LaRouche: We Do Not Wish 'an Allende Solution'
For the Chavez Problem in Venezuela - www.larouchepub.com
U.S. Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche has expressed his concern over the dangerous and rapidly degenerating political situation in Venezuela, and in particular over the added complications arising from the highly unstable and erratic behavior of President Hugo Chavez. Chavez's apparent personal state of clinical insanity, represents a significant security threat to the Americas. This, added to the overall explosive situation throughout the hemisphere, threatens to become the detonator which sets off the entire bomb.
LaRouche emphasized that, in his capacity as a leading candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for the 2004 Presidential elections, it would be negligent on his part not to draw attention to this urgent matter, and to emphasize the urgency of choosing the best path towards its solution. There is substantial evidence that Chavez is actually clinically insane. This evidence, which we indicate below, must be duly assessed, LaRouche urged. If Chavez is as insane as appears to be the case, then a prompt, quiet, non-bloody solution must be found and agreed upon by the relevant parties, under which Chavez would be induced to step down from office, perhaps with the assistance of suitable friendly professional advice.
LaRouche emphasized that such an approach is called for immediately, lest others might concoct very bad alternatives to the current Venezuelan chaos, such as coups, assassinations, and other approaches that will only trigger a chain reaction and spread the problem across the region. LaRouche stated emphatically "We don't want an 'Allende solution' to the Chavez problem." LaRouche also rejected the idea, currently promoted by the Inter-American Dialogue and other bankers' think-tanks, of using the Organization of American States (OAS) to orchestrate a supra-national intervention into Venezuelan affairs, in violation of that country's national sovereignty. This mechanism was employed in 2001 by Wall Street and the U.S. State Department, in order to overthrow the Fujimori government in Peru, which established a terrible precedent for the hemisphere.
LaRouche reiterated that his policy for the Americas is in the tradition of John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, where a community of principle among perfectly sovereign nation-states is the framework in which mutually beneficial economic development tasks are jointly undertaken. -
The Chavez Dossier - The essential evidence of Hugo Chavez's insanity is to be found in what masquerades as his "religious" or "theological" views. Typical were his heady remarks after his forces won 120 out of 130 seats for the Constituent Assembly in July 1999 elections: "The victory of the patriots has been pulverizing!... You are either with God or the devil, and we're with God because the voice of the People is the voice of God.... Now Chavez is not Chavez; Chavez is the People, and the People cannot be stopped! We'll win with God's favor and the People."
Before Chavez ever ran for President of Venezuela, Lyndon LaRouche identified the two years from 1992 to 1994, in which Chavez was jailed under horrendous conditions, as a critical period in turning Chavez from an ordinary fool, into a mental case, producing a "miraculous metamorphosis" in his world-view. The specific form of his insanity, became the text-book Romantic fascist dictum of Vox Populi, Vox Dei: "The Voice of the People is the Voice of God." The controlling sense of personal identity of victims of this outlook—such as Napoleon Bonaparte, or Adolf Hitler—is that of ethereal unity with "the People," and thus with "God." The victim thereby feels entitled to act like a Roman Caesar, displaying impunity and disdain towards other mere mortals.
Since assuming the Presidency in February 1999, at any point at which he has been challenged, Chavez has asserted that dictum, with increasing fervor, as justification for his decisions. When the courts overruled him, he asserted that he is bound by no law or institution, because he represents the People, and thus, by derivation, his is the Voice of God. As the crisis has grown, Chavez's assertion of "Vox Populi" has taken on increasingly "religious" tones, as the Venezuelan population, too, has become increasingly overtaken by charismatic religious movements of various denominations. Each of these reports hearing divine "voices" telling them what they must do—and each of which coheres, to an uncanny degree, with the role which the international oligarchical elites would have them play within their overall game-plan for Venezuela.
In April-May 2000, Chavez attempted to force the Catholic Church hierarchy to bow before him, arguing that "Christ was resurrected from the dead, to become the People," and since Chavez represents the People, he threatened to unleash "legitimate violence" against those in the Church who opposed him. In so doing, he presented himself as a died-in-the-wool Catholic. Then in January 2002, Chavez announced he had become a born-again (Protestant) Evangelical Christian, only to retract the statement four days later. Meanwhile, Chavez's disaffected wife, Marisabel Rodriguez, has shown up at born-again (Protestant) Christian rallies, to urge Chavez to mend his ways.
Chavez's most recent public display of clinical dissociation came in a rambling, five-hour presentation on his national TV/radio show "Hello, President," on Dec. 15, 2002. There Chavez ordered Army troops to ignore any rulings by the courts which were unfavorable to him, and to follow no one's orders but his own. As for those calling for his resignation, he retorted: "Chavez will leave only when God commands, because I am in the hands of Christ.... He is the commander, and when He speaks I obey, understood? And secondly, [I obey] the People. And I assume the voice of the People is the voice of God. I will not leave because of pressures from a group of businessmen, a group of coup-makers, a group of fascists."
From this substratum, numerous secondary expressions of Chavez's insanity are nourished, some of which have been noted in the public media. For example, The New Yorker magazine published a profile of Chavez in its Sept. 10, 2001 issue, written by Jon Lee Anderson, which contained a report on the author's interview with Chavez's psychiatrist, Dr. Edmundo Chirinos. Dr. Chirinos, who considers himself a supporter of the Venezuelan President, explained that Chavez "prefers to embrace dreams that seem impossible to achieve, rather than confronting the harsh realities of life." Anderson summarized Dr. Chirinos's description of Chavez, as "a hyperkinetic and imprudent man, unpunctual, someone who overreacts to criticism, harbors grudges, is politically astute and manipulative, and possesses tremendous physical stamina, never sleeping more than two or three hours a night."
Anderson also interviewed officials at the prison where Chavez was incarcerated in the early 1990s, including the secretary of the prison psychologist from that period. "Every morning, he [Chavez] sat in a chair in the open-air caged yard that had been built specially for him outside his cell," they reported. "There was a plaster bust of Simon Bolivar there, and he would speak to it." He would turn the head around to face him for the conversations, they reported. Anderson also noted that Chavez's aides today report that he is a "caffeine addict," who used to drink 26 cups of espresso a day, until his staff managed to wean him down to "only" 16.