[Marxism] Alan Garcia: rightwing idiot

[Louis Proyect]

The Guardian, Monday March 24 2008
Peruvian leaders cry foul as Chávez exports healthcare
by Rory Carroll in Caracas and Andres Schipani in La Paz

The plane door opened and the elderly visitors, all visually impaired 
and in some cases blind, shuffled out slowly and carefully into Venezuela.

Disease, age and poverty had stolen their eyesight but now they were 
in the land of Hugo Chávez and that was about to change. A scheme 
called Misión Milagro - Mission Miracle - had flown them here from 
Peru for free surgery which would transform their lives.

A portrait of Venezuela's president gazed down from the airport 
terminal. "It is thanks to Chávez we are here," beamed Rosario 
Vilcavilca, 88, a peasant farmer in a traditional highland skirt.

Mission Miracle has helped 400,000 impoverished Latin Americans see 
again and cast Venezuela's revolutionary leader as the region's 
humanitarian benefactor.

Critics, however, see an agenda behind this and other 
Venezuelan-linked initatives. They claim Chávez is trying to export 
populist leftwing rebellions and further tilt the region away from US 
influence.

Peru waded into the fray last week by accusing Venezuela of funding 
Peruvian militants under cover of humanitarianism. It said dozens of 
anti-poverty centres which have sprung up across Peru to promote 
Mission Miracle, among other schemes, were fronts for political 
agitation which may have fuelled protests against the government's 
free market economic policies.

Many centres were linked to a radical leftist organisation known as 
the Continental Bolivarian Committee, claimed the prime minister, 
Jorge del Castillo.

"No sovereign country needs to accept actions of other sovereign 
countries that are done under the table" he said. "Venezuela should 
act through normal channels."

The president, Alan García, has backed a congressional investigation 
into the allegations that Chávez is trying to destabilise one of 
South America's few centre-right governments.

Peruvian police have arrested nine suspected militants who allegedly 
received cash and directions from Venezuela via leftwing allies 
Bolivia and Ecuador. Most of the suspects were said to be former 
members of the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a guerrilla group 
which had faded since the 1990s.

The anti-poverty centres, whose bank and telephone records are 
expected to be checked, deny any agenda beyond helping people access 
education and healthcare.

Venezuela's ambassador to Lima, Armando Laguna, said Caracas was not 
offering financial or ideological support to Peruvian militants and 
said if Peru had proof it should expel him.

There is an unashamed political tinge to the eye-surgery visits to 
Caracas. Patients are greeted at the airport by officials wearing 
T-shirts with revolutionary slogans and ushered aboard red buses.

Some of the Peruvian arrivals said their gratitude to Venezuela's 
president would boost support for Ollanta Humala, Chávez's Peruvian 
protege who narrowly lost a presidential bid and has vowed to run 
again. "We're all Chavistas on this bus. Viva Humala!" said Santiago Sanchez.

But it did not add up to subversion. These elderly Peruvian visitors, 
stricken with cataracts, glaucoma and other ailments were about to 
have their sight restored courtesy of a pioneering initiative to 
spread the benefits of Venezuela's oil wealth. Upon returning home 
they would sing Chávez's praises but seemed unlikely to foment rebellion.

Venezuela also denied another Peruvian allegation - that Venezuela's 
new embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, would stir indigenous unrest across 
the region. "It will be a simple building, bigger than the one we 
have at the moment as we need more space but the rumours about it 
being a place for training and propaganda are completely false," said 
Luis Oblitas, a diplomat.

There is no doubt Chávez is seeking to project his influence across 
South and central America and the Caribbean. He is estimated to have 
spent up to £18bn on foreign aid largely through subsidised oil and 
soft loans. He has also promoted trade deals to lure nations out of 
Washington's ambit.

The question is whether he is breaking laws and infringing 
sovereignty, something the US practised for decades by sponsoring 
rightwing coups and shoring up dictatorships.

Opposition movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua claim Chávez 
has made clandestine payments to their governments to shore up his 
anti-American alliance. Prosecutors in Argentina are investigating a 
suitcase filled with $800,000 in cash allegedly destined for the 
election campaign of President Cristina Kirchner, another Chávez 
ally. Both vehemently deny it.

More seriously, Colombia has alleged that Venezuela's president gave, 
or planned to give, $300m to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of 
Colombia (Farc). Chávez has scorned the claim but makes no secret of 
his sympathy for Marxist guerrillas who are deemed narco-traffickers 
and terrorists by Europe and the US.

Hawks in Washington want Venezuela added to the US list of state 
sponors of terrorism, bracketing it with Iran and North Korea. So far 
the Bush administration has demurred rather than risk disrupting 
Venezuela's oil flow.

For impoverished Latin Americans such as Luis Nieto, a 67-year-old 
Ecuadorean who is almost totally blind and has been shortlisted for 
surgery through Mission Miracle, the politicking is irrelevant. "If 
Hugo somehow benefits, fine, good for him." What matters to Nieto is 
having his vision restored. "If I can see again," he said, a smile 
creasing his face. "Now that, that would be something."