Oil-Flush President Chavez Begins To Strut His Stuff

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
February 16, 2005

Washington Amps Up the Rhetoric
Oil-Flush Chavez Begins to Strut His Stuff
By JESSICA LEIGHT

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is not known for his discretion, caution, nor political reserve. Yet the in-your-face leader travels with lady luck as he revels in the nation's ever-increasing oil wealth and the virtually unprecedented political and economic prominence that skyrocketing petrol prices have brought to Caracas. The Venezuelan strongman shows every sign of being prepared to strike out even more aggressively this year against any foe he perceives as threatening his "Bolivarian revolution," namely his plans for land reform, social justice, and the redistribution of wealth. Certain to seek reelection to a six-year term in next year's presidential race, Chávez is bolstering his domestic base through the aggressive expansion of the recent social programs that have won him the fierce loyalty of the nation's long-neglected lower-classes.

At the same time, Chávez is aggressively raising his international profile as he seeks to position himself as a major spokesman for the burgeoning center-left South American informal group of nations and as a statesman of hemispheric stature, fully capable of creating a counterforce to Washington's still powerful, if fading, influence in the region. It is an ambitious and perhaps risky two-tier game that Chávez plays. But as long as he holds the trump card-the nation's huge oil reserves--Chávez may yet prove capable of winning at least this round in his confrontation with Washington. If reelected, he can rightfully claim overtaking one of the most stunning political trajectories seen in the hemisphere in recent decades: from his own failed coup attempt in 1992 followed by his being a victim of a near-successful military coup in 2002, to decisively winning the 2004 referendum, to his being a major progenitor of the grand design of Venezuela's (perhaps even Latin America's) political and economic future. If Chávez is to be looked back upon as a lion, there is little question who the goat will be. A major loser in the approaching U.S.-Venezuela confrontation is likely to be State Department Assistant Secretary Roger Noriega. The inept ideologue's myopic analysis that Chávez's close ties with Castro requires him to be either marginalized or eliminated has had a catastrophic impact on Washington's ties to the rest of Latin America and has brought such relations to their lowest point in years.

Meanwhile, Caracas has not neglected to maintain close ties with another, even more laurelled hemispheric revolutionary: Fidel Castro. Over the last two years, Venezuela has provided substantial shipments of subsidized oil to Cuba to ease the energy and transport shortages in the perennially ailing Cuban economy; in return, Cuba has steadily increased its flow of medical and other social service personnel to Venezuela. Such Cuban professionals now in Venezuela include 14,000 doctors, 3,000 dentists, 1,500 eye specialists and 7,000 sports trainers. In a break with usual practice when Cuba engages in sending its medical personnel to developing countries desperately in need of such services, Caracas committed itself in a December agreement with Havana to make separate payments for the Cuban aid, to be valued at a price set by the World Health Organization's schedule for such services. While the inflow of cash is no doubt vital to Castro, Chávez also stands to benefit considerably from the arrangement. He now has the necessary personnel to implement his "barrio adentro" (inside the neighborhood) program of social services, with its ambitious plans to construct 1,800 laboratories and medical clinics. It was precisely the inauguration of a long-delayed expansion of basic medical and social services, within the poorest Venezuelan slums that appears to have been decisive with the president's referendum victory last August, and no doubt represents one of Chávez's principal political assets for a reelection victory next year. Despite the symbolic and rhetorical value of the links that Caracas assiduously has cultivated with its ideological brothers-in-arms across the hemisphere, however, the president has not neglected the more pragmatic side of Venezuela's foreign policy.

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