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<h1 class="title"> Towards Another Coup in Venezuela? </h1>
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<p class="byline"> <span class="date">February 20th 2014</span> </p>
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<p>Five days after violent <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/13/us-venezuela-protests-idUSBREA1B1K220140213"
target="_blank">anti-government incitement</a> in Venezuela led to the
deaths of three people, the US State Department issued a <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/02/221720.htm"
target="_blank">press statement</a> declaring: "The allegations [by
President Nicolas Maduro] that the United States is helping to organise
protestors… is baseless and false. We support human rights and
fundamental freedoms - including freedom of expression and of peaceful
assembly - in Venezuela as we do in countries around the world."</p>
<p>Of course, US commitment to such freedoms is called into question by
its own operating procedures, which have included <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/18/occupy-oakland-police-beating-veteran"
target="_blank">police beatings</a> of peaceful protesters and the <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://civic.mit.edu/blog/schock/the-passion-of-chelsea-manning-chase-madar-and-noam-chomsky"
target="_blank">incarceration and torture</a> of whistleblower Chelsea
Manning.</p>
<p>Maduro might - meanwhile - be forgiven for associating the US with
efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government given said country's <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/21/usa.venezuela"
target="_blank">intimate involvement</a> in the 2002 coup d'etat
against Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez - not to mention its
general <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Fruit-American-Guatemala-Expanded/dp/067401930X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392725852&sr=8-1&keywords=bitter+fruit"
target="_blank">history</a>of fomenting opposition to
less-than-obsequious Latin American regimes.</p>
<p>George Ciccariello-Maher, a professor at Drexel University and the
author of <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.amazon.com/We-Created-Chavez-Venezuelan-Revolution/dp/0822354527/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1392730166&sr=8-1&keywords=george+ciccariello-maher"
target="_blank">"We Created Chavez: A People's History of the
Venezuelan Revolution"</a>, remarked to me yesterday that, although
"there's no reason to think that the US is directly involved in
organising or calling these protests… we need to bear in mind that [it]
<a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.chavezcode.com/2011/08/us-20-million-for-venezuelan-opposition.html"
target="_blank">continues to fund</a> the very same opposition groups
that have participated in violent, anti-democratic actions before and
that continue to do so".</p>
<p><strong>The great cake famine</strong></p>
<p>The opposition cites insecurity, food shortages, and inflation as
factors driving the protests. </p>
<p>However, pinning the blame for all of Venezuela's ills on <em>chavismo</em>
- the left-wing political ideology developed by Chavez and continued by
Maduro - is transparently disingenuous. Or rather, it would be
transparently disingenuous if the dominant international media were not
intent on parroting opposition propaganda.</p>
<p>In 2010, for example, the New York Times horrified the world with
the <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/world/americas/23venez.html?pagewanted=all"
target="_blank">news</a> that Venezuela under Chavez was deadlier than
Iraq. As noted in Richard Gott's <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/952-hugo-chavez-and-the-bolivarian-revolution"
target="_blank"><em>Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution</em></a>,
"much of the violence stemmed from the police itself (the highest crime
rates were registered in the states of Miranda, Tachira and Zulia,
where opposition governors ruled and controlled the local police
forces)".</p>
<p>Since such details complicate the vilification of Chavez and
company, they're often deemed unworthy of reporting. So is the fact
that Honduras - neoliberal lap dog of the US - happens to be <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://world.time.com/2014/02/17/honduras-is-still-the-murder-capital-of-the-world/"
target="_blank">far deadlier</a> than Venezuela, Iraq, and every other
nation on earth.</p>
<p>As for the issue of food shortages, it's instructive to take a look
at a recent <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI_s3OOVA0&feature=c4-overview&list=UUNye-wNBqNL5ZzHSJj3l8Bg"
target="_blank">episode</a> of Al Jazeera's <em>The Stream</em>
featuring an appearance by elite right-wing Caracas blogger Emiliana
Duarte. Asked to elaborate on the circumstances of daily existence in
Venezuela, Duarte launches into a sob story about having to visit 10
different supermarkets the previous year during a quest to bake a cake.</p>
<p>In addition to highlighting the sort of absurd hysterics that typify
the Venezuelan opposition, the cake-baking anecdote constitutes less
than persuasive evidence of the supposedly brutal tyranny under which
Duarte and her socioeconomic cohorts are forced to reside.</p>
<p>Perpetual opposition ruckus about the government’s alleged control
of the media - which is said to be thwarting proper transmission of the
protests - meanwhile - fails to account for the fact that the vast
majority of Venezuelan media is privately owned. In 2012, the BBC <a
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-19368807">noted</a>
that a mere 4.58 percent of television and radio channels belonged to
the state.</p>
<p>Regarding Maduro's <a
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/americas/venezuelas-leader-pulls-foreign-channel-over-protest-coverage.html">decision</a> to
indefinitely block the far-right Colombian news channel NTN24 from
transmitting in Venezuela, Ciccariello-Maher commented that, "while we
should be very concerned any time a media outlet is blocked, however
briefly, we should also remember that the private media is far from
neutral" and that "this is a government that has seen a coup d'etat led
by the private media".</p>
<p>Indeed, the narrative spun by anti-Chavez outlets during the 2002
coup was <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Id--ZFtjR5c" target="_blank">instrumental</a>
to its initial success.</p>
<p><strong>Polarisation by whom?</strong></p>
<p>On the occasion of Chavez's last landslide victory in 2012, Keane
Bhatt listed some aspects of the man's legacy thus far in a blog <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://nacla.org/blog/2012/10/8/hall-shame-venezuelan-elections-coverage"
target="_blank">post</a> for the North American Congress on Latin
America: "[In the pre-Chavez years of] 1980 to 1998, Venezuela's per
capita GDP <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela-2012-09.pdf"
target="_blank">declined </a>by 14 percent, whereas since 2004, after
the Chavez administration gained control over the nation's oil
revenues, the country's GDP growth per person has averaged 2.5 percent
each year.</p>
<p>At the same time, income inequality was reduced to the lowest in
Latin America, and a combination of widely shared growth and government
programmes cut poverty in <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/venezuela-2009-02.pdf"
target="_blank">half</a> and reduced absolute poverty by 70 percent -
and that's before accounting for vastly expanded access to <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://nacla.org/news/2012/5/21/revolutionary-doctors-interview-steve-brouwer-video"
target="_blank">health</a>, education, and housing."</p>
<p>Such improvements might be of more interest to the majority of
Venezuelans than, say, Duarte's cake saga. Although Chavez is
relentlessly cast in the mainstream media as a "<a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/06/world/americas/hugo-chavez-venezuelas-polarizing-leader-dies-at-58.html&OQ=_rQ3D0&OP=fd213b56Q2F.cm%29.xd%29.XXX.b%29SQ60.Q2AcQ3EgTcc%29Q22.Q22oqa.oa.ou.XcTQ60Q2A.Q7CSRT_Q3EQ7Cg.bQ5CQ3Cc%21Q3EbQ7C8RQ2F%218RxRQ2FQ5CRQ60Q7Cg%21mcQ60Q7CT_Q2F_xQ3C%21Q60RQ7CQ2ART%21Q2A_Rg%21Q7C%29%210J%28b%29SQ60"
target="_blank">polarising</a>" figure, the fact is that the late
president laboured to reduce the already existing polarisation of
Venezuelan society by reducing the income gap and offering the poor
masses some acknowledgement as human beings.</p>
<p>The doom-and-gloom squawking of the elite in response to the
effective anti-polarisation campaign of the <em>chavistas</em> has
merely been a natural reaction to a perceived threat against formerly
entrenched positions of arbitrary privilege.</p>
<p>As for the current opposition efforts against Maduro, it's not
difficult to see that <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/18/venezuela-protests-us-support-regime-change-mistake"
target="_blank">US support for regime change in Venezuela</a> is
itself quite polarising - both domestically and continentally.</p>
<p>While the Mercosur member states - Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay,
Uruguay, and Venezuela - have <a class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.telam.com.ar/english/notas/201402/1661-mercosur-countries-condemned-attempts-to-destabilize-the-democratic-system-in-venezuela.html"
target="_blank">condemned</a> the violent "attempts to destabilise
[Venezuela's] democratic order", US Secretary of State John Kerry has <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2014/02/221693.htm"
target="_blank">condemned</a> "this senseless violence" and exhorted
the Maduro government "to provide the political space necessary for
meaningful dialogue with the Venezuelan people".</p>
<p>To be sure, it's more convenient to blame Maduro for the phenomenon
of "senseless violence" than to ponder, say, the practice of <a
class="InternalLink"
href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24618701"
target="_blank">assassinating civilians</a> with US drones. That the
anti-chavista crowd is cast in the role of "the Venezuelan people" also
raises the question of what the millions of people who support the
government qualify as.</p>
<p>Initiated by ultra-right factions of the opposition, this bout of
violence was far from "senseless"; it did, after all, have a point. And
that point, as usual, was to agitate on behalf of an eventual systemic
overhaul and the deliverance of Venezuela into the imperial embrace.</p>
<p><em><strong>Belen Fernandez is the author of The Imperial Messenger:
Thomas Friedman at Work, published by Verso. She is a contributing
editor at Jacobin Magazine. </strong></em></p>
<div>
<p><strong><em>The views expressed in this article are the author's own
and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.</em></strong></p>
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