[R-G] Golinger: Chavez The Peacemaker

[Anthony Fenton]

THE PEACEMAKER
By Eva Golinger
9 March 2008

[President Chávez’s diplomatic tone and calm demeanor brokered peace  
between Andean nations on the brink of war at the Rio Group Summit in  
Santo Domingo late last week, yet the media portrays him as a  
“dictator” and “threat to the region”.]

PERHAPS the most misprepresented and demonized figure in the media  
today, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, recently became a symbol  
of peace and diplomacy at the Rio Group Summit in Santo Domingo this  
past March 7. Chávez’s diplomatic, affectionate tone and his call to  
peace between sister nations calmed tensions between Colombia,  
Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which just hours before had been on  
the brink of war after Colombia unilaterally violated Ecuador’s  
territory without permission or notification in order to bomb and  
assassinate a leader of the Fuerzas Revolucionarias de Colombia  
(FARC) who was camped with a group of visiting Mexicans on the  
Ecuatorian side of the border. All those stationed at the FARC camp  
were killed, with the exception of three women, including one  
Mexican, who were injured and left by Colombian soldiers to die but  
were later rescued by Ecuatorian armed forces. Chávez, who had  
ordered his troops to the Colombian border and warned President Uribe  
of Colombia that a similar attempt to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty  
would be met with force, was quickly labeled by the international  
media as a “warmonger” and “responsible” for the conflict in the  
region. Colombia’s government, publicly backed by President Bush  
himself, accused Chávez and President Correa of Ecuador of aiding and  
funding the FARC, a group labeled “terrorist” by the United States,  
Colombia and the European Union, and even went so far as to implicate  
Chávez in the proposed sale of uranium to the FARC in order to build  
dirty bombs. These unsubstantiated – and extremely dangerous –  
allegations fall right in line with the increased efforts of the Bush  
Administration to label Chávez’s Venezuela as a nation that supports  
“drug trafficking”, “terrorism” and “money laundering”, and to  
classify Chávez as a “dictator”, “authoritarian” and “threat to U.S.  
interests.”

Debunking the Chávez myth is not as easy as it should be. Coverage of  
President Chávez and Venezuela is negative and distorted in 90% of  
major media outlets in Europe, Latin America and the United States.  
An analysis of the Washington Post editorial page during the past  
year shows that of the twenty-three editorials or OpEds specifically  
written about Venezuela, only one – written by Venezuela’s Ambassador  
to the US – presented a balanced vision of the South American  
nation’s political and economic situation. President Chávez was  
labeled as a “dictator”, “autocrat”, “strongman” or “despot” on ten  
occasions and references to his government as “dictatorial”,  
“authoritarian” or “repressive” were made in almost every article.  
Even worse, the Washington Post perpetuated the falsehood of  
Venezuela’s relationship with terrorism in almost a dozen editorials  
during the last year.

None of these claims about Venezuela and President Chávez’s slippery  
slope towards a terrorist dictatorship have ever been seriously  
substantiated with real evidence. In fact, a frightening parallel can  
be drawn between the Bush-Cheney lies about weapons of mass  
destruction in Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq and the false allegations about  
Chávez’s Venezuela funding and arming Colombian terrorists and  
facilitating drug trafficking and money laundering. The mere  
reference made by President Uribe regarding a possible sale of  
uranium to the FARC to build bombs is eerily reminiscent of Pat  
Robertson’s outrageous claims in 2005 that President Chávez was  
building a nuclear bomb with Iran to blow up the United States. While  
ridiculous, such allegations justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq  
after government officials hammered the false claims into public  
opinion and the media recycled lies. Those cynical or too naive to  
believe that a similar aggression could occur against Venezuela need  
only remember the U.S. invasion of socialist Grenada in 1983 or the  
bombing and invasion of Panamá in 1989. In both instances, neither  
government represented a real threat to the U.S., and in both cases,  
myths about “dangerous dictatorships” were perpetuated in the media  
in order to justify the unilateral attacks. When the truth came out  
years later, as is the case with Iraq, U.S. officials offer insincere  
apologies and shrug it all off as “in the past” and anyway, they were  
all bad guys.

Over the past year, the U.S. State Department has classified  
Venezuela as a nation “not collaborating” with either the “war on  
drugs” or the “war against terrorism”. The Pentagon and the  
intelligence communities released reports earlier this year citing  
Venezuela as a “major threat to U.S. national security” and have  
proposed beefing up military presence in the region. The White House  
and Congress have increased USAID and National Endowment Funding to  
opposition groups in Venezuela in an effort to rebuild ailing  
conservatives that favor a U.S. agenda. International media portray  
Chávez as “public enemy #1” and the leader of a Latin American “axis  
of evil” that is threatening regional stability. Meanwhile, poverty  
in Venezuela has been reduced by more than 50% under the thrice- 
elected President Chávez, 100% of Venezuelans have access to free,  
quality health care and education beyond the doctoral level, voter  
participation has skyrocketed to unprecedented, historical levels and  
more new hospitals, schools, highways, bridges, railways and  
industries have been built since during the entire 40-year period of  
“representative democracy”.  And to top it all off, Chávez has  
negotiated the release of six hostages held by the FARC for more than  
five years, helped pay off Venezuela’s, Argentina’s and Nicaragua’s  
foreign debt and established regional initiatives such as Telesur,  
the Bank of the South, PetroCaribe, UnaSur (Union of South American  
Nations) and ALBA, a cooperative trade agreement between Venezuela,  
Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia.

Hugo Chávez is a man of peace. The question to ask is why the Bush  
Administration and mass media continue to portray him as an evil  
dictator. But we all know the answer to that: Venezuela has the  
world’s largest oil reserves. So what we really need to be asking is  
why public opinion – you - allow the perpetuation of this dangerous  
myth?


[Eva Golinger is a lawyer and the author of The Chávez Code: Cracking  
U.S. Intervention in Venezuela (Olive Branch Press 2006) and Bush vs.  
Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela (Monthly Review Press 2008).]