The
enemies of Venezuela, both in the country and in the U.S., foment
just this sort of crime and violence in order to manipulate the
collective consciousness of the people in an attempt to coerce them
into abandoning the Bolivarian Revolution in favor of a right-wing,
pro-U.S., pro-IMF, neoliberal ruling class that will theoretically
restore order and guarantee safety. Ultimately, that’s what this
Sunday’s election is really about: courage in the face of
intimidation. Venezuela is not always as beautiful as it appears from
an airplane window. It is a country fighting for survival against the
Empire, such fights are rarely pretty. But in doing so, Venezuela is
also fighting on behalf of all countries targeted by the U.S. And
that is truly something beautiful.
by
Eric Draitser
This morning
I saw the sun rise over Venezuela from 30,000 feet, my flight
descending to Caracas in the early dawn light. As the darkness
retreated, a rugged, majestic coastline came into view: the small
waves lapping against the rocky shore, perceptible only by a thin
streak of white foam set against the dark brown of rock, and deep
green of the lush hillside just above it.
This was my
first glimpse of Venezuela, a country I have been following since the
early days of my political development, when a man named Hugo Chavez
was elected and shook the very foundations of Latin America,
challenging the hegemony of the U.S. Empire in its own “backyard.”
Soon I was in the airport, sipping strong coffee from a small plastic
cup with a few members of my delegation from the U.S. and Canada. We
all came to the Bolivarian Republic to bear witness to the
all-important elections scheduled to take place Sunday, as well as
the violence and destabilization that is likely to follow if the
U.S.-backed opposition loses.
From the
back seat of the car taking us from the airport to the center of
Caracas, I gazed out the window, drinking in the landscape, the
people, the juxtaposition of modern public housing high rises and
small, dilapidated homes lining the hillsides. But as I observed the
surroundings, there was one pair of eyes that seemed to be gazing
back: El Comandante.
Chavez is
larger than life in Venezuela, a country where “Chavismo” is both
a movement and an ideology, one rooted in the legacy of this hero and
leader, even in death. His face adorns billboards. His signature is
plastered on the sides of buildings. His eyes have literally come to
be the symbol of the PSUV, the Venezuelan socialist party that he
built into a political force in the Bolivarian Republic (also a
Chavez creation) and throughout Latin America.
But one
cannot help but be struck by the difficulties the country now faces.
Many basic necessities of life such as deodorant, sunscreen, and
toilet paper are either missing from store shelves, or are in such
short supply that lines wrapping around the block are a common sight
at busy drug stores in the city. Inflation has wreaked havoc on daily
life for ordinary Venezuelans who have been forced to wait for hours
at the ATM just to withdraw Bolivars whose official exchange rate is
6.5 to 1 U.S. dollar, while the unofficial rate is hovering around
800 to 1. Even the cafes and restaurants that line the major avenues
of Caracas are often out of basic foods such as beans, pork, and
more. For someone with visions of hot, steaming arepas (Venezuela’s
signature food) filled with juicy pernil (shredded pork) dancing in
my head in the days leading up to my trip, the lack of such staples
was a major realization of just how dire the economic situation has
become.
While many
in North America and Europe argue that these harsh realities are the
result of mismanagement and corruption by the government or, worse
still, endemic to socialism, such reductionist analysis overlooks the
very real economic war being waged by the U.S. and its allies in
Venezuela and throughout Latin America. As economist and former
Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations Julio Escalona carefully
explained to us over dinner and drinks:
The
majority of Venezuela’s imports and distribution networks are in
the hands of the elite, the same elite who once also controlled the
government until 1999 and Chavez’s ascendance. Many of the goods
needed for Venezuelan consumption are diverted to Brazil and
Colombia. We are experiencing manufactured scarcity, a crisis
deliberately induced as a means of destabilization against the
government. For example, we have a huge company that processes
chicken, the majority of chicken for the country in fact. That
chicken company closed but continues to pay employees to do nothing,
deliberately reducing the supply of chicken in the country in order
to deprive the people of this critical staple food. This is
psychological war waged against the people of Venezuela in an attempt
to intimidate them into abandoning the government and the socialist
project entirely.
Of
course it is difficult to convince a mother with three children and
no chicken for dinner that she should consider the political,
economic, and psychological dimensions of the issue. Just as it is
easy to understand the frustration even of government supporters as
they wait on line just to get cash whose value diminishes by the day.
But these aspects of the situation are critical to understanding the
broader context within which Venezuela is now operating, the new
reality that has been thrust upon it.
I
have heard stories of foreigners coming to Venezuela in recent months
and changing a small amount of dollars or euros or yuan for a
mountain of bolivares. While artificial scarcity is one element in
the larger strategy to destroy Venezuela, an equally important
component is the manipulation of currency in an attempt to instigate
hyper-inflation. I can already see the emails from people lecturing
me about the finer points of economics, chastising me for “apologia”
on behalf of President Maduro and the government, absolving them of
their ‘sins’ of economic mismanagement and corruption. The truth
is though that the government cannot, and does not, control the
economy to the point of being able to stop speculation which
continues to drive the currency through the floor.
Here
again Julio Escalona succinctly stated the all-important truth, “Our
currency is not being devalued by speculation, but by
hyper-speculation.” This sort of economic warfare can be
understood by looking at the statistics, but it can also be felt on
the streets. The people, millions of whom will still vote for leftist
pro-government parties on Sunday, are struggling, their standard of
living has decreased almost as fast as the price of oil has
collapsed. And the correlation between those phenomena is not merely
incidental.
Listening
to the corporate media, one would think that Venezuela was a
barbarous place where men, women and children are gunned down in the
streets for seemingly no reason. One could be forgiven for
envisioning a city where murals of Che and Chavez are exceeded only
by the chalk outlines of dead bodies on every street corner. However,
the truth is that the violence and crime – both very real phenomena
– are symptoms of the larger affliction: economic and psychological
war.
The
enemies of Venezuela, both in the country and in the U.S., foment
just this sort of crime and violence in order to manipulate the
collective consciousness of the people in an attempt to coerce them
into abandoning the Bolivarian Revolution in favor of a right-wing,
pro-U.S., pro-IMF, neoliberal ruling class that will theoretically
restore order and guarantee safety.
Ultimately,
that’s what this Sunday’s election is really about: courage in
the face of intimidation.
Venezuela
is not always as beautiful as it appears from an airplane window. It
is a country fighting for survival against the Empire, such fights
are rarely pretty. But in doing so, Venezuela is also fighting on
behalf of all countries targeted by the U.S. And that is truly
something beautiful.
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