The arrest
in Venezuela of Colombian political refugee Joaquín Pérez Becerra and
his hand over to the Colombian authorities by the government of
president Chávez has raised deeper questions about the strategy of the
Venezuelan revolution.
The arrest
in Venezuela of Colombian political refugee Joaquín Pérez Becerra and
his hand over to the Colombian authorities by the government of
president Chávez has raised deeper questions about the strategy of the
Venezuelan revolution.
Demonstration in defence of Jaquin Pérez Becerra. Photo: Luigino BracciPérez
Becerra was arrested by Venezuelan security on April 23 as he arrived
at Maiquetia airport. Colombian president Santos reported that he had
personally contacted Venezuelan president Chávez to let him know that
Pérez Becerra was on a commercial flight to Venezuela, having left from
Sweden and changing planes in Frankfurt: “I gave him the name and asked
if he would collaborate in capturing him. He didn’t hesitate”.
Colombia
accuses Pérez Becerra of being a leading figure of the FARC guerrillas
in Europe. Perez Becerra was a local councillor of the Patriotic Union
(UP) in the Valle del Cauca region in the 1990s. The UP was subject to a
campaign of systematic killings by paramilitaries linked to the
Colombian state. Two UP presidential candidates, eight UP congressmen,
11 UP mayors, 13 UP deputies, 70 UP councilmen, and up to 5,000 UP
activists were killed. Perez Becerra then fled to Sweden where he was
given political asylum. He is the editor of the online New Colombia News
Agency (ANNCOL) and had visited Venezuela in the past.
Despite
the fact that the official statement from the Venezuelan Justice and
Home Affairs Ministry described him as a Colombian national, he is in
fact a Swedish national after having renounced his Colombian citizenship
in 2000, and was travelling on his Swedish passport. After being
detained by the Venezuelan authorities, he was held incommunicado. The
Swedish consulate was not informed about his arrest and within 48 hours
he had been handed over to the Colombian authorities and taken across
the border. The Swedish authorities have sent a protest note to
Venezuelan foreign affairs minister Nicolás Maduro and provided Pérez
Becerra with legal representation in Colombia.
This case has
created uproar amongst revolutionary activists and Bolivarian
organizations (including the UNETE trade union, the Venezuelan Communist
Party, the Coordinadora Simón Bolivar, the Bolivar and Zamora Current,
etc) in Venezuela and internationally. The details of the case are
particularly scandalous. Protests were first directed at foreign affairs
minister Nicolás Maduro and communication and information minister
Andrés Izarra, but a week after the arrest of Perez Becerra, president
Chávez himself assumed full responsibility.
The argument of the
Venezuelan government is that there was an Interpol “red notice” on
Perez Becerra and that they could do nothing else but to arrest him and
hand him over “in full compliance with international law”. This is a
poor argument even from a legal/technical point of view, as Interpol red
notices “are not arrest warrants”, but just a request “that the wanted
person be arrested with a view to extradition,” according to the
Interpol website. For Perez Becerra to be extradited he would have had
to go through a legal process which could become lengthy. Instead he was
just handed over to the Colombian authorities. Even if one accepts the
argument that the Venezuelan authorities had to respect Interpol’s red
notice and arrest him, Perez Becerra is a Swedish national, travelling
on a Swedish passport. Surely the thing to do would be to hand him over
to the Swedish authorities. And why should the Venezuelan government
respect an Interpol red notice when the Interpol has removed red notices
for Venezuelan bankers in the US who are sought for corruption by the
Venezuelan justice system? And why should the Venezuelan revolution
collaborate with the Colombian judiciary when the 2002 coup leader Pedro
Carmona is protected from Venezuelan justice in Bogotá?
Chávez
has also stated in his defence that the whole affair is a trap that was
set for him. He has queried as why Perez Becerra was allowed to leave
Sweden and board a plane in Frankfurt if there was an Interpol red alert
on him. He says he was put in an impossible position of “damned if I
arrest him and damned if I don’t”. It is clear that the whole situation
is very dubious. Why did the Colombian authorities only reported the
presence of Perez Becerra on the plane two hours before it was due to
land? When was the Interpol red notice issued? Was it when Perez Becerra
was already on the plane? If not, how was he allowed to board a plane
in Frankfurt, one of the most secure airports in the world? Was there
really a red notice on him, since none can be found on the Interpol
site?
The Colombian state wanted to get Pérez Becerra, who,
through the ANNCOL website has been a thorn in their side for a long
time, denouncing state collusion with paramilitary organizations, abuses
of human rights and publishing FARC statements. But it is also clear
that Santos wanted to use this opportunity to test Chavez’s commitment
to collaboration with the Colombian state in the struggle against the
FARC, and possibly use the opportunity to create an incident and accuse
the Venezuelan government of “aiding terrorism” if he had refused to
hand him over.
US diplomatic cables recently released by Wikileaks
show that former Colombian president Uribe had considered an armed
conflict against Venezuela which he saw as a threat: “The best counter
to Chavez, in Uribe’s view, remains action – including use of the
military.” It has also been revealed that a military force of about 100
Colombian soldiers was sent into the Venezuelan border state of Zulia in
2005. Another cable, dated 2006, explains how Uribe was attempting “to
maintain a positive bilateral atmosphere, using joint energy projects
and trade to create incentives to moderate Chávez’s behavior,” while at
the same time this would allow him “to create the political space to
permit clandestine cross border operations” into Venezuela (16 de noviembre de 2006, Wikileaks en elespectador.com)
There
is nothing really new about all this; it just confirms the fact that
Colombia (and behind it Washington) views the Venezuelan revolution as a
serious threat and was and is prepared to use all means at its disposal
to undermine it and, if possible, bring it down. These methods include
diplomatic pressure, media lies and slanders to prepare public opinion,
as well as support for military coups, destabilization up to and
including engineering a military conflict.
During the whole period
of the Uribe presidency, the current Colombian president Santos was a
close ally and collaborator, serving as minister of foreign trade, of
finance and then of defence. As a minister of defence he was directly
responsible for the illegal incursion of the Colombian army into Ecuador
to kill FARC leader Raúl Reyes. He also organized the Operación Jaque
to rescue FARC hostages, which was also designed to sabotage Venezuelan
efforts at mediation with the guerrillas which were embarrassing the
Uribe government. Under his watch the “false positives” scandal erupted,
which proved that the military had been carrying out extrajudicial
executions of innocent civilians and then presenting them as guerrillas
in order to “show results”. It is estimated that more than 3000 people
were killed in this way. And this is just a small sample of what Santos
was involved in before becoming the successor to Uribe in the presidency
in August 2010.
So, when Santos started a rapprochement with
Venezuela, it is clear and transparent what his aim was. The strategy is
the same as that used by Uribe, so transparently explained by the
Wikileaks cables: to use diplomatic and trade relations to try to put
pressure on Chavez to moderate his policies, to get him to collaborate
in the “struggle against terrorism” by handing over FARC and ELN members
based in or passing through Venezuela, while at the same time not
abandoning covert and illegal means of undermining the Venezuelan
revolution, to be used as and when required.
It is true that
revolutionary Venezuela is under siege and the threat cannot be
understated or dismissed. In the last 12 years since Chávez was elected
as president, imperialism and the reactionary Venezuelan oligarchy have
tried to put an end to the Bolivarian revolution by any means necessary:
military coups, assassination attempts, bosses’ lock-out, paramilitary
infiltration, economic sabotage, diplomatic pressure, international
isolation, media demonization, etc.
It is legitimate to try to
break the attempt to isolate the Venezuelan revolution by looking for
trade and diplomatic relations with any governments around the world.
However, diplomatic manoeuvring and dealing has its limits. The only
real defence for the Venezuelan revolution is the one that comes from
the support it gathers amongst workers and peasants around the world and
in Venezuela itself. Anything that weakens that is
counter-revolutionary; anything that strengthens it serves the
revolution.
The reformists and bureaucrats within the Bolivarian
movement will argue, and have argued for the last decade, that the
revolution should proceed cautiously and respect bourgeois legality so
as “not to provoke the enemy”. The problem with this argument is that
imperialism and the oligarchy are already “provoked”. They cannot
tolerate a situation where the masses are aroused, politicised and are
taking direct action to solve their problems. They cannot compromise
with a president who calls on the workers to take over the factories,
who renationalises privatised companies and who promotes workers’
control in state owned companies. They cannot accept a president who
encourages the peasants to take over the big landed states. They cannot
stomach a country that stands up to imperialism and denounces the
farcical character of the United Nations.
And they cannot do so,
because all of these things threaten their fundamental interests, power
and privileges. It is precisely all of these things that strengthen and
solidify the support for the Venezuelan revolution in Venezuela and
internationally. The masses want more of this, not less.
However,
when the revolution vacillates, makes appeals to the capitalists and
backs this with concessions, when it compromises, when it gets enmeshed
in a web of bureaucracy, corruption and theft which blocks and stifles
the revolutionary initiative of the people, then the revolution is
weakened. This applies both to domestic and to foreign policy, which at
the end of the day is just a continuation of the former.
Chávez
only until recently had become the most popular world leader in the Arab
world. How was that possible? Venezuela is not part of the Arab world,
and Chavez is not even a Muslim leader. What appealed to the Arab masses
was the sight of an oil rich country using its wealth to the benefit of
the majority instead of the enrichment of a corrupt elite, but above
all, the strong anti-imperialist stance which Chávez took against
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the raping of Gaza. If, on the other
hand, he is seen handing over revolutionary activists to a reactionary
government and supporting the dictatorial regimes of Gaddafi, Assad and
Ahmadinejad, all that support for the Bolivarian revolution will be
squandered.
The compromising, half-way policies of the reformists
weaken the support for the revolution amongst the workers and peasants.
And they do not even serve to appease the imperialists and the
oligarchy. On the contrary, weakness invites aggression. Santos now has
seen that he can call Chavez and get him to arrest a Colombian political
exile on a plane to Caracas, “without hesitation”. He will therefore
demand more. Santos and Obama will not draw the conclusion from all this
that Chavez is now “safe”, no longer a revolutionary threat and that
the plotting against him should cease. On the contrary, they will
interpret this as a sign of weakness and will increase the pressure (by
legal and illegal means) against the revolution. The only effect of the
handing over of Perez Becerra to Colombia will have been to drive a
wedge between Chavez and the revolutionary activists who are the very
backbone of the Bolivarian movement.
The “clever” reformist
advisors of the revolution are incapable of learning any lessons from
history. Chilean president Salvador Allende respected bourgeois legality
right until the end, did not go too far for fear of “provoking
reaction” and the Chilean revolution was thus drowned in blood. On April
13, 2002, after the revolutionary masses and revolutionary sections of
the armed forces had defeated the coup in Venezuela and restored
president Chávez to power, he came out on the peoples’ victory balcony
and appealed for national reconciliation. He even opened negotiations
with the reactionary opposition which had just staged a coup. Did that
serve to demobilise the oligarchy and imperialism? It did not. A few
months later a new conspiracy took place in the form of the oil lock
out.
The September 26, 2010 elections, where the Bolivarian
candidates lost one million votes, were already a serious warning. In
2012 crucial presidential elections will take place. The revolution must
move forward in a decisive way. The expropriation of the big
monopolies, the banks and the large landed estates, under democratic
workers’ control, is the only way of solving the most pressing problems
of housing, jobs, inflation and crime which affect the Venezuelan
masses. Such measures would rekindle the revolutionary enthusiasm of the
masses not only in Venezuela, but beyond, throughout Latin America and
the whole world. At a time of crisis of capitalism and revolutionary
upheaval in the Arab world, the abolition of capitalism in Venezuela
would provide inspiration to workers and youth everywhere.
Under
those conditions, any attempt at imperialist intervention against
Venezuela, from Colombia or anywhere else would swiftly be met with a
mass movement of opposition within those countries.
Such a
revolutionary policy at home should be accompanied by a clear
revolutionary policy abroad. Chávez’s appeals to struggle for socialism
worldwide have been met with enthusiasm everywhere. The plans to set up a
Fifth International to struggle against capitalism and imperialism
aroused similar interested and support. But once again, they were
watered down, delayed and finally abandoned. Reformists and Stalinists
argued that all this was unnecessary, an uncalled for provocation, that
the government should not adopt an anti-capitalist position, that they
already have the Sao Paulo Forum, etc. And what has this kind of
thinking led us to? We are now presented with a policy in which the
Ministry of Home Affairs and Justice justifies the handing over of
revolutionary activists to the reactionary Colombian oligarchy in the
name of an “unbreakable commitment to the struggle against terrorism and
organised crime” and a “strict fulfilment of international commitments
and cooperation”.
This is a serious mistake and it does not serve
to defend the Venezuelan revolution, on the contrary. The Bolivarian
revolution can only be defended if it takes a sharp turn to the left and
fulfils its tasks by overthrowing capitalism. That is only possible
through the organisation of a strong Marxist tendency within the
Bolivarian movement giving a lead to the unorganised aspirations of the
revolutionary masses. We remain committed to the defence of the
revolution against all its enemies, but we also consider it our duty as
friends of the revolution and comrades to warn about the dangers it is
facing from within.
