The Foreign Service Journal, May 2005

Chavez’s anti-democratic activities are reminiscent of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori. He de- scribed the common strategy of the two: “You win the election, but you do away with your opponents, you do away with the press, you do away with the rule of law, you pack the courts.” For her part, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called Chavez a “negative force” in the region. She says she is “very deeply troubled” by his policies. However, several sena- tors challenged her on this during her confirmation hearings. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Minn., said the message to Rice was, “Look, maybe there’s a chance here to have a real relation- ship [with Venezuela].” He com- plained that Rice was “absolutely rigid” in her unwillingness to reach out. There is little doubt that Chavez has been on America’s case ever since taking office. He ran afoul of the Clinton administration in 2000 by becoming the first foreign leader to call on Iraqi President Saddam Hus- sein since U.N. Security Council sanctions were imposed on Iraq in 1991. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Chavez joined Castro in vigorously condemning the crime. But his sym- pathy morphed quickly into anti-U.S. hostility once the American military began taking aim at the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Then-U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Donna Hrinak delivered a personal rebuke to Chavez after he went on national television and showed photographs of the bloodied remains of children killed by the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Chavez later said his message had simply been that one could not fight terrorism with terrorism. But as he would later explain, “The [American] ambassador came to me and demanded, ‘You must rectify your position.’ I replied: ‘You are talking to the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. You are dis- missed. When you learn what the job of an ambassador is, you may come back.’” Parallels with Cuba? Chavez’s close ties to Castro have been a particular concern to the Bush administration, which is well aware that the two men’s ascents are remarkably similar in some ways. Both achieved national and interna- tional renown through dramatic acts of defiance against the state. Castro led an assault on the Moncada bar- racks in eastern Cuba in 1953, while Chavez’s 1992 bid for power featured attacks on the presidential palace and residence. Both attempts failed. Castro was convicted of rebellion and served two years before being grant- ed early release. Chavez’s fate was similar — two years’ imprisonment followed by early release. It took Castro five-and-a-half years after the Moncada assault to shoot his way into power. The time gap for Chavez, using the electoral route, was just under seven years. Both men assured a suspicious Washington of their democratic bona fides but failed to live up to those promises. And each faced a crisis early on in his rule: Castro at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 and Chavez during a mass protest backed by military dissidents in April 2002. Both leaders survived (Chavez just barely), and were strengthened as a result. Obviously, there are important dif- ferences between the two leaders, as well, quite apart from the contrasting means by which they achieved power. While Castro runs a totalitarian state in which the government dominates the economy and harasses the private entrepreneurs, Venezuela retains many of the trappings of a democrat- ic society and a market-based econo- my. Newspapers are relatively unre- strained. But Chavez is steadily chip- ping away at the separation of pow- 66 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A Y 2 0 0 5