Chavez's UN speech: it's about the Security Council seat

[muriel_volestrangler]

With all the words flying back and forth here at DU about Chavez, Bush, the Devil and the Democrats, you'd think that Chavez was running in a Democratic primary somewhere, so great is the concentration on what 'our' reaction should be.

Chavez is currently running for election: to the non-permanent seat on the Security Council for the group of Latin American and Caribbean countries (GRULAC), which lasts for 2 years. This must be decided in October. I thought a bit of background on how it's decided might be useful to people, because Chavez's UN speech was surely aimed at securing this seat for his country:

Venezuela and Guatemala are campaigning for a two-year term on the 15-seat Security Council. If Latin American and Caribbean countries fail to reach a consensus by Oct. 16, the issue will be decided by a secret vote in the U.N.'s 192-member General Assembly.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/12/news/CB_GEN_Caribbean_Venezuela_UN.php

While most of the articles say Venezuela has the majority of the support in the group, the custom is that if there is not a proper consensus, ie everyone agrees, however grudgingly, on the region's candidate, then it goes to the General Assembly vote. The US is running the campaign to get Guatemala elected, and can probably stop the consensus by arm twisting (or effective bribery), so this will likely go to the GA vote. There, two thirds of the 192 members - 128 - must approve a nomination - and if you can't get that 128, then they vote, again and again, until, presumably, enough countries give up and do something to end the voting (I don't think they get locked in with black smoke and white smoke, though).

So Chavez was setting out his stall - he did talk explicitly about the vote in his speech. His audience wasn't us, the American public, or even his own public; it was the governments of the world. He's obviously decided he can get that two thirds by being the country willing to stand up, vocally, against the US. I'd say he has a pretty good chance (Guatemala isn't a beacon of human rights, or a powerful country, anyway. If, say, Brazil had been trying to get the seat, he'd have a much harder time). Plenty of countries would like to see Bush's final 2 years with a constant critic in the Security Council. Venezuela wouldn't get a veto power, of course, but sometimes the votes of the non-permanent members can be an important consideration - when the UK was seeking a second resolution on Iraq that would explicitly authorise invasion, as well as the question of the French veto, there was the hurdle of getting 9 affirmative votes in the SC, which also looked unlikely.

[maddezmom]

1. you're correct...K&R

but I think there might be bribery going on by both sides. :D

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. Well, it's possible

Chavez has certainly been touring the world a lot, recently, to make friends in governments. I did find the announcement that Belarus, a country with not much experience of petroleum exploration, was going to run a venture in Venezuela strange, when Venezuela would have more expertise of its own. That did look rather like a handout to another country which has arguments with the USA.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. absolutely right

Everything isn't said for American ears. At Chavez's press conference following his speech, all the questions were on the substance of his remarks, concerning such things as UN reform, and also Venezuela's campaign for a Security Council seat.

To Chavez's intended audience, the devil remark was nothing but an opening joke.

[1932]

4. It was actually about the exploitation of developing countries by wealthy

countries.

It was a better version of the same speech Allende gave to the UN a couple weeks before the coup in Chile that ended his life.

Chavez's speech is about the same issues that have concerened LDLs and DLs for the last 50-100 years.

Incidentally, in Stephen Kinzer's book Overthrow, there's a very nice little summary of the political dynamic that started the conflict between the US and countries who want to use the wealth under the ground to lift their citizens out of poverty.

[rman]

5. Guatemala economy totally dominated by United Fruit Company

(why Venezuela should have preference over Guatemala for a UN seat)


Overthrow - America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq
Democracy Now
Friday, April 21st, 2006

part 1
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/04/21/132247&mode=thread&tid=25
part 2
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/08/1353206
(video, audio, transcript)

<snip>

In Guatemala, economic life was totally dominated by one American company: the United Fruit Company. It was a uniquely powerful company, had great ties in Washington. Many of the senior people in the Eisenhower administration were either stockholders or former board members or otherwise closely connected with United Fruit. Now, in Guatemala, not only was United Fruit producing most of that country's banana exports, but it also owned more than half a million acres of land, some of the richest land in the country, that it didn't use. It was just holding this land for some potential future use.

Now, President Arbenz, who was in power in Guatemala in the early 1950s, wanted to take that land and use it to divide up among starving Guatemalan peasants. And with a democratic vote of the elected Guatemalan congress, a land reform law was passed that required the United Fruit Company to sell its unused land to the Guatemalan government at the price that United Fruit had declared on its last years tax returns as the value of that land. Well, naturally the fruit company went crazy when they got this request and said, Of course, nobody puts down the real value of the land on their tax returns, and really the price should be about ten times higher than that. But the government said, I'm sorry. This is the way you have, yourself, valued the land, and so we're insisting that you sell it to us at this price.

Well, this is what set the United Fruit Company in operation in Washington. It persuaded the Eisenhower administration that the Arbenz government would not have been taking steps like this, would not have launched a land reform program, would not have tried to take land from the United Fruit Company, if it were not fundamentally anti-American. In addition, there was the overlay of the Cold War. So the United Fruit Company was able to persuade the U.S. government that not only was this government hostile to an American corporate interest in Guatemala, but it was undoubtedly a tool of the Kremlin which was, as Americans then thought, working all over the world to undermine American interests.

Now, during the run-up to the Guatemala coup, the Brazilian ambassador actually came in to see Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and asked him if he was sure, if he had proof that the Soviets were manipulating Guatemala, and Dulles very frankly answered, We do not have that proof, but we are proceeding as if it must be so. So the United States with relative ease overthrew the government of Guatemala.


--

United Fruit Company, Zapata and Chiquita
It's a small world after all...

Zapata Oil was formed in 1953 by George H.W. Bush and Brown Brothers Harriman. Later George H.W. Bush bought the subsidiary Zapata Off-Shore and went into business for himself. It merged in 1963 with Penn to form Pennzoil. Even though Zapata never found any oil, it was succesfully sold in 1966 to Robert Gow. (All SEC filings between 1960 and 1966 were sadly destroyed in 1981)

In 1969 Zapata bought the United Fruit Company. On the board of directors was Ralph Gow, Robert Gow's father. Later that year on sept. 24. Eli Black makes the third largest transaction in Wall Street history up to that moment by buying 733,000 shares of United Fruit in a single day. Black becomes the largest shareholder of the company. In June 1970 United Fruit merges with AMK-John Morrell to become the United Brands Company.

After Eli Black's spectacular suicide on February 3, 1975 he jumped out of the window of his New York City office on the 44th floor of the Pan Am Building Cincinnati-based American Financial, one of millionarie Carl H. Lindner, Jr.'s companies, bought into United Fruit. In August 1984, Lindner took control of the company and renamed it Chiquita Brands International.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala/History#Operation_PBSUCCESS

There is a beautiful promotional movie of United Fruit at archive.org

The beauty is brilliant techni color of the movie. The message is very paternalistic and slightly racist as well. They really act like they owned the country.
http://www.archive.org/details/Journeyt1950