To get a good sense of America in the world, it helps to look from the outside in. This week, I traveled to Venezuela to meet with President Hugo Chavez and address the National Assembly. Here’s how America appears to many of its neighbors to the South.
President Hugo Chavez has been elected twice by large majorities. He is a champion of the poor in Venezuela. Riding the oil boom – Venezuela sits on the largest oil reserves of any nation in the hemisphere – he’s seeking to gain a higher percentage of the oil profits for his country. He is an ardent nationalist, challenging what he considers U.S. domination of the hemisphere. He has embraced Fidel Castro.
Chavez’ brash independence irritates the Bush administration. Don Rumsfeld recently traveled through Latin America proclaiming Chavez a threat to stability. The Defense Secretary, as is his style, offered no evidence for the charge.
Last week on TV, Pat Robertson, the zealous right-wing minister who is a key political ally of President Bush, said the U.S. should “assassinate” Chavez.
Robertson’s chilling words echoed across the world. The president did not rebuke him. The FCC, so quick to react to a bared breast in a Superbowl halftime, did not open an investigation.
Most Americans would dismiss these words as the loony ravings of a right-wing zealot. But consider how this looks from Caracas, or Santiago, or Managua.
The Bush administration denounces Chavez as a threat to stability. The same administration proclaims it will act pre-emptively with military force, covertly or overtly, to eliminate potential threats “before they have formed,” in the president’s words. It has unleashed the CIA, used high-tech weaponry to “take out” suspected terrorists, and demonstrated in Guantamo and elsewhere that its agents are prepared to trample laws and treaties when national security is at stake.
Throughout the hemisphere, decades of U.S. intervention – the gunboat “diplomacy” of the early 20th century; the CIA’s notorious wars against elected presidents in Guatemala, Chile and Nicaragua; the assassination plots against Fidel Castro – insure that Robertson and Rumsfeld’s words are taken very seriously.
In Venezuela, the Bush administration is already seen as implicated in the April 2002 coup attempt against Chavez. The Bush White House rushed to recognize the coup leaders one day after they announced Chavez had been deposed, only to discover that the Venezuelan people would defend their democracy. Prudence alone makes President Chavez take the threat of the president’s close political ally very seriously.
Venezuela is our neighbor and should be our friend. Chavez is elected by his people. Venezuela is our fourth-largest source of crude oil. We need to move from a big stick to a Good Neighbor policy. Make the U.S. a source of hope, not of fear in the hemisphere. We should start by listening rather than threatening.