front of a store where he sells live chickens, said he planned to vote for Chavez.

  "There are good things and bad things about the government, but with another president things would be worse," he said. "I have to thank this man because he is the first one who has used our oil for the poor."

  Similar sentiments were voiced in a number of other Caracas shantytowns, which have benefited from the same social programs seen in Catia.

  People were especially enthusiastic in the January 23 neighborhood, which is dominated by huge, dilapidated apartment buildings built in the late 1950s. From the windows, laundry hangs alongside large banners painted with a popular Chavez campaign slogan, "No al Pasado" ("No to the Past").

  "Here, you don't have to ask," a young woman said when asked how she would vote. "Everyone in this neighborhood is with the president."

  Nearby, a crowd gathered on a square in front of a neighborhood school where Chavez was expected to vote.

  Around noon, the presidential motorcade arrived, leading to a burst of fireworks and cheers from the crowd. As Chavez emerged from a blue sport utility vehicle, people began singing a campaign song, "Uh, Ah, Chavez No Se Va" ("Ooh, Ah, Chavez Isn't Leaving").

  Pastora Sivira, a primary school teacher, was among those singing the loudest. "We know he will win," she said. "We have waited for this president for too long to lose him now."

  -------

  Jump to TO Features for Tuesday August 17, 2004   

Today's TO Features -------------- William Rivers Pitt | Brain Dead, Made of Money, No Future at All Dozens of Blasts Rock Najaf; 3 American Troops Killed Bob Herbert | Suppress the Black Vote in Florida? Greg Palast | Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton's Band Trial of Mercenary Bounty-Hunter Embarrasses U.S. Bush Accused of Exploiting Hurricane Charlie Al Gore | Who's to Blame for Global Warming? Laura Martel | "The Stakes in the Election Were Not Chavez Himself" Bloodshed Continues in Sudan and Burundi Newsday | 1.3 Billion Reasons to Worry about Oil Robert Bryce | America's Achilles' Heel Text Messages for Critical Masses Family of Iraq Torture Whistleblower Threatened F.B.I. Harassing Political Activists Delegation Dispatched to Meet with Sadr Police Fire at Reporters as U.S. Tanks Roll up to Shrine Iraqi Conference on Election Plan Sinks into Chaos Chavez Appears Victorious in Venezuela t r u t h o u t  Home

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