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Title: A Dangerous Neighbourhood Author: Noam Chomsky Date: December 8, 2005 Language: en Topics: Latin America, United States of America Source: Retrieved on 11th September 2021 from https://www.khaleejtimes.com/article/20051208/ARTICLE/312089950/1098 Notes: Published in Khaleej Times.
How Venezuela Is Keeping the Home Fires Burning in Massachusetts,” reads
a recent full-page ad in major US newspapers from PDVSA, Venezuela’s
state-owned oil company, and CITGO, its Houston-based subsidiary.
The ad describes a programme, encouraged by Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez, to sell heating oil at discount prices to low-income communities
in Boston, the South Bronx and elsewhere in the United States — one of
the more ironic gestures ever in the North-South dialogue. The deal
developed after a group of US senators sent a letter to nine major oil
companies asking them to donate a portion of their recent record profits
to help poor residents cover heating bills. The only response came from
CITGO.
In the United States, commentary on the deal is grudging at best, saying
that Chavez, who has accused the Bush administration of trying to
overthrow his government, is motivated by political ends — unlike, for
example, the purely humanitarian programmes of the US Agency for
International Development.
Chavez’ heating oil is one among many challenges bubbling up from Latin
America for the Washington planners of grand strategy. The noisy
protests during President Bush’s trip last month to the Summit of the
Americas, in Argentina, amplify the dilemma.
From Venezuela to Argentina, the hemisphere is getting completely out of
control, with left-centre governments all the way through. Even in
Central America, still suffering the aftereffects of President Reagan’s
“war on terror,” the lid is barely on.
In the southern cone, the indigenous populations have become much more
active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, both major
energy producers, where they either oppose production of oil and gas or
want it to be domestically controlled. Some are even calling for an
“Indian nation” in South America.
Meanwhile internal economic integration is strengthening, reversing
relative isolation that dates back to the Spanish conquests.
Furthermore, South-South interaction is growing, with major powers
(Brazil, South Africa, India) in the lead, particularly on economic
issues.
Latin America as a whole is increasing trade and other relations with
the European Union and China, with some setbacks, but likely expansion,
especially for raw materials exporters like Brazil and Chile.
Venezuela has forged probably the closest relations with China of any
Latin American country, and is planning to sell increasing amounts of
oil to China as part of its effort to reduce dependence on a hostile
U.S. government. Indeed, Washington’s thorniest problem in the region is
Venezuela, which provides nearly 15 percent of U.S. oil imports.
Chavez, elected in 1998, displays the kind of independence that the US
translates as defiance — as with Chavez’ ally Fidel Castro. In 2002,
Washington embraced President Bush’s vision of democracy by supporting a
military coup that very briefly overturned the Chavez government. The
Bush administration had to back down, however, because of opposition to
the coup in Venezuela and throughout Latin America.
Compounding Washington’s woes, Cuba-Venezuela relations are becoming
very close. They practice a barter system, each relying on its
strengths. Venezuela is providing low-cost oil while in return Cuba
organises literacy and health programmes, and sends thousands of
teachers and doctors, who, as elsewhere, work in the poorest areas,
previously neglected.
Joint Cuba-Venezuela projects are also having a considerable impact in
the Caribbean countries, where, under a programme called Operation
Miracle, Cuban doctors are providing health care to people who had no
hope of receiving it, with Venezuelan funding.
Chavez has repeatedly won monitored elections and referenda despite
overwhelming and bitter media hostility. Support for the elected
government has soared during the Chavez years. The veteran Latin
American correspondent Hugh O’ Shaughnessy explains why in a report for
Irish Times:
“In Venezuela, where an oil economy has over the decades produced a
sparkling elite of superrich, a quarter of under-15s go hungry, for
instance, and 60 per cent of people over 59 have no income at all. Less
than a fifth of the population enjoys social security. Only now under
President Chavez … has medicine started to become something of a reality
for the poverty-stricken majority in the rich but deeply divided —
virtually nonfunctioning — society. Since he won power in democratic
elections and began to transform the health and welfare sector which
catered so badly to the mass of the population progress has been slow.
But it has been perceptible …”
Now Venezuela is joining Mercosur, South America’s leading trade bloc.
Mercosur, which already includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and
Uruguay, presents an alternative to the so-called Free Trade Agreement
of the Americas, backed by the United States.
At issue in the region, as elsewhere around the world, is alternative
social and economic models. Enormous, unprecedented popular movements
have developed to expand cross-border integration — going beyond
economic agendas to encompass human rights, environmental concerns,
cultural independence and people-to-people contacts.
These movements are ludicrously called “anti-globalisation” because they
favour globalisation directed to the interests of people, not investors
and financial institutions. US problems in the Americas extend north as
well as south. For obvious reasons, Washington has hoped to rely more on
Canada, Venezuela and other non-Middle East oil resources.
But Canada’s relations with the United States are more “strained and
combative” than ever before as a result of, among other issues,
Washington’s rejection of NAFTA decisions favouring Canada. As Joel
Brinkley reports in The New York Times, “Partly as a result, Canada is
working hard to build up its relationship with China (and) some
officials are saying Canada may shift a significant portion of its
trade, particularly oil, from the United States to China.”
It takes real talent for the United States to alienate even Canada.
Washington’s Latin American policies are only enhancing US isolation,
however. One recent example: For the 14^(th) year in a row, the UN
General Assembly voted against the US commercial embargo against Cuba.
The vote on the resolution was 182 to 4: the United States, Israel, the
Marshall Islands and Palau. Micronesia abstained.