"AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again"

By Kim Scipes

Massive mobilizations, strikes, street conflict, hysterical mass media, social and economic disruption: Chile in 1972-73 Venezuela in 2002-04.

The AFL-CIO is once again on the scene, this time in Venezuela, just as it was in Chile in 1973. Once again, its operations in that country are being funded by the U.S. government. This time, the money is being laundered through the quasi-governmental National Endowment for Democracy, hidden from AFL-CIO members and the American public.

Once again, it is being used to support the efforts of reactionary labor and business leaders, helping to destabilize a democratically-elected government that has made major efforts to alleviate poverty, carried out significant land reform in both urban and rural areas, and striven to change political institutions that have long worked to marginalize those at the lowest rungs in society. And also like Allende's Chile, Venezuela's government under president Hugo Chavez has opposed a number of actions by the U.S. Government, this time by the Bush Administration.
www.trinicenter.com/oops/2004/2903.html