DICK CHENEY, HUGO CHAVEZ AND BILL CLINTON'S BAND

Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President - Monday Aug.

16, 2004 - by Greg Palast

There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be

violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin

with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the

'hacendados.'

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march.

Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching

designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner

griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar

convertible.

That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that

so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's

Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only

fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that

Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to

hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.

But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable

president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a "negro

e indio" -- a "Black and Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the

landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's

history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than

the man in the Jaguar.

So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in

elections and today in a referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with our

democracy-promoting White House?

Maybe it's the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that

rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the

White House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum

Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez

cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price

of oil. It was a 'Goldilocks' plan. The price would not be too low, not too

high; just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel.

But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the

oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred

as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three

top oil industry lobbyists.

Why should Chavez worry about what Dick thinks? Because, said one of the oil

men, the Veep in his bunker, not the pretzel-chewer in the White House,

"runs energy policy in the United States." And what seems to have gotten our

Veep's knickers in a twist is not the price of oil, but who keeps the loot

from the current band-busting spurt in prices. Chavez had his Congress pass

another oil law, the "Law of Hydrocarbons," which changes the split. Right

now, the oil majors - like PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of the proceeds of the

sale of Venezuela oil; the nation gets only 16%.

Chavez wanted to double his Treasury's take to 30%. And for good reason.

Landless, hungry peasants have, over decades, drifted into Caracas and other

cities, building million-person ghettos of cardboard shacks and open sewers.

Chavez promised to do something about that.

And he did. "Chavez gives them bread and bricks," one Venezuelan TV reporter

told me. The blonde TV newscaster, in the middle of a publicity shoot, said

the words "pan y ladrillos" with disdain, making it clear that she never

touched bricks and certainly never waited in a bread line. But to feed and

house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez would need

funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the President of

Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton's

ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- enemy.

So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will of the Venezuela

electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning

most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez'

government "legitimate." Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland

Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed

discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for

Democracy,' to the Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez' supposed unpopularity

and "dictatorial" manner seized US news and op-ed pages, ranging from the

San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times.

But some facts just can't be smothered in propaganda ink. While George Bush

can appoint the government of Iraq and call it "sovereign," the government

of Venezuela is appointed by its people. And the fact is that most people in

this slum-choked land don't drive Jaguars or have their hair tinted in

Miami. Most look in the mirror and see someone "negro e indio," as dark as

their President Hugo.

The official CIA handbook on Venezuela says that half the nation's farmers

own only 1% of the land. They are the lucky ones, as more peasants owned

nothing. That is, until their man Chavez took office. Even under Chavez,

land redistribution remains more a promise than an accomplishment. But

today, the landless and homeless voted their hopes, knowing that their man

may not, against the armed axis of local oligarchs and Dick Cheney, succeed

for them. But they are convinced he will never forget them.

And that's a fact.

---

Greg Palast's reports from Venezuela for BBC Television's Newsnight and the

Guardian papers of Britain earned a California State University Journalism

School "Project Censored" award for 2002. View photos and Palast's reports

on Venezuela at www.GregPalast.com.