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venezuela and argentina: a tale of two coups by Greg Palast, New Internationalist Magazine - July 11, 2002 |
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| [Disinfo Note: To see more of Greg Palast's investigative reporting--which is always upsetting to those in power--check out his article "Burn the Olive Tree, Sell the Lexus" (with Oliver Shykles) in Disinformation's new book, Everything You Know Is Wrong.]
The big business-led coup in Venezuela failed, where international finance's coup in Argentina has succeeded. Greg Palast gives us the inside track on two very different power-grabs. Blondes in revolt On May Day, starting out from the Hilton Hotel, 200,000 blondes marched East through Caracas' shopping corridor along Casanova Avenue. At the same time, half a million brunettes converged on them from the West. It would all seem like a comic shampoo commercial if 16 people hadn't been shot dead two weeks earlier when the two groups crossed paths. The May Day brunettes support Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. They funnelled down from the ranchos, the pustules of crude red-brick bungalows, stacked one on the other, that erupt on the steep, unstable hillsides surrounding this city of five million. The bricks in some ranchos are new, a recent improvement in these fetid, impromptu slums where many previously sheltered behind cardboard walls. 'Chávez gives them bricks and milk,' a local TV reporter told me, 'and so they vote for him.' Chávez is dark and round as a cola nut. Like his followers, Chávez is an 'Indian'. But the blondes, the 'Spanish', are the owners of Venezuela. A group near me on the blonde march screamed 'Out! Out!' in English, demanding the removal of the President. One edible-oils executive, in high heels, designer glasses and push-up bra had turned out, she said: 'To fight for democracy.' She added: 'We'll try to do it institutionally,' a phrase that meant nothing to me until a banker in pale pink lipstick explained that to remove Chávez, 'we can't wait until the next election'. |
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