Americans Need to Look Beyond the Media on Venezuela

If we read the newspapers and watch TV in the United States, we are told that President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is a "dictator," "authoritarian," "a threat to democracy" in his own country and the region, and "anti-U.S." But leaders who try to empower poor people are generally vilified in the media and hated by those in power. Martin Luther King, Jr. now has a national holiday named after him, but when he was leading marches in the Chicago suburbs or denouncing the Vietnam War, the press treated him about as badly as they treat Chavez. And King was seriously harassed, threatened, and blackmailed by the FBI.

The idea that Venezuela under Chavez is authoritarian or dictatorial is absurd, as anyone who has seen the country in the last nine years can affirm. Most of the press there opposes the government, more so than in the rest of the hemisphere - including the United States. Chavez and his allies have won ten elections, the most important of which were all certified by international observers. Last month Chavez lost a referendum which would have abolished term limits on the presidency and ratified a move toward "21st century socialism." It should be remembered that this is a "socialism" that respects private property and the private sector - which is a larger share of the economy that it was before Chavez took office.
Nonetheless, after losing by a razor-thin margin, Chavez not only immediately accepted the results but last Sunday announced a shift of policy in line with the electorate's wants. He said that the government would slow its efforts at political change and concentrate on solving some of the voters' top-priority problems, such as crime and public services.

Chavez's relations with the Bush Administration and the rest of the hemisphere are also commonly misrepresented. The standard media description of the U.S. role in the military coup that temporarily overthrew Chavez in 2002 is that the Bush Administration gave it "tacit support." But "tacit support" is what the Administration gave to the opposition oil strike in 2002-2003, which devastated the economy in another attempt to overthrow the Venezuelan government. In the April 2002 coup, the Administration actually funded opposition leaders involved in the coup, according to the U.S. State Department. White House and State Department officials also lied to the public during the coup, in an attempt to convince people that the change of government was legitimate.

Rather than apologizing for supporting these attempts to overthrow and destabilize Venezuela's democratic government, the Bush Administration went on to fund further opposition efforts, and continues to do so today - including funding of the recent student movement in Venezuela, according to U.S. government documents. Is it any wonder that Chavez does not have kind words to say about Bush?....

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