Chavez Moves Against Right-Wing Leaders 

GERRY FOLEY Socialist Action v.21, n.3, Mar03

It is clear that the reactionary movement to oust Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has failed, and that right-wing leaders are now putting their hopes mainly on pressure from the United States and imperialist stooge governments in Latin America to achieve their objective.

The masses of the Venezuelan-poor, the great majority of the population, who have supported Chavez because they rightly see his opponents as their enemy, are demanding that action be taken against the opposition alliance that sought for more than two months to paralyze the country. Thus, for the first time the Chavez regime is threatening serious reprisals against opposition leaders.

They were left virtually untouched after the failure of the military coup they supported in April. At that time Chavez was talking mainly about the need for "reconciliation." Now he is talking about prosecuting the reactionary bosses as "traitors" to the country, and warning Colombia and the United States not to interfere in Venezuelan internal affairs.

Thus, on Feb. 19, the head of the employers' association, Carlos Fernandez, was arrested as he was coming out of a chic restaurant in the wealthy La Merced neighborhood. Along with the other leading figure in the opposition bloc, Carlos Ortega, president of the yellow trade-union confederation, the CTV, he was charged with "rebellion, treason, inciting to commit criminal acts, and destruction."

The federal court, which also released the military officers involved in the April coup, quickly disallowed the treason charge, but the others are serious enough. Nonetheless, Fernandez was treated with kid gloves, only confined to his home.

As for Ortega, he announced that he was going into hiding, defying the court order to present himself, and: it does not seem that any serious attempt has been made to arrest him. It is obvious that he does not have any great fear of Chavez's government, despite the fact that he likes to denounce the president as a "fascist dictator."

While Chavez is taking a few noisy but timid measures against the right-wing leaders, the country obviously remains polarized and inflamed. If the government does not take decisive steps against the right-wing insurrection, this situation could lend itself to provocations that would give the U.S. and its stooges excuses to increase their pressure, perhaps even intervene.

Recently, three "rebel" military men have been, assassinated and bombs have gone off at the Colombian and U.S. embassies. These could be acts of angry and frustrated Chavez supporters or even deliberate provocations by opponents.

However, the mere prosecution of some of the right-wing leaders is not going to remove the threat that the reactionary mobilization has posed. The only way to do that is to destroy the economic power of the bourgeois bloc, which means "nationalizing them down to the' nails in their shoes," as the Cuban leadership reacted to a similar threat out the outset of the Cuban Revolution.

So far Chavez has taken no radical economic steps, despite the fact that the opposition likes to denounce him as a new Fidel Castro. The obvious conclusion that the Venezuelan leader ought to draw is that it is better to be hanged as a sheep than a lamb and that unless he follows the Cuban example, he is going to be hanged one way or another. The driving forces of the right-wing capitalist and imperialist offensive are not going to accept resistance of any kind.

Chavez has given no indication, despite his verbal denunciation of imperialism and the Venezuelan oligarchy, that he is becoming a revolutionary. But his election as an expression of a mass revolt against the capitalist and imperialist offensive has set in motion a powerful polarization of the fundamental classes in Venezuelan society, in which imperialism and capitalism have suffered significant blows.

Hopefully, out of this conflict new mass organizations and leaders will arise that can lead the aroused masses to victory over their furious and ruthless enemies. Otherwise, Chavez will not be the only one hanged. The conflict in Venezuela has already gone so far that a nonviolent end seems unlikely.