The ZNet blogging tradition (brief as it is) seems to be that we answer questions put to us in our forums on our blogs. I was just asked this question:
Is there any credible evidence that “hundreds” of workers who signed the petition to recall Chavez are being fired for signing the petition and that pro-Chavezist legislators are posting the names of signers on their internet sites which are linked to by the government’s official webpages?
And in fact, I don’t have the answer.
I haven’t seen anything on this from sources that I think are credible, no. The most credible source in English in Venezuela is venezuelanalysis.com. Actually, there is very little that I find better than that site even in Spanish.
But there is a larger point to be made here, and that is this: the Venezuelan elite, and those who would like to see that elite regain its grip on the government of the country (the US media and so on) seem to have a strategy — the strategy is to present tons and tons of ‘factual’ and ‘pseudofactual’ claims about what Chavez, or Chavistas, are doing. They are stealing babies to indoctrinate them in communism; they are funneling arms to FARC in Colombia; they are housing Al-Qaeda training camps. Or the National Guard beat up unarmed demonstrators. Or Chavistas were sniping at protesters from crowds. Or Chavistas are firing workers who signed the petition (remember that most employers are anti-Chavez and most workers, probably pro-Chavez, so it’s not clear how many Chavez supporters are in a position to fire anybody). Claims range from the fantastic to the plausible. But the point is to bog Chavez supporters down in the details, obscure the bigger picture, and confuse anyone who is unsure what side they are on.
The bigger picture is this: there is a class conflict going on in Venezuela. A lot of the poor feel that they have found a voice in the Chavez administration. The elite and parts of the middle class, and of course the US, virulently hate this situation. If that elite, with US help, replaces Chavez’s regime in power, you can expect a situation that resembles Colombia’s, I suspect — the unleashing of a murderous repression against the population, accompanied by propaganda, in order to try to destroy any possibility of a decent future.
I started working on Venezuela, rightly or wrongly, not so much because I believe in what Chavez is doing, but because and I feel that Venezuela is perched on a knife-edge right now. I would much rather see Colombia’s social movements drag their country out of the abyss than to see Venezuela’s elites plunge their country into that same one.