Transcript

Host: This is “On The Line,” and I’m Eric Felten.

Latin Americans have complained for several years that Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has been interfering in their politics and elections. In 2006, Peruvian presidential candidate Alan Garcia expressed concern that Venezuela was meddling in Peru’s presidential election. He said Mr. Chávez “wants to extend his autocratic, militaristic model to various countries in the region.”

Now the Venezuelan government has been implicated in a scandal involving money smuggled into Argentina ahead of this year’s presidential election there. Four men were arrested in the U.S., charged with acting on behalf of the government of Venezuela to cover up a scheme to deliver illegal campaign contributions to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Mrs. Kirchner won the election and was sworn in as Argentina’s new president. She called the allegations “garbage.”

The arrests came just weeks after Venezuelan voters rejected Mr. Chávez’s effort to rewrite his country’s constitution. President Chávez wanted to change the Venezuelan constitution so that he could run for office indefinitely, seize private property at will, and appoint regional governors.

In his efforts to increase his power in Venezuela and in Latin America, has Hugo Chávez overreached? How is U.S. policy affecting the situation? I’ll ask my guests: Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; and president of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation: Alejandro Chafuen. And joining us by phone from Mexico City, Sarah Miller Llana, Latin America correspondent for “The Christian Science Monitor” newspaper. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

In a recent speech televised in Venezuela, a speech going on some five hours, President Hugo Chávez made a big issue of saying that the remains of Latin American revolutionary Simón Bolivar needed to be disinterred and tested to see if he had been murdered by oligarchs instead of dying, as is understood, of tuberculosis. Why all of a sudden switching gears to talking about digging up Simón Bolivar, Roger Noriega?

Noriega: Hugo Chávez wants to portray himself as sort of an heir to the Bolivar heroic tradition, and he also wants to play himself up as a victim, potential victim, of regicide. If anything were to happen to him, he says, it will be the empire of the United States or oligarchs in Venezuela who do him in. Frankly, it will probably be his own excesses and his own mistakes that are his own undoing.

Host: Sarah Miller Llana, are you there in Mexico City?

Llana: I am here. Thank you.

Host: What’s your sense sense of recent events involving Venezuela? Is Hugo Chávez, at this point, perhaps trying to change the subject?

Llana: I think he probably is. He has a vision for the country, and this defeat upon the referendum was a really big blow to him. Not only does it slow down his vision at home, it was a message from voters that they’re not ready to take the country where he wants to take it. It could also bolster the opposition, so anything that he can play into nationalist sentiment is probably a good thing for him at this point.

Host: Alejandro Chafuen, playing into nationalist sentiment -- How far is that going to get him at this point?

Chafuen: I think we have to bring, perhaps, a little bit of anthropology to understand why he reacts this way. His effort to impose his totalitarianism -- You can describe as tribal fascism that he’s trying to impose -- It’s very important for him to cultivate the image almost a superhuman image, like a chieftain, that can never lose. He can defy everything. Like when he tried to change the hour, he changed the hour half-hour, moving the clocks ahead or behind -- I do not know -- this thing of playing even with the dead. He can do whatever he wants, challenge whoever he wants, and I think he’s trying -- He suffered a blow, and this not only can be damaging internally, this has increased the cost of the people he wanted to deal with in Latin America, the allies he wanted to try to achieve.

Host: Roger Noriega, Alejandro Chafuen talks about in-the-region effects, and we’ve seen that, following Hugo Chávez’s effort to change the constitution in Venezuela, one of Mr. Chávez’s allies in the region, Evo Morales in Bolivia, has put forward a similar set of constitutional changes to build up his power in Bolivia, and we now see what appears to be almost the breakup of Bolivia following on this with regional leaders calling for tremendous autonomy as a way to get out from under this proposed presidential power in Bolivia. Is this the outcome of the Chávez effort in the region?

Noriega: I think it is. I think his strategy is to fish in troubled waters, definitely, so the problems in Bolivia are centuries in the making. But it’s important to note that Chávez is not merely weighing in, having his vision -- Sort of extolling his vision in the hemisphere. He is investing in the deconstruction of democratic institutions, institutions which were hard-won through decades and decades of sacrifice -- representative institutions that would give people access to power and economic opportunity. He’s returning to sort of this autocratic caudillo, strong-man model, which really creates a sort of arbitrary environment that is bad for the poor. The poor need rules. The poor need institutions. Sure, these have to be institutions that work for their interests and make them more effective and accountable, but Chávez’s vision is not merely autocratic, it’s breaking down the institutions of democracy and putting them and reconstructing a model that does the bidding of autocrats with a very personalized agenda. That’s how I would describe Evo Morales. That’s how I would have described the fellow who ran for president of Mexico: Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with Chávez’s tacit support. These are people that want to deconstruct institutions of democracy and put the powers of the state at the disposal of their personalized and sometimes corrupt agendas.

Host: Sarah Miller Llana, what’s your sense in the rest of Latin America about whether Hugo Chávez’s influence and appeal is still ascendant or on the wane?

Llana: I think, actually, his defeat, while it might hurt him at home, it actually might bolster him in the region, because a lot of people say this was a transparent election and he conceded defeat. I know he was a little belligerent after that, but he did concede defeat right after, and a lot of leaders in Latin America have come out and said that here this proves that he’s a democrat and he’s committed to democracy. So, in a way, I think it helps him. I should also note I think that as long as he has so much oil wealth, I think that’s really what’s important to leaders outside of Venezuela.

Host: What’s your sense, Alejandro Chafuen? How far can oil wealth go in maintaining Hugo Chávez’s influence in the rest of Latin America?

Chafuen: It can go a long way, but there are limits. It will not continue to grow indefinitely. We already see some of the inner circles of Chávez, not only his former general Baduel, but a lot of people are complaining about corruption -- how some are getting wealthy, some are not -- so there’s beginning to be a dissension within the regime. But on the other hand, I disagree a little bit with Sarah’s forecast, because I think that not only Chávez has been trying to undermine institutions, he has been doing it through his style, militaristic, with uniform. Planes have been descending into Bolivia full of weapons, helicopters in Nicaragua, and the populations are rejecting them with stones. They don’t want this alien tribal fascist leader imposing his views on their territory. So it’s true his image as a democrat might have gone, oh, a little bit high, but that’s not the way he was trying to impose his rule in his country and in neighboring countries. He’s trying to use the old totalitarian, fascist way -- using democratic rules to destroy democracy.

Host: Roger Noriega, in recent speech, Mr. Chávez talked about the situation in Bolivia, and he said, “We want to make the revolution in peace. Don’t force us to make it in a violent way.” And he was speaking to the U.S. in that regard. Is Mr. Chávez threatening to push forward for some kind of socialist revolution in Bolivia by means of a war?

Noriega: Right. Yes, I believe so. I mean, he’s threatening it, at least, and I think that of all of his unpardonable sins, that may be the worst, which is sowing polarization, social division, racial hatred as a means of governing, not only in Venezuela but pushing this divisive agenda in Latin America, because Latin America’s led today, by and large, by democratically elected leaders, many of whom rejected the militarism that Chávez is touting now, but folks that were victims of human-rights violations, et cetera, and what they wanted was an opportunity to make democracy work for everyone, to solve the very deep-seated social ills through accountable government, through market policies in which everyone from all walks of life can share in the nation’s prosperity. And Chávez’s tactic of sowing division, polarization, anti-Americanism -- it’s sort of going against the tide, and I think that’s why, by and large, I would agree with what Alex has said, that it is really sort of rejected by most of Latin America.

Host: And, Sarah Miller Llana, what’s your sense on this? Hugo Chávez also suggested that because of U.S. opposition to Venezuelan policies that it might even drive Venezuela to go to war with Colombia. How seriously are people in Latin America taking this saber rattling?

Llana: I actually went to Colombia right after I was in Venezuela, and he said people were just glued to the television, listening to every word that he said. I don’t think people really worry about war between countries there, but I do think that there is real concern that some of the political rhetoric is going to have a real -- an awful effect on the Colombians who live in Venezuela and vice versa and the trade between the two countries, so there are some repercussions, even if I don’t necessarily agree with the fact that war is coming.

Host: Let’s talk a little bit about this case in Miami involving men who’ve been arrested, who stand accused of being agents for Venezuela and trying to pressure a man who’s a U.S. Venezuelan citizen who had taken money to Argentina -- $800,000 in a bag -- ahead of the election there, was stopped at customs, and the bag was searched, and they seized the bag but they let him go, and he came back to the U.S., at which point, according to prosecutors, these men from Venezuela came and tried to pressure him into remaining silent, one, about the source of the money, two, about where the money was going. Roger Noriega, what’s your sense about how this complicates diplomacy between the U.S. and Argentina, the U.S. and Venezuela, and Venezuela and Argentina? For all the main players in this, what are the implications?

Noriega: I think the most significant thing for Venezuela will be what happens internally because people are starting to ask the question: “Where is all the money going?” And it’s ironic that this relatively small amount of money, $800,000, pales in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars that allegedly have been stolen by the Chávez government. But this may be sort of the thread that even people within his own camp start to pull and say, “Where -- How is he spending the largesse that belongs to the Venezuelan people as part of his personalized project in the hemisphere?” So, the corruption angle is sort of an Achilles heel of Chávez. It’s ironic in Argentina that the newly elected president didn’t simply say, “We need to get to the bottom of this.” She denounced it as sort of a dirty trick by folks in the United States trying to undermine her government. The fact is that this is an independent investigation. U.S. diplomats are probably horrified by the idea that it undermines an opportunity to start fresh with her government. But rather than saying, “We’re going to get to the bottom of it,” she defended Chávez and denounced the United States, and it makes you wonder maybe that she knows a little bit more about these transactions than the rest of us know.

Host: Alejandro Chafuen, what’s your sense of where this scandal involving questions of money from Venezuela into Argentina -- where it’s headed and how it’s going to affect relations among the various countries?

Chafuen: I agree with Ambassador Noriega’s analysis. I was also surprised by the reaction of the Argentine president, but I think that is, again, to show her strength to the local public. The world knows Transparency International has no relations with the U.S. government or anything like that. The State Department consistently ranks Argentina as one of the most corrupt countries in the hemisphere, the same as Venezuela. The majority of the population of Argentina, in the latest survey, think that corruption is going to get worse in Argentina, where bags of money have been found, and the Minister of Economics -- This is nothing new. What is surprising is that she began playing the game in a way that is going to damage the possibility of healthy or better relationship between our countries.

Host: Sarah Miller Llana, what’s your sense on the same question -- how this affects diplomatic relations among the countries and, going forward, relations in the region?

Llana: I think as Kirchner has come out calling this garbage and Chávez has said that the U.S. is trying to stoke divisions in Latin America, I think the by-product may be that it will push the two closer -- Argentina and Venezuela -- which the U.S. definitely does not want.

Host: And what’s your sense, Sarah Miller Llana, of what -- How do U.S. policymakers try to keep that from happening in the midst of there being this independent investigation going on?

Llana: I think it’s a lost cause in Venezuela, because relations are so bad. I think that the U.S. can reach out to Argentina and see if they can find some common ground to see if they can have a warmer relationship to counter any sort of growing ties between Venezuela and Argentina.

Host: Roger Noriega, what’s your sense of how U.S. policy is trying to deal with not just Argentina -- the relationship with Argentina -- but trying to deal with the efforts of Venezuela to spread influence in the region? Has the U.S. figured out how to counter that yet?

Noriega: The United States has tried to pull back in its confrontations with Chávez with the hope that the South American countries’ grown-ups, mature leaders in the region, would step forward and defend basic democratic values, defend at least their own sovereignty against the Chávez phenomenon. That, unfortunately, hasn’t happened. You’ve seen the OAS asleep at the switch.

Host: The Organization of American States.

Noriega: Exactly -- the regional body here in the hemisphere really not reacting to the institutional crises under way in Ecuador and until recently in Bolivia. It certainly wouldn’t touch this confrontation with a 10-foot pole and has turned a blind eye -- even whitewashed elections in Venezuela. So, the other countries in the region have not stepped up to this, and, unfortunately, the U.S.’s silence is misread as indifference and not being engaged enough. I’m not saying there should be an ad hominem confrontation with Chávez, but we have to be willing to speak out and defend our basic values, and, look, it wasn’t a conspiracy that put this fellow in Buenos Aires with $800,000 in cash in his bag, and it was one of a dozen trips that he’d made to the region -- he or his colleagues. So, this is a real phenomenon, and, unfortunately, I don’t think it bodes very well for Kirchner, because this investigation is going to carry on with its own momentum, and I think she’s going be hard-pressed to explain some of these happenings, and it’s only going to get worse. It’s not the best thing for diplomacy, but maybe it’ll wake everybody up to leaders that sell their political loyalties to a foreigner.

Host: Alejandro Chafuen, we only have a minute left. What’s your sense on the ability of the U.S. to --

Chafuen: It’s a unique opportunity today. It’s almost criminal that the Congress is not proactive and constructive in passing a free-trade agreement with Colombia. It’s completely consistent with the views of the United States as a generous country, an open country. That would be a tremendous positive sign today that the United States is playing a more intelligent game in the region.

Host: Sarah Miller Llana, we have about half a minute. You get the last word on U.S. policy toward the region.

Llana: I agree. I think that we should work on free-trade agreements and just engaging with Venezuela more. Venezuela is -- It’s hard, because anytime the U.S. gets involved, Chávez comes out and says that we’re trying to intervene, but I think that policymakers do need to start paying more attention.

Host: I’d like to thank my guests -- Roger Noriega, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; and the president of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, Alejandro Chafuen; and by phone from Mexico City, Sarah Miller Llana, Latin America correspondent for “The Christian Science Monitor” newspaper. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On The Line,” I’m Eric Felten.