It's a little over four years since the failed military coup took place in Venezuela. On April 11, 2002, the head of the Chamber of Commerce, Pedro Carmona, and Carlos Ortega, head of CTV, a trade union with strong political ties to the old political establishment in the country, forcefully removed from office the most popular president in Venezuelan history: Hugo Chavez. Such is his popularity among the majority of Venezuelans, that it was the ordinary voter, loyal to the last, who marched on the palace just two days later to demand the return of their President, and by April 14, he was back in his elected place.
It has long been suspected that Washington had a strong hand in the attempted coup, and while Washington still denies any involvement, it is a fact that both Carmona and Ortega were speaking with top Washington officials prior to the coup. Not too long after the failed attempt to set himself up as Venezuela's president, Carmona turned up in Miami. Additionally, after Chavez was arrested and taken to a secret island location, it was reported that a plane registered to the United States that was supposed to carry Chavez out of Venezuela. This neat plan sounds remarkably like the coup that ousted Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. According to Aristide, who spoke with Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman a short time after being forced out of Haiti, he was taken on a US plane to Africa - he was not told where he was going, was not allowed to open the shutters on the plane during fuel stops, and was not free to leave. Despite calls for an international investigation by countries such as South Africa and the CARICOM nations, Aristide, the democratically elected head of state in Haiti, is yet to resume his rightful position as President.
In the time leading up to the Venezuelan coup, two Irish documentary filmmakers, Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain, had arrived in Venezuela to get a more in depth look at the reason why Chavez was so popular among the people. They had not counted on being within the palace walls at the time of the coup and the subsequent re-taking of the palace. The result is a moving and triumphant documentary, The Revolution Will Not be Televised, which dispels the media wash surrounding Chavez and his self-proclaimed ‘Bolivarian Revolution', revealing the potential power that can lie in the hands of ordinary people when they are encouraged by their own government to play an active role in the politics of their country.
"Politics meant nothing to us," said one woman, filmed in Caracas by Bartley and O'Briain. "One group got rich while we got nothing. But now we're really interested in politics. Because politics now are about participation and democracy."
A year after Chavez was voted into power in a landslide victory in 1998, he held a referendum to vote in the new constitution, and ever since he has encouraged ordinary people to read it, analyse it, and to be aware of the rights it gives them. According to a report by the BBC's Greg Palast, which aired on Democracy Now! on April 12 this year, there are many such fundamental changes to Venezuelan society. "Chavez has finally tackled the health and education problems suffered by Venezuela's poor. He's imported 15,000 Cuban doctors and teachers, too. Before Chavez spread the oil wealth, 55% of the population lived in poverty. Now poverty is down by a third, and a million-and-a-half people have been taught to read."
But Washington is uneasy, and not just because of Chavez's close ties with Cuba: Venezuela has una fuente extensa de aceite - a vast supply of oil. On June 1 this year, Venezuela, the only Latin American member of OPEC (the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), will be hosting the organisation's annual meeting, where he will formally request that his country be recognised as sitting on the world's largest oil reserves - even larger than Saudi Arabia's famed supply. He will also be requesting that oil maintain a steady price of US$50 a barrel, which Chavez considers a fair, not a high, price.
To add to Washington's dismay, Chavez has put the nation's oil back into the hands of the people, and as well as using the funds for Venezuela, he has also surpassed the United States in supplying funds to other Latin American countries. Additionally, he has also actively pursued a programme that aims to supply cheap oil to poor people both in Europe and, to Washington's horror, the US. It's no surprise that the US refused the offer.
For as long as Venezuela has exported oil, it has only ever served to line the pockets of a few before Chavez came into power. The link, believes Chavez, is neo-liberalist policies, which have dictated where the profits of oil have gone in the past. "Here in Venezuela, and in the rest of Latin America, we were being taken over by the savage project of neo-liberalism," said Chavez, as recorded by Bartley and O'Briain. "With it's claim that there's a hidden hand which regulates the market. It's a lie, a lie! A lie a thousand times over!"
That claim may not be too far from the truth. Organisations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in particular have come under heavy scrutiny in recent years for their neo-liberalist approach to development. The IMF doles out large, conditional loans, many of which developing countries have no hope of repaying. The conditions include the privatisation of natural resources such as water and, of course, oil. However, according to the Observer's Faisal Islam, an IMF report released in 2004 stated that countries that follow IMF suggestions "often suffer a 'collapse in growth rates and significant financial crises.'"
Palast revealed that, according to an internal document from the US Department of Energy, Chavez's estimated oil reserves might even be modest, as they suspect he may have five times the official figures given. This is very good news for the average Venezuelan, but Palast suggests that the Bush Administration's close ties with Saudi Arabia will keep the pressure on Chavez. It seems, though, that the people of Venezuela have his back.
