Roughly 75 university students and community members gathered at the School of Law on Tuesday night to hear Venezuelan-American attorney and author Eva Golinger speak on U.S. intervention in Venezuela.
Since 2003, Golinger has used the Freedom of Information Act to investigate, analyze and write on U.S.-Venezuelan relations, focusing on the current Bush administration’s efforts to destabilize the government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Born and raised in New York, Golinger has lived off-and-on in Caracas, Venezuela for the last 10 years. In her lecture, she said she seeks to dispel misconceptions about Chavez – misconceptions that she says are the result of a “media manipulation” driven in part by the U.S. government.
She said Chavez has been intentionally misrepresented by corporate media because he is “a known public opponent of U.S. policy,” fighting against NAFTA’s expansion into the Americas and calling the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan “fighting terror with terror.”
Running on a political “platform of anti-corruption and constitutional reform,” the Chavez administration, she said, legally replaced the preceding government.
She said that upon securing the presidency, Chavez formed a “historically participatory” assembly of citizens that drafted a new constitution containing “the largest number of human rights laws of any country in the world.” The new government then passed a series of laws in 1999, some of which consolidated state ownership of oil in Venezuela.
Golinger said that such laws pose a threat to the U.S. because as far as oil is concerned, “the U.S. model of consumption is completely unsustainable” and is dependent on Venezuela, which has the largest number of oil refineries of any country worldwide and is the fifth-largest crude exporter to the U.S.
In nationalizing its oil industry, Venezuela stripped U.S.-based petrochemical companies such as ConocoPhillips and Chevron Corporation of crucial operational control of oil sales, she said. Golinger said Chavez seeks to decrease the Venezuelan economy’s dependence on oil, and thus, its dependence on U.S. purchases.
“This type of foreign policy is quickly chipping away at U.S. domination in the region,” she said.
She said, “Venezuela is moving towards the concept of socialism for the 21st century,” that is, “not exploitative, but inclusive.”
“The Venezuelan model is a direct threat to the U.S. model because it’s within a democratic framework, but is socially revolutionary,” Golinger said.
Since 1999, Golinger said U.S. policy toward Venezuela has “changed from intervention to war.”
During her research, Golinger said she uncovered more than $50 million in financing to anti-Chavez groups partly via the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. entity funded by taxpayers’ dollars and supervised by the state department that “supports pro-democracy groups” around the world. She also said she obtained top-secret documents that reveal CIA involvement in the April 2002 attempt to overthrow Chavez.
She said Chavez was imprisoned by U.S.-backed opposition forces, but a “popular uprising” of “the people who had been actively involved in the creation of their country said ‘No!’” and Chavez was returned to the presidency.
Following the attempted coup, Golinger said the NED gave $1 million to the same groups who had failed to overthrow Chavez.
After 2002, she said, the U.S. pursued further intervention in Venezuela, executing a “sabotage of Venezuela’s economy,” and participating in a period of “non-stop, round-the-clock opposition propaganda,” which she called “intense psychological warfare on the people of Venezuela.”
She said Chavez’s popularity has risen every year but the U.S. “doesn’t seem to understand.” The U.S., she said, has adopted a “misinformation campaign,” and entered into “a war of discourse,” in mainstream media. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Chavez “a negative force in the region,” and newly-elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) termed Chavez a “thug.”
Yet, Golinger said, “illiteracy has been eradicated” under the Chavez administration, a free healthcare system “almost for all” has been established, and “the majority” of Venezuelans “feel like they have more freedom than they’ve ever had in their entire lives.”
When asked what the audience knew about Chavez, responses ranged from “Petro dictator,” to “anti-Semitic,” to “rewriting the constitution so he can have more power.” Golinger, however, said this is far from reality. Chavez, she said, is not a military dictator but a kind of democratic president unseen in Venezuelan history.
Community member Lonnie Clark said, “Venezuela is our friend in democracy and our friend in capitalism,” and said Golinger is right in what she says, but “the corporate media doesn’t want her because she’ll tell the truth.”