On a governmental level for Latin America and the Caribbean, Cuba was to the Cold War as Venezuela now is to the current pattern of global confrontation over the ideologies and practices of neoliberalism. Like Cuba, Venezuela has elicited a strongly antagonistic response from Washington for playing this honorary role.
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently stated, what U.S.-Venezuelan relations comes down to, is “what kind of hemisphere is this going to be? Is it going to be a hemisphere that is democratic and that is prosperous and where neighbors get along, where neighbors don’t interfere in each other’s affairs, where people fight drug trade and fight terrorism together actively?”
Immediately, we can dismiss Washington’s “concern” for democracy as the basis for its hostility. The history of U.S.-Latin American relations makes this much abundantly clear. And the Bush Administration’s behavior regarding the fight against terrorism, the drug trade and other people’s prosperity is so riddled with contradictions that those “concerns” can also be dismissed. What remains is the accusation that Venezuela meddles in the affairs of other nations.
U.S. officials have repeatedly accused the Venezuelan government of supporting Colombian rebels and of funding the Bolivian coca-growers movement, but these allegations have been resoundingly rejected for lack of evidence. What Rice really means by Venezuela’s “interference” in regional affairs—a charge the State Department tags onto all its public comments on Venezuela—is more honestly stated as “influence.”
For decades, Cuba held considerable sway in the Americas, but now Venezuela has taken center-stage in hemispheric relations. At her confirmation hearing, Rice thus characterized Venezuela “a negative force in the region.”
Latin America stands poised at a historic crossroads. Left-leaning governments are consolidating power amid the hemisphere’s evisceration by Washington-backed military and economic policies. The moment is ripe for a profound, continental transformation, and that Venezuela is trying to be the progressive locomotive driving this process makes Washington (and Wall Street) nervous.
Within the community of American governments, Venezuela has taken a prominent role in mapping out a future course for the Americas. President Hugo Chávez’s words, and in many cases his actions, resonate deeply with Latin Americans struggling to escape poverty, inequality, exclusion and the yoke of neoliberal domination.
It is Chávez’s efforts, along with those of neighboring leaders, to create a “counter-hegemonic bloc” that has more potential bite than bark. Although substantive steps toward greater and deeper regional economic and political integration have been largely led by Brazil, it is Chávez’s emotive billing of integration under an anti-neoliberal banner that gives the process widespread support throughout the region. Helped by Brazil, he has also sought regional economic cooperation with Asian countries, particularly China, in an effort to diversify his country’s U.S.-dominated trade and investment portfolio. Instead of perceiving Latin America’s integration projects as sure-fire ways of ceding sovereignty, he understands regional integration, bloc-building and South-South solidarity as vehicles for attaining national sovereignty amid coercive U.S. power.
Of course, there are more radical forces at work in the region, notably in Bolivia, but none have yet achieved state power. Undoubtedly, Chávez is attempting a state-sponsored transformation of Venezuela, and by extension the hemisphere. He has invited Venezuelans to join him in constructing “a socialism for the twenty-first century”—presumably as opposed to Cuba’s. But in today’s context, what the Venezuelan government is carrying out is almost as radical as what the bearded revolutionaries achieved in the Caribbean. In both cases, immediate efforts focused on the radical inclusion of the nations’ poor, darker-hued majorities, and the chipping away of elite power.
Much ink has been spilled about Chávez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” his policies, his ideas and his style— especially by those questioning his “democratic credentials.” It seems the stagnation of the Cuban predicament has given way to a new crucible of debate and critique around questions of social justice, anti-imperialism, neoliberalism, socialism, democracy and, ultimately, the liberation of a hemisphere.
About the Author
Teo Ballvé is a NACLA editor and a contributing news editor for the Resource Center of the Americas http://www.americas.org.
