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An Open Letter to President and Mrs. Carter regarding Venezuela September, 2002 Dear President and Mrs. Carter: I recently returned from a women’s truth-finding mission to Venezuela, where the Carter Center has an active presence, to learn about the “peaceful and democratic revolution” the people there are undertaking and women’s involvement in it. We learned not only about the goals of economic and social reforms, but also about the tremendous efforts being made to undermine that government which was duly elected to carry out these reforms. While we were there, the US government announced its intention to open an “Office for Transition”. This caused great alarm throughout the country as a thinly disguised attempt at transition to yet another US-orchestrated coup, the April 11 armed coup having been overwhelmingly rejected and reversed by the people, especially women who were the first on the street. I am writing you on behalf of our mission and all the women in our national and international network to urge you to condemn the US Office for Transition and any such intervention -- subtle, covert or overt – aimed at defeating the will and determined efforts of the great majority of the people there, and the government they elected. But first, let me introduce myself. My father, John Jones, was Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Bobby Kennedy, and later with the law firm Covington and Burling. He also served on your Lawyers’ Committee to Free the Hostages in Iran. Both my mother and father, though white, were firm supporters of the Civil Rights movement and although we lived for a time in the then segregated State of Virginia, we never ate in a segregated restaurant and my parents sent us to the first integrated school in Virginia. My husband, daughter and I now live in Philadelphia. I am currently co-coordinator of the US Wages for Housework Campaign, an international campaign for the economic and social recognition of the value of caring work – that is, the basic work of society which mainly women do unwaged: bearing and raising children, caring for the sick and the elderly, growing and preparing food, community volunteer work, etc. We coordinate the Global Women's Strike (GWS), an international action every March 8 by grassroots women in 60 countries so far. The GWS calls for the world to “invest in caring not killing,” and for the $940 billion a year spent on military budgets worldwide (over half of it by the US government) to go to caring, and first of all to women who are the major carers. In July the GWS was invited by the National Women’s Institute of Venezuela to an international event. Its purpose was to inform women from other countries of the goals of what they call the “peaceful and democratic revolution” that put President Hugo Chavez in power, to counter the massive media dis-information campaign, and to avoid further coups. We are all aware, and the US media has reported, that the US government orchestrated the April coup that resulted in the deaths of at least 60 people. It was in our capacity as GWS coordinators that two of my colleagues, a Black woman from the Caribbean and an Indigenous woman from Peru, and I went to Caracas to discover the truth as we saw it and report back. We had, of course, heard that President Chavez was a demagogue, that workers supported the coup attempt, and that there were large popular rallies against him. We found quite another story and it is on this basis that we appeal to you. We make this appeal on behalf of women who are the carers, and whose tendency therefore is to protect those we bring into the world and nurture, who are always urging both fundamental change and an avoidance of violence wherever possible, even when men are not. The vast majority of Venezuelans are doing everything possible to avoid a bloodbath and to carry out the economic and social reforms laid out in their new constitution. The people who elected President Chavez and agreed in a referendum to the Constitution drawn up by the National Assembly they also elected, have a right for their lives and democratic decisions to be protected by all of us from attack. Given your well-known human rights record, we believe that this is what you want too. So many of our lives, not only in Venezuela but all over the region and the world, depend on it. The bulk of the support for President Chavez comes from the 80% of the country who are poor (80%!!) and mainly people of color. They have supported his presidency and its reform program through five more elections and referenda since1998, including 72% of voters adopting the new constitution – a far greater mandate than any US government has ever had, at least that we know of! Women have the strongest commitment to this revolution, and I’ll explain why below. Many in the middle class and almost all of the wealthy loathe President Chavez with a venom that can lead them to kill. We did meet and in fact stayed a few nights with a middle class family who are ardent supporters of President Chavez and the “Bolivarian revolution” (named, as you know, after Simon Bolivar, the famous liberator of South America from Spain) or the “proceso” (another name for the peaceful and democratic process the country has embarked on). We also met some working people who are against this process. But generally people take position on class lines, and as you know, these are also race lines. As you also know, one of the main reasons for the opposition President Chavez is encountering within Venezuela is that he finished up with the two-party system, and those who were used to being in power in one party or the other, can’t forgive him for it. As you put it, “President Chavez and the MVR [the party of supporters] were elected on the promise of ridding the country of a politics of hierarchy, corruption and elitism. Dominated by two centrally controlled political parties for much of its democratic life, Venezuelans grew tired of poor public services and deteriorating living standards.” The two parties had had decades to address the concerns of the 80% who are poor, but this was not in their interest. Many people feel that we face a similar stranglehold in the US and in many other countries where government -backed corporate corruption and erosion of human rights prevail. As a slogan at the Democratic and Republican Convention protests in 2000 said, “Either way you vote you get the corporations.” This breaks the heart of many, and first of all of those who used to think of the Democrats as the first line of defense for human and civil rights. It was also clear to us that the wealthy, who are generally “white”, cannot abide having a President, of Indigenous and African descent, who is the color of their servants. On the question of worker support for the coup attempt – this caused great confusion in the US and elsewhere. The media which is mostly corporate controlled and therefore mostly anti-Chavez, bears much of the responsibility for this. People questioned that if the workers did not support him or were split, maybe he doesn’t represent most of the 80% who are the have-nots. We spoke with dozens of trade union members and leaders who do not belong to the large (and generally recognized as corrupt) trade union conglomerate CTV (Confederacion de Trabajadores de Venezuela), which is all we have heard from in the US. They belong instead to the alternative congress of trade unions called the CUTV (Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Venezuela) whose voices are not reflected in the media, either there or abroad. All said the same thing: that workers, and in particular oil workers, were supporters of President Chavez and the “proceso”; that it was the corrupt union managers (well known for cutting deals for their own personal gain) who supported the owners in the so-called “general strike” and the coup. In fact, the oil workers had tried to go to work but found the factory gates shut. On the question of President Chavez being a demagogue. We did not find him to be so. We saw him speak in public and had the opportunity to have dinner with him and with several other women from different countries, to talk with him one-on-one, and ask him direct questions. We handed him a letter drafted by union members in the US opposing the AFL-CIO support for the pro-coup CTV, and he was very interested in it. When we told him that the goal of our Global Women's Strike is Invest in Caring Not Killing, he said “That is our goal too.” When we asked him what he wanted known about his government, he said the achievements he was most proud of in his three years in power were the drop in the infant mortality rate, the better nutrition offered in their free breakfast program, the clamping down on schools which were illegally charging for education, and the determination not to give in to violent provocation and keep the “proceso” peaceful. Of course we only met him briefly but we found him warm, charming, charismatic – and honest. He is a powerful person, to be sure, but not even the people we met who had reservations about him accused him of corruption. He seems totally dedicated to the people he represents, and did not seem flattered by the adoring crowds we saw many times gathered around him. He did not seem to have an ostentatious lifestyle. While he was relaxed at the formal but not lavish dinner, he was less at ease at the Conference the next day. Security was tight. His supporters are terrified that the next attack won’t be a coup, but an assassination attempt. Everyone knows he is key to keeping people together on the path they have collectively chosen. That, it seemed to us, is why he is under attack. But whatever we thought of him, most importantly, the vast majority of the country elected him to deal first and foremost with poverty. Their reforms do not seem farfetched or unreasonable. They have regained national control over their oil industry and increased the tax on oil in order to use the proceeds to finance the reforms and get resources to the many instead of to the pockets of a very, very few. They are giving unused land to the landless. We heard that the wealthy landowners are evoking land claims from the King of Spain hundreds of years ago in a desperate attempt to hold onto the land, while millions go hungry. (Is this acceptable to people in the US? Do they know about it? Should they be told?) Another important measure is the Women’s Bank, based on similar principles to the highly successful Grameen Bank in Pakistan, which allows women to borrow small amounts of money at no or low interest, keeping the hardworking grassroots self-employed woman out of the hands of middle men and moneylenders. And we were thrilled to learn that one of the social reforms in the Constitution is the recognition of the value of housework to society, and the introduction of social security for housewives. We can sure use that in the US and everywhere else! It also recognizes Indigenous people’s rights. The nub of this revolution, which is almost always hidden, is that it is a women’s revolution. Women, as in every country, are the lowest paid, and the poorest of the poor. In Venezuela 67% of households are headed by women. Everywhere we are the carers, and in Venezuela, as you well know, day care and nursing homes and other such facilities are scarce. If this revolution succeeds, and if the women who are its backbone succeed with their agenda, it will be the first time that the issue of domestic violence is as prioritized as the economy. President Chavez told us that women were the ones who went up to the armed soldiers involved in the coup and convinced them not to shoot, and that after the coup women came out in the streets in larger numbers than men to demand the reinstatement of their government – you can see that in the pictures of those days. Women are the ones who do most of the day-to-day work of the ‘Bolivarian Circles’ and “Puntos de Encuentro” (of which there are 5000 throughout the country) and other structures set up to involve people in the revolution. We were also struck by the President’s determination to have good neighborly relations with other countries in the region. He has introduced preferential oil export terms not only with the US (which the US doesn’t even acknowledge) and Cuba (a source of great resentment to the administration), but with other small countries in the region, including Suriname and Guyana with which Venezuela has an old border dispute about which his government refuses to fight. So President Chavez, who was democratically elected, in elections you monitored and concluded were a “true expression of democracy”, and who has taken his agenda back for popular referendums three times getting an even greater mandate, is the target of President Bush who got in by stealing the election and who is threatening to invade Iraq and kill tens of thousands, possibly even millions, with no popular mandate at all, for that or for anything. My family knows about the Southern style of stolen elections. When my father ran for County Supervisor in Virginia, the police motorcycle carrying the satchel of votes from the Black district in the County mysteriously lost its satchel. My father had the support of the Black community. I remember campaigning with him in the poorest parts of the county, mainly Black. Most white Southern politicians never bothered to do that. So with this lost satchel, my father lost the election by eight votes. A year later the man who “won” was sent to jail for fraud on another matter. And my family knows about assassinations too. The Kennedy assassinations were shocking to him personally, as well as to the country. He had been a “Kennedy Best and Brightest” and now he left government and went into private law practice. I don’t think he ever found again the passion and pleasure that he once had in his work. Assassinations are devastating for any democratic process. We have been a nation of assassinations and coups at home and abroad. The US government has a history of selectively supporting unpopular dictators in the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, while getting rid of popular and mostly elected governments which insist on putting the interests of their populations before the interests of US corporations. Henry Kissinger long ago made clear that his government would not respect elections where people “could not be trusted to vote for the right person”, i.e., the candidate they back. That is why there has been such a campaign against Evo Morales in Bolivia and Lula Da Silva in Brazil. Condoleeza Rice told the Venezuela people after the April coup: “let this be a warning.” So we have returned from our truth-finding mission, which my Quaker meeting helped support, and see our mission now as truth-distributing. We couldn’t help but feel committed to and identified with these dedicated, passionate, hopeful, hard-working people who are themselves totally committed to their peaceful and democratic revolution. They carried around their Constitution, printed in little blue books that can fit in your pocket, calling for everyone in the country to read it so they are aware of their rights and can defend them. We worry because at times we thought they were a little too idealistic – they talk so much of love, peace, faith and hope. The people we met seem to think that if Venezuela sticks to the constitution and respects human and legal rights they will be able to carry on with their social reforms. Yet those who oppose their Venezuela have shown themselves ready to go to almost any extreme to hold onto their power and wealth – coups, assassinations, death squads, “disappearing” people, bloodbaths, lies and distortions, not to mention out and out military attack. They are funded with billions of dollars by the banks that guard the resources of the landlords and the corporate owners and foreign investment, and of course by oil. The Chavez supporters have their alternative press and their radio shows which are listened to by much of the population, including the Sunday call-in show with the President called, “Allo Chavez!” (“Hello Chavez!”). But there is a constant and relentless barrage against the President in the mainstream press. One headline in El Nacional while I was there was “Chavez cannot last until 2003.” Another was, “Chavez is an ideological monster.” A third was “Chavez has driven the economy to its lowest level since 1996” – unlike, we thought to ourselves, the US and every other economy which are at their lowest levels since 1996. We also question, what is the definition or point of a “good” or a “strong” economy (what supposedly existed before Chavez came into power) when 80% of your people are poor? But even by their definitions, the GDP of Venezuela actually grew by 2.8% last year, according to reporter Greg Palast. As he put it, “Compare the ‘ruined’ Venezuela economy to Argentina. That ‘poster boy’ of neoliberalism ended last year in a depression which has since turned into an economic death spiral.” We heard that President Chavez is ready to support workers if they decide to take over any failing businesses industries so that downward spiral does not happen in Venezuela. The Chavez supporters have their alternative trade unions but the main trade union continues its dirty work of giving legitimacy to this attack on the elected government, against the will of its members. The pro-Chavez unionists were upset, as was I, that the AFL-CIO supported the corrupt CTV and acted as a conduit for money from the Bush administration. The unionists, and President Chavez, were thrilled about a letter we brought from US trade unionists condemning the AFL support and a New York Times clipping documenting the truth about the money. Most Chavez supporters are armed with their work of mobilizing the 80% to speak and to act in defense of their rights, backed by their pocket-size Constitution, while their opposition has the weapons that their US backers, the best armed government in the world, provide. We appeal to you again, President and Mrs. Carter, to help prevent vested interests from interfering with this people accomplishing its legitimate reforms. If this time the overthrow were to be more subtle than outright invasion or assassination, it wouldn’t make it any less of an overthrow. Please begin by condemning in no uncertain terms the proposed US Office of Transition. That is for countries at war. Venezuela is not at war. It is the US that wants to create a civil war in order to impose the government of its choice. Or the US and other opponents want to tie up the government with constantly defending itself so that it cannot make the changes and the people are demoralized – and go home, the end of their active participation in shaping their own lives. That would be the greatest tragedy of all for those committed to government of the people and by the people as well as for the people. We respectfully suggest that you seek the views of grassroots women in your negotiations, not only because women have the most at stake, or because women have the strongest commitment to peace, but also because, as we said, women have the strongest commitment to this revolution, and this we heard over and over again. Finally, when we reported back to a packed Philadelphia meeting, two nuns who have lived in Venezuela for 40 and 50 years, confirmed everything that we said. They said that many church members took the Catholic Church to task for involving itself on the side of those who attempted the coup. They are determined to do more and we would be delighted if you were interested in meeting them and/or any of us to discuss any of the points raised in this letter. One of the nuns reported that the US is going to run out of oil in the next few years, and that is why the US government is so interested in Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Iraq, among others. We want you to know that we opposed the bombing of Afghanistan and we oppose an attack against Iraq, and were very pleased to see your op ed against an attack on Iraq as well. But we are very concerned that the government not decide to attack Venezuela instead of Iraq in order to satisfy its need for oil and flex its macho muscles. Unlike your administration, this one is not about to refuse to bomb anyone merely because it would be wrong to do so. Let the world see that there are people connected to the US government who genuinely care about elections and human rights, and help us prevent another bloody takeover by the uncaring, murderous corporate interests that most often seem to govern US foreign policy. Thank you for your serious consideration of these observations and concerns. We would be most interested in hearing back from you and in meeting with you to further discuss our concerns. Yours sincerely, Phoebe Jones Global Women’s Strike |