Hugo Chavez

by Cristina Marcano

  After that, Chávez, who later said that Bush should be in jail for having started the war against Iraq, made Bush his favorite topic during the campaign leading up to the recall referendum, which ultimately confirmed his legitimacy as president of Venezuela on August 15, 2004. This fit of passion did not alter the course of U.S.-Venezuelan relations. The White House, it seems, learned its own lesson and pretended not to hear.

  Still, while Chávez was busy insulting the U.S. president and using him as a leitmotif in his campaign rhetoric to win popular support, the Venezuelan government was paying $1.2 million to Patton Boggs, LLC, one of the most important lobbying firms in the United States, to improve its image in Washington. This was nothing new. During its first year in power, the Bolivarian government spent “a record $15,363,398” on lobbying, according to the magazine Latin Trade, which placed Venezuela at the top of its list of Latin American governments that spent money racking up connections and influence in the United States. Venezuela even opened up its own Bolivarian lobbying office in Washington, the Venezuelan Information Office.

  In Washington, after more than five years of verbal attacks, people realize that Hugo Chávez is not as evil as he seems. And they do bear in mind Maisto’s advice: “Don’t pay attention to what he says, pay attention to what he does.”

  Venezuela has kept its commitment to deliver oil on time as the fourth largest exporter of oil to the United States, after Canada, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico. Venezuela also does plenty of business with U.S. oil companies, without any anti-imperialist vexations. A good portion of the exploration of the Deltana Platform, a massive project of five oil fields some 150 miles from the Orinoco delta, has been granted to Chevron-Texaco. When Chávez threatened to suspend the oil shipments, Alí Moshiri, Chevron’s president for Latin America, calmly said, “Politics is separate from business, and until now we have never had any hiccups in our projects…. In the Orinoco we are improving things, and that means lots of money.”15 At a press conference a few days before the recall referendum that would decide his fate as president, Hugo Chávez showed off the analyses of the most important U.S. financial publications, which predicted that businessmen would enjoy more stability and less uncertainty with Chávez. No longer was there even a trace of the rudimentary language of the oversimplified left, nor did anyone hear any impassioned invectives against imperialism and savage neoliberalism this time around. When it comes to statistics, the deaths in Iraq and U.S. interventionism don’t seem to matter so much. When it comes to the oil business, Chávez does not scream, “Yankee go home!”

  While Chávez’s relationship with President Bush is as strident as a heavy metal concert, his relationship with Fidel is as smooth as a guaracha. And that is how it has always been. A few months after his release from prison in late 1994, Chávez received a signal from Havana. According to Luis Miquilena, Germán Sánchez Otero, the Cuban ambassador in Caracas, personally extended an invitation to Chávez. Miquilena recalls, “We didn’t know if Fidel would receive him because [the invitation] was for him to give a talk at the Casa de las Americas. Naturally, it was Fidel’s way of retaliating against President Caldera. The prominent Cuban exile [ Jorge] Mas Canosa had come here to visit Caldera, who received him like a king. And so Fidel said, ‘All right, now I’m going to invite that lunatic.’ It was just to wave a red flag at Caldera. That’s how Fidel is, he’s another one who likes to provoke. Hugo’s trip was planned. Well, well, Fidel not only went to receive him, he was waiting at the door to the plane! He gave him a welcome that was fit for a head of state. At midnight they went out to get some food at the Venezuelan Embassy, and had to go to the guesthouse to make the food. You know, with that kind of camaraderie…that’s Fidel. He stayed with him from the minute he arrived until he said good-bye to him at the door to the plane. And of course, he won him over.”

  During his visit to Cuba, a brief lecture was arranged for Chávez at the University of Havana. “Cuba is a bastion of Latin American dignity, and that is how she should be seen, that is how she should be nurtured,” he stated in the opening lines of his speech. To gain the sympathy of his audience, he went on to say, “and we are honored as rebel soldiers by the fact that we are not allowed to enter North American territory.” He also stated that “We do not rule out the path of weapons in Venezuela” and promised that the Cuban people “have a great deal to offer” his project, “a project with a horizon that stretches from twenty to forty years.”16

  According to Miquilena, that was the first link, “but Chávez never considered the idea of a Fidel-style revolution, not at all. Never,” which is contrary to what many people in Venezuela believe, largely because of the almost filial relationship the two leaders have forged. The two men did not cross paths again until January 1999, when Chávez visited Havana as president-elect. His Colombian counterpart, Andrés Pastrana, was also in Havana then, and the two men discussed the Colombian conflict. With Chávez was Marisabel, who had brought along three sick children who were to be treated on the island in what would be something of a dress rehearsal for a medical program that was later developed between Venezuela and Cuba. And on February 2, 1999, a contented Castro found himself in the front row among the group of fifteen presidents that attended Chávez’s swearing-in ceremony. As always, the bearded Cuban leader was the darling of the local and international press.

  The two men next met toward the end of the year, when an exalted phrase that escaped Chávez’s lips caused serious consternation among the Venezuelan opposition. This time, he had gone to Cuba to attend an Iberoamerican summit. Chávez had such a good time that he decided to stay an extra three days, playing an unforgettable game of baseball with Fidel—who had also been a pitcher in his younger years—in the Latinoamericano Stadium, the bleachers overflowing with some 50,000 excited fans. According to Chávez, Castro played “one of those jokes he likes so much” by having the nation’s Olympic baseball team come onto the field dressed up like old men. When the joke became clear to Chávez, whose team was beaten to a pulp, he abandoned his competitive spirit and laughed, saying, “I had noticed those bearded men, they looked like they’d just come down from the Sierra [Maestra].” Afterward, in one of his speeches, Chávez expressed his solidarity for his colleague, noting that there were people “who come here to ask of Cuba the path of democracy, false democracy.” Immediately thereafter, he underscored that his movement in Venezuela “is going in the same direction, toward the same sea where the Cuban nation is going, the sea of happiness, of true social justice, peace.”17

  Chávez is well aware of the effect his words have. His adversaries in Venezuela, and even those who were not yet his adversaries, must have felt their hair stand on end as they envisioned that “sea.” But Chávez was too busy having fun. The visible empathy between Castro and Chávez, however, is more than a passing detail—people all across the Americas scrutinize the Castro-Chávez encounters, for a variety of reasons. The Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Alfredo Toro Hardy, told the Washington Times in May 1999 that “Mr. Chávez and Mr. Castro may have personal affinities. They are both strong, charismatic leaders from the Caribbean, but there is no ideological affinity.” Around that same time, the Brazilian weekly Veja stated that “the awe he feels for the Cuban leader is so shameless that in diplomatic circles people readily believe that Chávez gave his presidential inauguration speech to Fidel for a once-over.”18 Speculations of all sorts (a “Caracas-Havana” axis has even been mentioned) sprout forth every time the Venezuelan president defends Cuba at international forums, asks for its reinstatement in the Organization of American States, or calls for the end of the “brutal sanctions on the brotherhood of Cuban people.”

  Chávez’s friendship with Fidel, twenty-eight years his senior, has always served as a kind of buttress for Chávez’s sense of self, making him feel more independent, more sovereign, more revolutionary. He demonstrated his gratitude by signing an oil agreement with Cuba that the executive branch neglected to submit to Venezuela’s parli
ament for approval. According to the agreement, starting in late 2000 Venezuela would provide Cuba with 53,000 barrels of oil per day—a third of Cuba’s oil consumption—under extremely preferential conditions. In exchange, Cuba would pay part of the bill with generic drugs, vaccines, and medical equipment and treatment. Within one year Venezuela would almost double its trade with Cuba,19 edging out Spain as the island nation’s number one commercial partner.

  This prompted a wave of paranoia in Venezuela, but Castro averted trouble by promising the nation that Chávez was not a socialist and claimed that he had never heard Chávez utter “a single word” related to the idea of establishing socialism in Venezuela. During an eleven-hour press conference with Venezuelan journalists visiting Cuba, Castro went out of his way to state that Chávez’s thinking is “not based on the philosophy of socialism and Marxism.” He then recalled his affinity for Chávez, which grew out of the military insurrection of February 4, 1992, but promised that “Chávez is not a man of violence…like Bolívar and Washington, he is a revolutionary.”20 This, of course, was the older revolutionary’s way of giving the younger revolutionary his bona fide seal of approval.

  Shortly after this, an advance party of ninety Cubans—baseball players, artists, technical experts, parliamentarians, students, and precocious child thespians—visited Venezuela in what was a prelude to a visit from Castro. For five days, Venezuelan officialdom would revolve entirely around the Cuban leader, with all the government ministers vying to get their photograph taken with him. On this, his seventh visit to Venezuela, Fidel kicked things off by giving the country some lessons in anti-imperialism. Upon arriving at Maiquetía airport, he stated, “Your country is much bigger than ours. This is a continent, and if that little island managed to resist, there is no way that the continent of Bolívar, the land of so many great statesmen, cannot resist as well. I have no doubt about this. How can it not resist when it has men like Chávez?”21 With the exception of four medical doctors who spoiled the party by defecting and requesting asylum in Venezuela, it was smooth sailing all the way. Chávez ordered his men to remove Bolívar’s sword from the vaults of the Central Bank and deliver it to the National Pantheon, the eternal resting spot of his idiosyncratic god, to show his guest.

  “Chávez and Fidel have the power,” chanted a chorus of children and admirers from abroad. Next the party headed over to the place where Chávez had been held prisoner, the nearby San Carlos military barracks, which was now a museum.

  The following day, in his speech before the National Assembly, Fidel Castro indulged in another lesson, which left more than a few orthodox parliamentarians grumbling. “The revolution is possible in a market system,” he claimed, irritating the opposition whose hands he had shaken when they had been in power, as he criticized the forty years of Venezuelan history to which they belonged. Between the Cuban leader and the Venezuelan president, however, it was all smiles and mutual praise. The legendary comandante of the Sierra Maestra then boarded his own plane and paid a visit to the plains region, becoming the first foreign leader to visit Sabaneta de Barinas, the small town where Hugo Chávez was born. He was awarded the keys to the town and was duly declared an “illustrious son” of Sabaneta. Castro accepted the honor by declaring that Chávez “should be multiplied by a thousand, by five thousand, by ten thousand, by twenty thousand.” The entire visit transpired in a cloud of mutual adoration. In his usual ebullient way, Chávez did little to hide his admiration and counted, quite literally, the days that had gone by since they had first met: “So, just as I said to you in Havana on a night of farewells and hugs, when I met you five years, ten months, and twelve days ago: I want to see you in Venezuela and receive you as you deserve to be received. And in Sabaneta I repeat: We have received you as you deserve to be received, with the nation’s people in the streets.”22

  Castro’s trip, of course, wasn’t complete without a visit to the stadium for another baseball game or an appearance on Aló, Presidente.23 Encouraged by Chávez and the oil agreement they would be signing the next day,24 Fidel joined the Venezuelan president in a rousing rendition of the song “Venezuela,” a sugar-coated, modernized version of the song “Alma llanera.” The image was more than a bit ludicrous, given that Fidel was familiar with neither the lyrics nor the music of the song in question. Wearing a pair of headphones, trying to read the song lyrics off a piece of paper, Fidel attempted to hit the right notes but only managed to come off looking rather tacky and tuneless.

  Castro then went on to ask Chávez to be more careful about his safety, a comment that likely caused the comandante to break out into a cold sweat, since being assassinated has always been one of his greatest fears—so much so that his security system is far more elaborate than that of any other Venezuelan president before him. Even in 1998, he won renown for being the most bodyguarded candidate of the lot. Months before his visit to Sabaneta, Castro had warned the Venezuelan leader on two separate occasions that the Cuban intelligence service had detected plans to assassinate him in December 1999 and July 2000. Fear of magnicide is a recurring topic for the president, as are the accusations of presumed conspiracies to wipe him off the map of Venezuela. According to official sources, Chávez has others besides the anti-Castro groups who are after him: the Colombian paramilitaries, the Venezuelan far right, and his purported number one enemy, Carlos Andrés Pérez. Not one of these conspiracies, however, has ever been proven.

  Hugo Chávez advised those people who were purportedly out to kill him. “Don’t even think of it! Not for my sake, but for the sake of Venezuela and what could happen here,” he said, ominously alluding to what occurred in Colombia following the murder of the legendary politician Jorge Eliécer Gaitán in 1948: civil war. After the April coup, Miraflores became a real-life bunker and would stay that way for several months: the palace was surrounded with sandbags and barbed wire, there were tanks on every corner, and vehicles were forbidden to enter the premises. At one point later on, it was said that the political police had intercepted a plot to shoot down the presidential plane, with Chávez inside, just as it was about to land. A rocket launcher was produced as evidence, and the president assured the nation that they already had photographs of the suspects and that they were on their trail. After that, however, the public would never hear another word about the case, which simply faded away among so many others. In January 2001, Chávez swore that he had proof of international plots to murder him: “The day may come when I am forced to report specific things, with first and last names, and plans that might well complicate diplomatic relations on this continent.”25 He has not done so to date. As of September 2004, that day of first and last names was still unknown—with the exception, of course, of the oft-mentioned name of George W. Bush.

  FIDEL CASTRO’S VISIT TO Venezuela came to an end, and on a rainy night at Maiquetía, Chávez said good-bye to the Cuban leader. The farewell was jointly broadcast by all the TV channels, thanks to a presidential order to that effect. For one fleeting moment, the cameras captured the boy from Sabaneta: with a nostalgic look in his eyes, Hugo gazed at the plane and blew kisses as it took off. This effusive, almost theatrical scene surprised and shocked more than a few of his television viewers. In less than a year, on August 13, 2001, the Cuban leader would return to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday in Venezuela, where Chávez escorted him on an excursion to Canaima National Park, in the southern part of the country. At the Plaza Bolívar in Ciudad Bolívar, he announced to an audience filled with impatient, needy souls, “Let us forget about woes, papers, and requests. Today, just today, let us concentrate on Fidel with heart and soul.”

  Between 1999 and 2004, the two “revolutionaries” would see each other on at least fifteen occasions. Their closeness inspired some very mixed feelings both in and out of Venezuela. Chávez and Castro speak regularly. In Venezuela, some people claim that the two men have held secret meetings in Cuba, three hours by plane from Caracas, and on the Venezuelan island of La Orchila, where access is restricted
to members of the military.

  “Hugo Chávez has a direct line to Fidel Castro, and every time something important and unflattering to Chávez hit the news, Chávez would turn to Fidel. It was automatic. At a certain point it became something of a joke to us. Something unpleasant would come to pass, and we knew that we’d either have to start planning Chávez’s trip or else get ready for a visit from Fidel,” Juan Díaz Castillo, a former presidential pilot, told the newspaper El Nacional in early 2003.

  Chávez defends Fidel, and Fidel, who denies any involvement in Venezuelan politics, not only defends Chávez but harshly criticizes the opposition. Among the Venezuelan populace, this has resulted in an unprecedented wave of polarization regarding the country’s relationship to Cuba. After Chávez himself, of course, Castro is the man most reviled by the extremely radical elements of Chávez’s opposition—even more reviled than Chávez’s cabinet. This reality came into bold relief when a group of people launched an attack—purportedly spontaneous—against the Cuban Embassy, when it was believed that Chávez had resigned during the 2002 coup. According to Luis Miquilena, “I am one of the people who feel that the preeminence of this relationship has done a bit of damage to Cuba. They have taken things too far. They talk about North American intervention, but the Cuban ambassador is everywhere: on Aló, Presidente, when land is being handed over…I don’t care one way or the other about it, but from the perspective of appearances, it creates problems. With respect to Cuba, a country that has always been well liked in Venezuela, a great deal of antipathy has emerged—so much that when this [Chávez’s government] is all over, a lot will have to be done to keep Cuba from being called into question.”