Charlie Devereux's Notebook:

Barack, meet Hugo. Hugo, meet Barack

A week of reconciliation between the United States and its Latin American neighbors took a turn for the better today when Barack Obama shook hands with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela’s press office (which provided the photo) quotes Chavez as saying: “With this same hand I greeted Bush eight years ago. I want to be your friend.”

Since Obama came to office relations between the two leaders have been volatile. Chavez initially made overtures toward Obama but later hurled insults when Obama suggested he was an impediment to progress in the region. A month ago he told Obama to “go wash his suit,” a Venezuelan expression which translates as “go wash your ass.”

Chavez’s relationship with Obama’s predecessor had completely broken down by the end of Bush’s tenure. Chavez had called Bush “the devil,” “a donkey” and “an asshole.”

Diplomatic ties reached their lowest ebb last year when Venezuela expelled the U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela as a sign of solidarity with his ally Evo Morales of Bolivia who had accused the U.S. of meddling in internal politics.

Many Latin Americans are hoping that the fifth Summit of the Americas, which began today in Trinidad, will be about America’s reconciliation with its “backyard.” The buzz is that with a new administration the United States’ frosty relation with its neighbors might finally be beginning to thaw.

Latin American leaders this week met in Cumana, Venezuela, at a summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), an organization set up by Venezuela and other leftwing Latin American countries such as Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua to provide an alternative vision to the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The summit leaders released a statement in which they rejected the Summit of the Americas’ declaration, saying that it didn’t offer an adequate response to the global financial crisis, and called for an end to the U.S. trade and travel embargo on Cuba.

"The global economic crisis, climate change crisis, the food and energy crisis, are products of capitalism's decadency, which threatens to end with the very existence of life and the planet. To avoid this result we need to develop an alternative model to the capitalist system,” said Chavez, reading from a statement earlier today.

"We demand that the new government of the United States, whose arrival has generated some expectations in the region and the world, should end the long and disastrous tradition of interventionism and aggression that has characterized the actions of the governments of that country during the its history, especially during the government of George W. Bush,” the statement added.

It will be interesting to see which side of the diplomacy game between the United States and the Latin American left prevails.

My bet is we should expect a bit more yo-yoing first. 

Thousands protest proposed constitutional amendment

On Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009, thousands of Venezuelans turned out to protest an amendment to the constitution — set for a Feb. 15 referendum — that would abolish all political term limits. It would allow Venezuela’s controversial socialist president, Hugo Chavez, to run for office again after his second term concludes in 2012.  

Click here to see my photos from the day's march. 

Venezuela and political violence

 The Vatican's consulate in Venezuela was attacked yesterday. Two men on a motorbike approached the building in Caracas and threw tear gas bombs at the building, according to a press release issued by the Vatican.

This is not the first attack on a religious institution here. Last week, armed men broke into Caracas' oldest synagogue, vandalizing their offices.

What is going on? Opposition leaders accuse the government of sponsoring the attacks. In court, a prosecutor would argue that the government does have its motives. The Catholic Church is an outspoken critic of President Hugo Chavez while the Venezuelan government was one of the few countries outside of the Middle East to openly take sides in the Israel/Palestinian conflict by expelling the Israeli ambassador to Venezuela.

Tear gas attacks are a common method used by the militant group La Piedrita. Last year they claimed responsibility for a tear gas bomb attack on the offices of the anti-Chavez TV station Globovision. They also threw tear gas bombs at the apartment blocks of several leading opposition journalists.

The attack on the synagogue appears to be the work of a more professional outfit, according to Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the newspaper Tal Cual. He points to the fact that the intruders managed to crack two safes during the raid. 

The government, for its part, says the attacks were carried out by the opposition coalition in a bid to foster polarizing tensions ahead of a referendum on Feb. 15 that seeks to scrap presidential term limits.

The opposition are no saints and they did carry out an attempted coup in 2002 which sought to depose Chavez.

In Venezuelan politics it's very hard to read between the lines. Both sides seek to exploit situations and create polarization. Few moderates are given a platform.

What's interesting about the situation is that while these attacks are menacing, few so far have resulted in deaths. While the possibility of violent robbery and car-jackings are a very real danger for many Venezuelans — in Caracas 5 people a day are killed, often for little more than the watch on their wrist — this violence has yet to spill over into the political sphere in the same way as in neighboring Colombia.

Many predict that such a situation could arise from the results of the referendum, whichever way it goes. But let's hope that isn't the case.

A level playing field?

Venezuelans awoke to an unexpected national holiday today. It's the 10th anniversary of Hugo Chavez's presidency and the unpredictable president sprung a surprise by announcing a public holiday to commemorate the date.

I won't go into the pros and cons of his time in power. You can read excellent summaries in The Guardian, the BBC and the Christian Science Monitor.

In most countries, there would be a public outcry if a leader declared a holiday in honor of himself. But that's not how politics works in Venezuela.

Underneath everything that happens here at the moment is the undercurrent of a referendum that seeks to abolish presidential term limits.

Is the holiday a political move? No doubt the surprise holiday would have made most Venezuelans happy, especially his supporters. But there are voices of discontent. The president of the Chamber of Venezuelan Private Education, Octavio de Lamo, said he expected many children to turn up to school because their parents would not have heard the announcement. Business leaders said it was difficult to make plans when the government took spur-of-the-moment decisions like these. 

Chavez is an astute strategist but people I have spoken to think that undecided voters will interpret this stunt as a sign of, at best, arrogance, at worst, megalomaniacal tendencies.

In a tight race — the latest polls put him just a couple of points ahead — that could be crucial.

Among other bizarre political stunts, on Saturday the president took part in a televised baseball game. He played with the Venezuelan women's Olympic team against a team of baseball professionals headed up by Diosdado Cabello ( a great name — it translates as 'God-given Hair'), for many years his right-hand man. Cabello's team were called the 'si va' team. which is the slogan Chavez is using to promote his case in the referendum. Chavez's team won.

Meanwhile, the Caracas metro has been piping out a salsa tune with lyrics that promote the 'yes' vote in the referendum.

Chavez has suspended his weekly television show in which he usually speaks on anything from Marxist theory to the fallacies of the American "empire" for anything between three and nine hours.

Instead he has been on a country-wide tour of the country, campaigning for the referendum. Almost daily he uses a law that allows him to interrupt terrestrial television broadcasts to make announcements. All channels must broadcast his announcements, which usually last more than two hours.

The law was originally implemented to allow the president to speak to the country at times of national emergency. Instead, Chavez uses it to promote his campaign. The Caracas-based polling firm says he applied the law 46 times between Dec. 15 and Jan. 15.

The metro is a publicly funded institution. Half of the government's money comes from sovereign oil revenues, the other half from taxpayers. The baseball game was broadcast on VTV,  the state (eg oil and taxpayer) funded television station.

For their part, Chavez's supporters argue that its a level playing field because the private media — the TV channel Globovision and the newspapers El Universal and El Nacional — is openly biased against the government. 

Are these kinds of stunts signs of healthy democracy in Venezuela? Probably not. But expect to see plenty more of them before Feb. 15.

A wariness towards Obamamania

For Venezuelans, the real news about Obama happened back in November. The inauguration is seen as a formality. Most minds are concentrated on next month's referendum in which Venezuelans will vote on an amendment to the constitution that would scrap presidential term limits. It's a law that President Hugo Chavez needs to have passed if he wants to stay in power beyond 2012.

Already there have been signs of unrest. Students protesting the amendment had tear gas bombs thrown at them. A militant group that supports the president claimed credit.
The mood in Venezuela regarding Obama's inauguration wavers between cautious optimism and skeptical pessimism.

Ultimas Noticias, an independent newspaper with pro-Chavez sympathies, ran with the headline "the black man takes power" (in a country with a large black population this directness is not considered racist). The article lists the tasks Obama faces and notes that he will have to employ all of his charisma if he is to succeed.

Sparring between Obama and Chavez began before he had even taken office, when last week Obama said in an interview that Chavez has impeded progress in Latin America and criticized his alleged funding of the Colombian guerrillas, the FARC. Chavez responded by saying Obama has "the stink of Bush."

Pro-government media apes the president's position. The state-run news agency, Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias, quotes the Venezuelan ambassador to Washington, Jose Sosa, who says that Obama is likely to continue the Bush administration's policies in regards to Latin America.

Another state-run site, Aporrea, quotes ex-California senator Tom Hayden, who claims that Obama has no interest in Latin America. He suggests that April's Heads of State summit in Trinidad might be an ideal moment for Obama and Chavez to meet face-to-face.

Even opposition papers, which traditionally have been more in favor of the United States, are subdued. Writing in El Universal, Jose Gomez Febres comments that a new era of Latin American dialogue will "not be easy."  He points out that interventionist policies in Latin America have not only been the preserve of the Republican Party.

It seems that it will take more than eloquent oratory and a black man in the White House to convert Venezuelans to Obamamania. 

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