Background on Venezuela

Wrote this a good while back, but since the US and the US corporate media are dead set on another coup attempt in Venezuela... soon, I figured people might want to know the history. Though both parts start in Haiti, where a successful coup was carried out against the democratically elected government by both Bush administrations, to explain Venezuela it is necessary to show the similarities between the successful coup against Aristide's government and the failed coup against the government of Chavez. -SG

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Part I

In 1994, when my last Special Forces team, Operational Detachment Alpha 354, entered the Haitian city of Gonaives, I along with three members of that detachment waded through a huge and agitated crowd to encounter four soldiers and two plainclothes death squad members about to fire into that crowd with M-1 Garands. They were surprised to see us, and we took advantage of that surprise to compel them to lay their weapons down and submit to arrest. One of the plainclothes gents hesitated to relinquish his weapon, and I came very... LINK to Part 1

Part II

Haiti has two predominant ruling classes, one based on land and one based on money. Duvalier's base was among the landed class that exploited peasants in a sharecropping system. Their dominance was challenged by the mechanized capitalist form of agriculture that was imposed on much of the island in conjunction with the 19-year US Marine occupation of Haiti from 1915-1934. This accounts for Duvalier's hostility to the US, which was only resolved when both Duvalier and the US... LINK to Part 2