Statement by the International Action Center
April 12, 2002
According to an anti-war organization based in the United States, the U.S. government working with Venezuelan reactionaries, the wealthy classes of that South American country and the international pro-U.S. media, has fomented and carried out a military coup against the popularly elected leader, President Hugo Chavez.
Teresa Gutierrez of the International Action Center (IAC) said “the coup has all the markings of a CIA plot, much like the one carried out against the Chilean President Salvador Allende in September 1973.” Gutierriez pointed out that the “so-called strike leading up to the coup was really an action by the wealthy owners of the factories, aided by a corrupt sector of the trade union movement representing only the most privileged workers in the oil industry.”
“The moneyed media has all joined in an attempt to blame pro-Chavez forces for the deaths of demonstrators,” she added. “Our own sources, from those sympathetic to Chavez, say that it was reactionaries and police who started the shooting, and they fired at pro-Chavez demonstrators. Most
of those who died were from the poorer parts of the population who voted for Chavez in overwhelming numbers and who still support him, according to our sources.”
The IAC, whose founder and chairperson is former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, has been a leading organization opposing the Bush administration`s post-Sept. 11 crusade, including the bombing of Afghanistan. It is part of a coalition organizing a protest on April 20 at
the White House calling for freedom for Palestine and for no U.S. war on Iraq.
Sara Flounders, a co-director of the IAC, said, “That the Bush administration has rushed to welcome the new Venezuelan government, despite its illegal and unconstitutional creation, is a clear sign that Washington was in on the coup from the beginning,” she said. “The Bush administration has targeted Chavez because he had an independent foreign policy. He was friendly to Cuba and he had the courage to criticize the U.S. war drive against Afghanistan.
“We consider the coup against Chavez in Venezuela as part of the more aggressive U.S. military policy since Sept. 11,” said Flounders. “It goes hand in hand with the threats against Iraq, support for the Israeli massacre of Palestinians, and of course with the new threats of open
U.S. intervention against the revolutionary movement in Colombia, Venezuela`s neighbor.”
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Below is a copy of an eye-witness account of a leader of the popular movement, directly from Caracas, published on the web site of the Belgian Workers Party on April 12, 2002:
Is the resignation this morning of Venezuelan President Chavez due to a popular uprising, as the media make it appear? Nothing seems less true! An eye-witness account from Maximilien Averliaz, a leader of the popular movement that supports Chavez, directly from Caracas.
By Pol De Vos
April 12, 2002
Maximilien Averlaiz: “The plot appears to have been well prepared. It all started with a call for a general strike for Wednesday, April 10, launched by an alliance between the organization of the bosses FEDECAMARAS and the corrupt union the Venezuelan Workers Central (CTV). The big privately owned media helped create a climate of tension. They agitated the population against the government. The strike, however, for the most part failed. It occurred only in a few places. In the other places, the bosses
purely and simply closed their factories in such a way that the workers were unable to work.
After the first day of the strike, FEDECAMARAS and the CTV prolonged their action for an indeterminate time period, while calling for a demonstration April 11. During this reactionary demonstration, large groups of partisans of President Chavez gathered at Miraflores to defend his “Bolivarian Revolution.” The poor people came down from the neighborhood on the edge of the city toward the government building to support their president.
Chavez has always guaranteed the right to demonstrate to the opposition, all the while appealing to his partisans to refuse to respond to provocations and denouncing the crass media manipulation.
While Chavez was making a radio talk Thursday evening, the second phase of the destabilization plan was unleashed. The leaders of the right-wing opposition directed their demonstration toward Miraflores, where the progressives had assembled. Their aim was clear: blood must flow.
The government gave an order to the National Guard to place itself between the two groups to avoid battles. At this moment, some elite sharpshooters began to fire on the pro-Chavez demonstrators. They had been posted on the tops of high buildings, at 200 meters (650 feet) from the crowd. The first two deaths fell from among the defenders of the populist president.
It is then that the right-wing demonstrators attacked the National Guard, while the auxiliary police of the extreme right-wing mayor of Caracas, Alfrede Pena, fired on the pro-Chavez demonstrators. They unleashed violence to make a counter-revolution possible. The majority of deaths were from defenders of Chavez.
In the night from Thursday to Friday the following step took place. A group from the National Guard and a large part of the Command of the Army turned openly against President Chavez and seized the state television station. The national and international media have been the most important instruments of this coup d`etat, orchestrated by the wealthy elite classes with the direct support of the United States.
