If this was a coup d'etat, then it was a singularly inept one
<a href=www.vheadline.com> Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Sunday, April 13, 2003 By: Joyce Paterson
VHeadline reader Joyce Paterson reviews the BBC FOUR screening: The Revolution will not be televised -- Was this a coup, or wasn’t it? It was good to view two reports of the same series of happenings because they complemented each other; the first, all hand-held immediacy, blurry, uncut, and the second more measured, structured, focused. In both accounts the sincerity of the followers of Hugo Chavez shone through; these people believed passionately in the justice of their cause and in the ability of Chavez to secure that justice for them. No hidden agendas for them; they were so low that the only way was up, with Chavez extending a hand to pull them from their miserable poverty towards a share in the good things that Venezuela’s oil, their country’s oil, might offer them. More credit, then, to the sole state-owned television channel for giving them air-time, for showing their resounding support for Chavez.
That was the have-nots; the haves, too, had their own sincerity, of its kind. They believed with equal passion in their undisputed right to the good things of life by virtue of being industrious, decent citizens who had got where they were by hard work; this is the doctrine of those who believe, as an article of faith, that the poor are poor because they deserve to be so, that they have neither the brains nor the will to be otherwise.
How should these two camps have anything but scorn for one another? It must be well nigh impossible, with the social divide between them, that either could sympathize with the feelings and aspirations of the other. Gross ignorance of each other’s situation could only exacerbate the tensions between them.
So did these events arise spontaneously, from intolerable internal pressures?
Not, myself, being a great fan of conspiracy theories, I am reluctant to jump to easy conclusions; nevertheless, one has to ask the question -ú who has the most to gain from removing Chavez from power?
From where I sit (several thousand miles distant), it does seem to me that the wealthy few had relatively little to fear from Chavez’s projected share-out of the country’s oil wealth. Suppose, for a minute, that Chavez had already implemented his promises of a fairer division of wealth; Sure, initially the very rich would have moaned and complained, but, unless the redistribution had been very radical indeed, those on top of the social heap would be unlikely to find that their comfortable way of life had been drastically altered; who knows, they might even have found that a fully-employed and aspiring populace was less threatening than unemployed, hopeless and desperate masses. In short, the old Victorian ethic of Enlightened Self-Interest might have kicked in, and they might have found there were gains all round, with a more stable, safer country to live in.
Was there, then, any evidence that what Chavez had in mind was a Soviet Union style rearrangement of the social order?
Did the rich really believe he intended to bring about a Marxist-type society, with the wealthy forced to live in barracks and dig ditches?
Being a simple soul, I thought, ‘hmm, define your terms’ ... so I looked up coup d’etat in Collins English Dictionary, where it is described as ‘a sudden violent or illegal seizure of government.’
To my mind, this would mean that a faction within a country fervently desired a change of government; for example, if enough of the Iraqi army had conspired to remove Saddam Hussein from power.
Well, in Venezuela, it was certainly not the oppressed masses rising up against a hated tyrant; nor did the entire fighting force conspire to change the head of state -ú in fact, it was notable that few of the forces appeared to be in favor of Chavez’s removal.
If this was a coup, then it was a singularly inept one; it would seem axiomatic to be sure of your power base before attempting a step which risked violent destabilization of one’s country. And, whilst the upper classes might fervently desire a change of President, it is hard to see how they could engineer this without the wholehearted acceptance of the military.
It would, however, be extraordinarily easy for an outsider who had a vested interest in Chavez’s removal, to manipulate public opinion in such a way as to create a climate in which this could happen with apparent spontaneity.
To do this you need only play on two things -ú wealthy people’s avarice and their fear of the mob. Remember that almost all the media in Venezuela are privately-owned; how easy to plant the idea that Chavez is mentally unstable, that he is a danger to his country, that he is planning to strip the wealthy of everything they have sweated so hard to acquire.
How easy, too, with sophisticated editing techniques and spin, to make the raw television images tell the story the way you want it -ú so that the victim of bullets becomes the attacker, the mediator becomes the fomenter of unrest.
What can one say of the clumsy scheme physically to remove Chavez to ‘an island’ -ú from whence he is publicly rescued by the overwhelmingly loyal military?
It doesn’t sound as if his Generals thought Chavez was mad, does it?
No, from where I sit, it looks rather more like a maladroit attempt to foment fear and anxiety, inciting his own people physically to remove Chavez.
Coup? I don’t think so -ú but you choose.
Joyce Paterson aljopat2@btinternet.com
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