Another CIA sponsored Coup D'Etat?
Venezuela’s D-Day: Democratic Socialism or Imperial Counter-Revolution
The December 2, 2007 Constituent Referendum
by Prof James Petras
Global Research, November 28, 2007
On November 26, 2007 the Venezuelan government broadcast and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will influence the referendum this Sunday (December 2, 2007).
The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton Steere, was addressed to the head of the CIA, Michael Hayden. The memo was entitled ‘Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer’ and updates the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym ‘HUMINT’ (Human Intelligence) which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez government. The Embassy-CIA’s polls concede that 57% of the voters approved of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted a 60% abstention.
The US operatives emphasized their capacity to recruit former Chavez supporters among the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former Minister of Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the ‘yes’ vote by 6% from its original margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives concede that they have reached their ceiling, recognizing they cannot defeat the amendments via the electoral route.
The memo then recommends that Operation Pincer (OP) [Operación Tenaza] be operationalized. OP involves a two-pronged strategy of impeding the referendum, rejecting the outcome at the same time as calling for a ‘no’ vote. The run up to the referendum includes running phony polls, attacking electoral officials and running propaganda through the private media accusing the government of fraud and calling for a ‘no’ vote. Contradictions, the report cynically emphasizes, are of no matter.
The CIA-Embassy reports internal division and recriminations among the opponents of the amendments including several defections from their ‘umbrella group’. The key and most dangerous threats to democracy raised by the Embassy memo point to their success in mobilizing the private university students (backed by top administrators) to attack key government buildings including the Presidential Palace, Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council. The Embassy is especially praiseworthy of the ex-Maoist ‘Red Flag’ group for its violent street fighting activity. Ironically, small Trotskyist sects and their trade unionists join the ex-Maoists in opposing the constitutional amendments. The Embassy, while discarding their ‘Marxist rhetoric’, perceives their opposition as fitting in with their overall strategy.
The ultimate objective of ‘Operation Pincer’ is to seize a territorial or institutional base with the ‘massive support’ of the defeated electoral minority within three or four days (before or after the elections – is not clear. JP) backed by an uprising by oppositionist military officers principally in the National Guard. The Embassy operative concede that the military plotters have run into serous problems as key intelligence operatives were detected, stores of arms were decommissioned and several plotters are under tight surveillance.
Apart from the deep involvement of the US, the primary organization of the Venezuelan business elite (FEDECAMARAS), as well as all the major private television, radio and newspaper outlets have been engaged in a vicious fear and intimidation campaign. Food producers, wholesale and retail distributors have created artificial shortages of basic food items and have provoked large scale capital flight to sow chaos in the hopes of reaping a ‘no’ vote.
President Chavez Counter-Attacks
In a speech to pro-Chavez, pro-amendment nationalist business-people (Entrepreneurs for Venezuela – EMPREVEN) Chavez warned the President of FEDECAMARAS that if he continues to threaten the government with a coup, he would nationalize all their business affiliates. With the exception of the Trotskyist and other sects, the vast majority of organized workers, peasants, small farmers, poor neighborhood councils, informal self-employed and public school students have mobilized and demonstrated in favor of the constitutional amendments.
The reason for the popular majority is found in a few of the key amendments: One article expedites land expropriation facilitating re-distribution to the landless and small producers. Chavez has already settled over 150,000 landless workers on 2 million acres of land. Another amendment provides universal social security coverage for the entire informal sector (street sellers, domestic workers, self-employed) amounting to 40% of the labor force. Organized and unorganized workers’ workweek will be reduced from 40 to 36 hours a week (Monday to Friday noon) with no reduction in pay. Open admission and universal free higher education will open greater educational opportunities for lower class students. Amendments will allow the government to by-pass current bureaucratic blockage of the socialization of strategic industries, thus creating greater employment and lower utility costs. Most important, an amendment will increase the power and budget of neighborhood councils to legislate and invest in their communities.
The electorate supporting the constitutional amendments is voting in favor of their socio-economic and class interests; the issue of extended re-election of the President is not high on their priorities: And that is the issue that the Right has focused on in calling Chavez a ‘dictator’ and the referendum a ‘coup’.
The Opposition
With strong financial backing from the US Embassy ($8 million dollars in propaganda alone according to the Embassy memo) and the business elite and ‘free time’ by the right-wing media, the Right has organized a majority of the upper middle class students from the private universities, backed by the Catholic Church hierarchy, large swaths of the affluent middle class neighborhoods, entire sectors of the commercial, real estate and financial middle classes and apparently sectors of the military, especially officials in the National Guard. While the Right has control over the major private media, public television and radio back the constitutional reforms. While the Right has its followers among some generals and the National Guard, Chavez has the backing of the paratroops and legions of middle rank officers and most other generals.
The outcome of the Referendum of December 2 is a decisive historical event first and foremost for Venezuela but also for the rest of the Americas. A positive vote (Vota ‘Sí’) will provide the legal framework for the democratization of the political system, the socialization of strategic economic sectors, empower the poor and provide the basis for a self-managed factory system. A negative vote (or a successful US-backed civil-military uprising) will reverse the most promising living experience of popular self-rule, of advanced social welfare and democratically based socialism. A reversal, especially a military dictated outcome, will lead to a massive blood bath, such as we have not seen since the days of the Indonesian Generals’ Coup of 1966, which killed over a million workers and peasants or the Argentine Coup of 1976 in which over 30,000 Argentines were murdered by the US backed Generals.
A decisive vote for ‘Sí’ will not end US military and political destabilization campaigns but it will certainly undermine and demoralize their collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the Venezuelans have a rendezvous with history.
James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by James Petras
I looked into this a couple of days ago, but I found Petras’ account difficult to verify. In any case the CIA has only three days left to disrupt the referendum, which is not enough time. The changes will go through.
Meanwhile a more important constitutional battle is happening in neighboring Bolivia – more important because the rich elite is fighting back. Bolivia could conceivably erupt into civil war.
Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, friend of Chavez, is trying to get a new constitution through, but the rich elite is doing everything possible to stop him. By law, a specially elected Constituent Assembly must present the new constitution by 14 December. The rich are working to dismantle the Constituent Assembly. They want to move Bolivia’s capitol from La Paz (where Native Americans are a majority) to the city of Sucre (where rich whites are a majority). Sucre was Bolivia’s capitol until the late 1800s. Students -- children of the elite --violently took over all major public buildings Sucre, using dynamite and Molotov cocktails. They demanded the resignation of "the shitty Indian Morales,” and set fires all over the city, gathering into mobs that forced police to retreat to the mining town of Potosi, two hours away.
In Bolivia the racial divide is more direct and overt than in Venezuela, and the white elite is much more violent. President Morales cut funding from municipal governments like that of Santa Cruz, headquarters of the rich. The rich responded by threatening to create nationwide shortages.
The CIA is much more active in Bolivia than in Venezuela. Every U.S. embassy has CIA operatives. A Zionist Jew named Philip Goldberg runs the U.S. embassy in Bolivia, and he funnels money to the elite. Therefore president Morales ordered that all outside “aid” money to Bolivia be channeled through the government. Goldberg screamed, but Morales publicized a photo of Goldberg consorting with a leading right wing business magnet, plus a well-known drug lord. This was in Santa Cruz, the elite’s capitol. Goldberg (Bush’s ambassador) had gone there to get the drug lord out of jail.
Pressure is rising between Bush and president Morales, but we don’t gear about this because the media is focusing on Venezuela. After Venezuela’s changes go through, the western media will turn to Bolivia and trot out Cold War rhetoric about “domino effects.” First Venezuela, and now Bolivia!
There are two main differences between Bolivia and Venezuela. First, the struggle in Bolivia is more clearly along racial lines, and occurs throughout the country – whereas the struggle in Venezuela is mainly between the rich and poor in Caracas.
Second and more importantly, Chavez sought political equality first, and moved more cautiously in redistributing wealth. In Bolivia, poverty was so extreme that it became intolerable. Entire families routinely committed suicide. Typically a father poisoned his wife and all his children, often with his wife’s consent, and then poisoned himself. Therefore the indigenous people are seeking political and material concessions at the same time. They don’t seek total redistribution, or socialization of all wealth or property. They don’t even seek to nationalize everything and kick out foreign corporations. They just want to share in the profits, and have minimal access to opportunities and resources. They don’t say, "We must take all the land away from the hacendados (large landowners).” Instead, they say, "We also have a right to own land.”
In October president Morales moved set up a retirement fund for all Bolivians equal to the minimum wage. The money is to come from a special hydrocarbon fund. This is not a total redistribution of wealth. It is merely designed to help people stay alive.
Of course the elite will not allow any of this. It’s partly a question of “family pride.” Bolivia, like most countries, is ruled by clans that form dynasties. In Bolivia the white dynasties resent the “shitty little brown people.”
”First Venezuela, and now Bolivia!”
In dealing with such situations, the USA would normally bribe the military of a target country, choose a dictator, and then stage a coup, as Kissinger did in Chile and Argentina. However the military in Bolivia sides with Morales, just as Venezuela’s military sides with Chavez – which is why Bush’s coup failed in April 2002. Another option is to assassinate Chavez, but assassination can backfire. Hence Bush will bribe the rich in Bolivia to support a full-blown civil war, which will open the door for a U.S. invasion to restore “democracy and security” – that is, restore the rich to unchallenged power. It will also open the door for new U.S. military bases. In 2009 the USA will lose its military base in Manta, Ecuador. The USA could open a base in Columbia, but the drug lords there (most of which cooperate with the USA) won’t allow that. Hence the most attractive option is to launch a civil war in Bolivia, using death squads hired from some neighboring country. The real prize, always, is Venezuela, plus Bolivia’s natural resources.
These struggles are not new to Bolivia. Every ten or fifteen years the rich have embarked on extermination campaigns. The difference now is Chavez in Venezuela. Plus, foreign corporations became a little too blatant. Bechtel (the U.S. company) got so blatant in the city of Chochabamba that the natives kicked them out. Bechtel took over all of their water. Human life cannot exist where there is no water.
THE NEW CONSTITUTION
The changes sought by Chavez in Venezuela’s constitution are clear and straightforward. Only rich tyrants could disagree with them.
Bolivia’s new constitution is more complex. Past constitutions were mainly modeled on the French and U.S. constitutions, which don’t really fit Bolivia’s Native Americans. The Natives value the same things that whites do (e.g., equality) but their approaches to these same goals are different. Therefore Bolivia needs institutions that recognize unique forms of pluralism and diversity. The natives don’t want to take power away from whites. They want to share power, while letting the whites manage foreign affairs and so on.
Whites, of course, don’t want to share anything.
The new constitution must be submitted by November 14. President Morales has vowed he will make the deadline.
Implementing it will be another matter.
Sucks for the impoverished Venezuelans