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2 THE ROVING
EYE Bush, OPEC and Chavez of
Arabia By Pepe Escobar
Dig that red VW Beetle showing up this
past Sunday morning at a Caracas barrio. Behind
the wheel is none other than Hugo Chavez,
president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
(as it has been officially designated since 1999),
global South working-class hero and scourge of the
Washington Consensus, on his way to one more
red-Ferrari-style landslide electoral victory.
The historical metaphor came with a Bob
Dylan blowing-in-the-
wind
swing: while Chavez - who is seducing the global
South with his attempt to prove another world
system is possible - was having his mandate
renewed by an overwhelming majority of voters in a
free, fair, transparent election, in Santiago the
aging former US-backed Chilean tyrant Augusto
Pinochet - the ultimate, sinister Latin American
dictator from central casting - was suffering a
heart attack.
In the absence of credible,
untainted opposition, Chavez was actually, once
again, running against George W Bush. "Against the
devil [George W Bush], against the Empire, vote
for Hugo Chavez," proclaimed red flags scattered
all over Caracas. While Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva and Argentina's Nestor Kirchner, the top
two powers in Mercosur alongside Venezuela,
celebrated Chavez' victory, no tears were shed for
for Pinochet (Evita Peron was much cooler).
As for Bush's twin daughters - who were
having a ball in Buenos Aires, even with Barbara's
wallet and mobile phone pocketed by a dangerous
"terrorist" whose quick hand managed to floor all
the defense systems of the most sophisticated
Secret Service on the planet - they didn't stay
for the celebration: they left Argentina last
Thursday.
As they were unable to dissolve
the Venezuelan people and elect a new, more
pliable president, the discredited opposition - a
motley collection of racist, corrupt oligarchs and
plutocrats - was meekly forced to shelve the
threat of launching a plan B, a "Great Avalanche
against Fraud" scheduled for this Tuesday to
protest against alleged electoral shenanigans.
This was despite a heavily built-up public
relations campaign accusing Chavistas of being
"Nazis" and empty promises of unleashing a
Ukraine-style Orange Revolution to counter the
so-called "fraud". Once again Chavez won fair and
square, under the eyes of hundreds of
international monitors. The non-dissolved
Venezuelan people preempted a foretold coup
d'etat.
OPEC matters Behind all
the smoke-and-mirrors "debate" around the variable
"stay the course" scenarios, the only strategic
factor that really matters for the Bush-Cheney
system in Iraq is control of oil resources, which
in theory would allow Washington to knock out the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC).
According to the original
Bush-Cheney system plan, it would be crucial to
increase Iraq's oil production, make sure that a
barrel of oil does not cost more than US$30, and
prevent any moves (by Russia and/or Iran, for
instance) from the petrodollar toward the
petro-euro. To allow Iraq to produce 3.5 million
barrels of oil a day (nowadays it can be pumping
as low as 1.8 million, if that), the US would have
to invest at least $5 billion before the end of
Bush's term - and count on no sabotage by the
Sunni Arab resistance.
OPEC, for its part,
wants a barrel of oil at $60 minimum. In the
forefront of this policy we find none other than
Hugo Chavez. This "minimum price" and the contours
of a redistribution of production will be decided
in an extraordinary OPEC meeting in Abuja,
Nigeria's capital, on December 14. Chavez - and
not the Bush-Cheney system - will definitely get
what he, and other OPEC member states, want.
Chavez of Arabia
King-of-polemicists Chavez is set to
remain the most popular political leader in the
global South for years. It's not hard to see why.
In Venezuela, as in Colombia, Ecuador or Paraguay,
most of the population is mestizo - a mix of
Spanish colonizers and indigenous people. The key
issue in these countries is race mixed with class
(as in struggle). The overwhelming majority of
mestizos, not by accident, happen to be poor.
Chavez is Venezuela incarnated because he is an
absolute mestizo - Indian, Spanish and black. He
had to be popular: he's one of "them" - the ones
who had been excluded for centuries.
On
top of it, Chavez is spectacularly popular from
Mexico to India and especially in Gaza, Ramallah,
south Beirut - not to mention Baghdad and Tehran.
His portrait is now brandished all over alongside
that of iconic Che Guevara. A torrent of
editorials in the Arab press have nailed it: the
dispossessed masses have clearly identified how
cowardly, corrupt Arab rulers a la Hosni
Mubarak, Saudi King Abdullah or the emir of Kuwait
have not dared to do what a non-Arab, non-Muslim
Latin American has done: to confront head-on the
Empire's way of regulating the world.
What
could Chavez teach, for instance, Hamas and
Hezbollah? A lot: first of all, that it is
possible for a clear alternative to emerge
respecting the rules of parliamentary democracy.
Chavez has not emerged protected by a religious
movement; he is a democratically elected (and
re-elected) president and a committed
anti-imperialist socialist. He reaches way beyond
national or communal division. He insists on
continental unity (in the Middle East, that would
translate into pan-Arabism). And his
socio-economic policies are absolutely
egalitarian, with an emphasis on redistribution of
wealth.
As far as the Middle East is
concerned, it also helps that Chavez dedicates a
lot of thinking to the Iraq war, totally supports
the Iraqi resistance and defines himself as a
Nasserist (while in Beirut and south Lebanon he
has become as popular as Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah).
He appeals to Sunnis and Shi'ites alike - in fact
echoing large swaths of public opinion all over
Latin America who do not regard the Middle East in
sectarian terms and clearly support the
Palestinian struggle, the Iraqi resistance, the
Lebanese Shi'ites, the Arab nation as a whole, and
also Iran's right to a peaceful nuclear program.
The Bolivar swing Assorted
neo-cons and the Washington establishment cannot
but be horrified by the steady progression of a
Bolivarian movement bent on uniting South America
against imperialist practices and the Washington
Consensus. They now look south of the Rio Grande
and see a solidified ALBA (Alternativa Bolivariana
para las Americas, or Bolivarian Alternative for
the Americas) alliance - Cuba, Venezuela and
Bolivia - not to mention the return of Daniel
"Sandinista" Ortega in Nicaragua and the ascension
of Rafael Correa in Ecuador, plus a solidified
Mercosur where Brazil-Argentina-Venezuela are
deeply committed to an indigenous trade mechanism
that has nothing to do with the US-promoted Free
