While mercurial Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was teasing US President Barack Obama two weeks in his own backyard in New York, one of his powerful right-hand men was in T&T bringing home the reality that tensions were rising fast between the USA and Venezuela. Chavez was interviewed during a visit to the US last week by famed talk show host, Larry King, and cheekily told him that Obama had an open invitation to visit Venezuela.
That invitation had been extended when Obama met Chavez during the Fifth Summit of the Americas held in Port-of-Spain in April, and it was still open, said Chavez. While Chavez was doing so, however, Dr Amilcar Figueroa Salazar, Alternate President of the Latin American Parliament and Venezuelan representative to the National Assembly, was in T&T where he delivered a lecture on September 23 on Peace Strategy in the South American and Caribbean Region.
His very presence, and his message, was T&T was very likely to be caught up in the fray as the US and Venezuela locked horns in combat that is already straying far from the diplomatic front. His lecture at the Venezuelan Embassy, Victoria Avenue, Port-of-Spain came in the context of the US setting up military bases in Colombia and his boss, Hugo Chavez, coming up with a proposal to create some 70 "bases of peace from which the war policy of the North American imperialist and Colombian oligarchy was to be denounced." Salazar highlighted via a map of Central and South America as well as the Caribbean how the US was setting up strategic military bases close to water sources and oil deposits.
UNC Senator Jennifer Jones-Kernahan, who is an executive member of T&T Bolivia Solidarity Committee, said in an FM 91.1 radio interview on the First Up morning show two weeks ago that she believed the US, which got a 99-year lease to thousands of acres of land in Chaguaramas, Wallerfield and Carlsen Field in 1941, was interested in renewing their occupation. This was because of the rising tensions between the US and Venezuela, she asserted. The US gave up the lease in the 1970s, following pressure from the T&T Government led by Dr Eric Williams.
Capacity for war
Addressing an audience who included senior Association of Caribbean States (ACS). Ministry of National Security and Ministry of Foreign Affairs representatives, Dr Salazar said the world thought Obama's rise to power in the US meant the start of a "different way" of relationship with South American countries.
However, with the US beset by the worst economic crisis it had faced in the last 100 years, it was now resorting to an area in which it had a comparative advantage over its neighbours, its "capacity to go to war..."
As Dr Salazar put it: "Although they try to conceal their policy under its new conception of 'intelligent power', the use of force has been historically an expeditious route for their expansion."
After the installation of new North American military sites in Colombia, Chavez had been asked what he thought this move meant for peace and security of the region and he had retorted that "they blow winds of war," reminded Salazar.
Chavez insisted that the US knew no other way to maintain its hegemony over other countries but by military might, Salazar added.
The host of the Larry King Live show asked Chavez if he would invite Obama to Venezuela. He replied: "Of course, I would invite him anytime. When we met I told him: Obama, I gave this hand to Bush eight years ago and told him the same thing I told you...I want to be your friend." Chavez, who replied in Spanish, which was translated by an interpreter, added that Venezuela wanted to have the best of social and economic relations with all countries "but not with an empire..."
"I invited Obama," he repeated, having earlier stressed that Venezuela was on good terms with all countries in the hemisphere, except Colombia and the USA. He told Larry King that the socialist Government of Venezuela, which he heads, exported oil and petrochemical products, not revolution. Each country was entitled to have its own sovereignty, its own ideas, its own leaders; each country should have its own destiny, that was essential, said Chavez.
He told King that he revered Charles Bronson films and thought the actor had died too young. The Venezuelan Ambassador to T&T, Maria Eugenia Marcano Casado, who addressed the audience before Salazar, said a lot of misinformation was being spread around the world about the social and political process in her country. She said she hoped Salazar's address would go a long way to clearing up any misconceptions about the Venezuelan agenda led by Chavez.
