Fidel's Successor in Latin America

Martin Arostegui

Venezuela's left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, is using his country's oil wealth to subsidize military coups, communist guerrillas and drug barons in a secret plan to destabilize Latin America. Code-named "Project Bolivar" after 19th-century liberator Simon Bolivar, who expelled Spanish rule from South America and dreamed of unifying the subcontinent, the Chavez scheme has been supported actively by Fidel Castro, who enjoys close ties to the current administration in Caracas. Moreover, figures as diverse as Peru's fugitive security chief Vladimiro Montesinos and Colombian terrorist leader Manuel Marulanda are slated to play a prominent role in the scheme, according to leaked U.S. intelligence reports currently circulating in Latin America. These recent revelations have forced the resignations of Venezuelan defense minister Gen. Elecer Hurtado and top presidential aide Miguel Quintero, a key adviser to Chavez and close friend of Castro who together with Foreign Minister Jose Rangel secured an unprecedented discount sale of oil to Cuba last year. Castro has made official visits to Venezuela on two occasions to groom the Venezuelan leader as heir to his own revolutionary mantle and feed Chavez's ambitions to control the destiny of South America, according to top-level sources in Caracas.

The resignations came following a near showdown with elements of the Venezuelan military, which fear that Chavez's grandiose schemes could bring the country to economic ruin and even to war with its neighbors. Opposition parties were alarmed when Quintero received a delegation from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) headed by Olga Lucia Marin - Marulanda's sister - and guerrilla commander Hernan Martinez. It's long been suspected that Chavez has been aiding the Cuban-supported FARC in its alliance with narcotraffickers in neighboring Colombia, supplying money and safe haven to the guerrillas while publicly attacking U.S. military assistance to Bogota.

"Quintero's reception for the FARC leaders appeared to confirm Bogota's worst fears," says Venezuelan National Assembly President William Lara who, with the backing of Venezuela's top brass, complained officially to the president.

"There also are indications that the Chavez government has been supporting violent indigenous movements in Bolivia and military-coup plotters in Ecuador," says U.S. Undersecretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs Peter Romero. At last year's annual Ibero-American summit in Panama, Bolivian President Hugo Banzer accused Chavez of aiding Bolivian rebel leader and reputed cocaine boss Felipe Quisque Huanca. According to the Miami Herald, Chavez similarly provided $500,000 to Col. Lucio Gutierrez to fund his uprising in Ecuador, which overthrew the government of President Jamil Mahuad in 1998. Quintero delivered the money at personal meetings with Gutierrez, which also were attended by Venezuela's military attach in Quito, Gen. Milton Abreu. And Chavez's officials met with Gen. Paco Mocayo, who led a rogue border war against Peru in 1995 and now is mayor of Quito. The meetings were filmed secretly by the CIA, according to the press reports.

"Rebel Latin American army officers know they have a friendly ear in Caracas," a U.S. diplomat tells Insight, pointing out that Chavez made his mark as a popular leader in 1992 when he was a young paratroop commander by organizing a coup against the government of President Carlos Andres Perez. Although he was imprisoned for two years when the coup failed, Chavez went on to win his country's presidency. His example clearly inspired Gutierrez, who echoed the same populist theme against official corruption when he launched the Ecuadoran uprising triggered by a highly unpopular government decision to peg the local currency to the U.S. dollar.

But Chavez's purported crusade against corruption hasn't prevented the Venezuelan president from developing close ties with Montesinos, the scandal-ridden former head of Peru's intelligence services who caused the fall of President Alberto Fujimori when the spy chief was filmed bribing Peruvian congressmen. Quintero reportedly was in close contact with Montesinos when Peru's intelligence chief was permitting weapons for the FARC to move through the jungle border with Colombia. There are further suspicions that the Venezuelan administration may have aided the fugitive spy chief's escape following the Peruvian government's collapse. Montesinos reportedly last was seen sailing incognito on a yacht between the Caribbean islands of Aruba and Curazao.

"Chavez seems to be taking up from where Castro left off," says a Venezuelan analyst who explains that the looser Chavez ideology - combining nationalism, populism and Latin American chauvinism - more easily appeals to the military and traditional social circles that Castro's doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism tended to alienate. Castro began cultivating Chavez early on, inviting him to Havana upon his release from prison in 1994 and receiving the putschist colonel with honors. Cuba was the first country Chavez visited after being elected president, inviting Castro back for a warm welcome in Caracas where both leaders posed holding hands. Their special relationship is hyped further through broadcasts of their live telephone chats on popular radio talk shows.

To have such an ally suddenly governing Latin America's main oil producer is described by the New York Times as a "windfall for Castro." At a moment when Cuba was set to default on major international loans, say financial specialists, Chavez may well have ensured the dictator's survival. "Quintero was on the phone to Havana on a constant basis," says Nelson Bocaranda, one of Venezuela's top investigative journalists, while Foreign Minister Rangel visited Cuba regularly. Venezuela coordinated its oil policies with Cuba to the point that Chavez gave Castro advance warning of an impending Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) price hike in 1998. According to the Venezuelan weekly newsmagazine Zeta, Chavez advised his Cuban friend to buy as much oil as possible while it remained at $27 per barrel. Castro not only hoarded the oil, but reportedly profited by reselling part of it on the spot market when the price hit $30.

Chavez further used his 1999 presidency of OPEC to underwrite Cuba's oil needs by discounting one-third of total sales by 30 percent and even extending free oil in a swap for Cuban teachers to indoctrinate Venezuelan youngsters at "Bolivar schools." Cuban doctors also have been sent to administer social-welfare programs, and there are indications that agents of Cuban intelligence are operating undercover to prepare "popular militias" in the event of a coup by conservatives in the Venezuelan armed forces.

"What most worries Chavez is control of the armed forces," says veteran army officer and one-time Chavez supporter William Izarra, "but the president does not control them and is conscious of the fact that there are destabilizing forces working within the military." Members of the high command demanded the resignation of the defense minister last January when Hurtado was implicated in surreptitious maneuvers to shame top officers into backing government policies using such ploys as mailing them pieces of women's lingerie to imply their lack of machismo (see for the people, Feb. 19). Chavez had even more serious problems filling the vacancy when the generals rejected Gen. Lucas Rincon, a longtime friend and political ally promoted to flag rank by Chavez and his initial choice to replace Hurtado. Resistance in the armed forces was even more vociferous when Chavez tried moving his foreign minister into the defense slot. "The barracks didn't pull any punches in their total rejection of Rangel," explains Mario Carratu, former Venezuelan defense attach in Washington. "They were quite open about their personal distaste for the foreign minister," Carratu says, quoting a general as calling him a "professional left-wing hothead."

The controversy unleashed about Chavez's efforts to assert his control of the military finally forced him to create a new post - "chief of the armed forces," directly accountable to the president and headed by a compromise candidate, Venezuelan air force Gen. Lus Chacon, described as a politically neutral professional who once served as a presidential pilot. Sources in the Venezuelan military tell Insight that Chacon's appointment also is designed to gain Chavez support from his air force - a likely key to success in any coup by Venezuela's politically divided armed forces.

Hostility toward Chavez is reported to be heavy in the navy, traditionally a bastion of the Venezuelan upper classes. He also is unpopular in the national guard, in the internal-security service that once imprisoned him and among the army's top brass, "if only because most generals resent saluting a cashiered lieutenant colonel who has become their commander in chief," a retired officer tells Insight. But the charismatic paratrooper remains popular among the army's junior ranks and elite units that supported his 1992 putsch and ultimately would be the ones holding the streets in the event of a move out of the barracks.

Another factor to consider is the example of Chile's Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose prosecution and current trial for alleged crimes committed in his 1973 coup against Marxist-Leninist President Salvador Allende might make any right-wing general or admiral think twice before moving against an elected government - even one that is all but openly communist and preparing a decapitation of the military.

At the beginning of his presidency Chavez maneuvered to secure his dominance over the Direccion de Inteligencia Militar (DIM), Venezuela's military-intelligence service, by appointing officers who were personally loyal to him to key positions. "His current struggle to keep the defense ministry in politically reliable hands is mainly aimed at retaining his hold on DIM's nerve center in the Pentagonillo," says a military source who fears that any coup attempt could unleash a civil war.

To some observers, Chavez is just a showman. "He likes the spotlight, he does a lot of theater, but ultimately falls short of substance when push comes to shove," says Mauricio Sanchez, foreign editor of the Spanish daily La Razon, who closely has followed events in Venezuela. The analyst points to Chavez's much-publicized tour of the Middle East and Persian Gulf states last year when he drove across the Iranian border to Baghdad for a photo opportunity with Saddam Hussein, then flew on to Tripoli to meet Col. Muammar Qaddafi. Chavez was promoting a plan to raise oil prices to pressure Western industrialized countries at a time of economic downturns in Europe and the United States. "Ultimately it came to nothing," concludes Sanchez.

But Chavez's oil trump card could yet prove more effective closer to home as growing social hardship caused by economic slumps throughout Latin America threatens to erode the democratic status quo of the last decade. The repercussions across the continent would soon be felt if Venezuela's new strongman were to move decisively toward imposing a dictatorship. "There is little doubt," says an electronically informed analyst, "about what his friend Fidel Castro is urging him to do in their daily telephone chats."