{"id":127908,"date":"2019-02-18T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=127908"},"modified":"2019-02-12T12:10:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T12:10:48","slug":"in-venezuela-white-supremacy-is-a-key-to-trumps-coup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/02\/in-venezuela-white-supremacy-is-a-key-to-trumps-coup\/","title":{"rendered":"In Venezuela, White Supremacy Is a Key to Trump\u2019s Coup"},"content":{"rendered":"

8 Feb 2019 – <\/em>On January 23, right after a phone call<\/a> from Donald Trump, Juan Guaid\u00f3, former speaker of Venezuela\u2019s National Assembly<\/a>, declared himself president. No voting. When you have official recognition<\/a> from The Donald, who needs elections?<\/p>\n

Say what?<\/em><\/p>\n

I can explain what\u2019s going on in Venezuela in three photos:<\/p>\n

First, we have Juan Guaid\u00f3, self-proclaimed (and Trump-proclaimed) president of the nation, with his wife and child, a photo prominently placed in The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next, the class photo of Guaid\u00f3\u2019s party members in the National Assembly, white as snow\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2026especially when compared to their political opposites in the third photo, the congress members who support the elected President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro.\u00a0The Maduro supporters are nearly all of a darker hue.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is the story of Venezuela in black and white, the story not told in The New York Times<\/em> nor the rest of our establishment media. This year\u2019s so-called popular uprising is, at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier)<\/a> Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo<\/a> (mixed-race) poor.<\/p>\n

Four centuries of white supremacy in Venezuela by those who identify their ancestors as European came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo majority. This turn away from white supremacy continues under Maduro, Chavez\u2019 chosen successor.<\/p>\n

In my interviews with Chavez for BBC beginning in 2002, he talked with humor about the fury of a white ruling class finding itself displaced by dark-skinned man who was so visibly \u201cNegro e Indio,\u201d a label he wore loudly and proudly.<\/p>\n

Why did the poor love Chavez? (And love is not too strong a word.)\u00a0As even the US CIA\u2019s surprisingly honest Fact Book<\/em><\/a> states:<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial investment in Venezuela during the Chavez administration reduced poverty from nearly 50% in 1999 to about 27% in 2011, increased school enrollment, substantially decreased infant and child mortality, and improved access to potable water and sanitation through social investment.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What should be added is that, even more than the USA, race and poverty are linked.<\/p>\n

But just as Maduro took office in 2013, the price of oil began its\u00a0collapse<\/a>, and the vast social programs that oil paid for were now paid for by\u00a0borrowing money<\/a> and printing it, causing wild inflation<\/a>. The economic slide is now made impossibly worse by what the UN rapporteur<\/a> for Venezuela compared to \u201cmedieval sieges.\u201d The Trump administration\u00a0 cut off Venezuela<\/a> from the oil sale proceeds from its biggest customer, the USA.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Everyone has been hurt economically, but the privileged class\u2019s bank accounts have become nearly worthless<\/a>. So, knowing that the Mestizo majority would not elect their Great White Hope Guid\u00f3, the angry white rich simply took to the streets \u2014 often armed. (And yes, both sides are armed.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen this movie before. When I look at today\u2019s news reports of massive demonstrations<\/a> against the so-called \u201cdictatorship\u201d of Venezuela\u2019s left government, it looks awfully like 2002, when I was first in Caracas reporting for BBC Television.<\/p>\n

Then, The New York Times, NPR<\/em> and other mainstream outlets in the US reported on marches against the Chavez government, showing the tens of thousands of Venezuelans calling for Chavez\u2019s removal. But when I took my BBC camera crews to march with these protesters, they were clearly from the light-skinned minority. They were also the wealthy\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and they wanted you to know it. Many of the women marched in high heels<\/a>, the men peacocking in business suits, proudly displayed in the uniforms of their privileged class.<\/p>\n

The Chavistas wore patriotic yellow, blue and red T-shirts, sneaks, jeans.<\/p>\n

Race was an issue as much as political philosophy. When I marched alongside the opposition demonstrators, they shouted\u00a0\u201cChavez, Monkey!\u201d<\/a> and worse.<\/p>\n

Many in the US have never heard this story of race war in Venezuela (and war is what it is), as the US press does not recognize its own racial bias. In 2002, as today, the massive demonstrations of the whiter Venezuelans were reported as evidence that Chavez was wildly unpopular. Yet, the day after each anti-Chavez march, I would witness and film<\/a> the pro-Chavez demonstrations that flooded Caracas with an ocean of nearly half a million marchers, overwhelmingly poor Mestizos, that received little or no coverage in the US press.<\/p>\n

The bias continues. The New York Times<\/em> did not run a photo of this past week\u2019s pro-Maduro demonstrations. But in hard-to-find photos and reports<\/a> from my colleagues on the ground, the Chavista<\/em> demonstrations are bigger, involving mass turnouts in several cities, not just wealthy neighborhoods in Caracas.<\/p>\n

How many western news outlets showed the massive marches in Venezuela protesting the US-backed coup today? #HandsOffVenezuela<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/YBQpqbdEfl<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 Abby Martin (@AbbyMartin) February 2, 2019<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why do the poor march for Maduro? Even though the Mestizo majority suffers today, they will not turn back to the pre-Chavez days of de facto<\/em> apartheid.<\/p>\n

And we must remember this is not the first time the US government has tried to overthrow the elected government in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

In 2002, George W. Bush\u2019s State Department cheer-led the coup<\/a>. The plotters kidnapped Chavez and held him hostage. The coup was led by an oil industry leader and head of the Chamber of Commerce, Pedro Carmona<\/a>, who had seized the nation\u2019s White House<\/a>, and, like Guaid\u00f3 today, declared himself president<\/a>. Carmona told me proudly about the fancy inaugural ball held by the nation\u2019s elite and attended by Bush\u2019s ambassador.<\/p>\n

But the Bush\/Carmona coup collapsed when a million\u00a0darker-skinned\u00a0Venezuelans flooded the capital and forced the plotters to return their hero<\/a>, the supposedly unpopular Chavez, to Miraflores, the Presidential Palace. \u201cPresidente\u201d Carmona fled.<\/p>\n

Today, Guaid\u00f3\u2019s supporters, like Carmona\u2019s, know they can\u2019t win an election given the overwhelming fact of the newly empowered Mestizo majority. So Guaid\u00f3 has skipped the idea of an election altogether, simply replacing running for office with the \u201crecognition\u201d from Trump and allies which Guaid\u00f3 can\u2019t get from Venezuelans.<\/p>\n

When I see the images and hear the chants of the anti-Chavista demonstrators<\/a> now, I\u2019m also reminded of what I saw at a Trump rally in Macon, Georgia<\/a>, this past November. The president slid out of Air Force One to tell the crowd<\/a> \u00a0\u2014 heavily weighted with white supremacists<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 that they needed to take back their country<\/em> from those \u201cinvading\u201d the border. Trump told them to fear gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is Black, saying she would \u201cturn Georgia into Venezuela.\u201d<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think Trump was talking about Abrams\u2019 program to bring universal health care to Georgia<\/a>, as Chavez did for Venezuela.<\/p>\n

The US press is quick to condemn the racial hatred on display at Trump rallies. But I have yet to hear or read in the US press what our eyes can see in the three photos from Venezuela: an uprising of white people wanting to \u201ctake back their country.\u201d<\/p>\n

And take note: The Venezuela putsch by the wealthy, internationally connected minority is operating by a regime-change plan designed by neo-con re-tread John Bolton, Trump\u2019s national security adviser. And take further note: It is a plan to control Venezuela<\/a> and its oil<\/em>, as Bolton proudly\u00a0proclaims<\/a> in the open.<\/p>\n

Ah, yes, the oil. It\u2019s always the oil. And Venezuela has plenty to seize: the world\u2019s<\/a> largest reserves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll get to that in Part II.<\/em><\/p>\n

____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Greg Palast covered Venezuela during the Chavez presidency for <\/em>BBC Television Newsnight and<\/em> The Guardian. Download the film of Palast\u2019s <\/em>BBC reports, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, for FREE or with a donation<\/a> to the Palast Investigative Fund.\u00a0<\/em>Greg has written four <\/em>New York Times<\/em> bestsellers, including <\/em>Armed Madhouse<\/em>, <\/em>Billionaires & Ballot Bandits<\/em>, and <\/em>The Best Democracy Money Can Buy<\/em>, now a major non-fiction movie, available\u00a0on Amazon<\/a> \u2014 and can be streamed for FREE<\/a> by Prime members!<\/em><\/p>\n

This article incorporates additional reporting by William Camacaro in Caracas.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 gregpalast.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Feb 2019 – This is the story of Venezuela in black and white, the story not told in our establishment media. This year\u2019s so-called popular uprising is, at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier) Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo (mixed-race) poor. Four centuries of white supremacy in Venezuela by those who identify their ancestors as European came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo majority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":127912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latin-america-and-the-caribbean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}