John Perkins, author of "The Confessions of an Economic Hitman", has an interesting perspective on Hugo Chavez's contributions to progress in Latin America. Perkins, an economist, worked for the big transnational corporations and the IMF to wrest control of the economies of developing nations by convincing them, frequently through well placed bribes, to accept loans carrying conditions extremely favorable to the multi-nationals corporations. When, as anticipated, they defaulted, the IMF virtually owned the countries and their economies.
If the leadership of third world countries didn't cooperate with the corporatists' plans, then, according to Perkins, the Jackals (the assassins and coup fomenters) were sent in. Perkins, in an interview with
Howard Riell, in Smoking Argus Daily"Smoking Argus Daily" points to Ecuador’s Jaime Roldos and Panama’s Omar Torrijos, both of whom were populist leaders whose planes mysteriously exploded in 1981,mysteries widely attributed to the CIA. More recently, Perkins points to the 2002 coup against President Chavez in Venezuela.
Hiell queries Perkins about the prospect of turning Chavez into a collaborator with corporate imperialism, but Perkins demurs:
HR: If you were still in the business and had been given the assignment of turning Mr. Chavez around, how would you do it?
JP: I’d quit. I wouldn’t want to try and do it.
HR: Have they attempted to assassinate him?
JP: Yes, there have certainly been attempts to assassinate him. We attempted to overthrow him in the coup of 2002, but he’s extremely clever. He was a military man himself. (The coup attempt) was unsuccessful, but he learned a lot in the process.
Perkins, who has spent a great deal of time in South America, especially Ecuador and Boliva, dispels the notion promulgated endlessly by the Bush-Cheney administration, that Chavez is a dictator, noting that the many elections held since Chavez first came to power in 1998, have been internationally monitored and found to be fair.
Even his opponents, people who really don’t like him in Latin America - I spend a lot of time there, as you know - will tell you, ‘Yes, he’s a democratically elected president.' In this country, though, we have tried to depict him as something other than that. The Bush Administration was particularly onerous in doing that, and I think it’s very unfortunate. I don’t particularly like Chavez’ personality, and there are many other aspects about him that I’m not very fond of. But you can talk about a politician like him in honest terms and disagree strongly with his policies, but you don’t have to misstate whether he was democratically elected or not. He was.
Interestingly, when asked how the "corporatocracy" would like to deal with Hugo Chavez, Perkins responds that many of the oil companies favor retaining him in power because they apparently feel that they can work with him and may need to if Middle Eastern oil becomes less available. There is a lot of oil in the Amazon crescent of Venezuela-Brazil-Colombia-Ecuador which would be easier and cheaper to reach than that coming through the problematic straits of the Middle East. There are others in the oligarchy, however, who favor removing Chavez from power.
Perkins notes that 80% of South America has now voted progressive governments into power, government whose objectives are securing the benefits of their natural resources for the majority of their citizens. This is the platform that elected and re-elected Hugo Chavez into power. Indeed, Perkins states that the success of the Chavez government has made it possible for other countries in Latin America to throw off control by the corporatist elites.
Rielle asks Perkins to predict the future:
HR: Pull out your crystal ball: what’s going to happen in Venezuela with Chavez?
* * *
I have no idea where he’s really coming from. I can say at this point that he is democratically elected, and he has done an amazing job for a lot of Latin America. If Chavez hadn’t been elected and hadn’t survived that coup I don’t think we’d have a lot of these other presidents in Latin America. He is also sending medical aid and money to many
other countries. One of the reasons he was despised by the Bush administration was that he had ties with Cuba. Part of what he was doing was paying Cuba to send their very good medical doctors out to some extremely poor parts of places like Bolivia where they couldn’t get doctors any other way.
One reasons we hear so many bad things about him is that the majority of the Venezuelans who live in the States, speak English, and get interviewed by the press come from relatively wealthy families. For decades they did not pay taxes - or at best paid very low taxes - in Venezuela. Chavez is now forcing them to pay taxes so that the lower
classes can attend schools and receive food and medicines.
And so throughout Latin America, in many, many areas he’s seen as a real hero. On the other hand, in Latin America like here people fear that he might be trying to another Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) and create a huge dictatorship throughout Latin America. Maybe that’s his intent. Who am I to say it isn’t? I’m not his psychiatrist. But he certainly has done very little to demonstrate that that is, in fact, what he’s intending
to do at this point. Who knows what comes next with him?
One only hopes that the trillions of dollars that the G-20 have just agreed to give to the International Monetary Fund for assistance to third world countries will not be used, as in the past, to hijack their economies and assassinate their populist leaders. Chavez has directly assisted several countries in Latin America from escaping the draconian loan conditions placed upon them by the IMF. Undoubtedly this is a major reason for his unpopularity with the corporate imperialists of the U.S. government.