Chavez's Insanity Must Be Reigned In Before it Triggers A 'Pinochet' Solution In Venezuela

"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has responded in his characteristically unstable and provocative manner to the useful efforts of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Lula government in Brazil, to defuse the explosive Venezuelan crisis and initiate serious negotiations between the government and opposition there," U.S. Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche commented today.

"The Carter initiative and the efforts of the Brazilian government were the right thing to do," LaRouche said, in reference to the Jan. 20 Carter mission to Venezuela, which proposed two concrete electoral options to address the political crisis there, and the late January Brazilian initiative which established a six-country group of "Friends of Venezuela," to also try to broker serious talks which would begin to de-escalate the crisis.

"Carter and the Friends tried to cool things out, but now Chavez is destroying the very deal that was being put together to bring Venezuela back from the brink. As I noted in a December 21, 2023 statement, ‘There is substantial evidence that Chavez is actually clinically insane... A prompt, quiet, non-bloody solution must be found and agreed upon by the relevant parties, under which Chavez would be induced to step down from office.' Chavez's latest provocations only underscore my earlier assessment and proposed course of action," LaRouche stated.

After the Carter mission and the group of Friends of Venezuela helped pressure the opposition to call an end to the two-month general strike which had largely shut down the Venezuelan economy, including its oil production, Chavez turned around and announced an immediate Jacobin offensive to decapitate all opposition:

* - The strike leaders must be given "more than 25 years in prison for treason to the Fatherland," Chavez said.

* - The head of Fedecamaras, the country's major business federation, would be arrested for his role in the strike.

* - Newly imposed exchange controls would be used to selectively bankrupt the opposition. "Not one dollar for coup-mongers," Chavez said. He announced that he had appointed to the 5-member commission, which is to decide who gets dollars, former Vice President Adina Bastidas, infamous for her remarks justifying the September 11 terror attack as a response to "the terrorism of the oppressors....of WASP domination, which becomes unbearable to the most radical and violent of the dominated."

* - Chavez also threatened violence across Ibero-America: "If the oligarchs of the continent do not understand that changes are inevitable ... the telluric force of this continent will erupt, and as Ernesto [‘Che'] Guevara once said, ‘the cries of battle and the flash of gunfire' will sound.”

LaRouche stated that “What this means is that further urgent efforts are required of friends of Venezuela, to quietly stop this Chavez insanity, before it triggers a Pinochet-style coup in that country, and a consequent left-right firestorm across the continent. It is obvious to me that some nasty faction from within the U.S. is orchestrating the situation around Chavez, including Mont Pelerinite elements within the opposition, who have strong ties to the imperialist ‘chicken-hawk' crowd in Washington. They are exploiting Chavez's mental problems to the end of producing an added element of strategic chaos into both the Ibero-American theater generally, and also the international petroleum issues posed by the current threat of a Mid-East war.

"The essential problem here, is the mental condition of President Chavez himself. His conduct serves no rational interest. As Abba Eban once said to me, during our New York meeting on the subject of Middle East peace, one must never forget that ‘some heads of state are clinically insane.' Chavez is such a complication. The greatest danger, is that someone might use his nuisance-like qualities to turn him into a martyr to Benthamite Jacobinism. Thus, I have warned against a ‘Pinochet' solution for the Chavez problem," LaRouche emphasized.

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Paid for by LaRouche in 2004

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