Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez celebrate as Chavez gives a speech from the balcony at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sunday, December 3, 2006.
Photo: AP
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Venezuela Casts Its Vote for Greater Colombia
// Hugo Chavez Wins a Third Term in Venezuelan Elections
Election results released yesterday in Venezuela handed incumbent Hugo Chavez a triumphant victory with more than 60% of the vote. Having secured himself a second six-year term in office, the world’s biggest buyer of Russian arms is ready to fulfill his main goals: to organize a Bolivar-style revolution across the whole of Latin America and, possibly, to create a powerful new state in the region. Within a few years, the United States could be facing a new threat on its southern border that would make Iran and Iraq pale in comparison.
Defeat for the Devil
“This is a new defeat for the devil who wants to dominate the world. Down with imperialism!” cried Hugo Chavez in an appearance before his supporters in Caracas on the night after the presidential elections. It was clear even from the preliminary results that he had been reelected as president with a clear margin that made a second round of voting unnecessary. Around 61% of the vote went to Mr. Chavez, while his opponent Manuel Rosalesa won just 38%.
The recent elections were Mr. Chavez’s third contest and his most successful thus far. After being elected president for the first time in 1998 with 56% of the vote, he rewrote Venezuela’s constitution to give the sitting president the right to run for office again. The previous constitution limited presidents to a single five-year term. Mr. Chavez increased the term length to six years, and in 2000 he was reelected under the new constitution. Since then, the Venezuelan leader has repeatedly said that he sees no need for a two-term limit and has vowed to introduce a corresponding constitutional amendment. According to Mr. Chavez, he intends to stay in power until at least 2021, if not longer.
In constructing his ambitious plans, Mr. Chavez is making no secret of the projects that he hopes to see to fruition in the near future. First of all, the Venezuelan president is actively arming himself. For the past several years, Caracas has been making deals with Moscow to the tune of $3 billion, including one for the delivery of 24 SU-30 fighter jets for $1.5 billion, 100,000 Kalashnikovs, and the right to build a Kalashnikov factory in Venezuela. Russia is not Mr. Chavez’s only arms supplier: over the last few years Mr. Chavez has spent an additional $2 billion on weapons from Spain and elsewhere, leading to fears in the American government concerning why Mr. Chavez needs so many weapons and with whom exactly he is spoiling for a fight.
Hugo Chavez’s other hobby is ideological warfare. Immediately after he was first elected president, he announced the beginning of a “Bolivar-style revolution.” Mr. Chavez needs military might to bring his revolutionary project to fruition, and his recent victory at the polls has opened up the road to the implementation of a key phase of his plan.
The Idol’s Legacy
The Venezuelan leader’s hero is the legendary Latin American revolutionary Simon Bolivar, in whose honor Mr. Chavez has named his own revolution. What is more, in 2000 he even changed the country’s name in the constitution to the Bolivar Republic.
The cherished dream of the Venezuelan-born Bolivar was the unification of all of the former Spanish colonies in America, much in the same way that the former British colonies to the north had been incorporated into the United States of America. Bolivar’s vision, however, was not of a democratic republic along the lines of the United States but rather of an authoritarian regime. In his well-known “Letter from Jamaica,” he wrote, “A great monarchy would not be easy to maintain, a great republic impossible.”
Simon Bolivar came close to realizing his dream: in 1819 he created Greater Colombia, a state that encompassed present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, and Ecuador, as well as parts of Peru, Guyana, and Costa Rica. Bolivar became the country’s first president, but ultimately he could not hold the fledgling republic together. In 1830 Bolivar, disillusioned, named a successor and retired, and within a year Greater Colombia fragmented into three parts.
Hugo Chavez has made no secret of his desire to revive Bolivar’s dream. After being elected president, he often told the story of how in his youth he was investigating a battlefield in Venezuela where his idol had been victorious. Wandering through the woods, he inadvertently crossed the border into Colombia, where he was seized by the army and, found to be carrying a camera and maps of the area in his bag, accused of spying. In the interrogation room hung a portrait of Simon Bolivar. “How can I be a spy,” Chavez persuaded the Colombian officer, “when a hundred years ago our armies were one whole, and that man [he indicated Bolivar] commanded them both?” The Colombian, deeply moved, released the miscreant.
Upon becoming president, Hugo Chavez not only preserved his youthful ideas but also began to breathe life into them. Today he is one of the main proponents of Latin American unification, and his core unifying idea is regional hatred for the United States. According to Bolivar, who greatly admired the political system and ideals of the United States but who believed that such a republican system of government could never work for the former Spanish colonies of Latin America, “I think it would be better [for Spanish] America to adopt the Koran [as a political code] than the form of government of the United States, even if the latter is the best in the world."
Accordingly, Mr. Chavez has begun to actively participate in the political life of his country’s neighbors. He supports like-minded politicians and has popularized an ideology of left-wing populism that calls for unity among the countries of Latin America and hostility towards the United States. A large part of the success enjoyed by Hugo Chavez and “Chavezism” has been thanks to the growing price of oil and a flood of petrodollars into Venezuela, which has allowed Caracas to invest colossal resources in its neighbors’ economies, thus burnishing the Venezuelan president’s image.
“Chavezism” has been spreading through Latin America for some time. Last year Evo Morales, a like-minded associate of Mr. Chavez, became the president of Bolivia, while last month’s elections in Ecuador were won by Rafael Correa, another disciple of the Venezuelan leader. Mr. Chavez also counts the left-wing leaders of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay among his fellows.
Another ace up Mr. Chavez’s sleeve is Cuba. The Venezuelan leader has long positioned himself as a devotee of Fidel Castro and as someone who will continue the Commandante’s legacy, and he has also become Havana’s main financial sponsor. Now that Castro has disappeared from public life in all but name, Mr. Chavez’s political clout on the island as greater than ever before: according to some American analysts, Cuba is basically becoming a Venezuelan satellite.
The results of this year’s presidential elections in Colombia and Mexico, however, have been much to the chagrin of Mr. Chavez and his associates. Both countries saw the left-wing candidates – Carlos Gaviria and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, both potential allies of Mr. Chavez – lose to their opponents by narrow margins. Naturally, both of the victors were favored by the United States.
The Victory of the Revolution
Before the recent elections, Hugo Chavez’s expansionist tendencies had a tentative and exploratory character. Now that he has consolidated his base and secured a seat in power for an apparently limitless period, however, the Venezuelan leader will undoubtedly embark on a massive assault on the position of the United States in the region. The only piece missing in Mr. Chavez’s push to revive Simon Bolivar’s Greater Colombia is Colombia. In Colombia, however, the central government lacks control over much of the country: a civil war has been being fought in Colombia for the last 30 years, and many parts of the country are in the hands of FARC insurgents (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Moreover, Bogota has never officially rebuked Caracas for its links with the rebels or even for its outright support of them.
The consolidation of Latin America under the aegis of Hugo Chavez may take different forms. For example, one of the concepts that he has come up is a Latin American Bolivarian alliance (ALBA), an idea that is gaining increasing currency in the region. The popular appeal of his ideas is buoyed by high oil prices, but left-wing anti-Americanism is spreading through Latin America regardless of Venezuela’s generosity and the flow of petrodollars.
Hugo Chavez’s star is rising against a backdrop of a lack of awareness in the United States of the scale of events in Latin America. Washington, heartened by the apparent impending death of Fidel Castro, is banking on the hope that once loosened from Castro’s grip, Cuba will fall quickly into America’s embrace. However, another scenario is entirely possible: the United States will not only fail to gain the friendship of Cuba, which is already clamped tightly in the arms of Venezuela – it may well lose all of its remaining partners in Latin America. As Hugo Chavez puts it, “the Bolivarian revolution is a sister of the Islamic revolution in Iran.” Even if only some of Hugo Chavez’s plans are realized, the next American administration may well have to open a new front: and not in the Near East, but in Latin America.
Mikhail Zygar
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 05, 2006
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