U.S. Fingerprints on Venezuela's Short-lived Coup Attempt

U.S. Fingerprints on Venezuela's Short-lived Coup Attempt

Interview by Between The Lines' Scott Harris

For many months, rumors of a planned coup against populist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had circulated around the hemisphere and the world. Chavez, a former Army paratrooper who had led an aborted coup in the early 1990's, was elected by a large margin in 1998 promising to fight for the nation's poor majority and clean up rampant corruption. His program to remake Venezuela was consistently endorsed by voters in referendums, but Chavez provoked opposition from the wealthy and some unions when he recently attempted to transform the nation's important oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, the No. 3 supplier of oil to the U.S.

A demonstration by tens of thousands of Chavez opponents in Caracas on April 11th led to violent confrontation between supporters and foes of the government when they exchanged shots resulting in more than a dozen killed. Elements of the armed forces working with business leaders arrested Chavez falsely declaring he had resigned and abolished his government, the legislature and Supreme Court. But, only 48 hours later, after violent street protests in support of Chavez and a mutiny by some sectors of the military, the president was restored to power.

When word of the coup first reached Washington the Bush administration sent unmistakable signals welcoming the overthrow of a Latin American leader who had befriended Cuba's Fidel Castro and met with Saddam Hussein. The White House reaction was in marked contrast to the denunciation of the coup by most South American governments. According to press reports, coup plotters had met several times with senior Bush administration officials in recent months.

Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Gregory Wilpert, a former Fulbright scholar currently conducting research in Caracas, who provides an eyewitness account of the short-lived Venezuelan coup(A RealAudio Version of this interview may be found at http://www.btlonline.org).

Read Gregory Wilpert's account at http://www.zmag.org(www.zmag.org/content/LatinAmerica/wilpertcounter.cfm)

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