Last week Bolivia expelled the US Ambassador; Venezuela followed suit; the United States responded in kind; the Honduras government refused to accredit the new American Ambassador to Tegucigalpa; the Americans issued flight advisories to their citizens travelling to Venezuela; Miraflores ordered the US to reduce flights by American airlines to Venezuela; President Chávez unveiled yet another coup plot against him allegedly originating with the military and backed by Washington; the US Treasury declared it had frozen the assets of three Venezuelans – two intelligence chiefs and the former Minister of Justice Ramón Rodríguez Chacín – because they had “armed, abetted and funded the Farc…”; and President Chávez’s name was called in a Miami court where testimony was given that he had sent agents to Florida to try and buy the silence of the businessman involved in the ‘suitcase scandal’ case. And, oh yes, two Russian bombers landed in Caracas, and later there will be joint Venezuelan-Russian naval exercises in the Caribbean.
All of this was enough to leave any observer breathless. International relations between this part of the continent and northern latitudes escalated with exceptional velocity from being fairly quiescent, if somewhat chilly, to being agitated and torrid. Matters were not helped by Mr Chávez’s raw language which in one address was peppered with expletives about the United States that the international news agencies declined to carry. There was of course the usual threat to cut off oil to Venezuela’s primary customer, and a new one that if President Evo Morales of Bolivia were to be overthrown or assassinated, the Venezuelan military would go into Bolivia. It was a threat not well received by Bolivia’s army chief who was quoted as saying that his country’s armed forces “emphatically reject foreign interventions of any kind,” while in some of the rebel provinces the Venezuelan flag was burnt in the street.
The events in the sequence given above were not all related. The Miami court case which had its origins in the discovery of US$800,000 by an over-zealous Argentinian Customs officer and which allegedly implicated the Venezuelan government in the illegal funding of President Cristina Kirchner’s election campaign, has been going on for some time. In addition, the US Treasury announced that its decision to freeze the assets of the three Venezuelan officials was neither connected to the diplomatic spat, nor timed to coincide with it.
As for the spat itself, that began in Bolivia, where President Morales faced three days of rioting in some parts of the east of the country and in one northern province, as a consequence of which around ten people died (no one is sure of the final figure) and the natural gas supply to Brazil and Argentina was interrupted for a time. The five provinces in question are seeking greater autonomy, and oppose the President’s plans for a socialist constitution, the imposition of higher taxes on their production, and the break-up of ranches to re-distribute the land to the highland peasants. Mr Morales accused the US Ambassador of inciting the protests, and promptly expelled him. On Friday, the President effectively imposed martial law on the northern Amazonian province of Pando.
President Chávez then did something similar to what he had done in the case of the Colombian raid into Ecuador; he jumped into the fray as though he personally – and by extension his country – had been involved in the issue, and declared the US Ambassador to Venezuela persona non grata. It was not as if Ambassador Duddy had been particularly outspoken on Venezuelan issues, in contrast to his predecessor, although no doubt the US Treasury Department’s announcements, the flight advisories and the statements in the Miami courtroom inflamed the President’s temper beyond the bounds of even his customary irascibility.
Mr Chávez’s aggressiveness in the Ecuador case, it was speculated, was to preclude the possibility that the Colombians might try the same thing in Venezuela, but what was operating on this occasion? The two Presidents concerned face major problems, of course, and hostile anti-American rhetoric plays well in in the two countries both as a distraction as well as for scapegoat purposes and to secure the popular support base. In addition to what is going on outside Venezuela over which Mr Chávez has no control, he has problems within the country as well. Polls indicate he is nowhere near as popular as he was, and the opposition is currently engaged in a campaign to collect two million signatures to send to the OAS claiming that democracy in Venezuela is under threat. The focus of the campaign is the 26 decrees issued by the Venezuelan head of state, some of which have a correspondence to the constitutional provisions which were rejected by the electorate in a referendum last December.
The decrees which are particularly problematic concern the attenuation of property rights, presidential control of the military and the power the President now has to appoint regional political leaders and give them separate budgets, thereby bypassing the local government system. This last would neutralize the effect of key mayoralties and regional governments falling into the hands of the opposition in the local government elections in November. And it is these elections which are his biggest headache; the disorganization and in-fighting in the opposition notwithstanding, polls suggest that they could still take some important governorships and mayoralties from the President’s party. This is despite the fact too that he has had many of the higher profile opposition candidates disbarred by means of a legal manoeuvre, which appears to be unconstitutional, but has been deemed constitutional by Venezuela’s supreme court. One of the affected candidates is the popular Mayor of Chacao, Leopoldo López, who before he was declared ineligible was going to run for the position of Mayor of metropolitan Caracas.
It has been customary for Mr Chávez to go into megaphone anti-American mode prior to an election, but in the past he has usually waited until nearer the time of the poll. Perhaps with the signature campaign and the revelations from the US Treasury, etc, he thought it necessary to retaliate in order to prevent a further slide in his popularity, and Bolivia provided him with the occasion for doing this. It might be noted that as far as the coup plot allegations are concerned – and no one yet has been arrested in connection with these – the New York Times has reported that this is the twenty-sixth occasion on which he has revealed plots to kill him in the last six years. One cannot help but feel that even in the case of some of his supporters, this tactic will eventually be seen as crying ‘wolf’ too often.
And as for the Russians, President Chávez was quoted last week as saying, “It’s a warning. Russia is with us. We are strategic allies. It’s a message to the empire. Venezuela is no longer poor and alone.”
Well it is a message to Washington, of course, but it is not a message about this region; rather from Moscow’s point of view it is a message about Russia’s own neighbourhood in general and Nato in particular. If there were some agreement in the future between Russia and the West on that front, the Kremlin would probably lose interest in this portion of the planet as fast as it acquired it.
One presumes that between now and November, things are not going to get any quieter in the state to our west, and given in addition the instability in Bolivia, volatility may be the order of the day.
