The First FUBAR

Bush's first FUBAR made Hugo Chavez the future of Latin America.

Long before the misguided backing of an invasion of Somalia, before Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration backed an attempted coup of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela that was less "Bay of Pigs" than Keystone Cops.

This forgotten cock-up came early in the Bush Administration, yet set the precedence for many of the same mistakes that would destabilize the Middle East and Africa, and re-aligned Latin America with socialism. Yet, although covered by the New York Times and others, it went largely unnoticed by the columnists and chattering class, and was mostly overlooked.

Now, Chavez did attempt a coup in 1992 and went to prison for two years but was eventually pardoned. Having failed militarily, he decided to try the electoral route, winning by 56% of the vote.

Sucks for us, but with democracies, that's the way things break sometimes, especially in places that don't like us very much. With voters in other countries, you can never be sure they have America's best interests at heart. (Sometimes, you can't expect US voters to, either.)

Part of what made Chavez so hated by us, and so popular in his own country, was that Chavez wanted to nationalize the oil companies and give profits to the poor. We certainly didn't like it, rich people in the international oil business didn't like it, and oil barons in Venezuela sure as heck din't like it, but the poor people registered to vote in Chavez's country liked it very, very, very much. It sucks, but that's how democracy works.

So, the rich oil barons in Venezuela ousted Chavez and installed the President of Venezuela's largest trade union, Pedro Carmona. The coup had scarcely begun when Washington endorsed the new government, and Carmona's first act as "interim" President was to disolve the National Assembly, Supreme Court and suspend the election of any mayor or governors who got voted in when Chavez had coattails.

Ultimately, Carmona's reign would last only 47 hours, and was forced to resign when the Venezuelan people rose up in mass to protest and strike, and other things people in democracies do rather than resorting to military overthrow. Seeing that Venezuelans were bound and determined to have the election results honored, Chavez was restored to power. Probably more due to the coup than anything Chavez achieved in office, he then won re-election by 63% under the independent monitoring of the Carter Center that certified the results. (Maybe the oil barrons ought to learn something from Chavez, and try buying the election next time?)

As for Carmona, he was granted asylum by Columbia, evenutally ending up in Miami, Florida. Embarrassed, the Bush Administration immediately backed off their support of the coup and played dumb (yet refused to extradite Carmona). However, according to The Guardian:

Now officials at the Organisation of American States and other diplomatic sources, talking to The Observer, assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.

The visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, 'several months ago', and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich.

As the New York Times reported, the Bush Administration was soon forced to admit Reich had in fact been in contact with Carmona the day of the coup. That same day Reich had informed Congress that Chavez had voluntarily resigned, and the Administration admitted to speaking to many opposition leaders in the run up to the coup, and refused to condemn the ouster with the rest of the Americas until after Chavez was restored.

However, a former intelligence officer told the Guardian that the US Navy had aided the coup with intelligence, as they did in Somalia. "Wayne Madsen, a former intelligence officer with the US navy, told the Guardian yesterday that American military attaches had been in touch with members of the Venezuelan military to examine the possibility of a coup," as well as providing "communications jamming" of the opposition. Months prior, the government had been funneling money to groups opposed to Chavez that would come to be involved in the coup.

What was most disturbing is how willingly the press had harped the Bush Administration line that overthrowing an elected President and dissolving the country's constitution was somehow pro-democratic, a position they later had to defend when they were forced to back-track, as the White House did, after the coup ultimately failed.

 The result has been that in every election since the attempted Chavez ouster, the most anti-American, socialist candidate has won:

During eight years in the White House, Bush's war on Iraq so absorbed his attention that for once in three centuries of Yanqui hegemony, Latin America has breathing room to shore up common defenses against the Colossus of the North, build alliances, as the pendulum swings left from neoliberalism, and even elect some social democratic presidents.

 It has become, what McClatchy described as the end of the Monroe Doctrine, where Latin American countries gladly formed alliances with other nations, with the explicite purpose of leaving us at the side lines. "[Bush's] legacy may be the biggest loss of U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory.]"

"Bush has presided during one of the most significant political re-alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere," Nick Miroff said in the San Francisco Examiner. "By this summer, every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to be run by elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free markets. If Cold War-era domino theory has been a bust elsewhere, it's working in Latin America."

The Underground does not endorse Chavez, by any means, but it is disturbing when the Press so willingly backs a coup of a democratically elected leader to install a businessman who immediately dissolves the government. It is amazing that it is taken as an accepted fact that Chavez is somehow equal to Saddam Hussein, when he, at least, had an election. Even if he is the Saddam of South America, as in Iraq, it seems our policy had, far from hurting our enemies, driven potential allies into their hands.

You can find some documents obtained via FOIA request.