Hugo Chavez

by Cristina Marcano

  According to the annual report issued by Reporters Without Borders, in 2003 “at least 72 journalists were harassed,” two were arrested while on the job and jailed for short periods of time, and three media employees were threatened in Venezuela. The report also included a separate section listing the pressures and obstacles threatening the exercise of journalism in Venezuela. This part of the report included information on all sorts of practices such as robbery and/or burning of equipment, intimidation through protest groups, damage to the facilities of certain TV stations, and even personal aggression.

  Vladimir Villegas, a journalist who has held various positions in the Chávez government, points out the following: “Just as generalizations are never a good thing, paradoxically, personalizations are also not entirely advisable, because to a large degree—this is undeniable—the harassment sustained by certain social communicators whether or not they engaged in reprehensible practices, was provoked by certain expressions of the president, but that does not imply that this was the head of state’s objective.”13 In the other corner, however, are those people who insist that all of this is yet another part of the same plan to destroy or suppress the existing structures. These people believe that Chávez’s authoritarian program will bring on the demise of freedom of expression and paint the media into a very tight corner.

  On July 28, 2004, Chávez chained all the radio and television channels in the country one more time. The images that flashed across the screen featured a delighted head of state at a hacienda in the plains surrounded by his family. The reason for this official message to the nation was a party: the celebration of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías’s fiftieth birthday.

  Once, while serving as the general manager of the Central Information Office, Juan Barreto was asked about Chávez’s affinity for appearing in the news. He replied, “He likes it, but that isn’t a sin. I understand that Madonna likes it, too—that’s why she attracts the media.”14 Barreto’s flippant answer, however, offers a glimmer of truth about the industry and its effects: few people are immune to the charms of the media. The glow of the spotlight may be more powerful than any other charm. Beyond strategies, beyond political machinations, vanity tends to be an uncontrollable force, which begs the question: Is the historically minded Chávez capable of governing his own fascination with the media-minded Chávez? Which of the two is closer to the real man?

  CHAPTER 14

  Bush the Pendejo and Fidel the Brother

  WASHINGTON HAS ALWAYS TENDED TO MISREAD LATIN AMERICA. AND Hugo Chávez is no exception, for he is a rare specimen who eludes easy categorization. Is he a Communist? A revolutionary? A neoliberal? For the U.S. State Department, Hugo Chávez is the latest headache in the region. But Chávez has not always been the enfant terrible. His first public statement regarding the United States was issued with delicacy, just a few days after he had emerged from relative anonymity. With these words he assured the world, “Our struggle is not against the United States. Our struggle is against corruption and against this government…. We believe that the United States would not interfere with our project because it is not openly at odds with [U.S.] foreign policy.”1 Moreover, during one of his first interviews in prison, he clarified that his endeavor espoused “no anti-imperialist or anti-yanqui discourse, which, in any event, went out of fashion in the era of the 1960s.”2

  Six years later, however, in light of the incendiary campaign rhetoric with which Chávez promised to pulverize forty years of Venezuela’s past and demolish the establishment, Democrat Bill Clinton forgot about that early declaration of goodwill. As Chávez got ready to travel to Miami to participate in a televised forum with his rivals, he was denied a visa on the grounds of his conspiratorial past, despite being the clear front-runner in the presidential elections. This was surely a tough blow, and the candidate would likely remember the brush-off for a long time. Perhaps he was thinking about it on December 6, when former U.S. president Jimmy Carter called his overwhelming victory “a peaceful revolution.” Soon enough, Washington would serve him his revenge on a silver platter.

  His incredible leap into the political realm awakened a good deal of curiosity among international circles. On his first European tour in 1999, Chávez was on top of the world—that is, until something happened at a dinner with a group of Spanish business leaders in Madrid. The president-elect of Venezuela was sailing through an improvised bit of chitchat when he was suddenly interrupted by an urgent phone call. Chávez took the cell phone that was handed to him, listened for a few minutes, and responded, “These things are not discussed through these channels.” Then he hung up. The following day he traveled to Paris and was received by President Jacques Chirac. During their meetings, the two leaders warmed up to each other, and Chávez told him about the previous evening in Spain.

  “He told him that he had received a phone call from Peter Romero, assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs. ‘President Chirac,’ he said, ‘look at how clumsy the Americans can be sometimes when it comes to foreign policy, especially in Cuba. They have really made a mistake with us. Did you know, President, that I do not have a visa to go to the United States? And Peter Romero told me that President Clinton could receive me, that I didn’t have problems anymore with the visa, but that they were worried because on this trip I have a last stop in Cuba. That they were concerned about me going to Cuba before going to the United States. I am not going to tolerate any kind of U.S. interference in Venezuela’s foreign policy. I don’t talk about these things with Romero, or anyone else. That’s why I hung up on Peter Romero,’” Hiram Gaviria, the former coordinator for the Patriotic Pole recalls Chávez saying to Chirac. “That was the first unequivocal indicator of where Hugo Chávez was headed with respect to foreign policy. He was not the traditional president who would make concessions in order to be received by the president of the United States. Instead, he stuck by what he believed.”

  Hugo Chávez’s first visit to Washington was postponed twice. The first time, he changed his plans when he found out that Clinton would not be in the U.S. capital on the days he was planning to visit. The second time, he had to cancel his trip due to a case of colitis. When the meeting finally happened, on January 27, it was not a momentous occasion. The appointment was not accorded the status of an official visit, and the U.S. president granted Chávez only fifteen minutes of his time in the office of the national security advisor, Sandy Berger. Five months later, when the Venezuelan president returned to the United States after his inauguration, he did not stop in Washington at all. Clinton and Chávez would meet again, for the second and last time, during the U.N. General Assembly. At the U.S. Mission to the U.N., the two leaders spent an hour talking about drug trafficking, Venezuela’s constitutional reform process, and the Colombian conflict. Chávez, who at the time objected to Plan Colombia, a U.S.-designed program to control the drug trafficking trade, did not want to allow U.S. antidrug planes to fly over Venezuelan territory, a stance that was annoying—though not surprising—to Washington.

  By the end of the year, Washington-Caracas relations had soured even more, thanks to the incident following the Vargas mudslide, when Venezuela requested assistance from the United States and then refused it when it was already on its way. Peter Romero now adopted a threatening pose. In an interview with the conservative Spanish newspaper ABC, he questioned the Chávez administration’s inconsistent behavior: “In Venezuela, you don’t see a government in charge…but we gringos are not exactly known for our patience.” From that point on, President Chávez would become, steadily and implacably, more and more hostile when referring to the Clinton government, and he would continue doing so in earnest with Clinton’s successor.

  At that time, the person who came closest to deciphering Chávez’s behavior and attitude was John Maisto, the first U.S. ambassador who had to interface with him. According to Maisto, Chávez was to be judged not by his words but by his actions. “Look at his hands, not his mouth,” was Maisto’s advice, which the Sta
te Department would heed only rarely. Ambassador Maisto was replaced in 2000 by Donna Hrinak, a strong character who was perhaps the most openly combative U.S. official the Chávez administration faced.

  The ever-strengthening bond between Caracas and Havana, as well as certain inflammatory statements made by Fidel Castro, also caused some serious consternation in the most conservative sectors. The New York Times took sides by publishing an editorial that criticized the Chávez-Castro alliance, calling Chávez “demagogic” and saying that he “clearly means to be an influential symbol of resistance to American influence, not just in Latin America but around the world.”3 It was decided that for the duration of the Chávez administration, Romero would play the bad cop, and he would be joined by other tough guys later on, including Otto Reich,4 the White House’s special envoy to Latin America, and Roger Noriega,5 assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. At the bottom of it all, though, the ex-comandante seems to enjoy it: he loves to be defiant, he loves to be newsworthy, and he does whatever he can to be at the center of controversy and confuse everyone. Chávez has claimed that his political adversaries were conspiring to provoke a serious conflict with the United States but ultimately promised that “relations with Washington are doomed to be good.”

  By the time Republican George W. Bush assumed the presidency of the United States in January 2001, more than one dart against American imperialism had shot out of the mouth of the Venezuelan president, which earned him the sympathies of many in the European and Latin American left. Chávez was delighted to see his popularity cross borders. The job shuffle in the State Department would pave the way for more public confrontations and scathing attacks. In the end, Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, would turn out to be moderate next to her successor, Colin Powell, a man of few words who toughened the U.S. stance toward Caracas. One month later, when the pro-Chávez congressman Rafael Simón Jiménez, then the vice president of the National Assembly, visited Washington with a parliamentary delegation, former ambassador Maisto would say to him in the White House, “Chávez always said to me, when he would talk about the topic of [the friction with] the United States, ‘Don’t worry, ambassador, I know where the red line is. And I’m not going to cross that line, I just go up to that little edge.’”

  In response, Jiménez replied, “You see how he pushes it, pushes it, pushes it, but then when [things] reach a breaking point, he eases up.”

  Chávez later described his informal meeting with Bush during the Third Summit of the Americas, held in Canada that April: “He said he wanted to be my friend, and I said to him, ‘I want to be your friend, too.’ We said our hellos, but there was no agreement, no commitment, no bilateral meeting, that hopefully we can hold sometime in the near future.”6

  Chávez’s wishes were not to be granted. Mired in an eternal dispute, the two presidents seem ages away from arriving at any kind of understanding, much less friendship. In formal diplomatic terms, their relations grew worse, though never to the point of no return. With respect to trade, things would always be rosy. The United States, buying approximately 72 percent of Venezuela’s oil exports,7 continued to be Venezuela’s number one commercial partner, and Venezuela continued to be a reliable provider that did not create problems for the U.S.-based multinationals keen on investing in the country. George W. Bush is one thing, but Chevron-Texaco is something else entirely, and in fact, Alí Moshiri, Chevron-Texaco’s representative for Latin America, was received by Hugo Chávez with open arms.

  The World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001, gave rise to a whole new set of troubles. One month later, with the superpower still in shock from the discovery that it was vulnerable, Hugo Chávez grazed the edge of that red line. On television, Chávez pointed his finger at a photo of dead Afghani children. “They are not to blame for the terrorism of Osama bin Laden or anyone else,” he said. Then he asked Washington to stop bombing Afghanistan and to end “the massacre of the innocents. Terrorism cannot be fought with terrorism.”8 His last words weighed heavier than his first words, which condemned the terrorist attacks. The United States responded by saying that it was “surprised and deeply disappointed” and promptly recalled Ambassador Hrinak for a consultation. After a week, Chávez let up a bit, expressing regret that his statements might have been misinterpreted. Venezuela and the United States were partners, he stated, and “the revolutionary government has neither the slightest desire nor intention to damage these relations.”9

  But it didn’t seem to be enough. In early 2002, Chávez’s most complicated year in terms of domestic issues, Colin Powell communicated the Bush government’s attitude toward Chávez. In addition to questioning the level of democracy of Chávez’s government, Powell also blasted the president for visiting government leaders openly hostile to the United States, such as Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi: “We have expressed our disagreement on some of his policies directly to him, and he understands that he has been a serious irritant in our relationship.” Ambassador Hrinak said good-bye to Venezuela when the constant tension became another source of strain in and of itself. In her farewell, she did not mince words. She left the country concerned, she said, by what she felt was Chávez’s sympathy for the Colombian guerrillas and did not hide that she was bitterly disappointed. “I hoped to see a real revolution in Venezuela. Real changes. A more efficient public administration, less corruption, more economic development, more opportunities for people. And I have not seen those things.”10 She was replaced by Charles Shapiro, a man with a perennial nervous smile who stepped into a carefully spun spiderweb. The new ambassador’s first meeting with president Chávez occurred scarcely a week before the April 11 crisis.

  The day after the coup attempt, when the Venezuelan populace believed that Chávez had resigned, the White House suggested that Chávez himself had caused the situation that culminated in his removal from office and asked Carmona’s provisional government to organize elections as soon as possible. The fact that Washington did not categorically condemn the coup generated a serious controversy both inside and outside the United States. On April 12, Shapiro met with Pedro Carmona. As he explained it a week later, he had gone to Miraflores first thing in the morning “to suggest two things: first the importance of reestablishing the National Assembly and second, to welcome the OAS mission.”11 Once Chávez was back in the presidency, after bouncing back from the coup and countercoup, the Chávez machine began to accuse Washington of having encouraged the group that tried to overthrow him. From Condoleezza Rice, then the powerful national security adviser, all the way down the line, U.S. government officials flatly denied this. Perhaps taking a leaf from the tone of contrition and reconciliation that Chávez adopted during those delicate days, President Bush said he hoped Chávez had “learned the lesson” and Powell also chimed in, saying “We hope that the most recent turn of events in that country foretell a president much more cognizant of the demands of democracy.”12

  Many people felt certain that the United States had been involved in the coup to get rid of this very inconvenient president, and their suspicions were amply documented and analyzed by the news media both in and out of Venezuela, though Washington strenuously denied these accusations. President Chávez, however, did not complain until two months later, when, on one of his Sunday broadcasts, he asked Washington to explain its lukewarm reaction to the events of April 11, and claimed to have evidence that U.S. military officers had met with Venezuelan officials at the military base of Fort Tiuna and that a U.S. ship had been in Venezuelan waters during the thirty-six hours he had been held in custody. Washington denied everything. A U.S. congressional investigation concluded in July that Bush had not supported unconstitutional activity in Venezuela. Despite this, however, the issue would always remain something of a mystery. The suspicions regarding U.S. participation in the coup were never fully cleared, and Chávez’s evidence was never aired in public.

  It is possible that U.S. officials were present at Fort Tiuna. In f
act, the U.S. military mission operated out of Fort Tiuna, headquarters of the Venezuelan Defense Ministry, on the basis of an agreement signed in 1951. Ever since the beginning of the Chávez administration, Venezuela had been asking Washington to move the base somewhere else, but because of negotiations that were not made public, the issue was always postponed. It wasn’t until May 2004, two years after the coup, that the U.S. mission finally abandoned the base. What happened in the aftermath of April 11 was a kind of escalating tug-of-war in which Chávez and his officials would make almost daily statements against the United States and then a dozen or so U.S. officials13 would take turns at bat, questioning the democratic commitment of the ex-comandante. Even former president George Bush—a close friend and fishing buddy of the magnate Gustavo Cisneros—intervened at one point, stating that a very vague “we” did not much like what Chávez was doing in Venezuela.

  In 2004, the Venezuelan president reacted with irritation to Washington’s requests that he behave democratically during the process leading up to the recall referendum regarding his presidency. Chávez called Condoleezza Rice “illiterate” because she was, according to him, incapable of reading Venezuelan reality. With Bush he was a good deal harsher. During a progovernment rally in March, Chávez yelled out that the American president was a pendejo (which the U.S. newspapers translated as “asshole”) for presuming he had no popular support the day he had been briefly overthrown. He also accused Bush of having reached the White House fraudulently and challenged him: “From here, I would like to place a bet with Mr. Bush to see who lasts longer, him in the White House or me here in Miraflores.” He also threatened to suspend oil sales to the United States and added that he would not accept any interfering with his country’s domestic issues. “We’ve got enough balls here to run the country, dammit!”14