Category: Venezuela Coups

Thought I should check in, even though there are no results yet obviously. Indeed, there has been an announcement that the polls are closing 4 hours later than planned—10pm, that is, instead of 6pm. It is going to be a long night.

The private network Globovision is covering it as “REFERENDO REVOCATORIO” (recall referendum). The state channel VTV is covering it as “PARTICIPATION 2004”.

More on all this later, but I went to two neighbourhoods. First, to 23 enero, one of the poor barrios, of 500,000 people, that is solidly NO! It is a place that got some media attention today because Chavez himself voted there (I saw my good friend Juan Forero there again). The people of that barrio have been fighting for social change for decades—one of them gave a very good interview and history that I will post some time soon—and were confident, organized, and serious.

Next stop: El Bosque! Country clubs! Social clubs! SUVs! And a very long lineup of umbrella-holding SI voters. Got a good interview there too, with someone who was every bit as confident as the people of 23 enero. According to her, there were two possibilities: either the opposition will win, or the government will have committed fraud. There seemed to be a lot of SI voters. And it seems to me they will be genuinely stunned if (when) they lose. More on this, too.

As far as procedural things go, there have been some. Carter started by saying this morning that things were going normal. Most polling stations opened late, well after 6am, with long lineups. Some of the registration machines that take fingerprints aren´t working. There have been a few other machine glitches.

But by far the weirdest thing so far has been (published on aporrea.org) that a fake tape recording of the president of the National Electoral Council, Francisco Carrasquero, was discovered. On it, a voice impersonating Carrasquero´s announced that the SI forces got 11 436 086 votes and that thus Chavez was revoked. The real Carrasquero said at a press conference that they are doing an “exhaustive investigation” of this “serious electoral crime”.

If you can read spanish at all, the place to go tonight is aporrea.org. I was in their “control room” yesterday and hope to get back there tonight (I am in the Narconews “control room” now). But aporrea.org is filing dozens of reports every hour, following every irregularity or problem.

You´ll have a full report as soon as the results are in. And maybe before, if anything else happens…

In this room I have had a chance to spend some time looking at other news for the first time since I arrived here. It looks like the US is preparing for a major massacre in Najaf. It is almost as if the US was the vindictive ruler of a global system of domination, punishing one population by smashing through holy sites and civilian areas at the same time as it is (maybe) resigning itself to losing a battle with another population. It is almost as if the US were fighting a two-front oil war… retreating on one front and assaulting on the other. Even if (when) “NO” wins tonight, it will be bitter that one people are winning yet another battle for their self-determination while another is being denied and massacred for fighting for the same thing.

http://www.zcommunications.org/the-calm-before-the-by-justin-podur-1-2

Today is the day before the referendum. Not only is campaigning formally closed, but there is also a law in effect, quite common in Latin America, that no alcohol is to be sold or consumed until well after the referendum. And with good reason, given that both the NO and the SI forces want their followers to be up by 3am and voting by 6am.

The Opposition Plan

Continue reading “The Calm Before the?”

Today is the day before the referendum. Not only is campaigning formally closed, but there is also a law in effect, quite common in Latin America, that no alcohol is to be sold or consumed until well after the referendum. And with good reason, given that both the NO and the SI forces want their followers to be up by 3am and voting by 6am.

The Opposition Plan

One can put together the comments of the various opposition figures {please see the previous entry on the Mendoza press conference} and get a picture of what the opposition plan is. Short of some kind of violent provocation {and there have been warnings of that as well} to try to discredit the whole electoral process, the opposition has signalled repeatedly that it plans to announce the results at 2pm. Then, when the real results are announced after the polls close at 6pm, the opposition will say {assuming that the opposition loses the referendum, which it will if there is not fraud} that its results disagree with the official results and argue that a fraud has occurred. At that point things will depend on the integrity of the Carter Center and the OAS {gulp}. That is not strictly true. There are all kinds of observers here, more media than ever before, so things will depend on the ability of everyone with integrity to get the truth out past all of those who are going to lie about the result. My own suspicion, based on the highly unscientific methods of watching the SI rallies and talking to random people, is that the result will be closer than the NO forces might like, but quite decisive.

If the SI forces claims are then discredited, as they should be, they and the US will just keep the “fraud” card in their hand, waiting for the correlation of forces to change. Then, at some point down the road, if Chavez loses a substantial chunk of support, or the army, or the oil company, they will bring out the claim that the referendum was “fraudulent” when they try to bring him down. This is the way the same kinds of forces used the Haitian elections of 2000 in legitimating the coup that happened there this year. For now, though, it is hard to think of what else they will be able to do.

As for the role the 2pm announcement of the results by the opposition might play, it is again hard to know. It could create some disorder and confusion, but it seems that everyone has been trying to prepare the electorate for it at any rate. This morning in a press conference, the President of the state television channel 8, Vladimir Villegas, had it right. He said “The opposition is announcing that they are going to announce the results tomorrow at 2pm. The polls open at 6am and close at 6pm. How are they going to know the results four hours before the polls close. If they are going to announce it at 2pm, I would invite them to announce the results now! They are not going to know anything then that they do not know now!” And it is that absurd. (For more detail on the opposition plan and strategy, see the piece by Jonah Gindin today on ZNet and venezuelanalysis.com)

Control Rooms

In spite of the absence of campaignings, today is a day of frantic activity. I realize I promised that I would do interviews. And I have met a lot of interesting people with a lot of interest to say. Every single one of them has one response when I ask them for an interview. “Of course! Call me just as soon as the referendum is over!” Fair enough. Indeed, even if the opposition plans some bad business, it is as likely to come immediately after the referendum as it is to come before.

But people are better prepared this time around. If anti imperialists were kicking themselves for not doing more to stop the coup in 2002 (we were) they are trying to learn from their mistakes. I know of at least two alternative media “control rooms” that are being set up. One is by the intrepid NarcoNews team (check them out at narconews.com and the narcosphere blog) and another is organized by aporrea.org. What they have here is a lot like some of the best indymedia centres I have seen at the big anti globalization demonstrations and meetings. Indymedia from many countries are here, rebelion.org, aporrea.org, antiescualidos.com, lots of alternative radio folks from all over Latin America and Europe. They have set up computers, techies, phones, food… people are even staying here. Of course there are all the sensible security precautions… they say they have been hacked already, more than once. The idea of both control rooms is to create a real newsroom where people can complement each others work, where people can check and cross check information (this one has four televisions, each tuned to a different news channel) and complement each others efforts.) If things do get ugly, we have learned from (at least some) of our mistakes and can (hopefully) do better than last time.

The most likely scenario for tomorrow is also the best case scenario. A clean, uneventful day of voting, resulting in a sound victory for the NO forces, and a big party to follow. That is what I would like to be reporting tomorrow. Stay tuned, regardless.

http://www.zcommunications.org/venezuela-florentino-the-devil-and-the-opposition-by-justin-podur

Continue reading “Venezuela:Florentino The Devil And The Opposition”

Last night was the closing of the referendum campaign. It closed with huge marches of the opposition and the chavistas. They say the opposition march was the biggest ever—one estimate I heard, from a journalist who was at the Madrid demonstrations around March 11, is over 500,000 people. More, he said, than any opposition march, ever, including the “national strike” of last year and the coup the year before. I cannot verify that, as I was not there. I was, however, at the “No” rally.

That rally was also huge, and I got there late, as people were already leaving. I am not very talented at guessing numbers of people. But there were hundreds of thousands as well, though not as many as at the massive march last Sunday. For a flavour of the “No” rally {it is always hard to know what to call the different groups. The opposition calls the chavistas “oficialismo”, the chavistas call the opposition “escualidos” or “golpistas”} it is necessary to discuss the famous local legend of Florentino and the Devil, which is the story the Chavistas have been using since the referendum was announced. There is even a feature movie coming out with the title: “A battle between good and evil in the plains”, is the byline.

Florentino y El Diablo

Chavez resurrected this local legend after the referendum was announced. The story goes as follows. There is a local music on the plains, based on improvisation, and musicians play a kind of competitive game, a kind of call-and-answer game. In the game, the one who gets the last word and stumps the other, wins. It is like rap, based on lyrical skill and improvisation. The champion of this game was Florentino. One day the Devil came along and challenged Florentino to a game, I think for the soul of Florentino. The one who got the last word as the sun rose would win. And there is a whole song that tells the story, with lyrics for both parts. In the end, Florentino won, of course. So Chavez says, he is like Florentino, the opposition—or the US, as you like—is the Devil, and he will have the last word.

So, yesterday at the party, this music, Florentino and the Devil was the recurring theme, and variations of it and the song were sung, including various musicians doing the call-and-answer with Chavez himself. There were other jokes too… Chavez ripping open his shirt to reveal a big “NO” T-shirt underneath. It was a very festive atmosphere—as the “Si” march also appeared to be, from television and second-hand reports that I have heard—people were dancing, drinking, listening to the music. The beer to be had—Polar, owned by Mendoza, one of the wealthiest families of Venezuela, a member of which {Enrique} is governor of the state of Miranda and leader of the opposition Coordinadora Democratica. The alternative beer, if you want to drink it—Regional, owned by Gustavo Cisneros, the wealthiest man in Venezuela, and one of the main leaders of the opposition. It is not easy to escape enriching the elite, even at a “No” rally.

The Opposition Press Conference

I tried to rectify my non-attendance at the “Si” rally by going to the Coordinadora Democratica press conference this morning. A nice neighbourhood, certainly. A very nice social club setting. And, for the most part, a different set of media than were at Miraflores yesterday. The speaker: the aforementioned Enrique Mendoza.

Interesting stuff. He registered protest with much that the government was doing. There were “hostile attitudes”, for example. International observers reported, in private meetings with the opposition of course, that their work was being “blocked”. How, specifically, he was asked. Well, he could not say specifically, out of respect for the “privacy” of the observers, who expressed worry that they might be kicked out and decided not to complain publicly, the most important thing being that they stay in the country. There are up to two million Venezuelans who will not use the voting machines but will vote with ballots, and Mendoza is worried that these ballots will be used to track voters and intimidate them. There are people who signed to bring the referendum about who now appear to be dead—he did not actually say whether or not they really were dead when they signed, something that seems to have happened—and others are getting “the runaround” from the electoral authorities. He thanked the Carter center and the OAS profusely, several times, noting that without their intervention we would not have gotten to the point we are at. In spite of all these government actions, Mendoza said, he was absolutely sure that the opposition would win.

The question and answer period was interesting as well. A Swiss journalist asked if the opposition could govern within the framework of the constitution or whether they would seek changes if they were in government. Mendoza said no, they would work with the constitution. A Brazilian journalist asked if the opposition would dialogue with Chavez. Mendoza said that a condition of dialogue was that Chavez release the sixty political prisoners—these, presumably, are people imprisoned for their role in the coup of 2002. Picking up where Chavez left off yesterday, another journalist asked about all the Wall Street confidence in Chavez. Did the opposition also have the confidence of Wall Street, Mendoza was asked. Mendoza gave a touching reply. This is a matter for Venezuelans to decide. “When we win on Sunday, we will win something beyond price. We will win a victory for our values, of reconciliation.”

One Venezuela, where the rich and poor can coexist

The CNN correspondent had an interesting question. She said—given that there are no guarantees of transparency, what will you do if the government announces that it has won, when you do not believe that it has. Are you prepared for another national strike, or what. Mendoza answered that there was no point in such speculations, that the opposition is democratic above all.

But the most touching statement came at the end. A question from TV Azteca in Mexico—the FOX NEWS or Globovision of Mexico—asking Mendoza “What kind of Venezuela are you seeking”. Mendoza answered: “We want a Venezuela where people respect one another. Where we are all Venezuelans, we are all together, whatever religious differences we might have, whatever class differences we might have. One Venezuela, where the rich and poor can coexist.” Truly, a moving vision for any country.

It was, overall, an interesting set of evasions and lies, combined with some setting up for the post-referendum claim that there was fraud. As for the voting machines, it seems like fraud will be difficult to do by way of the machines. The system works as follows. You register. You are faced with a touchscreen that very clearly asks are you SI or NO with the buttons clearly marked. You press one. The machine prints out the result. You check if the printed ballot matches what you pressed on the touchscreen, then you put the paper in the box. So there is the machine result and the paper trail, and hence a way of checking one against the other. There might be ways of cheating even with this system, but it is not a system made to facilitate such things… no hanging chads around here.

A last note on “polarization”. I am not convinced that it is so terrible a thing. Chavez mentioned yesterday that they cannot blame him for polarization—the country was polarized well before he showed up. All societies are, to the extent that they are unequal, polarized. When the poor are starving, that is not “polarized”, unless they are fighting back somehow or finding some expression. Then, there is “polarization”. I believe that the world would benefit a great deal if US society was a lot more “polarized” than it is. But there is a problem with polarization too, and you can see it when you look at the statements of the “oficialismo” versus the “opposition” or the “people” versus the “oligarchy” or of the “chavistas” versus the “escualidos”, different sets of names for two groups, none of which are “neutral”. Where there is polarization, there are radically different stories that cannot be reconciled, and evaluating them on their factual or logical merit is often very difficult, because the sources of the facts are themselves combatants. You are right now reading the report of a deeply biased observer, one whose biases are not at all hidden. This is not something that will change after the referendum. But it is important not to miss a key point: here there are two sets of official, irreconcileable pronouncements, both highly visible, both with plenty of power and support behind them. In most of the world there is only one, and the rest is completely marginalized. In which situation is it easier to figure out for yourself what is true… is a real question.

http://www.zcommunications.org/in-caracas-by-justin-podur

It has been an interesting night and day. I have spent a substantial portion of the past 24 hours listening to Chavez speak. The man speaks a lot. But let me explain.

Fear…

Continue reading “In Caracas”

It has been an interesting night and day. I have spent a substantial portion of the past 24 hours listening to Chavez speak. The man speaks a lot. But let me explain.

Fear…

My interest in Venezuela started with my interest and work on Colombia. It seemed to me like the two countries, linked historically in so many ways, were living completely different histories today. I remember the coup in April 2002 in Venezuela and a moment when I thought Venezuela was going to go that same route—of paramilitarism, of neoliberalism based on massacre and assassination. But over the past two years Venezuelans have beaten repeated attempts at plunging them into that kind of future.

But yesterday I learned that I had overlooked something else—that that history of murderous counterinsurgency is very much a part of Venezuela´s own history. Last night, at the Complejo Cultural Teatro Teresa Carreno (which is a theatre built for the rich for their own use), there was a really moving event. An auditorium of well over a thousand people, mostly young people, students—real people, not elites—came to a launch of the fourth edition of a book by a journalist who is now the Vice President of Venezuela, Jose Vicente Rangel. The book, ´Expediente Negra´, is an investigation of human rights violations committed during the years of “democracy” here in Venezuela. There was a guerrilla insurgency here, in the 1960s and 1970s, and it, like so much else, was repressed savagely—the whole gambit of disappearances, massacres, assassinations. One President held publicly to the dictum of “shoot first, find out later”.

In addition to the strangeness of an elite theatre filled with people, the event itself was quite dignified, I thought. It would have been easy to do wrong: to turn an event that was a kind of commemoration into a way of scoring political points. But—and this is not to deny that political points were scored—the dead were honoured. Several family members of the disappeared spoke, and told their stories. There were cultural events, musical groups in between the speeches. And yes, there was Chavez, on the screen and in person.

The theme of the evening was “recovering memory” (“recuperar” in spanish has a deeper meaning than recovery in english). The disappeared were shown on screen. Their families held up their pictures. Their names were named (Alberto Lovera, Alejandro Tejero, Andres y Jose Ramon Pasquier, Jose Carmelo Mendoza, Luis Alberto Hernandez… and on and on). A famous musician of the era, Ali Primera, has a song, based on something a famous priest said during a service for one of the dead decades ago—“Those who die for life, cannot be called dead” (again, something is lost in the translation but you get the idea). The photos were shown in a montage, to the music of Ali Primera.

What was the political point of all this? Well, at the beginning of this note I said that my initial interest in Venezuela was not that of someone looking for the authentic revolution or the next revolutionary fashion—it was, instead, a kind of fear of a situation that was close to the brink, with paramilitaries sharpening their knives and waiting for their chance to restore neoliberalism. I thought of Colombia—but Venezuelans have their own, living memories of all this. And it only made sense for Chavez’s people to want to remind Venezuelans of what came before. Chavez does not do disappearances, torture, and massacres, though they accuse him of being a dictator. Venezuelans know this. And many of the people in the opposition are people who did participate in all this. So the cry, “no volveran!” (they will not return!)

Chavez talks…

The evening ended with a lot of Chavez. First, Luis Britto, one of the old generation of leftists who is part of the government, showed some interesting videos. To those who accuse us of censorship, he said, let me remind you of this freedom of press. He then showed two videos of the current vice president, Jose Vicente Rangel, who was in the 1990s a TV personality, trying to interview Chavez, who was in jail after trying to overthrow the regime in a coup in 1992. Both times, the interviews were censored, in a very crude way—a big red “CENSURADO” sign was pasted on Chavez´s face and the attempt ended.

But then, Britto showed a video of a very long interview Rangel did with Chavez two days before Chavez won the elections of 1998. That was an interesting interview—good questions, good answers. Rangel asked about power—they say you are a man who wants power, Chavez… why? Power for what? Chavez said, power isn’t like a glass of water you pick up—it is something you build… I want to build a new kind of power, democratic power, popular power.

After the long interview, Chavez got up to speak himself. “I will be brief”, he began, and he was—he only talked for an hour. He told a story of when he was in the army, and how he witnessed the torture of two campesinos where he was posted as a young sub-lieutenant in the 1970s. He tried, and failed, to stop it, but decided then that he had to do something. There were more stories, too, all trying to return to the point that all those who died fighting for change did not die in vain, that today´s process is built on their sacrifices.

And talks some more…

Then, this morning, I did what any good journalist should do once in a lifetime—I went to a mainstream press conference at the Presidential palace! Now that was a genuine media circus. Several hundred people, from mainstream media all over Latin America, Europe, and some of our friends from the United States as well. Indeed, Venezuela´s good friend Juan Forero (read his NYT reports on Colombia and Venezuela if you have a strong stomach) was sitting just a couple of seats from me. I got to watch him school another American journalist about all the money that Chavez is spending on frivolous things like education, health care, and Argentine beef. I got to watch him elbow that same American journalist and chuckle when Chavez mentioned how infallible the new voting system and voting machines were (that gave me a bit of the chills, actually, especially after getting a chance to read Greg Palast´s latest… do they know something we don´t? All sides here seem to like the machines. Is that not a sure sign something is wrong?)

The American journalists (you can probably read more about this on Narconews—there was a solid Narconews team there today) projected this air of world-weariness, cynicism, and wisdom to the ways of overblown politicians. That attitude was striking, considering how little wisdom or doubt they exhibit when dealing with their own government. But not, perhaps, surprising.

At any rate, Chavez hit his usual notes in the press conference: Latin American integration, opposition to neoliberalism, the likely overwhelming victory in the referendum, the readiness and preparation for any ‘irregularities’, the long history of US destabilization (mentioning Chile many times) in the region.

My two favourite quotes from the press conference were the following. First, when asked about what he hopes for from the US, he said—“we could hope for a lot. What couldn´t we accomplish with the US on our side? What couldn´t we accomplish in fighting poverty, fighting for education, for health care, for literacy in the neighbourhoods? What couldn’t we accomplish for all of the Americas, or for the whole world? I would be the first one to ally with the United States for something like that. But we cannot hope for anything like that. I read this morning that the US is about to take Najaf. Instead of withdrawing from Iraq, as Spain did, in a very dignified way, as other Latin American countries did, they are making this terrible mistake, with its terrible consequences, even worse.” He reminded the audience that Venezuela always opposed and continues to oppose the war in Iraq. And he reminded those present that the reason the price of oil is climbing is because of that war, in part.

My other favourite quote was about the CIA itself. When asked about the CIA, he said: “You know, it is like James Bond. Now, I love James Bond. I think the Sean Connery James Bond movies are irreplaceable. But James Bond is not as cool now as he was.” (this is fairly loose translation, forgive me) “Look at Dracula! Is the new Dracula as scary as Bela Lugosi´s Dracula? Superman? Even Batman, he’s not scary any more, and neither is Robin! The same is true of the CIA. We, a third world, underdeveloped country, we have taped the CIA giving classes here in Venezuela—that is, we have infiltrated them. I’ve called the US Embassy to ask them to stop trying to infiltrate our military—I know the military, when something is going on, they tell me…” When asked if the US would try to destabilize Venezuela, he said they probably would. “But they will fail, again and again.”

Let´s make a deal?

On the streets tonight, there are demonstrations. One of the opposition, the ‘Si’ camp, which by the private TV networks looks like it has hundreds of thousands (check out venezuelanalysis.com for last Sunday’s ‘No’ march photos). And another, a street party at the palace, of the ‘No’. You see, there is no campaigning allowed on Friday and Saturday—so this is the last night to publicly campaign (we will see how this rule is bent or broken tomorrow…) I am in the wrong place, writing when I should be on the street. But, I should mention the one thing that the mainstream media are likely to pick up about Chavez’s speech today.

There was a tone of wanting to play ball: Chavez mentioned the pipeline deal with Uribe. He quoted from many mainstream Wall Street journalists and analysts who predicted chaos, and who predicted that a Chavez victory would bring stability to the markets which the markets, especially the oil markets, need right now, whereas the opposition has no plan and no idea how to govern the country. In the midst of some very solid talk about Latin American integration, the irreversible changes to the constitution and in terms of land reform, housing, education, health, that have been mobilizing and democratizing forces, there was also this sense, that the government could work with the multinationals, work on the megaprojects, and cooperate in some areas. I imagine the mainstream media will seize on this.

The next days of non-campaigning promise to be interesting. Maybe a chance to get out of the media zone and talk to some people…

Greetings from Venezuela. I am not sure how much blogging I will be able to do, or what I will be blogging about. But I am in Venezuela, and I am here to cover the referendum for ZNet, and so I am glad that blogging can be a part of that. More later, I promise. I hope to get interviews and lots more…

Continue reading “The Referendum Will Not Be Televised — or, hello from Venezuela”