Fidel's Successor in Latin America

0 Comments | Insight on the News, April 30, 2001 | by Martin Arostegui

President Hugo Chavez -- a protege of Fidel Castro -- is positioning himself to be a dictator in Venezuela, with an eye toward destabifizing the continent of South America.

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 attache 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 Curacao.

"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.