In Venezuela, White Supremacy Is a Key Driver of the Coup

[Judi Lynn]

In Venezuela, White Supremacy Is a Key Driver of the Coup
BY
Greg Palast, Truthout
PUBLISHED
February 7, 2019

Note: Palast covered Venezuela during the Chavez presidency for BBC Television Newsnight and the Guardian. Readers of Truthout may download, for free, the film of Palast’s BBC reports, The Assassination of Hugo Chavez. This article incorporates additional reporting by William Camacaro in Caracas.


On January 23, right after a phone call from Donald Trump, Juan Guaidó, former speaker of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declared himself president. No voting. When you have official recognition from The Donald, who needs elections?

Say what?

I can explain what’s going on in Venezuela in photos.



First, we have Juan Guaidó, self-proclaimed (and Trump-proclaimed) president of the nation, with his wife and child, a photo prominently placed in The New York Times. And here, the class photo of Guaidó’s party members in the National Assembly. They appear, overwhelmingly light-skinned — especially when compared to their political opposites in the third photo, the congress members who support the elected President Nicolás Maduro.

This is the story of Venezuela in black and white, the story not told in The New York Times or the rest of our establishment media. This year’s so-called popular uprising is, at its heart, a furious backlash of the whiter (and wealthier) Venezuelans against their replacement by the larger Mestizo (mixed-race) poor. (Forty-four percent of the population that answered the 2014 census listed themselves as “white.”)

Four centuries of white supremacy in Venezuela by those who identify their ancestors as European came to an end with the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, who won with the overwhelming support of the Mestizo majority. This turn away from white supremacy continues under Maduro, Chavez’s chosen successor.

In my interviews with Chavez for BBC beginning in 2002, he talked with humor about the fury of a white ruling class finding itself displaced by a man who embraced his own Indigenous and African heritage.

More:
https://truthout.org/articles/in-venezuela-white-supremacy-is-a-key-driver-of-the-coup/

[Perseus]

1. Palast could not be more wrong about this

Where did he get this from? Where is the push to defend the Venezuelan regime that has brought chaos to the country? I don't get it.

Sure, by looking at the very white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes of Guaido is easy to come to that conclusion, right?

[shadowmayor]

2. Probably from his many visits to Venezuela

Any time you see all the Fawning Corporate Media get in line with the White House, you know something crooked is going down. When Hannity and Maddow start spewing the same scary message it's time for critical thinking. This whole episode has been rolled out like a WMD redux.