Hands off Bolivia, Venezuela

As the lame-hawk Bush administration finishes its last four months, Washington has accelerated its efforts to overthrow the most progressive elected Latin American governments. Local rich are involved in the plots, but on their own these forces are weak. They depend on U.S. money, advice, arms, instructions and promises of future aid to keep them afloat.

The good news is that these plans appear to be headed for failure. A failure for the counter-revolution can open the road to progress.

But the battles are still undecided. And one important element in the outcome is the solidarity of people in the U.S. for the people of Latin America and against the reactionary and murderous plans of the U.S. government.

In Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela the state appears to have broken up a serious coup in the planning stage. Former Vice President José Vincent Rangel charged that the U.S. government, a Colombian ambassador, and a few dozen Venezuelan military officers, including a former defense minister, were involved in the plot. Venezuela’s government arrested four retired and one active military officers, questioned 33 others and—this is important—expelled U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy.

While the worldwide corporate media have tried to discredit Chávez’s case against the coup plotters, a revealing taped phone conversation among retired Vice-Adm. Carlos Alberto Millan Millan, retired National Guard Gen. Wilfredo Barroso Herrera and retired Air Force Gen. Eduardo Baez Torrealba was broadcast on Venezuelan state television. The officers talked about a takeover and possible bombing of Miraflores presidential palace and the need to “take Chávez out.”

Venezuelans didn’t doubt the U.S. role in the plot. But Chávez expelled Duddy also as a move in solidarity with Bolivian President Evo Morales. A few hours earlier, Morales had expelled U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg.

Morales, the first Indigenous leader of Bolivia, is extremely popular and has won two elections, the last one with more than 67 percent of the national vote.

In Bolivia, the U.S. has been backing a scurrilous group of oligarchs and their racist hangers-on in four mineral and energy-rich eastern regions of the country known as the “Media Luna.” The oligarchs want the four wealthy regions to secede. This too points to Goldberg, who was a key architect of Kosovo’s reactionary secession.

A top official of Pando, one of Bolivia’s regions or prefectures, had hired mercenaries to murder Indigenous peasants participating in a demonstration. The gangsters killed at least 30 and possibly 90 people. The Bolivian armed forces, operating after Morales declared a state of siege in Pando, arrested only the one prefect responsible for the massacre.

Seeing a crying need for independent action and self-defense, popular organizations have mobilized to fight against the fascist gangs. Popular leaders hope to mobilize 50,000 peasants and workers to prepare to march into Santa Cruz, the richest town and headquarters of the oligarchs and fascists.

The Morales government is negotiating with the Media Luna prefects in the city of Cochabamba to try to resolve the conflict short of civil war. Bolivia’s masses are mobilizing also in and near Cochabamba to try to make sure the gains promised by a new constitution will be preserved.

The Pentagon has reactivated the Fourth Fleet to threaten South America. In return, Venezuela has decided to hold joint maneuvers with Russia.

The U.S. progressive movement can be most helpful to the workers and peasants of the region by doing everything possible to get the U.S. government and its secret agencies out of Latin America and put the new Fourth Fleet back in mothballs.

U.S. hands off Venezuela and Bolivia!