VENEZUELA Urgent Politics. Counter-information bulletin #1
Caracas, February 20th, 2002
VENEZUELA - política urgente is a counter-information initiative of the Plataform for Radical Democracy, one of many initiatives of the autonomous leftist movement that have organized in the past months, in order to stop the conservative forces from overthrowing the process of social transformation that is taking place in the country, and to promote further political changes.
Translated by: Brian Holmes has translated 3 of 4 sections of this bulletin on his own initiative. Thanks Brian!
Contents
1. Presentation of the initiative
2. A Pinochet-style coup for Venezuela
3. Some major victories in the Venezuelan process
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1. VENEZUELA - urgent politics is a counter-information initiative from a group of persons who, faced with the difficult situation currently being traversed by the Venezuelan political process, have decided to put together efforts in an attempt to reverse the campaign of informational manipulation concerning what is happening in the country. In the present situation, popular organizations, militants on the left, intellectuals, students and progressive sectors in general find ourselves forced to close ranks in defense of what we consider to be policies oriented unequivocally in favor of social justice, equality and popular participation.
We are taking a stand because not to do so would be to ignore the exclusionary project of the right which is advancing among the ever-more powerful and articulate enemies of the process. But also because we see with surprise how militants on the left, members of social movements, solidarity collectives, syndicalists, students and progressive intellectuals abroad are victims of the powerful campaign of disinformation orchestrated by the press agencies and the major communications media.
With this effort of counter-information, we seek to offer another reading of the Venezuelan situation to the collectives, groups and critical and progressive individuals who may be interested, with the aim of facing up to the campaign of manipulation by the major media, disqualifying in the most shameless and deceitful way the complex and contradictory but valuable process of popular liberation led by Chávez and pushed forward and supported by the great majorities of excluded people.
We do not aspire to be neutral: we clearly assume our political position in favor of a process of change which is most uncommon in these times of neoliberalism and social demobilization. In addition, we hope to promote a vigilant attitude of solidarity from the spaces of progressive political action both outside and inside the country. Nonetheless, we will attempt to offer them sufficient elements of information so that they can form their own judgments concerning what has been called the "Bolivarian" political process - which beyond all labels represents a project of possibilities for unheard-of social transformation in the country.
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2. A Pinochet-style coup for Venezuela
The political and social atmosphere of the nation has become stifling after the recent declarations in the media by three right-wing military men demanding that President Hugo Chavez step down. An open conspiracy can be observed among various actors posturing in an orchestrated way. In the tumultuous month of December the United States government pronounced its opinion through Collin Powell and the director of the CIA, both insinuating that Venezuela is a state with anti-North American inclinations. The high ambassador continued this cynical extravaganza by calling for civil disobedience. Then came the Papal Nuncio and the high ecclesiastical hierarchy with medieval insinuations: Chavez should be excommunicated. The major communications media constantly play up military discontent and display the calls for a coup d'etat in lengthy editorials. The landowners create paramilitary groups to defend their extensive parcels of idle fields - which are already laid in with their first victim in the person of a militant campesino from Zulia state. The right-wing parties and the unions caught up in the reaction vie publicly for the most radical of conspiratorial overtones. The upper-middle class, passed off abroad as "to the people rising up in anger," parade in luxurious cars, though without leaving the streets and squares of their home districts.
Nonetheless, this flood tide of speeches and mobilizations on the right holds an incentive for the left and the excluded sectors: it has been provoked by what we can call the radicalization of the process of change, or what comes down to the same, the clear redistribution of political and economic power toward the excluded majorities.
In barely two weeks, the sectors with the greatest power, those who have the most to lose, have decided to topple Hugo Chavez. They do not even consider the constitutional possibilities: they demand immediate renunciation of power, and since they cannot topple him by popular pressure they have placed the pressure on the members of the armed forces, some of whom are heeding the call while uncertain kinds of bribes flow under the table.
The excluded sectors, the leftist activists, the people from the countryside, the fishermen, the progressive sectors of the church, and the people from the poor neighborhoods, for their part, constantly take to the streets to defend not so much a president or a government as a project for the country which is becoming conceivable, and which for the first time takes them into account as participating subjects. Almost a million people from these sectors mobilized on February 4th and will do it again whennecessary. A display of force on the part of the powerful sectors then opens up the stage for cruel and battles between the allies and enemies of the revolutionary process: peace hangs by a thread when it only benefits the excluded.
Something very similar to what we're now seeing in Argentina happened here 12 years ago with the so-called "Caracazo." Our process has gathered up these cries and struggles of innumerable men and women who decided to rise against a dictatorship called democracy. Today, the same men and women are in the street defending what they consider to be theirs, no longer as a cry but as a real conquest: popular measures, a revolutionary constitution, laws against exclusion, the centrality of the struggle against poverty and hunger, the conferal of micro-credits, the tenancy of urban and rural land, sovereign international policy, the transferal of power from the upper class to the poor, the struggle against neoliberalism, against the unipolarity of the United States and against the hegemony of an overtly racist right. If the tendency in favor of a coup persists, many of these men and women will carry out a repeat of the "Caracazo," which left behind it the legacy of a bloody massacre of over 4000 people - and which will be commemorated next February 27th with opposite signs and intentions by the popular movement and the right, amidst a full-blown scenario of the confrontation between contradictions.
The cards are on the table. The process is radicalizing and the radicalization leads to confrontation with a powerful groups. This and only this is the reality constantly distorted by the national and international communications media when they call the most popular of Venezuelan presidents a dictator, a militarist and a caudillo, the only mestizo president ever, who together with the people is taking the first steps to put an end to a colonial era that has lasted over 500 years. This is what they cannot forgive and what causes so much reaction from the sectors of power and the opulent and pillaging middle and upper classes, which constitute minority sectors in the country (80% poverty, 60% of the land in the hands of 2% of owners, etc.).
The configuration of this scenario pushes us to watch out for the possibility of a rising in arms from the reactionary sectors and the right, in close public alliance with the government of the United States. Or what comes down to the same thing, a mortal attack against legitimate, popular and constitutional democracy and consequently, a bloodbath in our streets. It is necessary to ensure that our country should not be alone and that despite the discredit produced by the international media, that news of our process should be heard by world solidarity, above all if we can make it clear that Latin America will not bear a new Pinochet-style coup ­ and that the popular majorities will not let the first gains of the social transformation process be struck down.
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3. Some major victories in the Venezuelan process
a. Development of an international policy oriented to overcoming the traditional relations of hegemony and to the formation of a geopolitically multipolar world, a debate over social justice in the international sphere and a decisive confrontation with neoliberalism, as well as a reinforcement of Venezuelan sovereignty. Initiatives have been developed destined to reinforce the self-determination of the oil producing countries with respect to their own resources, with visits to Arab countries, the realization of the OPEC summit and the defense of prices; to develop exchanges with new allies such as China and Russia; to tightening of relations with Cuba and the Caribbean countries, among others. Thus, official declarations have been put forth questioning the U.S. war against Afghanistan and its permanent exercise of force, the formation of the FTAA as the imposition of a neoliberal model, and the opinions of spokesman of this country with respect to matters of internal policy.
b. Approval of the Law on Land and Agrarian Development, which constitutes a powerful instrument to bring about an end to the long history of injustices and inequalities in rural areas. The law declares the latifundista regime as contrary to the social interest, establishing penalties (lien or expropriation) for land left fallow. In this way complete rural development and food security is sought for the nation, as well as a more just and equitable distribution of the land, including the adjudication of public or expropriated land to campesino sectors. Self management and cooperative management is also being promoted through the financing of agricultural cooperatives, and a system of social security is being created for rural workers.
c. Approval of the Law on Fishing and Acquaculture, which leads toward the rational use of fishery resources within the framework of sustainable development; promotes the reinforcement of small-scale fishing, on which the large part of the coastal population depends and which provides for internal consumption; and establishes, for the first time in the country, clear regulations concerning drag-net fishing and the ecocidal practices of industrial fisheries.
d. Approval of the Bank Law, which obliges the bank to offer 17% of its credit to the agricultural sector under preferential conditions (in the accord with the Land Law); to offer preferential credits to small and medium-sized industry, and to destine a minimal percentage of its portfolio to the populations with least resources, in the form of micro-credits. It also establishes a mechanism to regulate the bank's profit rate.
e. Initial cessions of title deeds to landless campesinos. Up to this date, the state has delivered 6751 title deeds in the agricultural states of Zulia, Merida, Barinas and Portuguesa. These cessions, which are accompanied by the delivery of agricultural credits, include both the donations of new properties and regularizations of lands occupied and used over long periods of time.
f. The beginning of the process of ceding the property of land to popular urban settlements. For the first time in the contemporary history of Venezuela, on the basis of Presidential Decree no. 1.666, the inhabitants of the popular neighborhood can obtain title deeds (both individual and collective) to the land on which are established the living spaces they have constructed in an informal manner on the margins of state policies. The project includes the active part suspicion of the communities in elaboration of the local plans for the normalization of tenancy. c. Clear orientations of public policies in social matters to the progressive retrieval of public structures of social protection, pillaged within the framework of earlier neoliberal governments. Guarantees for free education, health services, plans for participatory policies, budgetary asignation in all social matters, these are only some of the most exceptional elements in this respect.

For information and contacts: politicaurgente@politicaurgente.org (Spanish, English, French spoken)
Local sites regarding the Venezuelan process: www.antiescualidos.com - www.proceso-digital.com -www.redbolivariana.com
Brian's e-mail: 106271.223@compuserve.com