BY Stuart Munckton
On November 18, two bombs ripped through a car in Caracas, killing 38-year-old state prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Anderson was leading the campaign to bring to justice those responsible for the April 2002 military coup that briefly overthrew the radical government of Hugo Chavez and replaced it with one acceptable to US imperialism and the local elite.
A corrupt and reactionary judiciary had originally protected opponents of Chavez from punishment for their crimes, including the police who, under the control of Caracas’ anti-Chavez mayor, murdered more than 60 Chavez supporters.
Following the April coup, the Supreme Court let the key perpetrators go free, ruling that what had happened was not a coup at all, merely a “power vacuum”.
This is starting to change, however, with eight anti-Chavez politicians and businessleaders receiving jail sentences in the state of Tachira for their role in the forced removal of the elected state governor during the failed coup. The charges that have been laid against four leaders of the opposition organisation Sumate — requesting and receiving money from the US-government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — are a clear indication of the government’s continued determination to punish those who conspire with foreign powers to subvert the will of the Venezuelan people. Anderson was collaborating on this prosecution.
Anderson was also investigating all the individuals who signed the decree that overthrew Chavez and installed the multi-millionaire Pedro Carmona as dictator. The more than 400 individuals Anderson had subpoenaed included leading politicians, bankers, businesspeople, top bureaucrats, former generals and media barons.
The government condemned the assassination as an act of terrorism. Evo Golinger, the attorney leading the investigation into the CIA and the US government’s role in attacking Chavez, wrote in an obituary posted at the Vheadline website on November 19, “The assassination of Danilo is an attempt to silence us, to intimidate us and prevent any further progress”.
Vheadline reported on November 22 that Ivan Simonovis, the security chief for former Caracas mayor Alfredo Pena (who is in hiding), was detained by Venezuelan State Political and Security (DISIP) officers after attempting to flee to Florida. Like his former boss, Simonovis is on the list of Venezuela’s “most wanted” for his role in the failed coup. Simonovis will be interrogated about the assassination of Anderson.
In other news, Venezuela Analysis reported on November 24 that an opposition-aligned lawyer, Antonio Lopez, had been shot dead in a gunfight with police in a busy plaza after police approached Lopez, who was in a car they were searching for as part of their investigations into the assassination. An officer was also killed in the gunfight. The officers allege that Lopez opened fire on them as they approached. Police later raided Lopez’s home to discover stores of grenades, rocket launchers, missiles, bulletproof vests, gas masks and bomb-making materials.
The assassination of Anderson, and the discover of this weapons cache, the uncovering of Colombian paramilitaries training on an oppositionist’s farm earlier this year, the recent attacks on Venezuelan military and oil instillations near the Colombian border and a failed assassination attempt on a government minister on August 8, have prompted some to ask whether we are seeing the beginning of a terrorist campaign by an increasingly desperate US-backed counter-revolutionary opposition.
The Cuban newspaper Granma featured an article in its November 22 online edition entitled “Miami-Caracas: Expansion of the terrorist wave”. The article points out that Miami, which also houses anti-Cuban terrorists, is now home to a growing number of strongly anti-Chavez wealthy Venezuelans. This includes a number of those wanted in Venezuela for their role in the coup. The US has so far ignored calls from Venezuela to have those facing charges extradited.
The article claims: “It is no secret that Florida, together with Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Colombia, are the four points selected by the Venezuelan opposition to conspire against the Bolivarian process. But the main bases for military and terrorist training are in Miami. With the consent of the US government, the F-4 Commandos training the Venezuelan coup plotters are centred there.”
Exiled oppositionists have repeatedly called from Miami for the assassination of Chavez. According to the Granma article, statistics complied by Venezuela Analysis show that the counter-revolutionaries called for Chavez’s assassination no less than 27 times on Miami TV and radio between 2002 and March 2004. It is easy to imagine what attitude the US government would take to any nation that allowed its media to repeatedly provide a platform for calls to assassinate President George Bush.
The article quotes the late Anderson’s colleague Luis Bilbao declaring, “Those leading the coup section of the Venezuelan opposition from the [US State Department] with
an operative base in Langley and Miami have already initiated their plan of operations”. The article argues that post-US election comments from Bush’s Latin America expert Otto Reich, in which he said that he would not now like to be in Chavez’s shoes, are evidence of a prepared plot to unleash a wave of terror on the Venezuelan people.
Whatever the reality of any such plans, history shows that the US will not stand by while a revolution develops that aims, in the words of its leader Hugo Chavez, not simply to break the hold of imperialism on the continent, but to build an alternative to the capitalist system.
From Green Left Weekly, December 1, 2004.Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.
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