RSN Fundraising Banner
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment

writing for godot

U.S. Foreign Policy in Venezuela: Hegemony over Democracy

Print
Written by Miguel Jimenez   
Monday, 21 April 2014 12:56
During the early part of January 2003 I had a discussion with a fellow Marine about our inevitable war with Iraq. We were having this discussion because we were scheduled to ship out to Kuwait—the staging ground for our invasion of Iraq—in mid January. This Marine had already served a tour in Afghanistan and did not have an issue with his participation in that war. However, when it came to Iraq, we shared similar views in that we both disagreed with the forthcoming invasion. As our discussion continued, I eventually started to explain that it was absurd to think that we were going to invade Iraq, albeit the main premise for the invasion was weapons of mass destruction, to establish a democratic state. After all, if our government was so concerned with spreading democracy around the world, it would not have a record of overthrowing so many democratically elected presidents. As I continued to explain my views, his roommate overheard our discussion and decided to walk into the room to inform us that he disagreed with our perspective. He basically felt that it did not matter that our government had been complicit in the downfall of democratically elected presidents because, in Iraq, we were going to do the right thing and help the Iraqis to establish a democratic country. Unfortunately, as events keep unfolding in Venezuela, the aforementioned Marine’s statement is a disturbing reminder of our government’s foreign policy when dealing with democratically elected presidents; democracy is acceptable only when it serves U.S. interest.

The U.S. government’s involvement—The National Endowment for Democracy funds Venezuela’s opposition parties with millions of dollars annually (1)—with its current destabilizing efforts to try to remove Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro is nothing new because throughout the 20th century, our government played key roles in the downfall of several Latin American presidents:
Latin America [was a] symbol of U.S. domination. Guatemala under Arbenz, Brazil under Goulart, Bolivia under Estenssoro, Chile under Allende, Ecuador under Roldos, Panama under Torrijos, and every other country in the hemisphere that was blessed with resources that our corporations coveted, and that had enjoyed leaders who were determined to use national resources for the benefit of their own people, had gone the same route. Every one of them had seen those leaders thrown out in coups or assassinated and replaced by governments that were puppets of Washington (2).

Propaganda, via the mainstream media, has often been an essential component of a successful coup. For example, in 1954 the United Fruit Company initiated a large scale propaganda campaign in the U.S. to convince the American people that the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz was trying to convert Guatemala into a Soviet satellite (2). It was a ridiculous accusation because “Guatemala didn’t even have diplomatic relations with Russia” (3). The UFC’s propaganda succeeded in rousing up Cold War anxiety to convince the U.S. public and congress to take action against Arbenz’s so called communist threat. Although Arbenz was never a communist, he did cause a problem for the UFC because he expropriated 234,000 acres of their land, but his intention was to aid Guatemala’s landless peasants; and he did offer compensation. Nevertheless, the UFC refused Arbenz’s compensation and eventually, with the aid of the CIA, helped orchestrate a successful coup against his presidency (4).

Fast forward to 2002 and we find that the mainstream media in Venezuela was distorting the facts, as they have done so throughout the current turmoil in 2014, to have the world support a CIA backed attempted coup against Hugo Chavez. For instance, when the Chavez’s opposition succeeded in shutting down the state run channel, Chavistas were left without an outlet to refute the mainstream media’s distortion of the facts. Unfortunately for the opposition there were two Irish directors, Kim Bartley and Connacha O’Briain, who were filming a documentary during the coup. These directors were able to refute the claim that it was the Chavistas who fired upon a crowd of opposition protesters who were supposedly marching under a bridge. Venezuela’s mainstream media had aired footage of Chavistas taking cover and firing shots when they were on a bridge, but they were not firing at protesters; they were firing at a sniper who had opened fire on them. The Irish directors were able to acquire footage of the same incident that clearly depicted that the street, where the supposed opposition protesters were being fired upon, was empty. The mainstream media had simply manipulated their angle in order to depict the Chavistas as murderers, when in reality; they were simply trying to protect themselves (5).

Twelve years later and the opposition and mainstream media are up to their old tricks again in Venezuela. If you get your news from the mainstream media, it would appear that Venezuela is experiencing a popular uprising with the majority of college students protesting against the government. However, most of the protesting is occurring in middle and upper middle class communities (within 18 of Venezuela’s 335 municipalities) and not all the students support the opposition because there are many students, just like the general population, who support the government (6).

The U.S. government has long touted the necessity to spread democracy around the world. However, it has proven time after time that it does not seek to spread democracy around the world but rather its hegemony. We know this is true because our government has supported despotic rulers who supported U.S. interest while being complicit in the ousting of democratically elected presidents who chose to put the interest of their citizenry before that of the U.S. And in Venezuela the hypocrisy is once again evident because the U.S. seeks to oust a democratically elected president to reinstate the opposition that was guilty of the very same things it accuses the Maduro government of perpetuating:
It is ironic that many of those opposing the Venezuelan government in the name of democracy, equality, and security were once supporters of autocratic and openly corrupt governments before the Chavez era. Memory loss or outright hypocrisy is at play. When the same oligarch’s that form and finance the Venezuelan opposition that is supporting and instigating the current anti-government protests were in charge of Venezuela, corruption was widespread, poverty rates were much higher, inequality was greater, and there was much higher inflation. Nor was Venezuela even a functioning democracy (7).

References:
1) Beeton, D. (2014). Violent protests in Venezuela fit a pattern. Truthout
2) Perkins, J.(2007). The secret history of the American Empire: The truth about economic hit men, jackals, and how to change the world. New York: Penguin Books.
3) The power principle-I. (2012). [Documentary]. Metonia Films.
4) Zinn, H. (1995). A people’s history of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Harper Perennial.
5) Bartley,K & O’ Briain, D. (Directors). (2003). The revolution will not be televised.
[Documentary]. Ireland. Power Pictures.
6) Salas, T.S. (2014) What is happening in Venezuela? Common Dreams
7) Nazemroaga, M.D. (2014). What you should know about the protests in Venezuela.Boiling Frog Post.




e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page

 

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

RSNRSN