Expose Chavez’s betrayal. Let us build an anti-imperialist, classist and socialist alternative.
The recent surrender of the journalist Joaquín Perez Becerra to the terrorist Juan Manuel Santos administration by Hugo Chavez Frias has shocked thousands of left activists all over Latin America and the world, including those who regard themselves as Chavists.
Nothing less than that could have been expected. However, we find it fundamental to overcome these first reactions and make headway to draw political conclusions and seek the deep roots that explain the reprehensible behaviour of Chavez’s.
Chavez’s “new best friend”
It is a well-known fact that in Colombia there is a Bonapartist regime that acts in the service of the domination of American imperialism, guaranteeing a political and military platform inside the continent.
This regime of terror was consolidated during the last Alvaro Uribe administrations (2002-2010) a time during which Colombia turned into one of the countries with the highest rate of violations of human rights. Half of the trade union activists who are murdered all round the world are Colombian. To all these blood curdling figures we must now add the discovery of common graves with 2000 bodies of social fighters and oppositionists in general. And not to mention the famous Patriotic Union (UP) a political party from which the paramilitaries and even the Colombian army exterminated 2 presidential candidates, 8 congress-people, 13 representatives, 70 councillors, 11 mayors and over 5000 grassroots militants who survived the selective murder.
During his last days in the office, Uribe the murderer sued Chavez to the International Penal Tribunal and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the OAS for giving shelter to members of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). After a heated discussion, Chavez broke off diplomatic and commercial relations with Colombia, built up the frontier lines, and announced that a Colombian invasion was imminent with strong support from American imperialism, who had just signed an agreement with Uribe entitling them to use 7 Colombian military bases during 10 years to fight “against drug dealing and terrorism” within the framework of the Colombia Plan.
In the midst of these political tensions, in August 2010, Juan Manuel Santos, Uribe’s former defence minister and therefore the accomplice and executor of all the atrocities of the genocidal regime.
The way the leader of the “Bolivarian revolution” assessed Santos during those month was not in the least favourable. Shortly before and during the “paper war”, Chavez dubbed Santos as “mafioso”, as the “lord of the war” and the “pitiyanquee number one in Colombia”. He then announced his decision of “taking some distance from, reduce commerce with a government that has practically confessed to be the enemy of Venezuela and who threatens with invading him and has left the front door wide open for the Yankee Empire. He tops it all by announcing that – if elected – “I shall not receive him”. ome would be very much surprised by his future behaviour.
Once the crisis of the “paper war” was over, thanks to the mediation promoted by Nestor Kirchner via UNASUR, Chavez drastically changed his position regarding the new Santos administration.
In early August he publicly requests the Colombian guerrilla to negotiate with Santos, with the gall that since the Colombian government publicly “proposes the path of peace, the guerrilla should (…) also do so”. He insists to exhort in the face of the world, “this guerrilla should manifest for peace, but with forceful manifestations. For example, they might free all the hostages. Why should a guerrilla hold hostages?”
His newfound policy leads him to trample even his rhetoric rejection of the settling of American military bases on Colombian soil. Even though it is evident that they are a menace to the entire continent, Chavez asserts that “Colombia is sovereign to arrive at agreements with any country in the world.”
That is not all. Surprisingly, in November 2010, he declared that a “new age” had started for the relations with the Colombia of the Uribe continuity. Juan Manuel Santos says the same thing. Almost euphorically, the Colombian said that since 10th August, relation with Hugo Chavez are “radically different”. Above all he highlights the cooperation with the “Bolivarian regime” in capturing and handing over of people linked or related to Colombian guerrilla. Santos says so quite bluntly: “And he committed himself in front of the whole world, and he committed himself with Colombia and he has been true to his commitment: he has handed people over to us. There has been no precedent for that; he has handed over to us people of the FARC of the ELN is what he has handed over to us.” Finally he asserts that Chavez will dutifully comply with the imperial guardians: “If I am to say what I think (…) that there is headway and I believe there will be further progress every day. This is what we expect him to do for he has been fully complying.”
This change in Chavez’s behaviour and even his rhetoric is the outcome of the efficiency of the renewed tactics of democratic reaction boosted by American imperialism. In the same way as Obama represented a “necessary change of face” against the loathed Bush figure, Santos –with his “conciliatory” and “broad-minded”– profile, willing to talk to the neighbours – appeared fit to substitute Uribe and so win Chavez and Correa to his policy of definitely beating the FARC and so stabilise the area in the service of imperialism. It is by means of this new tactics and the explicit collaboration of these two governments credited as “XXI century socialism” that imperialism is reaching its aim.
The Perez Becerra case
It is within the framework of this policy of capitulation to the genocidal regime of Santos-Uribe that last 25 April, the journalist Joaquin Perez Becerra, director of the News Agency Nueva Colombia (ANNCOL), country from which he escaped in order to avoid being murdered and then he obtained political asylum in Sweden.
The way in which Perez Becerra is handed over to Santos is revolting. He was arrested as soon as the set his foot on Venezuelan soil, jailed, placed in solitary confinement and in less than 48 hours deported to Bogotá.
Chavez’s servile spirit with respect to his new ally is best described by the following fact. Acting smug and self-satisfied Santos declared to the Bogotá newspaper El Tiempo, “On Saturday I called President Chavez and told him that a fellow who was very important for us, of the FARC, was arriving at Caracas on a Lufthansa flight this afternoon and if he please could have him arrested. He did not hesitate. He had him captured and will now hand him over to us.”
Chavez complied with the order. Perez Becerra, accused of being the “leader of the international front of FARC in Europe” was arrested by the Venezuelan state. In an official communiqué explanation was given that the dissident journalist was “wanted by organs of justice of the Republic of Colombia, through INTERPOL for the commission of such offences as agreement to commit crime, financing terrorism and administration of resources related to terrorist activities.” Sounds incredible coming from the government whose president just months before said that the FARC and the ELN were not terrorist, that they were real armies and had to be acknowledgement (…) being the insurgent forces whose Bolivarian political project is respected here”.
Just in case there is any doubt left among honest activists or revolutionaries, it was Chavez himself who admitted his own responsibility when he said, “The only one responsible for sending Joaquin Perez Becerra to Colombia is Hugo Chavez. It is not Nicolas Maduro (Foreign secretary) or Andrés Izarra (minister of Communication). Whoever wishes to criticise me, he may do so!” And it is no coincidence that, face with mobilisations rejecting the handover of Perez Becerra, the government responded furiously accusing and associating the protesters with the “ultraleft”.
Chavez has violated every democratic principle. We are not talking of revolutionary socialist principles for he has never had any of those. But only the basic right to the defense and political asylum!
The most grievous thing about it all is that Joaquin Perez Becerra is not the only one. This comes together with the surrender tens of other real or simply alleged members of the FARC, of the ELN or ETA. The latter were handed over to the reactionary Spanish government and the decadent Bourbon monarchy.
We have always sustained that the bourgeois nationalism professed by Hugo Chavez, with all the nationalizations settled with the multinationals and other tepid measures, is extremely limited. But in the case of Perez Becerra this becomes even more evident, for this cowardly and despicable attitude in the face of imperialism and its agents is far from what bourgeois nationalists of the 30s and 40s of the XX century did in Latin America, for it contrast badly with the case of the Mexican Lazaro Cardenas who had no qualms about granting asylum to such revolutionaries as Leon Trotsky, when – in 1938 he was claimed by several imperialist countries and the powerful soviet bureaucracy.
These shameful deeds evidence Chavez’s adhesion to the demands of imperialism and the Bonapartist regime of Colombia in matters of the “struggle against terrorism which, as we know, is nothing but struggle against the resistance of Latin American toiling masses against the imperialist recolonisation.
What is behind Chavez’s treason
The background to this deliberate policy of collaboration with Santos, imperialism, INTERPOL and the CIA is to be found at home, in the tremendous economic crisis, stemming out of the world crisis of capitalism, that Venezuela is going through. Abroad it stands for political pressures of imperialism.
Bolivar’s fatherland was the only country that ended 2010 with a recession of -1.9%. The accumulated yearly inflation soared from 6.5% to 8.7% in these last months. The “Bolivarian” government responded to the crisis the same way as all the other capitalist countries did: shoving the weight of it onto the backs of the toiling masses.
That is why commercial relations with Santos receive VIP treatment. That is why murderers of the people are extolled. It is all in consideration of the commercial aid from the one whom Chavez used to call mafioso and “pitiyanqui”. He is even prepared to legitimate such coup-made administration as that of Porfirio Lobo in Honduras who has not been so far acknowledged by most of the remaining administration on the continent.
This aspect deserves a special highlight. Last 9 April, In Colombia and boosted by American diplomacy, a meeting was held between Chavez and Santos and an agreement was reached to boost the international acknowledgement of the administration spawned by the June 2009 coup in Honduras and its reincorporation into the OAS at the nearest General Assembly. In this way, the squalid coup-spawned administration and the Honduran bourgeoisie could gain access to loans of such organisations as the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) and benefit from the advantageous financing for oil that PETROCARIBE, a company formed within the Chavez-led ALBA, has to offer. President Chavez made it very clear in Colombia, “I was very pleased to meet president Lobo (…) and the results are very positive (…) we have proceeded to try and help Honduras to be reintegrated into all the international organisms and programmes of cooperation with our countries”.
Chavez is ready to whitewash a government emerged out of a coup d’etat and to betray the struggle of the Honduran toiling masses who still resist persecutions and repression from the de facto government. All this shameful process of capitulation to imperialism and to the Honduran coup-makers takes place with the blessing from the former President Mel Zelaya who, on April 19 went to Caracas to “accept the mediation for the sake of “peace and democracy in Honduras”.
These facts pose a solution to a discussion that started on 2009, when most of the left asserted that the tactics of imperialism was to promote Honduras-like coups all over the place and that, because of that we had to build up political support for “progressive” governments. The IWL-FI championed that the main tactics of imperialism was altogether different. It was the democratic reaction, to try to incorporate the Honduran opposition and even Zelaya himself into the regime by means of agreements, which is what we can now witness.
It is not right to go beating about the bush. Chavez’s actions must be called by their name: treason and hand-over. Treason of the Venezuelan toiling masses who have been fighting impressive revolutionary battles ever since 1989 and all those honest fighters and activists all over the world who trusted – and still trust – him for they se him as an “anti-imperialist” and “socialist” leader.
For an international solidarity campaign, exposure and for the freedom of Perez Becerra!
From the International Workers’ League – Fourth International (IWL-FI) we expose this infamous treason by Hugo Chavez and we make his government liable for any physical jeopardy Perez Becerra and all the remaining political prisoners arrested by the Chavez administration may suffer.
It is absolutely necessary to start a massive campaign of information, bringing to light and mobilisation for the immediate liberation of Perez Becerra and all the other political prisoners handed over by the Chavez administration to the terrorist regime of Santos.
The time has come to expose Chavez’s betrayals and to demand the breach of his fatal pact with Santos and with imperialism. Only the independent mobilisation of the working class and Venezuelan people, together with the rest of Latin America, will succeed at defeating this pact signed at the price of blood and freedom of thousands of social and left fighters.
Let us build an anti-imperialist, proletarian and socialist alternative to confront Chavism!
It is furthermore necessary to go deeper into the analysis of all the organisations that claim to be left and hoist the banner of socialism regarding the class character of the Chavez administration. It is urgent to break off with this confusion that crops up as an effect of identifying the defence of the Venezuelan and Latin American revolutions with the defence of the Chavez administration. Hugo Chavez is not the revolution; he is its gravedigger.
The “Bolivarian” leader has proved amply that he is a bourgeois leader, of a sector of Venezuelan capitalists who became rich on the oil rent and all kinds of profiteering on the State. He is not a socialist leader; he is the leader of the so-called “Bolibourgeoisie”. Because of his bourgeois character, he will never be a consistent “anti-imperialist, in spite of his rhetoric and certain rubs with imperialism, he will continue maintaining the semi-colonial condition of Venezuela.
A policy of support for this government will only weaken the possibility and the need of building an independent way out, classist, socialist and internationalist for the Venezuelan working class, this being the task upon which we, the militants of the IWL and other revolutionaries in the world.
We insist that no bourgeoisie or national bourgeois sector will be able to play a progressive role in the liberation of our continent from the claws of the imperial eagle. Chavez is not – and will not be – an exception to this rule proven throughout history. The time has come to draw balance sheets and draw the necessary lessons for the Socialist Revolution that will liberate us from all oppression and exploitation.
International Secretariat of the IWL
May 2011
