VENEZUELA: Chavez Sees Support from Array of Latin American Leftists

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Apr 14 2003 (IPS) - Who said that raised fists at a political rally were out of style? Representatives from across the spectrum of the Latin American left were swallowed up in the crowd as they gathered in Venezuela to mark the one-year anniversary of President Hugo Chávez’s return to power after being overthrown by a short-lived coup.

A "red sea" of tens of thousands of "Chavistas", who wore their trademark red berets, formed on the central Bolívar Avenue in Caracas to cheer on their leader and president, who on Apr. 13, 2002, was returned to power by his civilian and military supporters after the 48-hour coup.

"The time has come for a new continental wave of independence. We have no alternative but to unite in struggle. This is the globalisation of the revolution," Chávez told the crowd.

He asserted that the coup against him on Apr. 11, 2002, "had and continues to bear the stamp of imperialism. It was cooked up outside the borders of Venezuela."

The president, who was re-elected in 2000 to a six-year term, slammed the "reactionary oligarchy" of Venezuela that preceded him in power, the "savage neoliberalism" of the Free Trade Area of the Americas – "which we cannot join according to the mandate of our Constitution" – and the International Monetary Fund, to which he declared "Venezuela is not for sale."

Amidst the waving Venezuelan flags above the crowd were some Cuban flags, and several posters of South American independence hero Simón Bolívar were accompanied by portraits of Cuban-Argentine guerrilla Ernesto "Che" Guevara, emblem of the Latin American left.

Alongside Chávez at the rally were personalities from the region’s leftist movement, including Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage, former Nicaraguan president and Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega (1984-1990), and El Salvador’s Schafik Handal, leader of the guerrilla movement-turned political party Farabundo Martí National Liberation movement (FMLN).

Also present were Evo Morales, Bolivian indigenous and coca-farmer leader, Ecuador’s Blanca Chascoso, of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities, Chilean communist leader Gladys Marín, Colombia’s Gloria Gaitán, daughter of assassinated politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Argentine activist Hebe de Bonafini, of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo.

The street rally marked the end of a series of seminars that drew other figures from the left and the international movement to create alternatives to the existing globalisation model, among them former French socialist minister Jean-Pierre Chévénement, Spanish Euro-parliamentarian Pedro Marset, and U.S. activist Margaret Prescott, of Global Women Strike.

And there were proponents of Marxism, including Chilean resident of Cuba Marta Harnecker, the filmmakers Tarik Ali (Pakistani-British), Alex Cox (British) and Fernando Solanas (Argentine), and sociologists, such as James Petras, of the United States.

Journalists also made their presence felt, with Argentina’s Stella Calloni, Italy’s Luciana Castellina, Briton Richard Gott and Spaniard Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, participating in the events.

The foreign visitors shared panel discussions with leaders of the Venezuelan political parties that support Chávez, like the Fifth Republic Movement and Fatherland for All, and with military officials who played key roles in the "countercoup" that put Chávez back in power, including Gen. Jorge García Carneiro, then head of the Caracas regiment and now commander of the army.

In between the various events, groups of the foreign guests met with residents of the poor districts of western Caracas, where organisations like the Tupamaros are camped, sympathisers of the president that have emerged from older radical leftist groups.

Cuban Vice-President Lage said in his speech, "There are sectors (of the opposition) that are afraid that the Venezuelan revolution is going to be ‘Cubanised’. They can relax. The real danger is that the Cuban revolution will ‘Venezuelanise’."

"The United Nations is in its death throes since the ‘yanquis’ (United States) launched the invasion of Iraq, ignoring its allies Germany and France, ignoring China and Russia and, above all, world public opinion," said Nicaragua’s former president Ortega.

Le Monde Diplomatique editor Ramonet said the war in Iraq was "an ideological war to demonstrate the imperial power of the United States, a sort of militarised arm of globalisation," made even more offensive by its control over Iraq’s oil wells.

"Bush’s political difficulties are going to start in Iraq, due to the chaotic spectacle and the disorder he has caused," said former French minister Chévénement.

"All of our solidarity is with the suffering people of Iraq, with the children, men and women, innocent victims of the bombings," stated Chávez.

Salvadoran Handal commented that there is "no single path for revolutionà the lesson of Venezuela is that it has opened the political-electoral route."

U.S. activist Prescott told a gathering of 2,500 Chávez supporters Sunday, "The people of the United States are with you. Chávez has marked a milestone."

In 1992, Chávez, as a lieutenant-colonel paratrooper, led a failed coup, for which he spent two years in prison. Later, he turned to electoral politics and one the presidency in December 1998.

The next year, he pushed for a new Constitution, which was ultimately approved by a plebiscite, and in the new institutional system he was elected in 2000 to govern the country until 2006.