[News] USA does not want democracy in Venezuela ... it wants TOTAL control

[News at freedomarchives.org]

Published: Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Bylined to: <mailto:kkoth at hotmail.com>Karl B. Koth

The USA does not want democracy in Venezuela ... it wants TOTAL control

VHeadline.com commentarist Karl B. Koth writes: Two articles in VHeadline 
caught my attention in the last few days. The first, by Bob Chapman was 
entitled <http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=22338>“What will Bush do 
after Chavez wins the election?” The suggestion was that there might be an 
invasion from the north.

This suggestion is not without historical precedent, the second article 
seemed to be closer to the truth ... this report was based on 
<http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=22356>the Spanish newspaper’s El 
Mundo’s article that the CIA was meeting in Chile to plot some sort of 
disruption of the Recall Referendum, in the assumption that President 
Chavez was heading for a victory.

But whichever scenario becomes reality, it should be clear to all that the 
path along which President Chavez is steering Venezuela is not what the US 
wants ... and that some sort of interference from the north, either during 
or after a victory of the No votes, is a very likely outcome.

Why do I say this?

Although the United States has constantly vaunted its adherence to 
democratic principles, in reality throughout its history and especially on 
this American continent, it has shown itself driven by base motives ... and 
has promoted anything but democracy ... at least in the way I understand it.

All one has to do is look at some history in order to arrive at this 
conclusion.

Case Study: The Rape of Guatemala, 1954
Following years of right-wing dictatorships, in 1954 Jacobo Arbenz Guzman 
was elected President. Not only was this a clean election, Arbenz Guzman 
was genuinely popular with a majority of the electorate. He received over 
60% of the popular vote. It is not difficult to understand why. Arbenz had 
campaigned on a platform promising far-reaching reforms. Basing his actions 
on a recent report of the World Bank, which had documented the appalling 
inequalities and underdevelopment of his country, Guzman embarked on a 
moderate reform intended to eradicate poverty, propel Guatemala forward as 
a capitalist nation, and free it from the domination of foreign companies. 
One of his plans was land distribution. But since his intention was to 
nationalize and distribute unused land, these reforms provoked the ire of 
the United Fruit Company, one of the largest landholders. Unfortunately for 
Guzman, John Foster Dulles, The US Secretary of State, and his brother, 
Allen Dulles, head of the CIA, hand interests and connections with the 
company. While John Foster mobilized the State Department, beginning with 
the accusation that Guzman was a “Communist,” Allen Dulles secretly 
prepared the CIA to undertake a coup. Creating a rag-tag “rebel” army, 
Guatemala was “invaded” from

Honduras, after being bombed with planes piloted by US citizens, Guzman was 
overthrown and all the reforms rescinded. In the aftermath, among other 
actions, trade unions were outlawed and the land reform reversed. Book 
burnings ... even of the works of the Guatemalan Nobel prize-winning 
author, Miguel Angel Asturias (El Presidente), became the order of the day. 
No official voice in the US, neither Eisenhower nor the Dulles brothers 
complained!

Case Studies: The Rest of Latin America
Guatemala was not an isolated case. Since the Spanish American war (1898) 
the United States has invaded, coerced, or manipulated almost every Latin 
American and Caribbean country in one way or the other. Cuba, Haiti, the 
Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, 
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Grenada and 
Panama, have all felt the heavy hand of US coercion. The latest case (now 
being documented) is Haiti. There, it has been suggested, the International 
Republican Institute, a private foundation fairly close to the White House, 
was instrumental in setting off a train of circumstances leading to 
President Aristide’s forcible ouster from office.

And Venezuelans are all too aware of the on-going attempts to manipulate 
the outcome of the Recall Referendum, not to speak of the earlier Carmona 
debacle. Nor should they be surprised if, after a Chavez victory next 
Sunday, the US continues with more insidious plans to wipe out the 
democratic gains of the present government, revoke all social reforms that 
benefit the poor, and return Venezuela to the status of lackey and 
subservient oil supplier.

Which US are we talking about?
    * But doesn’t one get tired of blaming the US for every foreign policy 
mishap, every coup-d’etat, for everything that goes wrong in Latin America?

When I was a boy growing up in Jamaica, I was taught that the US was a 
country to be emulated. After all, a country that had produced the likes of 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, 
William Faulkner, and countless others of their imagination, caliber and 
resonance could not but be the harbinger of the civilized virtues of Truth 
& Justice. Was it not this same United States that had welcomed the poor 
and oppressed of countless European and other nations, ensuring them the 
nurturing hand of freedom and tolerance?

And there certainly are individual US citizens right now who represent and 
espouse those values. But how many are they, and further,

how many are there that can understand how important it is for them to 
maintain and to demand the maintenance of those values, and to allow other 
nations the right to define their own paths?

I believe the numbers must have dwindled significantly, for it seems to 
have become strangely easy for their government to lie egregiously and to 
mislead.

Or perhaps, with hindsight, this other USA was all a chimera ... a 
carefully orchestrated campaign that never existed in reality ... or at 
best is a relic of the past. For the real United States of America we know 
today has other motives, and the US (as a national entity) never did 
espouse those superior values.

But never has this been so obvious as with the present regime in 
Washington. The real motives; the real driving principles of the USA, have 
been exposed as mean-spirited greed and avarice, with their governments 
increasingly serving the avaricious hand of Mammon.
    * And this has led that nation to undertake every act of subterfuge, 
every deceit, every lie, every breach of international law, and to use 
blatant and murderous force in order to get its way.

I cannot understand how any country can breed or train citizen soldiers who 
take a delight in torturing and sodomizing children. Worse yet, how any 
civilized government could want to repress the publication of these facts, 
and not investigate and punish the wrongdoers publicly, is beyond me. But 
that evil was foisted on children in Iraq.

The Real Problem

When Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok was presented with a report that 
documented his peacekeepers’ inability to prevent the mass murder at 
Srebrenice (there were only 400 Dutch soldiers, and no help from NATO or 
the US), he broke down in tears ... then, with his entire cabinet, 
resigned. His was the only honorable action in the circumstances even 
though the Dutch were not to blame.

This much I know is wrong with the strongest military power in the world 
today, the USA.

There seems to be no conscience; there seems to be no higher value than 
running after the main chance; there seems to be no place any longer for 
humanity; or tolerance; or sympathy for those who are less well off. 
Everything has only a crass commercial value. It is a sad sate of affairs.


The Recall Referendum

I am not going to be presumptuous and try to tell Venezuelans how they 
should vote on Sunday, August 15. Most of them already know ... all I beg 
is that they keep these facts in mind. For with their vote, there is an 
opportunity to tell the world that they refuse to be coerced; and that they 
wish for a government where humanity, and humanitarianism are the highest 
principles.

I believe I am not going to be disappointed.

Dr. Karl B. Koth
<mailto:kkoth at hotmail.com>kkoth at hotmail.com

Dr. Karl B. Koth is former professor of Latin American History at Okanagan 
University College in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada. He is the author 
of Waking the Dictator: Veracruz, the Struggle for Federalism, and the 
Mexican Revolution, 1870-1927, Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary 
Press, 2002. He divides his time between Canada and Brazil.  You may email 
him at <mailto:kkoth at hotmail.com>kkoth at hotmail.com

[i] Bob Chapman, “What will Bush do after Chávez wins the election,” The 
International Forecaster, Vol. 8, June 2004, No. 6-4, quoted in Vheadline 8 
Aug. 2004; VENPRES, “CIA executives gathered in Santiago de Chile revealed 
in contingency plot to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias,” 
9 Aug 2004, quoted in Vheadline, 9 Aug. 2004.

[ii] Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: the Foreign Policy of 
Intervention, (Austin: University of Texas Press), 1982; Stephen 
Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the 
American Coup in Guatemala, (New York: Doubleday and Co. Inc.), 1982.

[iii] Ronald Fernandez, Cruising the Caribbean: U.S. Influence and 
Intervention in the Twentieth Century, (Monroe: Common Courage Press), 
1994; Ivan Musicant, The Banana Wars: A History of the United States 
Military Intervention in Latin America from the Spanish-American War to the 
Invasion of Panama, (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.), 1990; on IMF 
policies, which crushed the small island nation of Jamaica in the 1970s see 
the award-winning documentary, “Life and Debt,” by Stephanie Black, based 
on texts, and narrated by novelist Jamaica Kincaid; for the 1989 US 
invasion of Panama and the attendant atrocities committed there, see the 
award-winning documentary, “The Panama Deception,” by Susan Ryan.

[iv] Interview with Max Blumenthal by Democracy Now, “Did the Bush 
Administration Allow a Network of Right-Wing Republicans to Foment a 
Violent Coup in Haiti?” 20 July 2004. Blumenthal’s work “The Other Regime 
Change” may be found at Salon.com.

[v] William Rivers Pitt, “Torturing Children,” Truthout, 20 July 2004. 
According to Pitt and Seymour Hirsch there are videos documenting these 
unspeakable incidents. But the feckless US media has failed to make any 
mention of them, or the crimes .

[vi] Samantha Power, “Bystanders to Mass Murder,” 21 Apr. 2002, Washington 
Post, p. B07



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