Chávez budgets $250 million for 'alternative' groups
Venezuela's proposed budget includes more than $250 million for
'anti-imperialist' groups in the United States and Latin America.
Posted on Sat, Nov. 24, 2007
By CASTO OCANDO
El Nuevo Herald
In an ambitious push to extend President Hugo Chávez's revolutionary
ideology, the Venezuelan government's draft 2008 budget includes more
than $250 million to finance pro-Chávez groups and ''anti-imperialist''
movements in the United States, Central and South America and Mexico.
Under the draft budget, given initial legislative approval earlier this
week, the Foreign Ministry would finance an ample variety of foreign
activities, including the ''consolidation'' of the
Venezuela-Cuba-Bolivia axis, the strengthening of alternative movements
in Central America and Mexico, and the promotion of solidarity ``with
sectors that have been excluded from the North American Society.''
In the past two years, the oil-rich Chávez administration has committed
some $18 billion, between agreements and donations, to countries in the
Americas in what analysts view as an effort to buy support for his
leftist-populist policies.
The draft was the first time that the government publicly included in
the Foreign Ministry's budget these types of spending plans for programs
to promote Chávez's ideology abroad.
The Venezuelan government has allegedly intervened in presidential
campaigns in Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Ecuador, Bolivia and
Argentina. Caracas has denied the complaints and there has been little
evidence to back them up.
Chávez is ''making use of the enormous amount of money that comes from
high oil prices to buy support from Latin American countries and promote
anti-American initiatives,'' said Peter Hakim, president of the
InterAmerican Dialogue, a Washington think tank.
KEY AREAS
The draft budget discussed by the National Assembly, dominated by Chávez
supporters, identifies eight key areas of influence and includes
strategies to strengthen the links to countries like Iran, Syria,
Belarus, and Vietnam.
For Latin America, it includes plans to consolidate ALBA, Chávez's
response to the free-market treaties promoted by the United States, and
a strategy to ``neutralize the actions of the empire, [by] strengthening
the solidarity and the public opening of organized social movements.''
In Central America and Mexico, the draft says the Venezuelan government
expects to ''strengthen alternative movements'' in ``the search for an
erosion from the imperial domination.''
After the draft budget was first made public last month, Mexican
congress members protested and the Foreign Ministry in Mexico City
demanded an explanation from Venezuela.
Mexico expelled two Venezuelan ambassadors and another top diplomat in
the past three years, accusing them of promoting pro-Chávez candidates
and organizing pro-Chávez groups in alliance with Mexican radical
leftists factions.
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, a former Mexican legislator who first denounced the
Venezuelan meddling in his country's politics in 2004, said that the use
of Venezuelan funds to finance ideological groups could be a matter of
``national security.''
He cited the recent seizure of a weapons shipment in the Mexican port of
Veracruz, that arrived from Venezuela and was suspected of being
destined for leftist Mexican guerrillas. The Mexican congress is
investigating the incident.
In the United States, the Venezuelan-owned CITGO oil company has been
selling discounted heating oil to poor families in the northeast and
even Alaska's indigenous groups.
`AN OFFENSIVE'
The draft 2008 budget also sets aside up to $70 million for trips abroad
by government officials, including $20 million destined for activities
by the Venezuelan military.
'This is an offensive by . . . Chávez so that the Venezuelan military
can have influence in friendly countries like Bolivia, where there are
Venezuelan functionaries and military equipment helping [leftist
President] Evo Morales' government,'' said Carlos Berrizbeitia, a former
Venezuelan lawmaker and leader of the opposition Proyecto Venezuela.
Berrizbeitia said that over the past seven years, most of the resources
managed by Chávez for foreign agreements and aid has come from oil
income that has not been in the official budget.
''There is no way to supervise those expenses,'' he added.
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