Commentary on Venezuela's counter-coup

by: Gregory Wilpert for Straight Goods

Venezuela: Gregory Wilpert, former US Fulbright scholar currently living in Caracas and researching the sociology of development in Venezuela, gives a first-hand account of the country’s recent coup and ensuing counter-coup:

It looks like Venezuela is not just another banana/oil republic after all. Many here feared that with the 11 April coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela was being degraded to being just another country that is forced to bend to the powerful will of the United States. The successful counter-coup of 14 April, though, which reinstated Chavez, proved that Venezuela is a tougher cookie than the coup planners thought.

The coup leaders against President Chavez made two fundamental miscalculations. First, they started having delusions of grandeur, believing that the support for their coup was so complete that they could simply ignore the other members of their coup coalition and place only their own in the new government. The labour union federation CTV, which saw itself as one of the main actors of the opposition movement to President Chavez, and nearly all moderate opposition parties were excluded from the new “democratic unity” cabinet. The new transition cabinet ended up including only the most conservative elements of Venezuelan society. They then proceeded to dissolve the legislature, the Supreme Court, the attorney general's office, the national electoral commission, and the state governorships, among others. Next, they decreed that the 1999 constitution, which had been written by a constitutional assembly and ratified by vote, following the procedures outlined in the pervious constitution, was to be suspended. The new transition president would thus rule by decree until next year, when new elections would be called. Generally, this type of regime fits the textbook definition of dictatorship.

The second miscalculation was the belief that Chavez was hopelessly unpopular in the population and among the military and that no one except Cuba and Colombia’s guerrillas, the FARC, would regret Chavez’ departure. Following the initial shock and demoralisation which the coup caused among Chavez-supporters, this second miscalculation led to major upheavals and riots in Caracas’ sprawling slums, which make up nearly half of the city. In practically all of the “barrios” of Caracas spontaneous demonstrations and “cacerolazos” (pot-banging) broke out on 13 and 14 April. The police immediately rushed in to suppress these expressions of discontent and somewhere between 10 and 40 people were killed in these clashes with the police. Then, in the early afternoon, purely by word-of-mouth and the use of cell phones, a demonstration in support of Chavez was called at the Miraflores presidential palace. By 6.00pm, about 100,000 people had gathered in the streets surrounding the presidential palace. At approximately the same time, the paratrooper battalion, to which Chavez used to belong, decided to remain loyal to Chavez and took over the presidential palace. Next, as the awareness of the extent of Chavez’ support spread, major battalions in the interior of Venezuela began siding with Chavez.

How could such an impeccably planned and smoothly executed coup fall apart in almost exactly 48 hours? Aside from the two miscalculations mentioned above, it appears that the military’s hearts were not fully into the coup project. Once it became obvious that the coup was being hijacked by the extreme right and that Chavez enjoyed much more support than was imagined, large parts of the military decided to reject the coup, which then had a snowball-effect of changing military allegiances.

The media and the opposition movement tried to create the impression that Chavez was completely isolated and that no one supported him any longer. Nearly the entire media is owned and operated by Venezuela’s oligarchy. There is only one neutral newspaper, which is not an explicitly anti-Chavez newspaper and one state-run television station. During the coup, the state-run station was taken off the air completely and all of the other media kept repeating the coup organizer’s lies without question. These media distortions in the aftermath of the coup drove home the point just how powerful the media is at creating an alternate reality.

Gregory Wilpert's article can be read in its entirety on the Straight Goods website here. He can be reached at wilpert@cantv.net.

Source: Straight Goods