My comments on Venezuela in the U.S. Congress, a few months ago

April 22, at the Sam Rayburn House Building of the U.S. Congress I had the opportunity to be a member of a panel on Latin America for some 50 members of the Congressional staff, including three members of the congress and general public. This is what I said in the 15 minutes at my disposal:

FRANK GAFFNEY:

John, thank you. The complexities and challenges of asymmetric warfare are clearly something we’ve got to be focused on. Gustavo Coronel, former member of congress in Venezuela, will tell us about the rise and--from your lips to God’s ears--fall of the Bolivarian revolution.

GUSTAVO CORONEL:

Thank you. Good morning to everyone. As you know, Chavez came into power eleven years ago. And he came into power because he promised to eliminate corruption in Venezuela. Of course, corruption in Venezuela nowadays is the most intense we have ever had. So he failed in his main electoral promise. There are only two problems with the name he gives his movement. He calls it a Bolivarian revolution. The first problem is that it is not Bolivarian. And the second is that it is not a revolution. A revolution, of course, is a radical change, hopefully, to improve things. But in his case, there has been a radical change to make the country worse than ever before. Chavez has developed a political model, key strategies, and some main tactics. The political model is almost identical to the one Fidel Castro developed in the 1960s. It has to do with (1), authoritarian rule at home, (2), trying to become a hemispheric leader and, (3), the leader of a global anti-US alliance. In turn his strategies are based on three pillars. (1), Oil money. He has had so far no less than nine hundred billion dollars of income in eleven years. (2), the support of the armed force, which are coopted and are being supplied with abundant privileges and money by Chavez. And (3), a real following among the poor. Many of the poor support Chavez because he has expressed interest in the poor. But of course, if you consider Venezuela as if it were a bus, what he has done is to put the poor into the bus, at the expense of expelling the middle class from the bus. And that, of course, is no solution. You cannot include a sector of the population at the expense of excluding another sector of the populatio, particularly the sector that creates wealth.
His main tactics have had to do with handouts at home and abroad. In fact, as the old chinese proverb goes, his policy is one of giving fish but not one of teaching anyone how to fish. And as you can imagine, when the fish runs out, people getting fishes will be more dependent in the paternalistic government and more defenseless than ever before. He has given money abroad, about thirty-five to forty billion dollars to his ideological friends in Latin America. He has been working within OPEC to try to reduce oil production, so that oil prices can increase. Four, he has been financing the extreme left in Latin America and in almost every country. Peru, Argentina, Chile. Five of his ambassadors have been expelled from these countries because of their intervention in internal affairs. Five, he has been aligning himself with rogue states all over the world. His club of friends now includes Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, all the “good” guys. And finally, he has done quite a lot of recruiting in the US, among leftist groups, especially in Hollywood, where he has become the favorite dictator, replacing Castro.
Now, what are the results of these strategies and his tactics? Number one, he’s still popular. He's currently at forty percent popularity. Which is very high, except that before, a few years back, he had seventy percent popularity. Two, he has gained some influence in Latin America and the Caribbean by giving oil to the small countries which import oil. Three, he has converted Venezuela in the preferred ally--and I would say almost the only ally--of Iran. He has made inroads in the United States. Joseph Kennedy third is very enthusiastic about Chavez. You listen to certain sectors of the academic world in the US and they are also very enthusiastic. Hollywood’s Danny Glover received 18 million dollars to make a picture that he might never finish.
Chavez has also become very influential in the OAS. Not only because he has acted very shrewdly, but because Insulza has been a disaster as a secretary general. In OPEC, he has not made any inroads, because Saudi Arabia is the leader. He doesn’t control production increases.
In the Latin American region, he has done quite a lot of work proselytizing the small Caribbean countries through his PETROCARIBE initiative. That means oil in exchange for bananas and black beans, good for those countries, bad for Venezuelans.
What is the outlook? Eleven years later, the revolution is stagnant. He can no longer win--his original conception of winning. Now he’s surviving. He can no longer make Venezuela into another Cuba. He can no longer make the region into a socialist bloc. Oil money now is less abundant than before. And that means losing friends. Friends are there as long as money is there. The currency has been devalued, there is a tremendous electricity crisis in Venezuela. There are food shortages. Crime rate is the highest in the hemisphere. We have sixty violent deaths per one hundred thousand inhabitants in Venezuela. Even more so than El Salvador or Mexico. We are witnessing what could be a really impending implosion of the revolution. High-level followers have been leaving him, the vice-president left, and he took his wife along because his wife was also a minister. He has already lost several memmbers of the cabinet and a key governor in the state of Lara to the opposition. In fact, he lost an entire political party. PPT, Patria Para Todos, is no longer a Chavez follower.
They have abandoned him and the whole regime seems to be crumbling down. The polls show that his popularity has been highly diminished. So my outlook, or my prediction if you wish, probably with a small component of wishful thinking, is that Chavez will not finish his term in 2012. He will be ousted before 2012. Thank you.

FRANK GAFFNEY:

Thank you, Congressman, that's, as I said, I hope not so much wishful thinking, but accurate forecasting. But we appreciate very much your background on how some of these trends are working within Venezuela. It certainly informs the rest of the region as well.

SOME QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE.
GUSTAVO CORONEL:

No, I just want to mention that Venezuela today is a totally militarized country. The popular militia created by Chavez is now in the thousands. I am not saying that they are very efficient, but they are real. So, for all practical purposes, Venezuela is on a war footing. But I couldn’t recommend that the United States take any [MILITARY] action on Venezuela. My impression is that Chavez is imploding. If the US did not do anything, Chavez would implode. So there is no need for any US invasion.


WOMAN:

[OFF-MICROPHONE, QUESTION INAUDIBLE]

GUSTAVO CORONEL:

Yes. [LAUGHTER] Actually, if you remember April, 2002, and the author of a wonderful book on that event, Brian Nelson, is here with us, Chavez was ousted as a result of a gigantic popular march. And the reluctance of the army to fire on the protesters caused Chavez’s ousting. I think this is exactly what is going to happen somewhere in time, before 2012. The situation in Venezuela is such there is a very high level of frustration. Not only among the opposition to Chavez, but even among the own Chavez followers. Because as money dwindles, so loyalty dwindles. the art of keeping everybody happy at the same time is only possible if you have enough money to go around. But Chavez is now getting in great debt. He has quintupled the national debt during his eleven years and he’s now mortgaging the oil of the Orinoco area to the Chinese for a loan of twenty billion dollars. This is illegal. I definitely believe that the popular protests in Venezuela are increasing, will keep increasing up to a point in which the combination of popular protests and the army rejecting Chavez’s orders to repress them will result in a new ousting of Chavez, just as it happened in April 11 of 2002.


FRANK GAFFNEY:

Surely if Robert Gates doesn’t see any problem with the FARC or the Iranians, there can’t be a problem. Does anybody disagree with that view?

GUSTAVO CORONEL:

Well, I , yeah, I know about Mr. Gates, of course, I don’t know what goes on in the mind, of Mr. Gates, but therE is plenty of evidence about the links between Hugo Chavez and the FARC. I mean, as Norman [Bailey] says, tons of documents. And in fact I have some of those documents in my own files. There is no possibility of denying these links any longer. So I think probably Mr. Gates was just misinformed, but we have to ask him.


GUSTAVO CORONEL:

Just a comment on this Ahmadinejad guy. [OVERLAPPING VOICES]. Lula just visited Iran a few weeks ago and before he went, he did say publicly that you have to be very careful, he said, with Ahmadinejad because he’s a basket case. And he added: "we have another basket case in Latin America and that’s Hugo Chavez. That’s why I go and visit with him every three or four months to keep him in check".
Can you imagine a president of a Latin American country talking like? And that was all over the newspapers in Brazil.