Venezuela 2004 is not Nicaragua 1990

Despite its awesome firepower and the unquenchable thirst for oil that guides United States foreign policy, the Bush administration is about to suffer a significant defeat on Sunday, August 15 at the hands of the Venezuelan people.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and most political analysts agree that the real opposition in the upcoming recall vote is the US government. That makes the situation similar to events of fourteen years ago in Nicaragua during elections widely described as being a contest between the Sandinista revolution and the US, in all its post cold war glory.

As the Feb 25, 1990 elections approached in Nicaragua there were several factors weighing hard on the government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. The covert and overt war to topple the revolution inspired by the “I am a contra” president, Ronald Reagan, was by then in the hands of Bush Sr., fresh off his December, 1989 invasion of Panama.

After nearly a decade of defending itself from the US backed “contras” the already weak Nicaraguan economy was all but crippled. Inflation was rampant with the dollar trading at over 45,000 Cordoba’s to one US dollar.

Production was dangerously low, supplies depended on friendly countries giving donations and soft credit and shortages of many basic products were growing.

I remember how on payday people would rush to spend their entire paychecks, going from store to store in search of the basics or in their absence anything, before seeing the money devaluated in their hands.

Likewise, by 1990, many of the social-economic programs that the Sandinista government put in place in the early years of the revolution had long since been put on hold or lacked funding for their implementation as the country had no choice but to devote the vast majority of its human and material resources to the defense effort.

After her best teacher was summoned into the army in 1984, an American adult education specialist working in rural Nicaragua wrote in her dairy: In nine words the young recruiter summed up the change occurring in the country:

“Now, a soldier is more important than a teacher.”

By 1990, the death toll was extremely high and added to the tens of thousands killed in the war that overthrew the brutal dictator Anastacio Somoza in 1979. Few Nicaraguan families were unscathed from over twenty years of fighting.

The pressure of the US backed contras had taken a costly toll on the young revolution attempting to transform the impoverished nation, and the people were being asked to go to the polls with a gun pointed at their heads.

Retrospect shows us that these adverse factors had an overwhelming influence on the outcome of the vote that brought Violeta Chamorro to power and closed the window of opportunity opened by the Central American country’s hard-won revolution.

A revealing Wall Street Journal quote cited by Ernesto Cardenal in his book “The Lost Revolution” stated: “In Nicaragua the US won by backing terrorism, not Democracy.”

Meanwhile, in Venezuela 2004, the right of President Hugo Chavez to finish out his 6-year electoral mandate of 2001 comes up for a vote in a recall referendum. The stakes are also high but the conditions are quite different from what the Sandinistas faced.

Before Chavez shook up the status quo, the world had grown accustomed to Venezuela’s elite lining its pockets as they sacked the country of billions in oil revenues, earning it a ranking as one of the most corrupt nation’s on the planet.

Today, Venezuela is in relative peace and the economy is healthy with excellent growth figures, this despite large scale opposition sabotage attempts at the end of 2002 and beginning of 2003.

For the first time in Venezuelan history, oil revenues are visibly linked to important social and economic programs to benefit the majority of the people. These include credit for small farmers and business people, important public works projects and large-scale education, health, cultural and sports programs.

When masses of underprivileged but hopeful Venezuelans combined with a significant portion of the armed forces to rescue President Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution from the 48-hour coup of April 11, 2002, planned and executed by the “democratic” opposition and their US advisers, a strong statement was sent to Washington.

Likewise, in their short-lived de-facto government the coup leaders showed their true “democratic” colors. They immediately suspended the Constitution and closed down the Congress and virtually all of the important state institutions. They formed a junta to rule by decree that not surprisingly was quickly approved of by its patrons in the White House.

But since you can fool the people some of the time but not all of the time, Venezuelans countered with a historic lesson of dignity reminiscent of Latin American icons Simon Bolivar, Augusto Sandino and Jose Marti.

Now the same discredited politicians hope to return to power and once again milk the national cow. On their side they have the powerful private media and the Bush administration.

If successful, there are no secrets as to what they would do. Their actions over several decades and during their 2-day coup speak for themselves.

On the other hand, if the forces of the Bolivarian revolution win the recall referendum battle, as most believe will happen, the war will not be over. The opposition will cry fraud or foul play and the Bush Jr.

administration will continue to try and undermine the country as the Bush Sr. government would surely have done if the Sandinistas had won in 1990.

Nonetheless, a victory by a clear majority of Venezuelans united around national sovereignty, Latin American integration and a widely inclusive social-economic project will shine as a beacon of hope throughout the changing continent.

Circles Robinson is a translator-journalist based in Havana who worked in Nicaragua during the 1980s and 1990s.