Seaton, a former president of ASNE, is editor-in-chief of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury. He can be reached at eseaton@themercury.com.
ASNE’s trip to Venezuela starts off rocky, but finishes strong when the delegation scores a private meeting with President Hugo Chávez on a day when his country was implicated by Interpol for aiding terrorists in Colombia
LIKE TO GET IN THE MIDDLE of a hot news story?
How about this: Interpol releases a report validating documents that implicate Venezuela in aiding terrorists in Colombia. And on that day, you get to spend five hours with the president of Venezuela — one of the most important figures in the Western Hemisphere — to hear his response.
That was the scenario for ASNE’s fact-finding trip to Venezuela, a Latin American country that sells half of its oil to the United States — 10-12 percent of U.S. consumption — and is a sharply divided democracy flirting with authoritarianism, building a worrisome military force and promoting its socialism throughout Latin America. It apparently also is sponsoring terrorism in the neighborhood — a troubling issue that unfolded during our visit.
President Hugo Chávez, who famously branded George W. Bush “the devil” in a United Nations speech, is our hemisphere’s new Fidel Castro. He has the charisma and loquacious public speaking style of the former Cuban leader, and one-on-one, like Castro, can be a charming and gifted storyteller — as our 21-member delegation would learn. But he differs from Castro because he holds more-or-less legitimate elections, and perhaps most importantly, he has oil — lots of it. He even acknowledged a loss in an election last December that would have eliminated term limits for the president.
We began our five-day visit in mid-May with a briefing by U.S. Ambassador Patrick Duddy and his top staff at the embassy residence in Caracas, enjoyed an evening in a Venezuelan publisher’s home with two leading opposition politicians, met with pro- and anti-regime business leaders, listened to a pollster and commiserated with newspaper and television executives about harassment and press freedom struggles, including the chairman of Venezuela’s oldest and largest television network, which the government took off the air a year ago. We learned that poverty remains entrenched despite the enormous windfall in oil revenues, inflation is high and foreign investment falling as a consequence of aggressive, although compensated, nationalizations.
But let’s back up to where the Chávez government began jerking us around. Three days before the trip, we were ready to cancel because Venezuela’s Washington embassy still had not issued us visas, which it said were required, despite having had our passports for nearly two months. Then came word we could go without visas, and the passports were returned — the day before our departure. We were later to conclude this episode was not intended to discourage our visit as we thought, but more likely a matter of the incompetence, inefficiency or confusion — you choose the word — in Caracas that virtually everyone acknowledges is rampant. After that, subsequent failed promises and delays should not have come as surprises.
When a president exercises nearly absolute control over the congress, the courts and his administration, very little of importance takes place without his approval, and Chávez apparently hadn’t made up his mind about us. Upon arrival in Caracas, despite much advance work by ASNE secretary and delegation taskmaster Milton Coleman, as well Venezuelan friends, the only confirmed appointment we had with a government official was Information Minister Andrés Izarra. Even this interview was temporarily put off because the president wanted him elsewhere. Ultimately, it took place as originally scheduled. It was a useful meeting that provided a window into the success of the government’s expansive welfare programs in education, health care and food distribution as well as its efforts to address one of the highest crime rates in Latin America.
We had been promised meetings with other ministers, but none materialized — or so it appeared. We were told weeks earlier that President Chávez would not be available. So we thought we would spend our remaining time interviewing the opposition and going on show-and-tell visits arranged by the Information Ministry. The latter were worthwhile and included a model health-care facility, one of many throughout the country staffed in part by 30,000 Cuban doctors, a textile cooperative and two remarkable cultural sites. The first of these was Teatro Teresa Carreño, a magnificent state-of-the-art concert hall where we watched the National Philharmonic Orchestra practice two modern (dissonant) pieces. Then we were totally thrilled by hundreds of young musicians at the Montealban music school, including the Venezuelan National Youth Orchestra, which has played to sold-out audiences and rave reviews in New York, Los Angeles, Boston and around the world. It has been featured on CBS’ 60 Minutes and is the flagship ensemble of Venezuela’s world-renowned music education network. With more than 1,000 schools nationwide, “El Sistema” has trained more than 600,000 young Venezuelans during the past 30 years. Their enthusiasm and technical skill, from preschoolers whose feet dangled from their chairs to precocious adolescents, opened our eyes. The visiting conductor of the National Philharmonic, Germán Cáceres from El Salvador, characterized the Venezuelan system as “the best youth program in the world.”
Back on the bus we were preparing for a final day of visits with opposition leaders and a tour of the Contemporary Art Museum when we received a call inviting us to a surprise presidential press conference for foreign journalists at noon the next day.
All was forgiven. We were to see Hugo Chávez. Be at Miraflores, the presidential palace, two hours ahead, we were told. We began canceling other appointments, including the museum. These press conferences can be all-day affairs, we were told, and our last day was to teach us a lot about time and priorities in Chávez’ Venezuela.
The next morning on our way to Miraflores came a call saying the press conference had been delayed until 2 p.m. We had time to kill, so we headed for the art museum — now unexpected and five hours earlier than our original appointment. The museum director had celebrated a birthday the night before and had to be rousted from bed. But we were treated to a classy tour of what is arguably Latin America’s best contemporary art museum followed by exotic juice drinks and scrumptious chocolate desserts, both items of national pride. The museum contains an outstanding representation of modern art that includes more than 100 Picassos.
We arrived at Miraflores at noon and were ushered into the press conference site, filling the right-hand side of the room. At 3 p.m., an hour after the scheduled start, we were still the only press in the room and wondered if we were to be the only attendees, but finally the site began to fill. The others had been watching a press conference being conducted in Bogotá, Colombia, by Interpol, the international police agency. President Chávez finally arrived at 4:12 — more than four hours after we were told to be in place and two hours behind schedule. We would be with him the next five hours — three in the press conference where he took only four questions and nearly two in a private audience in his office, where he talked with us through an interpreter, with family photos spread behind him.
The first hour was a Chávez soliloquy on his plans for a summit in Peru for which he would depart later that night. But the real purpose was to be a seminal moment in the Chávez presidency — his response to the Interpol report. The report put him in the international hot seat and presents a problem he may not overcome because it authenticated the origin of computer files implicating Venezuela in aiding and arming guerrillas in neighboring Colombia. The laptop files contain e-mails and other records that show Chávez’ government offering money and assistance in acquiring surface-to-air missiles and other weapons for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, identified by both the U.S. and European Union as terrorists. Rather than respond to the allegations, Chávez chose to denounce Interpol and attacked the report as “the show of clowns.” He described Ronald K. Noble, Interpol’s secretary general, variously as “a gringo policeman, “a Dick Tracy,” “a vagabond” and “a bandit.” Coming off the dais, he even staged a show of his own with a dramatic pantomime demonstrating how false evidence can be planted.
A correspondent commented privately that Chávez was “loopier than usual today."
Chávez critics in the U.S. are now calling for punitive sanctions based on the FARC computer files. Should Venezuela be declared a “state sponsor of terrorism,” however, the $54 billion in bilateral trade with the U.S. — mostly oil — would be in jeopardy.
At the press conference, Chávez also threatened to “reclaim” an area in Colombia near the Venezuelan border if Colombia permits the U.S. to move a reconnaissance base now in Ecuador to Colombia.
Speaking to reporters afterward, he was asked if he plans nationalizations beyond the takeovers of big oil, the telephone company, the power company, the television network and recently a large cement company and steel mill. “Not right now, today,” he answered, “but I might tomorrow."
While Chávez used blistering rhetoric at the press conference in his comments about the United States — “the empire” — he also said he wants to return to “reasonable relations like I had with Bill Clinton."
At our private audience, where we were served coffee, he was more conciliatory. As I greeted him, I said I hoped relations could improve. “I have faith that our relations will get better,” he responded. He declined to state his preference in the upcoming U.S. elections, although he said he has one. “Bush has refused to sit down with me,” he said.
"I would love to be able to work with the United States, regardless of ideology, on issues like health, infant mortality and food production,” he said, “but if we can’t do all that, we at least can talk."
"Rest assured, we will supply you oil,” which he said amounts to 1.5 million barrels a day. Venezuela has the third largest oil deposits in the world.
He said his criticisms of the U.S. are not of its people, but of some of its political elite. “We are friends of the United States, but we are being ill treated,” he commented. He said a U.S. invasion was “a genuine concern” and likened it to the invasion of Iraq, which he said was for oil.
He also spun elaborate stories about his personal dealings with Fidel Castro, including a baseball contest, and his encounter with troops who intended to kill him at the time of a 2002 attempt to overthrow his government.
A full day indeed, but a memorable finale. As ASNE President Charlotte Hall e-mailed the morning after we arrived home, we were all “basking in the glow of Caracas. What a trip!”
In today’s Venezuela changes come fast. Just a week after the ASNE visit, President Hugo Chávez shocked opponents by using his decree powers to issue a sweeping intelligence law intended to guarantee “national security” and shield against “imperialist attacks.” The law could have resulted in up to six years in prison for failure to comply with requests to assist the secret police, other agencies or community activist groups loyal to him, according to The New York Times. A week later Chávez withdrew the new law and, in another sharp reversal, called on the Colombian guerrillas to end their five-decade campaign to overthrow Colombia’s government.*