Otto Reich e-mails:
Capitol Hill conference draws ire of Latin American leftists
November 16, 2010
Washington, DC – An event this Wednesday on Capitol Hill entitled “Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights, and Inter-American Security” has raised the ire of leftist governments and activists in Latin America. Several news stories from the state-controlled media in Venezuela and Bolivia have included scurrilous attacks, evidently designed to demonize their critics. El Cambio, the state-run newspaper of Bolivia, whose Orwellian masthead reads “The truth will set us free,” launched vicious personal attacks on the Bolivian panelists that are scheduled to speak about Evo Morales’ abrogation of human rights.
This was followed on Saturday by an “alert” by the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (Venezuelan News Agency), Venezuela’s newly-named state-owned news service, which launched a smear of nearly everyone on the list of speakers. The participants on the list include three former U.S. ambassadors, two former Assistant Secretaries of State, and the former head of the White House Director of Drug Control Policy.
Not to be outdone by her fellow propagandists, New York attorney turned Venezuelan government-paid apologist, Eva Golinger, has also written an article attacking the conference. Golinger, called “the Sweetheart of the Revolution” by Hugo Chavez, has written a series of hagiographies about Chavez and the “Bolivarian Revolution,” and has reportedly become a very well paid editor of the Correo del Orinoco International, a state-controlled newspaper launched in 2009 by Hugo Chavez’s PSUV (Socialist Party of Venezuela). Golinger’s 2006 conspiracy book, The Chavez Code, was actually released in Havana, Cuba, at a Castro regime-sponsored event. The Venezuelan government has paid to have the book translated into six languages, and plans to turn it into a movie.
This proliferation of state-controlled news agencies, newspapers, books and movies are part of a project launched by Hugo Chavez several years ago to attempt to overwhelm the negative coverage of his regime as it has faced rampant increases in crime, runaway inflation and food shortages. In January 2007, the president of Venezuela’s new state-funded satellite news channel Telesur, Andres Izarra stated, “We have to elaborate a new plan, and the one that we propose is the communicational and informational hegemony of the state.” The leftist governments of Argentina, Uruguay and Cuba are also said to be funding the network.
Hugo Chavez has been a long term advocate of “asymmetric warfare” against his enemies, which includes a strong and well-funded propaganda effort. At the “1st Military Forum on Fourth Generation War and Asymmetric War” held in Venezuela in 2004, Chavez had a special edition of La Guerra Periferica y Islam Revolucionaria (Peripheral Warfare and Revolutionary Islam) by Jorge Verstrynge printed in Spanish and distributed to the Venezuelan Army. Among other tactics, the book promotes the use of propaganda as a tool against superior enemies, and even describes how to build a radioactive “dirty bomb” for use in asymmetric war.
Shortly after, Chavez set up the Venezuela Information Office, a Washington, DC-based lobbying and public relations organ that “floods the zone” with Chavez-friendly articles and press releases – mostly attempting to defend the regime against negative coverage, such as the 2008 Human Rights Watch report condemning Chavez for a multitude of human rights offenses as well as the destruction of democracy that has occurred during his time in office.
The Capitol Hill conference features such speakers as Ecuadorean ex-President Lucio Gutierrez and indigenous victims of human rights abuses in Bolivia. President Gutierrez was the target of a recent propaganda effort by President Rafael Correa, who tried to diminish the rival for upcoming presidential elections by accusing him of plotting a coup when police held a strike to protest pay and benefit cuts. Though Correa called the strike an attempted coup and claimed to be held against his will at a Quito hospital, a hospital patient later told the Ecuadorean newspaper Expreso that the Ecuadorean president was actually asked to leave the hospital to protect the safety of the other patients, and was given a special forces cordon to do so, but refused. Correa instead received Venezuelan advisers and conducted TV and radio interviews from the hospital, while ordering an emergency shut-down of private media outlets. President Gutierrez is expected to address the issue at the the conference.
The conference may be a harbinger of future committee hearings after November’s midterm election results. Committee chair changes will likely produce a harder line policy toward these regimes. Representatives Connie Mack (R-FL) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), both reported to be in line to chair committees in the new congress, are scheduled to speak as well.