Ever since the 2002 coup in Venezuela was defeated, the international corporate press has generally ignored it, downplayed its significance, or accused the government of using it as a “distraction” and as a way to smear opponents. However, the recent plunge in oil prices – and absurd predictions that Venezuela could be forced into defaulting on its foreign bonds – clearly had many foreign journalists excited about the prospects of a coup while President Nicolas Maduro was out of the country. The threat was no longer dismissed as Maduro’s paranoia or opportunism but as sober analysis to be encouraged – provided that harsh conclusions that logically follow about the opposition were completely evaded. For example, the AP quoted David Smilde as saying “it is not inconceivable that stakeholders, among which are the armed forces, would step in before Maduro drives the government into single digits of popularity….that would be unfortunate but is within the realm of possibilities.”
Actually, a coup would be highly criminal and a major disaster for the local population – not merely “unfortunate”. We need only consider the murderous consequences of successful coups in Haiti (2004) and Honduras (2009) – the former directly perpetrated by US troops. David Smilde instinctively uses outrageously feeble language to describe a crime that US officialdom and the corporate media would applaud or simply ignore.
Sibylla Brodzinski opened a January 16 article for the UK Guardian by saying that “even Venezuela’s most conciliatory opposition leader has had enough”. She was referring to Henrique Capriles but doesn’t tell her readers that Capriles – right along with the hard line opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez – led the illegal arrest (i.e. kidnapping) of a government minister during a briefly successful military coup in 2002. Here is a video of Lopez and Capriles leading that “arrest”. Being the “most conciliatory” among a group of unabashed golpistas (coup perpetrators) isn’t saying very much, but she doesn’t mention the 2002 coup at all. Unless you know the facts before reading the article you will come away worse than unformed. You will be seriously misled.
Brodzinski is correct in reporting that “Capriles said this week that the time was ripe to try to force a change.”
The international press is certainly doing all it can – as it has over the past 15 years – to try to “force a change” in Venezuela. The liberal New York Times editors, aping the Bush government, applauded the 2002 coup: “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator” the NYT editors proclaimed with astounding cynicism. The liberal Guardian’s news articles have always been one-sided and hostile to Hugo Chavez (and then Nicolas Maduro after Chavez passed away in 2013). Rory Carroll’s departure from Venezuela in 2012 led to a drop in the quantity but not the quality of the Guardian’s Venezuela coverage – its news articles in particular.
A few other bits from Brodzinski’s article are worth addressing:
- “According to the latest opinion poll, Maduro enjoys the support of just 22% of the population…”
She cites an opposition aligned pollster (Datanalisis) whose poll numbers are regularly reported in Venezuela’s largest newspapers but doesn’t tell her readers that the pollster is aligned with the opposition. A top official from Datanalisis just said (absurdly) that Venezuela’s has no independent institutions. After embarrassing itself in the 2004 recall referendum, Datanalisis has become much better at predicting election results (at least when they are very close to happening), but there are no elections until late in 2015 – and therefore no check on any pollsters’ numbers. Even when elections are imminent, Venezuela’s top pollsters have produced widely varying results.
- “Venezuela’s economy is estimated to have shrunk by 4% in 2014, with inflation hitting 64%.”
She uses government figures but ignores the ones showing that, despite the recession, “extreme poverty was down to 5.4 percent of households in 2014, half the level before Chavez came to power, while unemployment fell to 5.9 percent” as Reuters reported.
- “Maduro confirmed that the country was in recession, but blamed an ‘economic war’ orchestrated by political foes.”
Venezuela’s economic problems stem primarily from a mismanaged and ill-conceived exchange rate system. However, Maduro’s government has provided ample evidence that hoarding, smuggling and deliberately spreading panic are serious problems that aggravate the situation. The 2002-2003 period revealed how far elite government opponents are willing to go against their narrow short-term interests to oust the government. Real per capita GDP contracted by about 20% over those years as direct result of opposition-led sabotage (the coup and an upper management-led oil strike). The chart below shows the percentage drop in Venezuela’s real per capita GDP caused by each recession since 1980. The “conciliatory” Capriles has referred to the current recession as “the worst crisis in Venezuela’s history” – a ridiculous claim, but not if made about the recession he and his allies caused as they ruthlessly tried to depose the government in 2002-2003, and very briefly succeeded.
Recessions in Venezuela: Percentages are calculated using IMF data
A corporate journalist working in Caracas told me that he and a few colleagues laughed at one of the more blatant of recent efforts to encourage a coup, but privately ridiculing such vile propaganda does nothing to counter it. Mind you, the career risks of aggressively countering it are far from trivial. In its reporting about Venezuela, the international press is, on the opposition’s behalf, everything it falsely accuses the Venezuelan media of being on behalf of Maduro: hopelessly one-sided and effective at cowing and marginalizing dissenting voices.
The opposition did dominate the Venezuelan media in 2002, and that explains why the coup briefly succeeded that year. The perpetrators openly expressed their gratitude with Venezuela’s private media, but thanks largely to media reforms since 2002 – reforms the international press has depicted as a “crackdown on dissent” – the opposition is very unlikely to violently seize power again. The NYT editors and others can hold their applause.
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