VENEZUELA: COUP AGAIN LOOMING?

Zmag: VENEZUELA 2004
Nicaragua's Contra War Revisited by Toni Solo

Another article in the continuing media campaign in Britain against Venezuela's President Chavez again posits civil war as a possible sequel to the current recall referendum process in Venezuela. In a self-contradictory account published by the Guardian on May 25th, Miami Herald writer Sybilla Brodzinsky writes that the recall referendum “...may also be the last chance to avoid a civil war, experts say.” She offers no source for the assertion, although she might easily have cited President Chavez himself who has openly referred to the possibility of civil war – as a result of foreign intervention.

The insistence with which the spectre of a spontaneous civil war has been invoked lately in the less reactionary British media by writers like Rupert Cornwell in the Independent and now by Sybilla Brodzinsky in the Guardian is noteworthy. It is as though all mainstream media reporting on Venezuela have been briefed to spread anxiety about a civil war. Thus, such fears become the very prophecy the White House war-crime machine is already primed to make come true.

The way the “free press” works can be seen from a report by Martha Sanchez in the Washington Post on May 20th. She writes “State Department officials say they are talking with U.S. editorial writers, hoping to send a clear message to Chavez through the press: let the recall referendum happen or face the consequences.” Pass-the-parcel threats, accompanying misrepresentation and downright falsehood, are routine in mainstream reporting on Venezuela just as they were on Nicaragua through the 1980s. Other similarities abound.

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