Harry Targ
“And so, on election day,
just after polls closed and before any official results had been
released, Machado and Washington, as if in concert, began to bleat
about fraud, building on a line of attack that they had been
establishing for months. Machado’s followers immediately took to the streets
and attacked symbols of Chavismo…” (*from V J Prashad).
https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/venezuela-elections-2024/
PRESS RELEASE: National Lawyers Guild electoral observers praise
fairness, transparency of Venezuelan election process; condemn the U.S. backed
opposition’s refusal to accept the outcome of democratic election
“The US secretary of state has said there was "overwhelming evidence" Venezuela's opposition won the recent presidential election.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1d10453zno
In V J Prashad’s
essay he suggests that supporters of the founders of the Bolivarian Revolution,
particularly deceased Hugo Chavez and later Nicholas Maduro, built masses of
organized support through workplace communes, community political organizations,
and programs designed to reduce poverty. And it is these people who have
rallied in defense of the Maduro victory in the recent elections. Prashad wrote: “During
the massive marches to defend the government in the week following the
elections, people openly described the two choices that faced them: to try and
advance the Bolivarian process through Maduro’s government or to return to
February 1989 when Carlos Andrés Pérez imposed the IMF-crafted economic
agenda known as the paquetazo (packet) on the country.”
And as Prashad
suggests, the rallies protesting the election outcome are largely
representatives of the wealthy classes, inspired and supported by the United
States.
In sum, before we
pass judgement on the Venezuelan elections, we need to remind ourselves that
United States policy ever since the Monroe Doctrine of 200 years ago has been
committed to crushing popular movements in the Western Hemisphere and returning
wealth to the minority of the rich.
*************************************************************
Originally posted on Thursday, January 24, 2019
US IMPERIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA CONTINUES: Now it is
Venezuela
The world again enters an economic, political, and military
crisis in the Western Hemisphere. It remains important to historicize and
contextualize this week’s call by the United States and 10 hemisphere countries
for President Nicholas Maduro to step down as President of Venezuela. The
sub-text of statements from the United States, the Organization of American
States, and numerous right-leaning governments in Latin America is “or else” or
“all options are on the table;” meaning that there might be a military
intervention to overthrow the government of Venezuela. For many who are
learning about US imperialism for the first time, it is important to revisit
the history of the Western Hemisphere and to contextualize a regional crisis
which is misrepresented throughout the mainstream media.
A
Brief History
As Greg Grandin argues in “Empire’s Workshop,” the rise of
the United States as a global empire begins in the Western Hemisphere. For
example, the Spanish/Cuban/American war provided the occasion for the United
States to develop a two-ocean navy, fulfilling Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Theodore Roosevelt’s dreams. After interfering in the Cuban Revolution in 1898
defeating Spain, the United States attacked the Spanish outpost in the
Philippines, thus becoming a global power. Latin American interventionism
throughout the Western Hemisphere, sending troops into Central American and
Caribbean countries thirty times between the 1890s and 1933, “tested” what
would become after World War II a pattern of covert interventions and wars in
Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.
The
Western Hemisphere was colonized by Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, and France
from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. The main source of accumulated
wealth that funded the rise of capitalism as a world system came from raw
material and slave labor in the Western Hemisphere: gold, silver, sugar,
coffee, tea, cocoa, and later oil. What Marx called the stage of “primitive
accumulation,” was a period in world history governed by land grabs, mass
slaughter of indigenous peoples, expropriation of natural resources, and the
capture, transport, and enslavement of millions of African people. Conquest,
land occupation, and dispossession was coupled with the institutionalization of
a Church that would convince the survivors of this stage of capitalism’s development
that all was “God’s plan.”
Imperial expansion generated resistance throughout this
history. In the nineteenth century countries and peoples achieved
their formal independence from colonial rule. Simon Bolivar, the nineteenth
century leader of resistance, spoke for national sovereignty in Latin America.
But from 1898 until the present, the Western Hemisphere has been shaped by US efforts to replace the traditional colonial powers with neo-colonial regimes. Economic institutions, class systems, militaries, and religious institutions were influenced by United States domination of the region. (Already in the 1840s, a large part of Mexico had been appropriated by the United States).
In the period of the Cold War, 1945-1991, the United States
played the leading role in overthrowing the reformist government of Jacob
Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), Salvador Allende in Chile (1973), and gave support
to brutal military dictatorships in the 1970s in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and
Uruguay. Also the United States supported dictatorship in Haiti from 1957 until
1986. The Reagan administration engaged in a decade-long war on Central America
in the 1980s. In 1989 the United States sent 23,000 marines to
overthrow the government of Manuel Noriega in Panama. (This was a prelude to
Gulf War I against Iraq).
From
1959 until today the United States has sought through attempted military
intervention, economic blockade, cultural intrusion, and international
pressures to undermine, weaken, and destroy the Cuban Revolution.
Often during this dark history US policymakers have sought
to mask interventionism in the warm glow of economic development. President
Kennedy called for an economic development program in Latin America, called the
Alliance for Progress and Operation Bootstrap for Puerto Rico. Even the harsh
“shock therapy” of neoliberalism imposed on Bolivia in the 1980s was based upon
the promise of rapid economic development in that country.
The
Bolivarian Revolution
The 21st century has witnessed a variety of forms of resistance to the drive for global hegemony and the perpetuation of neoliberal globalization. First, the two largest economies in the world, China and India, have experienced economic growth rates well in excess of the industrial capitalist countries. China has developed a global export and investment program in Latin America and Africa that exceeds that of the United States and Europe.
On the Latin American continent, under the leadership and inspiration of former
President Hugo Chavez Venezuela launched the latest round of state resistance
to the colossus of the north, with his Bolivarian Revolution. He planted the
seeds of socialism at home and encouraged Latin Americans to participate in the
construction of financial institutions and economic assistance programs to
challenge the traditional hegemony of the International Monetary Fund, the
World Bank, and the World Trade Organization.
The Bolivarian Revolution stimulated political change based on varying degrees
of grassroots democratization, the construction of workers’ cooperatives, and a
shift from neoliberal economic policies to economic populism. A Bolivarian
Revolution was being constructed with a growing web of participants: Bolivia,
Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and, of course,
Cuba.
It was hoped that after the premature death of Chavez in 2013, the Bolivarian Revolution would continue in Venezuela and throughout the region. But the economic ties and political solidarity of progressive regimes, hemisphere regional institutions, and grassroots movements have been challenged by declining oil prices and economic errors by Maduro; increasing covert intervention in Venezuelan affairs by the United States; a US-encouraged shift to the right in the prior decade by “soft coups” in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Ecuador; and a more aggressive United States foreign policy toward Latin America. Governments supportive of Latin American solidarity with Venezuela were undermined and/or defeated in past elections in Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, and now attacks have escalated against what former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton called “the troika of tyranny;” Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. As Vijay Prashad puts it: “Far right leaders in the hemisphere (Bolsonaro, Márquez, and Trump) salivate at the prospect of regime change in each of these countries. They want to eviscerate the “pink tide” from the region” (Vijay Prashad, thetricontinental.org, January 20, 2019).
Special Dilemmas Latin Americans Face
Historically all Western Hemisphere countries have been
shaped and distorted in their economies, polities, and cultures by colonialism
and neo-colonialism. They have also been shaped by their long histories of
resistance to outside forces seeking to develop imperial hegemony. Latin
American history is both a history of oppression, exploitation, and
violence, and confrontation with mass movements of various
kinds. The Bolivarian Revolution of the twenty-first century is the most recent
exemplar of grassroots resistance against neo-colonial domination. Armed with
this historical understanding several historical realities bear on the current
threats to the Venezuelan government.
First,
every country, with the exception of Cuba, experiences deep class divisions.
Workers, peasants, the new precariat, people of color, youth, and women face
off against very wealthy financiers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists, often
with family ties, as well as corporate ties, with the United States. Whether
one is trying to understand the soft coup of recent years in Brazil, the
instability in Nicaragua, or the deep divisions in Venezuela, class struggle is
a central feature of whatever conflicts are occurring.
Second, United States policy in the
administrations of both political parties is fundamentally driven by opposition
to the full independence of Latin America. US policy throughout the new century
has been inalterably opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution. Consequently, a
centerpiece of United States policy is to support by whatever means the wealthy
classes in each country.
Third, as a
byproduct of the colonial and neo-colonial stages in the region, local ruling
classes and their North American allies have supported the creation of sizable
militaries. Consequently, in political and economic life, the military remains
a key actor in each country in the region. Most often, the military serves the
interests of the wealthy class (or is part of it), and works overtly or
covertly to resist democracy, majority rule, and the grassroots. Consequently,
each progressive government in the region has had to figure out how to relate
to the military. In the case of Chile, President Allende assumed the military
would stay neutral in growing political disputes among competing class forces.
But the Nixon Administration was able to identify and work with generals who
ultimately carried out a military coup against the popular elected socialist
government of Chile. So far in the Venezuelan case, the military seems to be
siding with the government. Chavez himself was a military officer.
Fourth, given the rise of grassroots
movements, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela began to support “dual
power,” particularly at the local level. Along with political institutions that
traditionally were controlled by the rich and powerful, new local institutions
of popular power were created. The establishment of popular power has been a
key feature of many governments ever since the Cuban Revolution. Popular power,
to varying degrees, is replicated in economic institutions, in culture, and in
community life such that in Venezuela and elsewhere workers and peasants see
their own empowerment as tied to the survival of revolutionary governments. In
short, defense of the Maduro government, depends on the continuing support of
the grassroots and the military.
Fifth, the
governments of the Bolivarian Revolution face many obstacles. Small but
powerful capitalist classes is one. Persistent United States covert operations
and military bases throughout the region is another. And, perhaps most
importantly, given the hundreds of years of colonial and neo-colonial rule,
Latin American economies remain distorted by over-reliance on small numbers of
raw materials and, as a result of pressure from international financial
institutions, on export of selected products such as agricultural crops. In
other words, historically Latin American economies have been distorted by the
pressure on them to create one-crop economies to serve the interests of
powerful capitalist countries, not diversified economies to serve the people.
Finally, and more speculatively, United States policy
toward the region from time to time is affected by the exigencies of domestic
politics. For example, during the Trump Administration verbal threats against
Venezuela were articulated as the president’s domestic fortunes were challenged
by the threat of impeachment and confrontations with the new Congressional
leadership. War often masks domestic troubles. In the Biden years, foreign
policy spokespersons warn of the spread of Chinese influence in the Western
Hemisphere. US policies toward Lating American become features of the New Cold
War with China.
Where
do Progressives Stand
First, and foremost, progressives should prioritize an
understanding of imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and the role of
Latin American as the “laboratory” for testing United States interventionist
foreign policies. This means that critics of US imperialism can be most
effective by avoiding “purity tests” when contemplating political activism
around US foreign policy. One cannot forget the connections between current
patterns of policy toward Venezuela, with the rhetoric, the threats, the claims,
and US policies toward Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Nicaragua, El
Salvador, Panama, and in the new century, Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Brazil,
and Argentina.
Second,
progressives need to show solidarity with grassroots movements in the region,
support human rights, oppose military interventions, and demand the closure of
the myriad of United States military bases in the region and end training
military personnel from the region. (When citizens raise concerns about other
countries interfering in the US political system, it is hypocritical for the
United States to interfere in the political and economic lives of other
countries in Latin America.)
And finally, as tensions rise again in the hemisphere there
are two growing dangers of violence spreading throughout Latin America. By
attacking “the troika of tyranny,” the United States is increasing the
likelihood of class war throughout the region. And, given growing Chinese and
Russian economic and political involvement in the Western Hemisphere, it is not
inconceivable for regional war to escalate to global war.
The
time has come to stand up against United States imperialism in the Western
Hemisphere.
(A
useful history of United States interventionism can be found in Stephen
Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to
Iraq, Henry Holt, 2006).
