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Indybay Feature
Chavistas Lose Referendum in a 'Photo Finish'
The text of indybay's blurb on the Venezuelan referendum follows.
By a margin of 1.4 percent, the forces of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez lost a December 2 vote on a referendum of social programs that also would have lifted term limits for the presidency. Chávez called it a "photo finish." The United States reportedly spent $8 million dollars to sway the vote, and a CIA document uncovered by the Chavistas spelled out a thorough program of psy-ops and destabilization. Fidel Castro wrote on the Friday before the election, "The most sophisticated mass media technologically developed, designed to kill human beings and subjugate or exterminate whole peoples … is being used now against the Venezuelans, in an attempt to rip the ideas of Bolívar and Martí to shreds." The referendum would have helped the landless and small producers obtain land, given social security to laborers in the informal sector of the economy, reduced the work week from 40 to 36 hours a week with no reduction in pay, created open admissions for the universities, and sped up socialization of key industries. It would also have empowered the neighborhood councils so they could legislate and invest in their own communities. Wrote analyst James Petras, "The electorate supporting the constitutional amendments is voting in favor of their socio-economic and class interests; the issue of extended re-election of the President is not high on their priorities. And that is the issue that the Right has focused on in calling Chávez a 'dictator' and the referendum a 'coup'."
For more information:
http://www.streetdemos.com
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On 7 October, masked gunmen opened fire on student protestors in Caracas, Venezuela, who were returning from a protest against President Hugo Chavez's proposed Constitutional reforms. Thousands of students marched on the Supreme Court protesting the reforms, which Chavez proposes to pass by referendum and critics say consolidate executive powers, giving the President control of the Central Bank, abolishing presidential term limits, expanding state of emergency powers, and creating new provinces to be governed by centrally appointed officials. These authoritarian changes are paired with populist measures like reducing the voting age and decreasing the hours of the maximum work day.
After the protest, as students were returning to the Venezuela Central University (UCV), they were attacked by an armed group of Chavistas with gas grenades, knives, clubs, stones, and pistols. Anti-authoritarian students who had participated in the protest, though they lacked firearms and all but improvised weapons, counterattacked and forced the “pistoleros” to take refuge in a university building. Shortly, a much larger group of armed Chavistas arrived on motorcycle to rescue the first group. In total, eight student protestors were injured.
Two of the those injured are members of Venezuela's Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), a prisoner support group that opposes Chavez's dictatorial rule. They and other libertarian opponents of the Chavez regime have experienced heavy repression. One week earlier, police dispersed a major protest against the Constitutional reforms with water cannons and tear gas.
Very few leftwing media outlets have reported the attacks on the protestors. The corporate media continuously portray Chavez in a negative light, mainly on the basis of his socialist reforms, and the US has attempted to organize at least one coup attempt against Chavez, who himself originally tried to come to power in a military coup; thus many opponents of US imperialism raise Chavez to the stature of a popular hero, glossing over his authoritarian credentials, and repression of opponents. While the Chavez regime does face strong opposition from the country's business leaders, it has also been targeted by protests from students, antiauthoritarian groups, and indigenous peoples inhabiting the heavily exploited coal-producing regions. Similar habits of uncritical support for opponents of the superpower led to reduced and delayed recognition of state repression and abuses with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Castro regime in Cuba.
http://www.cna.contrapoder.org.ve/
photos
http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2007/11/562981.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7084636.stm
compiled from
reports of Anarchist Black Cross Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7084262.stm
http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2007/11/562981.php
http://www.el-universal.com.mx/internacional/55942.html
After the protest, as students were returning to the Venezuela Central University (UCV), they were attacked by an armed group of Chavistas with gas grenades, knives, clubs, stones, and pistols. Anti-authoritarian students who had participated in the protest, though they lacked firearms and all but improvised weapons, counterattacked and forced the “pistoleros” to take refuge in a university building. Shortly, a much larger group of armed Chavistas arrived on motorcycle to rescue the first group. In total, eight student protestors were injured.
Two of the those injured are members of Venezuela's Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), a prisoner support group that opposes Chavez's dictatorial rule. They and other libertarian opponents of the Chavez regime have experienced heavy repression. One week earlier, police dispersed a major protest against the Constitutional reforms with water cannons and tear gas.
Very few leftwing media outlets have reported the attacks on the protestors. The corporate media continuously portray Chavez in a negative light, mainly on the basis of his socialist reforms, and the US has attempted to organize at least one coup attempt against Chavez, who himself originally tried to come to power in a military coup; thus many opponents of US imperialism raise Chavez to the stature of a popular hero, glossing over his authoritarian credentials, and repression of opponents. While the Chavez regime does face strong opposition from the country's business leaders, it has also been targeted by protests from students, antiauthoritarian groups, and indigenous peoples inhabiting the heavily exploited coal-producing regions. Similar habits of uncritical support for opponents of the superpower led to reduced and delayed recognition of state repression and abuses with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and the Castro regime in Cuba.
http://www.cna.contrapoder.org.ve/
photos
http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2007/11/562981.php
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7084636.stm
compiled from
reports of Anarchist Black Cross Venezuela
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7084262.stm
http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2007/11/562981.php
http://www.el-universal.com.mx/internacional/55942.html
For more information:
http://www.anarchistnews.org
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