Militant report on rightist march, popular countermobilization in Venezuela

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Another excellent factual report from Argiris Malapanis, who led the
Militant's reporting team in Venezuela a couple of months ago.

He indicates that there has been some progress in implementing the land
reform since he was there and that peasants are expecting more.

One factual point: Malapanis reports that there was little violence by or in
response to the rightist demonstration.  This is accurate.  However, the
capitalist papers reported that cops fired on a group of Chavez supporters
attempting to mobilize against the supporters of a coup, and that one was
killed and several wounded.
Fred Feldman

THE MILITANT
Vol.66/No.40           October 28, 2002

Venezuela: massive protest
counters coup plans
(front page)

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
MIAMI--Hundreds of thousands of working people took to the
streets of Caracas, Venezuela's capital, October 13 in one
of the largest mobilizations in years. The action marked six
months since President Hugo Chávez returned to office after
a U.S.-backed military coup ousted him for two days in early
April. Protesters also denounced an ultimatum by the
pro-imperialist opposition that Chávez resign or call
immediate elections.

Opposition forces had mounted their own rally three days
earlier. This action, dominated by professionals and other
middle-class layers, drew between 500,000 and 1 million
people, many of them banging pots and pans. Leaders of
Fedecámaras, the country's main bosses' association, and top
officials of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV),
the country's largest trade union federation, declared at
this rally they will call a general strike beginning October
21 to try to bring down the government if Chávez doesn't
step down immediately.

Tensions mounted the week leading up to October 13. The
government claimed October 6 that it had foiled a feeble
coup attempt after security officers raided the house of
Enrique Tejera, a former foreign minister, and seized
documents that supposedly implicated him in a plot.

On October 9, an antigovernment mob of hundreds prevented
police from arresting Manuel Rosendo, an army general who
called on the military to disobey any orders to suppress the
following day's opposition march. Rosendo is among 300
military officers under investigation for their involvement
in the April coup. They have been sidelined from active
command duties but none have been convicted so far.
Leading up to and during the October 10 opposition rally, the
government deployed hundreds of troops and tanks on the
streets of Caracas. The mobilizations took place largely
without violent clashes.

"There are already enough people here for a march twice the
size of the opposition demonstration," said journalist
Tibisay Franquis in a telephone interview on the afternoon
of October 13 as she was covering the pro-Chávez action.
Franquis works for CATIATV, a local television station based
in Catia, the largest working-class barrio of Caracas, that
broadcasts mostly in such neighborhoods.

"Catia, the January 23 barrio, and many other areas of the
city--the poorer areas--are virtually empty. People have
poured into the downtown area. Three days ago it was the
richer suburbs that were empty during their rally. Today's
march is at least 16 kilometers [10 miles] long. And there's
many people from other areas of the country here."

Peasants' land aspirations
For example, thousands of people from San Carlos, the
capital of Cojedes, a largely agricultural state, went to
Caracas for the October 13 march, said Armando Serpa, a
farmer who lives on the outskirts of the city. Among them
were 400 peasants. Serpa gave a phone interview from his
home the same afternoon. "I had an accident, broke my leg
and I could not go," he said, "but I am watching it on TV.
It's the biggest march we've had since 1998."

Militant reporters had met Serpa and other peasants in the
area during a visit in mid-July. "Since then, people feel we
may have a little wind in our sails," he said. "Most of us
who were promised titles to land are still waiting. But the
opposition failed to 'reform' the agrarian reform law. And
those who had claims as part of the estate of the Yauques
got their titles."

Serpa was referring to the Law on Land and Agricultural
Development. It was signed by the government in November of
last year. Along with the Law on Fishing and Aqua-culture,
the new agrarian law is among the most contentious measures
taken by the Chávez government. It allows the state to
confiscate some idle private farms of more than 12,000 acres
and distribute the land to the peasants. It also lays out
procedures for peasants and indigenous people to place
claims for stolen lands.

Members of the Yauques, a family of indigenous people, filed
documents under this law showing a legal claim to some
153,000 acres of land in Cojedes, granted to their tribe in
the 19th century. Big landowners forcibly seized the land
over the last half century, members of the Yauques said.
Joining forces with peasant organizations, the Yauques won
their claim, according to Serpa. They turned over the land
to the state, which distributed it to landless peasants from
the area over the last two months.

"For the first time, the majority, I would say more than 60
percent, at the march were young people," said Claudia
Orsini, in a telephone interview the evening of October 13,
as the pro-Chávez rally was winding down. "High school and
college students, artists, young professionals, and workers,
you name it." Orsini is a national leader of the Fifth
Republic Revolutionary Youth (JVR), a pro-Chávez youth
group. She spoke as many people around her at Bolívar Avenue
in central Caracas could still be heard chanting, "Chávez is
here to stay."

Orsini and others interviewed that day by phone said some 2
million marched. The big-business press reported
substantially smaller participation.

Orsini pointed out that for the first time virtually all TV
and radio stations, which are mostly private and in the
hands of opposition forces, carried live coverage of the
pro-government action. Chávez had threatened to take these
stations off the air after their technicians reportedly
tried to scramble the signal of Venezuelan TV, the only
state-controlled channel. Their management had also
announced it would boycott the October 13 action, after it
gave wide coverage to the opposition march three days
earlier. These channels also showed repeatedly an interview
with Navy officer Alvaro Martín Fossa, a vice-admiral who
called on Chávez to resign.

Chávez addressed the rally, rejecting the call to step down
as undemocratic and unconstitutional. He maintained his
previous offer to call a referendum in August 2003 over
whether he should remain president or call early elections
before his term expires in 2007.

"We still have to assess the results," said Orsini, "but
many of us are coming out of this march feeling that we are
stronger." She said the mobilization put in a better
position those fighting "for the ownership of the land to be
turned over to the people, the ownership of the factories to
be turned over to the people, the ownership of the services
to be turned over to the people. It's not enough to have
elected a government we support, or at least that we oppose
it being brought down by force by the rich minority who
still control the economy. We need the economic power too.
That's what we thought was the president's most important
message at the rally."

Most workers oppose CTV strike call
Ismael Hernández did not share Orsini's view that Chávez
made such statements in his October 13 speech. "What I heard
him saying is that if some bosses boycott the economy he won
't oppose efforts to take over those businesses," Hernández
said in a telephone interview that evening. A member of the
textile workers union, a CTV affiliate, Hernández had just
gotten off the bus returning from the Caracas march to
Valencia, the country's third largest city and biggest
industrial center. Some 40,000 people from Valencia--mostly
auto, textile, health care, and other workers--joined the
Caracas rally, he said.

"The problem for the CTV tops and the bosses is that more
and more people believe they should do what Claudia said. In
the factories, most workers oppose the CTV call for a
general strike. They [the CTV officials] did it without
consultation with us, the workers, which flies in the face
of their claims for democracy. This week, the textile
workers and other unions here have planned meetings. These
assemblies are supposed to authorize takeovers of the
companies if the CTV gets its way in supporting the bosses'
strike, where factories close despite the wishes of the
majority of workers."

Such views have spread well beyond Valencia, Hernández said.
They are part of the reason for divisions within the trade
union tops and the bourgeois opposition over the
CTV-Fedecámaras call for a strike to oust Chávez.

Officials of Venezuela's largest oil union, Fedepetrol, for
example, stated they would not join the reactionary strike
after the government agreed to a 35 percent wage raise.

Pro-imperialist opposition divided
An article in the October 10 Washington Post, titled "Weak
economy pinches Venezuelan opposition," pointed to some
other factors. Venezuela is gripped by a worsening economic
crisis, mostly as a result of the workings of the capitalist
system and the effects of imperialist domination. The
country's gross national product shrank 7 percent in the
first half of this year, according to government figures,
the Post reported. Nearly half a million people have lost
their jobs in the same period, bringing unemployment to
about 20 percent. Foreign investment has virtually dried up,
while the bolivar, the national currency, has lost more than
half its value against the dollar this year. Inflation is
running at nearly 25 percent. Food purchases are down 10
percent compared to the same period in 2001.

Bourgeois opposition forces that vehemently oppose Chávez
for backing measures that cut into the prerogatives of big
capital--such as the agrarian and fishing laws--and for
closer ties with Cuba's revolutionary government are "also
wary of a money-losing national strike that would be the
third in less than a year," the Post said. "A poll released
this week by the independent firm Consultores 21 showed that
60 percent of the population opposes a strike.... [Henrique]
Salas Romer, a likely opponent for Chávez in a coming
election, is among a growing number of opposition leaders
who have split from the Fedecámaras-CTV formula for driving
Chávez from office."

Under these conditions, Washington has muted its earlier
not-so-hidden support for efforts to oust Venezuela's
president. Following the October 10 opposition rally, U.S.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "It's
important for both sides to use the opportunity to resolve
those issues democratically and through dialogue." An
article in the October 8 St. Petersburg Times stated that
U.S. government officials have smoothed somewhat relations
with Chávez as part of guaranteeing petroleum shipments from
Venezuela, from where 30 percent of U.S. oil is imported.
"This is not an embrace of Chávez," the article quoted
Michael Shifter, of the Washington-based Inter-American
Dialogue, saying. "But there is clearly a distancing from
the opposition."

The U.S. rulers are worried that resistance to "market
reforms" and expectations for better living standards among
working people in Venezuela, heightened with the coming to
power of Chávez, may spread elsewhere in Latin America.
Pointing to the first-round victory in recent presidential
elections in Brazil of Ignacio Lula da Silva, the candidate
of the Workers Party, an editorial in the October 10 New
York Times said, "If free-market reforms are to prevail in
Latin America, more effort must be made to extend their
benefits beyond a narrow elite to the tens of millions whom
Mr. da Silva attracted. Such an impoverished majority put
Hugo Chávez into power in Venezuela and seems likely to be a
majority force in next year's Argentine presidential
election."





Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT


~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.