posted on the web on April 21 2003

Country Data

Full Name: Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Capital: Caracas Population: 24,287,670 (2002 est.) Location: South America Total area: 912,050 sq km Language: Spanish Ethnic groups: Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Arab, German, African, indigenous people. Religions: Roman Catholic 96% Currency: Bolivar IGO memberships: UN, WHO, WTO Internet site: Ministry of Foreign Affairs Source: CIA World Factbook

The war with Iraq has inundated national as well as international media. It will surely be a turning point in international diplomacy, the role of the United Nations and the Bush-dubbed 'War against Terror'. It is all the more reason why we should, at this pivotal point, pause to evaluate the current and future coalitions of interest. After thousands of deaths and billions of dollars spent, we have learned that for nations and individuals throughout the world-including some of our "allies"-the values that the United States embodies have become bête-noire. As much as I agree with President Bush, I must urge him to use less rhetoric in his anti-terror speeches but instead, pay more attention to some simple phrases of knowledge. The new slogan for the prolonged campaign against terror should be: 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.'

I hope that our friends in the United States State Department will take into account my proposed motto when they buy gasoline. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article (http://www.petroleumworld.com/storyT551.htm), the Venezuelan state owned oil company, PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela Sociedad Anónima), has been supplying fuel to some 13,400 US gasoline stations since the early 1990s. Although Venezuela has a close-to-perfect track record when it comes to oil, how much can we really depend on this Latin American friend?

First, I must acknowledge that the United States cannot force Citgo out of the hands of PDVSA. Even if it could, why would it want to give the Venezuelan government another reason to hate the US? Second, oil revenues account for more than a third of the GNP of this Latin American country, so it is in their best interest to continually supply the US-the number one buyer of Venezuelan oil. But when our friends at the US government-or any American citizen for that matter-buy gasoline from Citgo, they fail to realize what that money indirectly funds.

More than a year ago, millions of people were dying of hunger, the national education system was-and still is-one of the worst in the region, hospitals were (are) lacking basic medical goods, and the economic crisis had been deepening. Yet Hugo Chavez Frias, the despicable un-leader of Venezuela, bought a magnificent Airbus 319 Corporate Jet, with a price tag of over 65 million dollars. Not only did he buy a new Venezuelan "Air force One," but did not like the interior decoration and had it changed. But Chavez must have a nice décor when he is globe-trotting.

Coincidentally, the first head of state to visit Saddam Hussein since the first Gulf War was Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan Premier's August 10th, 2000 trip to Iraq was part of a world tour to oil exporting countries. The Venezuelan President declared in May of 2002 in an interview with CBS's 60 minutes, "To tell you the truth, I honestly didn't know [the visits would anger the U.S.]." Furthermore, "[I visited Saddam Hussein] for the same reason I decided to visit King Fahd in Saudi Arabia...to revamp OPEC, which was in shambles," "and to insure for you Americans and our brothers on the Continent and the world, a secure supply of oil." He also added in the same interview that, "if I had known [visiting Saddam would anger the U.S.], I still would have gone to Baghdad because what I am basically doing is defending my country's interests."

It comes as no surprise that it was in Chavez's best interest-not necessarily Venezuela's best interest-to visit Saddam. Chavez, who has also called upon Libya's Muammar al-Qadhafi, admires leaders such as (the defeated) Hussein and Castro. He turns to Castro for advice on being a despot and pays close attention to Cuba's tips on how to intimidate the opposition. The infamous Bolivarian Circles, Chavez's main weapon against dissidents, have been compared to Cuba's Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. In reality, they are in the same category as Castro's Interior Rapid Response Brigades, a body formed to verbally and physically assault dissidents.

Castro, as I will show, is one of the biggest pieces of the Chavez jigsaw puzzle. With most of the attention focused on the Iraqi situation, Castro gave the orders to execute three men who stole a vessel to escape the hell of present-day Cuba. More than sixty people were also captured and thrown into jail. This time however, Castro was the one receiving advice about how to murder innocent citizens. A few weeks before the Cuban incident, three Venezuelan nonconformists soldiers had been killed. First the scientific police of Caracas, Venezuela's capital city, had declared the homicides to be "acts of passion," then they changed their minds and argued that they had been caused by an angry mob and finally declared that recent evidence pointed to five armed men. But regardless of who killed the three soldiers and the reasons behind Castro's recent executions, Filinto Duran, a congressman from Chavez' MVR (Movimiento V Republica) party, argued that "it is a free and sovereign practice of a country to apply the death penalty. Personally [I am] not for the death penalty, but I respect the self-determination of peoples."

Intimidation aside, when it comes to oil, Chavez now has a deal with the head of the Cuban revolution. Chavez sells Venezuelan oil to Cuba making no profits. In return, Cuba sends trained professionals to Venezuela, including doctors. These Cuban physicians, exporters of Cuban revolutionary ideals, have been granted permission by the Venezuelan Supreme Court, without the consent of the Venezuelan Medical Association, to practice medicine in Bolivarian soil. The barrels of oil that Chavez has begun to exchange for physicians have made Cuba an oil exporter. The Castro regime does not equitably distribute the Venezuelan crude to its citizens; it ships it to other countries, making sizeable profits. Rumor has it that the great Venezuelan leader gets a big chunk of these Cuban revenues.

So the next time you find yourself pumping gas from your local Citgo gas station you should ask yourself, 'how much of the money I just spent is going to the Chavez-Castro oil venture?'

Leon Skornicki is a student at Princeton University, USA.