This week I’m travelling in Venezuela, home to one of the most extraordinary political revolutions of our time. Since coming to power in 1999, President Hugo Chávez has transformed politics in this oil-rich country.
His ‘Bolivarian’ revolution has promoted pride in the country’s history and culture, while at the same time implementing a socialist agenda to combat ubiquitous poverty.
The achievements of the Chávez government have certainly been impressive. His social humanitarian politics have resulted in a rigorous literacy programme, state-subsidised supermarkets for the country’s poorest citizens, high participation in decision-making by local councils, free education and an impressive exchange with Cuba whereby oil is exchanged for doctors and medical care.
The Chávez government has also been extraordinarily magnanimous in its dealings with the United States. Thanks to Venezuela, millions of poor Americans receive heating oil in winter at 40 per cent of the normal price!
Despite this, the US is likely to push for war against Venezuela in the next few years. There have already been clashes on the border between Venezuela and the US proxy regime of Colombia, with two Venezuelan paramilitaries recently shot by their Colombian counterparts, while American drones have been spotted trespassing Venezuelan airspace.
The Columbian government has over 30,000 paramilitaries, the so-called ‘death squads’ allegedly responsible for the massacres of entire villages in an effort to dissuade them from supporting the Marxist-Leninist Farc rebels.
The western press has always represented Farc as merely a band of narco-terrorists. But nothing could be further from the truth. Farc has always opposed the tyranny of the Colombian drug trade, and has extensive programmes in place to encourage other forms of agriculture among local farmers.
In Colombia, the real narco-terrorist is the US-backed government of Uribe. It might come as a shock to the uninformed reader, but the drug trade generates considerable wealth for the US economy, with billions of laundered narco-dollars lodged in Wall Street banks every year. And readers of Prof Peter Dale Scott’s work will be aware that drug traffiking has long been a major source of financing for the covert operations of the CIA throughout the world.
Pinning the blame on the Farc guerrillas is just subterfuge – and Hugo Chávez is one of the few world leaders to have pointed out that fact.
While there are admittedly still many problems in Venezuela, it is likely that much expenditure will soon have to be channelled into the military from now on in order to protect the country from US terrorism.
Chávez is well aware of how US foreign policy works: protect US interests in foreign states by bribing politicians and training the military to repress the people. And if the people rise up and oppose this rule, the US responds by bombing the entire population. It’s called ‘liberal democracy’.
