Venezuela and the paranoid right

By Abner D. Barrera

CARACAS – In recent weeks, the major commercial media in different Latin American countries have intensified their propaganda against candidate Hugo Chávez Frías. The nearness of the presidential elections in Venezuela, Oct. 7, has the Jurassic right in a desperate, anguished state. There is panic in Caracas, because all the surveys, including those done by sectors favorable to Capriles, indicate that Chávez would win the elections with an almost 20-percent margin.

The slogan shouted in Venezuelan streets some years ago – Ooh-Aah! Chávez won’t leave! – resounds again in the ears of citizens and foreigners, inside and outside Venezuela.

As one of their last hopeful recourses, the enemies of the Bolivarian revolution bet this year that Chávez would be defeated by disease and be prevented from participating in the elections. They hoped for “good news” after each diagnosis and medical treatment, but in all these months they had to swallow their hatred.

Many columnists – whose hands did not tremble – wished for the Bolivarian leader’s death. Some soothsayers and doctors in Latin America’s right-wing sewers predicted that he had only days to live. Today, when they see Chávez defy wind, heat and rain to address the crowds, they become paranoid. They don’t know what to do because they’ve played all their cards and none has been effective. Rather, their cards have turned against them.

For example, announcing the death of the president made Chávez’s supporters come together closer, to defend their social programs and strengthen the electoral struggle.

The world knows that the campaign waged by the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, led by candidate Henrique Capriles, has been characterized by repeated slander against the Bolivarian government and by deceitful promises. All this has failed against a people that has acquired greater political culture and democratic participation. They are no longer the people who used to be tricked by Pérez, Lusinchi, Caldera and their ilk.

The right-wing candidate buried himself some weeks ago, when he unveiled his government program, known popularly as “el paquetazo” [the big package], which he would apply in the first 100 days of his administration, if he won the elections. He praised those measures as if they represented an economic breakthrough, ignoring that it is the same old and failed plan applied by neoliberal governments in Latin America since the 1990s, with catastrophic social and economic results.

When the media questioned him, Capriles was unable to give explanations, showing that he is just another parrot that the oligarchy places on the stage to repeat the same old bromides.

Wishing to position himself as a moderate politician, the disoriented Capriles said that his administration would be similar to Lula’s, in Brazil. The poor fellow hasn’t been told that some months ago Lula said to Chávez: “Your victory will be our victory.” It is obvious that the man doesn’t get it.

Even though he has fallen into disrepute and has few social sympathizers – some political parties have decided to withdraw their support for him – the international media machine continues to give him publicity with every means at its disposal. CNN is the worst propaganda tyranny serving the Venezuelan troglodytes. Believing that it’s helping the bourgeois candidate, CNN has paraded the rightist figureheads past its cameras: Vargas Llosa, Andrés Oppenheimer, Álvaro Uribe (someone needs to tell him he’s no longer president of Colombia), and Carlos Alberto Montaner, among others.

To top that parade of “stars,” all that remains is to show terrorist Luis Posada Carriles having a chummy chat with CNN hosts Janiot and Del Rincón. They’re doing Capriles no favor! There is practically not a single CNN program (Noticias, ‘Choque’ de Opiniones, Cala, Mirador Mundial, Panorama Mundial, Vive el Golf, Notimujer…) that doesn’t attack Chávez and praise Capriles. So much for CNN’s journalistic impartiality.

One example of what we maintain is a recent “interview” on CNN that Oppenheimer simulates conducting with the dense Capriles: “Candidate Henrique Capriles, a few weeks ago, Carlos Alberto Montaner, one of Latin America’s best known and most respected columnists and writers, wrote a column titled ‘The trap that will be sprung in Venezuela.’ In it, he quotes a Venezuelan political adviser saying that there are 2 million virtual voters (i.e. nonexistent voters) on the rolls and therefore the government can distribute them as it wishes on election night. Is that true? Can there be electronic fraud?”

The answer doesn’t matter. What matters is the way this publicist does journalism.

Three observations: First, Oppenheimer quotes Montaner, a man whose links to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have totally discredited him. Second, Montaner is a columnist noted for slandering, fantasizing and inventing (his sources always are “secret”. Third, it is traditional in Latin America that every time a right-wing candidate is about to be defeated, he becomes hysterical and shouts “fraud, fraud!” But they’ve never been able to prove it.

Some weeks ago, referring to the Venezuelan elections, Vargas Llosa burped: “If the elections are free, the opposition will win.” For sure, he was still celebrating his Nobel prize with champagne.

As you can see, the publicity of the right-wing fauna has no limit. Chávez is driving them crazy!

Abner D. Barrera is a journalist and a profesor at the Institute of Latin American Studies of the National University of Costa Rica. He is a Peruvian citizen living in Costa Rica.