Seeing Red

Protest in Venezuela Targets Chávez Government
by Róger Calero
from The Militant, U.S. socialist newsweekly, 18 March 2002
read at original site

In another in a series of public demonstrations that are part of a reactionary drive to oust the Venezuelan government headed by Hugo Chávez, some 20,000 people marched in the capital city of Caracas February 27. The march was joined by one of the four high-ranking military officers to publicly called for Chávez's resignation in the last month.

According to a March 1 CNN online report on the action, "The U.S. government has reported that several officers have approached American diplomats to sound them out about a coup."

The protest in the capital was called by the country's main trade union federation, the Venezuelan Workers Federation (CTV), and supported by the employers' association, Fedecámaras, along with capitalist opposition parties.

This was the third major action recently organized by the capitalist class and social layers that support their efforts towards carrying out a coup against the Chávez government. In December the bosses organized a one-day strike that shut down 85 percent of the country's businesses and industries. Some 70,000 people turned out for a January 23 march, called by Fedecámaras with support from the CTV leaders.

Even though workers were given the day off by the bosses to attend the February 27 action, it was substantially smaller than the earlier protests. The same day Chávez joined with several thousand supporters in front of the presidential palace chanting, "They will not come back," in reference to the previous administrations.

"I will hand over the presidency in 2013, I am not leaving yet," said Chávez to the rally in response to calls for his resignation. He went on to call on the military "to grab the sword to defend social entitlements."

The CTV leaders cast the protest as one to commemorate the 13th anniversary of a popular uprising against the economic policies of former president Carlos Andrés Pérez and to call for increased wages. During the 1980s Pérez slashed government subsidies and other social spending at a time when workers in that country were facing massive unemployment and an acute social crisis. In response to the protests, Pérez unleashed the army and the police who killed between 400 and several thousand people in 1989.

The capitalist opposition parties are trying to take advantage of the impact of a worsening economic crisis, aggravated by a sharp drop in oil prices and currency devaluation, to undermine popular support to the Chávez government.

The announcement by Chávez of the suspension of wage increases and contract negotiations for public employers has also been used by the union officialdom to step up the campaign to oust the current government. CTV president Carlos Ortega warned that a 24-hour strike called for March 18 could be moved up in response to Chávez's announcements and the appointment of a new minister of labor. Ortega warned that the federation will call a general strike if the government does not change its policies.

Support for such a strike will have to come from all sectors, said Ortega, including the active military, alluding to greater intervention of the armed forces.

The opposition Venezuelan daily El National has also taken note of the growing polarization in the countryside, where landless peasants have taken over land belonging to wealthy landowners. The capitalists and big landowners are targeting the Chávez government in part for pushing through a partial land redistribution effort and have blamed the law for encouraging land occupations. Several big landlords complained to El National that the occupations began last September after several hundreds peasants received titles for small plots of land from the government.

The daily described the sharpening conflict as "low intensity warfare." The landowners have hired armed thugs to remove the peasants from the occupied lands. According to the article, three peasants have died in the confrontations.

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