American Empire

Episode 11  |  How did the United States become Hugo Chávez's enemy? 

After the failed coup of 2002, Chávez transformed a Venezuelan political crisis into something much bigger: a global battle between his revolution and U.S. imperialism. 

And it worked. 

Around the world, Chávez became famous for standing up to American power. But inside Venezuela, that same rhetoric was used to persecute the opposition, silence the media, and intimidate civil society. 

This is the story of how Hugo Chávez turned anti-Americanism into a weapon for his "Bolivarian Revolution." 

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Transcript

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Speaker 2 0:01

On September 20th, 2006, Hugo Chavez, the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, stepped up to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly. He opened by recommending a book to world leaders and high-ranking diplomats in the room. He had brought the book up with him and held it for the people to see. It was a book by Noam Chomsky.

Speaker 4 0:50

Noam Chomsky, one of the America and the most prestigious intellectuals of the Americas and the world.

Speaker 2 1:09

"America's Quest for Global Dominance." An excellent work if you want to understand what's happening in the world in the last century, what's happening today. Yesterday, the devil was here. Between the laughs of world leaders, Chavez made an exaggerated sign of the cross. At this very spot, it smells of sulfur still today. And if his veiled insult was not obvious enough, Chavez then named who he was talking about. Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this very podium, the President of the United States, who I call the devil.

Speaker 4 3:10

Came here speaking as if he were the owner of the world.

Speaker 2 3:48

It would be a good Alfred Hitchcock movie. And of course, the speech immediately became international news. Here was the President of Venezuela calling the President of the United States the devil in front of the world. It was a speech that catapulted Chavez even further into international fame. Chavez's revolutionary ideology was already popular around the world, especially among leftist intellectual circles, including Noam Chomsky and among European leftists. In full command of the room, Chavez expertly leveraged humor and Chomsky's academic work to sugarcoat his insults. He was not only able to get away with these undiplomatic barbs, but to win applause and admiration for them. A skill he had perfected in Venezuela after hundreds of cadenas and broadcasts of his TV show "Alo Presidente." His mockery of Bush made him seem powerful, but beneath the performance, Chavez was tapping into something real. The growing anger towards the US-led world order. By 2006, global opinion had already begun to question the morality and legality of the US war on terror, marked by the invasion of Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. We need to remember where we are in history. It's been three years since the Iraq War, which was widely rejected by many countries in the so-called Third World, non-Western states, mostly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The world was changing. After the Cold War, many believed that liberal democracy and free markets would become the dominant model everywhere. But by the mid-2000s, that belief was faltering. At that moment, the world seemed to be shifting towards a multipolar order, where the United States might no longer dominate global affairs alone. Instead, new states would rise to challenge the old world order. In other words, there was a thirst for an alternative, partly fueled by the rejection of the US invasion of Iraq. And by now, Hugo Chavez had positioned himself as the leader of that alternative, gaining notoriety and fame across the world for his willingness to speak truth to U.S. power. Chavez's 2006 UN speech stands as the ultimate example of the audacity and flair that made him an icon of anti-neoliberal, anti-capitalist, and anti-interventionist currents around the world. But it's critical for us to understand where and why Chavez started publicly identifying the United States as his biggest enemy. And that story starts with the coup of April 2002. Immediately after the coup failed, Chavismo began crafting one of its foundational myths, that the Venezuelan people had forced Chavez's return in April 2002. According to this narrative, the sheer power of the streets had toppled the coup and restored Chavez to Miraflores. The regime would later claim that eight million Venezuelans took to the streets. An absurd exaggeration, far beyond the tens of thousands who actually mobilized that day. As we've already discussed in our episodes on the coup, it wasn't the people who brought Chavez back. It was the military. That context matters. The coup was not a simple story of oligarchs overthrowing a beloved president. It was the result of a political system collapsing in real time. Chavez had tried to use the military to repress a massive protest, the largest in Venezuelan history. That order helped trigger the coup, which collapsed in less than 36 hours because of disastrous mistakes made by the provisional government. But the Chavista myth was irresistible. It elevated Chavez's image at home and burnished it abroad, turning him into the president removed by elites and restored by the people. And the international media helped cement that version of events. When foreign journalists descended on Venezuela during the coup, they encountered a provisional government that was already dysfunctional and desperate for legitimacy. It had dissolved institutions, excluded Chavismo, and projected the image of a conservative elite restoration. Meanwhile, Chavez's supporters, alienated by the national media, turned to international networks to communicate their version of events. The result was a simplified story that traveled easily, a populous president that had been toppled by oligarchic reactionaries. That framing was not entirely invented, but it flattened the local context. The decree laws, the confrontation with PDVSA, the media war, the mass protests, the military rebellion. And it dovetailed with another powerful storyline. One that audiences across the hemisphere recognized instantly. The specter of U.S. interventionism in Latin America. Within days of returning to power, Chavez began openly accusing the United States of involvement in the coup. His government pointed to several pieces of evidence: contacts between U.S. officials and opposition figures, Washington's response to Chavez's removal, and later declassified intelligence cables warning that a coup was likely. International media amplified the story. The Guardian published claims linking the failed coup to senior officials in the U.S. government. The New York Times, meanwhile, became part of the controversy for its own editorial response to Chavez's removal, initially treating his fall as a positive development, before later acknowledging that the situation had been far more troubling than first presented. These reports and reactions were immediately useful to Chavez. They allowed him to recast the coup as something larger, a plot orchestrated by domestic elites, foreign interests, and transnational corporations. And if I had to guess, you're probably wondering right now: "but Alex, was the US actually involved in the coup?" And my answer is, I don't think so. Certainly not in the way Chavez later claimed. I don't believe that the United States planned the coup, organized the coup, or controlled the officers who removed Chavez from power. The coup was far too chaotic for that. The actors were too divided. The provisional government made catastrophic mistakes almost immediately. Honestly, if the CIA had been involved, the coup wouldn't have been such a disaster. In the end, what made the coup possible and then led to its collapse was not Washington, but the breakdown of the military chain of command inside Venezuela. Now, was Washington happy to see Chavez gone? Yes, absolutely. The Bush administration's initial response made that clear. It immediately blamed Chavez's own undemocratic actions for the crisis. But that's different from saying that the United States planned the coup. A lot of people point to the declassified intelligence cables showing that US officials knew a coup was possible. And that's true. But knowledge is not the same as authorship. By early 2002, rumors of military conspiracy were everywhere in Venezuela. It was an open secret within the military. Dissident officers were openly unhappy. Chavez himself knew that there were sectors of the military plotting against him. So, yes, the U.S. handled the crisis badly. Its initial reaction looked like approval. Its contacts with the opposition figures created suspicion, and its long history in Latin America made every denial sound hollow. But turning the United States into the enemy gave Chavez exactly what he needed. It allowed him to distract from the domestic causes of the coup. The decree laws, the confrontation with PDVSA, the mass protests, and the military rebellion. It transformed a Venezuelan crisis into a global one. Chavez was no longer just the president who had survived a coup. He was the Latin American leader who had stood up to the empire. But Chavez's suspicion of the United States did not begin in 2002. These children are not responsible for terrorism, or Osama bin Laden, or any of that. Washington was angry, but it was still willing to preserve the relationship because economic interests were far too important. After the coup, everything changed. Chavez could now present himself not just as a president suspicious of US power, but as a leader of a popular revolution that had survived an imperial attack. I wish I had an opposition here to whom I could send a message. Send a message. But these four stone throwers, which is all that remains as the leaders of a collapsed opposition, what message can be sent to them? No message. This was absurd, because if there was one political figure in Venezuela who had repeatedly refused to compromise, it was Hugo Chávez. His refusal to negotiate had helped produce the crisis. The 49 decree laws, the confrontation with PDVSA, the coup, the national strike, and now the recall referendum, whose signatures the opposition had just submitted to the Electoral Council. But Chávez now had a way to explain all of it. The opposition was not a legitimate political force. It wasn't millions of Venezuelans who disagreed with him. It was a collection of terrorists, fascists, coup plotters, and agents of Washington. In these last few days, we have observed what we already knew. The intention of these groups, terrorists and fascists. They were swept out by the people and the military. Then they launched the terrorist oil strike. And they also failed and were swept out. Then they tried to blackmail us with those supposed signatures that they had collected. Terrorists and fascists. That's how Chavez described his opposition. And that was the genius of the post-coup narrative. The events of April 2002 had been confusing, chaotic, and extremely difficult to explain. They required a lot of context. They required nuance. They required asking hard questions about Chavez, his opposition, the media, and the military. But Chavez offered something simpler. The revolution had been attacked by fascists, backed by the Empire. And remember, Venezuela was still deeply divided. This was not a country united behind Chávez. Millions of Venezuelans opposed him. Millions had signed to activate the recall referendum against him. But in Chavez's rhetoric, those Venezuelans were no longer citizens exercising constitutional rights. They were enemies of the people. And behind them stood the ultimate enemy, the United States of America. These violent groups supported by Washington. There's no doubt that they're financed with the money of the United States. It's proven, we have the documents. Supported by the CIA. And the American government pretends to light our country on fire. This is where Chavez's anti-Americanism became politically powerful. He merged two stories into one. At home, he portrayed his opponents as servants of US imperialism. Abroad, he portrayed himself as the leader of a new Latin American resistance. The Argentinians, the Brazilians, the Chileans, the Peruvians, the Bolivians, and everyone. So that Latin America and the Caribbean will be truly free and independent from the empires that continue to threaten us. And in the years that followed, Chavez used Venezuela's oil wealth to turn that message into foreign policy. As oil prices rose, he had the money to export the revolution. He strengthened ties with Cuba, subsidized oil shipments abroad, funded projects across Latin America and the Caribbean, and helped promote alternatives to U.S.-backed regional institutions. He was no longer only fighting the opposition in Venezuela. He was trying to build a new regional order around himself. And this is why Chavez became such a celebrity among global leftist movements. His rhetoric resonated because it was not invented out of nothing. The history of U.S. intervention in Latin America was real. The Iraq War had damaged America's moral authority. The world was hungry for an alternative to U.S. power. And Chavez understood that better than almost anyone. So he placed himself at the center of that global realignment. The coup gave him the story. The oil gave him the money. And anti-Americanism gave him the language. But while Chavez was building this international image as the man standing up to American empire, inside Venezuela, the revolution was consolidating power. Between 2003 and 2007, Chavez's government massively expanded its communications apparatus. It launched four new state-run television channels, financed alternative newspapers and radio stations, and built a media ecosystem designed to echo the message of the Bolivarian Revolution. Then, in December 2004, the National Assembly passed the law on social responsibility in radio and television, La Ley Resorte. Officially, it was presented as a law to regulate harmful content on radio and television, but in practice, it imposed sweeping new controls on the media. Human Rights Watch warned that the law severely threatened press freedom in Venezuela and said that its vague restrictions and heavy penalties were a recipe for self-censorship. And that was the point. The government didn't need to shut down every critical outlet overnight. It could make the cost of criticism higher and higher until they closed down themselves. In 2007, the government refused to renew the broadcasting license of Radio Caracas Televisión, RCTV. One of the oldest and most important television networks in the country, Chavez accused the channel of having supported the 2002 coup. And that accusation wasn't random. RCTV had a strong anti-Chavez editorial line, but so had Venevisión, its competition. And Venevisión kept its concession. The difference was not that Venevisión had been neutral, it was that its owner, Gustavo Cisneiros, had met with Chavez and Jimmy Carter after the strike and agreed to soften the network's coverage. RCTV, by contrast, remained defiant, so it was forced off the air. For millions of Venezuelans, this was an emotional shock. It was soap operas, variety shows, childhood memories, and the sound of Venezuelan television itself. By 2009, Chavez was ordering police on national television to use tear gas on protesters and put them in prison. The media was now forced to choose self-censor or be silenced. And that same logic was applied to civil society. Take Sumate. Sumate was the civil society organization that helped organize the recall referendum signatures. It had received a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. funded organization that supports democracy projects around the world. The grant was just over $31,000, and the money was designated for education on the constitutional referendum process. But Chavez seized on the grant as proof that Sumate was part of an imperial conspiracy. But absurdity wasn't the point. The point was intimidation, to show civil society that if you organized against the government, if you applied for foreign funding, if you tried to use the Constitution against Chavez, the state could come after you. So while Chavez was telling the world that Venezuela was under attack by the American Empire, he was attacking any and all forms of opposition at home. And much of the world looked away. Some governments were drawn in by Chavez's oil diplomacy, subsidized fuel, generous financing, and the promise of Venezuelan money. Others were captivated by the illusion he had created, the image of a popular revolution standing up to the American Empire. During these years, much of the world abandoned Venezuela's democratic opposition, caught up in a fever dream spun by Chavez himself. And the greatest irony was that behind all this anti-American theater, Venezuela continued to sell most of its oil to the United States. Because Chavez needed the money. By 2006, Venezuela was supplying roughly 1.5 million barrels per day of crude and refined petroleum products to the U.S. market. Around 60% of Venezuela's total oil exports. Money to fund the missions. Money to buy loyalty. Money to expand his influence abroad and build the next stage of the revolution. Combining anti-US sentiment, regional ambition, and almost unimaginable oil wealth, Chavez turned his sights beyond Venezuela. He wanted to construct a new political reality, one that could reshape Latin America, and perhaps even the world order itself. And now he had everything he needed to build it. This was the birth of Chávez's socialism. El socialismo del siglo XXI. Socialism of the 21st century.