[Peace-discuss] US troubles in Back Yard

[C. G. Estabrook]

   The Khaleej Times
   A Dangerous Neighbourhood
   BY NOAM CHOMSKY
   8 December 2005

"HOW Venezuela Is Keeping the Home Fires Burning in 
Massachusetts," reads a recent full-page ad in major US 
newspapers from PDVSA, Venezuela's state-owned oil company, 
and CITGO, its Houston-based subsidiary.

The ad describes a programme, encouraged by Venezuelan 
President Hugo Chavez, to sell heating oil at discount 
prices to low-income communities in Boston, the South Bronx 
and elsewhere in the United States -- one of the more ironic 
gestures ever in the North-South dialogue.  The deal 
developed after a group of US senators sent a letter to nine 
major oil companies asking them to donate a portion of their 
recent record profits to help poor residents cover heating 
bills. The only response came from CITGO.

In the United States, commentary on the deal is grudging at 
best, saying that Chavez, who has accused the Bush 
administration of trying to overthrow his government, is 
motivated by political ends -- unlike, for example, the 
purely humanitarian programmes of the US Agency for 
International Development.

Chavez' heating oil is one among many challenges bubbling up 
from Latin America for the Washington planners of grand 
strategy. The noisy protests during President Bush's trip 
last month to the Summit of the Americas, in Argentina, 
amplify the dilemma.

From Venezuela to Argentina, the hemisphere is getting 
completely out of control, with left-centre governments all 
the way through. Even in Central America, still suffering 
the aftereffects of President Reagan's "war on terror," the 
lid is barely on.

In the southern cone, the indigenous populations have become 
much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia 
and Ecuador, both major energy producers, where they either 
oppose production of oil and gas or want it to be 
domestically controlled. Some are even calling for an 
"Indian nation" in South America.

Meanwhile internal economic integration is strengthening, 
reversing relative isolation that dates back to the Spanish 
conquests. Furthermore, South-South interaction is growing, 
with major powers (Brazil, South Africa, India) in the lead, 
particularly on economic issues.

Latin America as a whole is increasing trade and other 
relations with the European Union and China, with some 
setbacks, but likely expansion, especially for raw materials 
exporters like Brazil and Chile.

Venezuela has forged probably the closest relations with 
China of any Latin American country, and is planning to sell 
increasing amounts of oil to China as part of its effort to 
reduce dependence on a hostile U.S. government. Indeed, 
Washington’s thorniest problem in the region is Venezuela, 
which provides nearly 15 percent of U.S. oil imports.

Chavez, elected in 1998, displays the kind of independence 
that the US translates as defiance -- as with Chavez' ally 
Fidel Castro. In 2002, Washington embraced President Bush's 
vision of democracy by supporting a military coup that very 
briefly overturned the Chavez government. The Bush 
administration had to back down, however, because of 
opposition to the coup in Venezuela and throughout Latin 
America.

Compounding Washington's woes, Cuba-Venezuela relations are 
becoming very close. They practice a barter system, each 
relying on its strengths. Venezuela is providing low-cost 
oil while in return Cuba organises literacy and health 
programmes, and sends thousands of teachers and doctors, 
who, as elsewhere, work in the poorest areas, previously 
neglected.

Joint Cuba-Venezuela projects are also having a considerable 
impact in the Caribbean countries, where, under a programme 
called Operation Miracle, Cuban doctors are providing health 
care to people who had no hope of receiving it, with 
Venezuelan funding.

Chavez has repeatedly won monitored elections and referenda 
despite overwhelming and bitter media hostility. Support for 
the elected government has soared during the Chavez years. 
The veteran Latin American correspondent Hugh O'Shaughnessy 
explains why in a report for Irish Times:

"In Venezuela, where an oil economy has over the decades 
produced a sparkling elite of superrich, a quarter of 
under-15s go hungry, for instance, and 60 per cent of people 
over 59 have no income at all. Less than a fifth of the 
population enjoys social security. Only now under President 
Chavez . . . has medicine started to become something of a 
reality for the poverty-stricken majority in the rich but 
deeply divided -- virtually nonfunctioning -- society. Since 
he won power in democratic elections and began to transform 
the health and welfare sector which catered so badly to the 
mass of the population progress has been slow. But it has 
been perceptible . . ."

Now Venezuela is joining Mercosur, South America's leading 
trade bloc. Mercosur, which already includes Argentina, 
Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, presents an alternative to the 
so-called Free Trade Agreement of the Americas, backed by 
the United States.

At issue in the region, as elsewhere around the world, is 
alternative social and economic models. Enormous, 
unprecedented popular movements have developed to expand 
cross-border integration -- going beyond economic agendas to 
encompass human rights, environmental concerns, cultural 
independence and people-to-people contacts.

These movements are ludicrously called "anti-globalisation" 
because they favour globalisation directed to the interests 
of people, not investors and financial institutions. US 
problems in the Americas extend north as well as south. For 
obvious reasons, Washington has hoped to rely more on 
Canada, Venezuela and other non-Middle East oil resources.

But Canada's relations with the United States are more 
"strained and combative" than ever before as a result of, 
among other issues, Washington's rejection of NAFTA 
decisions favouring Canada. As Joel Brinkley reports in The 
New York Times, "Partly as a result, Canada is working hard 
to build up its relationship with China (and) some officials 
are saying Canada may shift a significant portion of its 
trade, particularly oil, from the United States to China."

It takes real talent for the United States to alienate even 
Canada.

Washington's Latin American policies are only enhancing US 
isolation, however. One recent example: For the 14th year in 
a row, the UN General Assembly voted against the US 
commercial embargo against Cuba. The vote on the resolution 
was 182 to 4: the United States, Israel, the Marshall 
Islands and Palau. Micronesia abstained.

Eminent thinker Noam Chomsky, the author, most recently, of 
Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World

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