By: Mark Fitzgerald "I'm going to Caracas," I tell a friend who in the 1990s traveled there frequently as a senior executive for a multinational corporation. His immediate response: "I never went anywhere in Caracas without an armed guard."
Hmm, I think to myself, that's not in the budget.
It would be a comment that captured the tensions of my late-November trip to Venezuela as part of a delegation of Inter American Press Association (IAPA) directors. We were going to Caracas at the request ? the insistence, really ? of IAPA's Venezuelan members who were alarmed at the latest threat to press freedom from their increasingly authoritarian president, Hugo Ch?vez. Sweeping constitutional changes in a Dec. 2 referendum threatened to remake Venezuela as Cuba with Ch?vez as its Fidel Castro, they warn.
We know one thing for certain about going to Venezuela ? we won't be welcome.
IAPA and Ch?vez have a history. His hostility soared after an aborted coup in 2002, when ? in the view of even many objective observers ? the national news-papers and television stations openly cheered the feckless golpistas.
Referring to IAPA by its Spanish acronym, his vice president once spit out: "SIP es una latrina." No translation necessary.
At its Miami annual meeting in October, IAPA President Earl Maucker, editor of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, had revealed that hotel after hotel were suddenly refusing to host our long-planned March 2008 mid-year meeting. Maybe the government was putting pressure on them. Maybe they just didn't want the political heat we might bring.
Now, even getting a relatively small group of us into Venezuela is starting to look daunting.
As the Nov. 18 date for the study mission draws closer, the National Assembly's deputy speaker ? a journalist by trade, ironically ? wants our delegation declared personas non grata. Student demonstrations against Ch?vez had turned violent, and we are coming, she says, to stir up more.
"You had to wonder," Maucker would say afterward, "how would the population, the pro-Ch?vez folks, react to that?"
No matter what, he adds, we're going.
SATURDAY, NOV. 17My lingering fears of being turned back at Simon Bolivar International Airport prove groundless as Bruce Brugmann, editor and co-owner of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and I breeze through immigration.
A sign by the baggage claim announces, "Venezuela ? Now it's for Everyone!" Not just, I guess, Ch?vez's domestic enemies, the "oligarchy."
Just outside is a huge billboard, reminiscent of ones I'd seen in Havana, showing a satanic-looking Uncle Sam setting fire to corn. Like Fidel Castro, Ch?vez believes ethanol is a crime against the world's hungry. "Food is not fuel!" it reads. "Reject the Harvest of Death!"
For the next three days, I would see Ch?vez propaganda at almost literally every turn.
On nearly every usable vertical surface on the long drive from the airport to Caracas, there were a series of neatly stenciled paintings, in the trademark Ch?vez red, proclaiming support for the constitutional changes with the slogan "Yes, With Ch?vez!"
But then, there were apparently a lot of freelancers on the "reforma" bandwagon, too. "S?" was spray-painted in red everywhere around the city, or marked in soap on the windows of countless automobiles. I would be in Caracas 24 hours before I saw a single "No."
SUNDAY, NOV. 18Bruce and I decide to explore Caracas ahead of our first meetings that evening.
A cab driver declines to take us to our destination, Bolivar Plaza, because, he says, there would be too much traffic and hassle from the "megamercal." The what? An event with lots of food. Oh, so kind of like an art fair, I say. His silent look tells me I had a lot to learn about life with Ch?vez as your president.
Oil has fueled a huge consumer binge reflected in the many SUVs in the streets and expensive Scotch in clubs. But Ch?vez's socialist tinkering with price controls on food basics is also causing things like milk and meat to disappear from grocery shelves. At occasional megamercals run by Ch?vez's food ministry, long lines form to buy these basics at cheap prices.
The next day, front-page headlines in the leading independent newspapers will take some none-too-subtle shots at the megamercal. "Lines like in Cuba," El Nacional says. "It's Caracas, Not Havana," jibes El Universal.
At a Metro stop we wait in our own long line for tickets. The clean and modern subway includes ads for the usual consumer products ? and Ch?vez. At every stop, sleek graphics urge a "Yes" vote for reforma with the tag line, "Nothing can stop the Revolution!"
On impulse, we stop short of our intended destination ? and walk right into a pro-Ch?vez rally. Children jumped on inflatable slides, and knots of excited girls in Ch?vez red bounce to a rumba blaring from a bus. "Yes, yes, yes!" the chorus goes. Venezuela is turning from the old corruption, "for good." Hawkers sell red caps and t-shirts with a grinning Ch?vez on the front and the legend "S?! I'm a socialist!" on the back.
The megamercal had apparently decamped by the time Bruce and I arrive at Bolivar Plaza, home to the Ch?vez- controlled Supreme Court and National Assembly. A small crowd gathered around a man excitedly declaiming his cause. It's not politics ? but pills that would enable his male buyers to perform "three, four, five times" a night.
MEET THE PRESS, PART IA little before 7 p.m., our group assembles for our first meeting with Venezuelan IAPA members.
From the United States, there is me, Bruce, Earl Maucker, and Ed Seaton, publisher of Seaton Newspapers' flagship Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury. From Colombia: Enrique Santos Calder?n, co-director of the nation's biggest daily, El Tiempo in Bogota, and IAPA's first vice president. Gonzalo Marroquin heads the IAPA's committee on freedom of the press and expression, and is director of Prensa Libre, Guatemala's biggest daily. Alejo Mir? Quesada heads the influential El Comercio daily in Peru. From IAPA's Miami headquarters comes Executive Director Julio E. Mu?oz and its press freedom director, Ricardo Trotti.
I knew that IAPA missions are big deals in the countries they visit, but I hadn't figured on the media scrum that awaits, and would pounce at our every meeting. We have a long photo op, and then close the door to hear from the members.
They are among old association friends, but they are a grim-faced group of 16, sitting stiffly in their chairs. They tell of constant intimidation by elected officials and Ch?vez supporters, who target reporters and circulation workers, and vandalize property.
None of this is new to us. Over the past eight years, IAPA has scrupulously documented the many ways Chavez has systematically sought to muzzle and intimidate the press. Beyond his relentless verbal attacks and the imposition of financial controls that vastly raised the cost and availability of newsprint, independent dailies like El Universal and El Nacional saw the government's hand in mobs from "Bolivarian circles" that would blockade or vandalize their offices in "repudiation" demonstrations.
A 2005 IAPA report found that newspaper photographers and TV cameramen were assaulted by Chavez supporters so often they were afraid to wear vests with their news organization's logos. The government ratcheted up penalties and prosecutions for libel and "insult" laws, in which the truth is not necessarily a defense.
"You come here, and there is criticism [of Chavez] on the front pages of some papers, and there are people talking about him on TV, and it seems like there is free speech, it might be hard to understand the intimidation," Miguel Henrique Otero, El Nacional's editor, tells us.
The proposed "reforms" that were getting the most attention included provisions allowing Ch?vez to seek re-election for the rest of his life, and to suspend all freedom of expression during open-ended "states of exception" that he could decree unilaterally. But the media owners are as much worried about provisions giving the government new rights to "communal" property.
It promises to protect only "legitimately acquired" private property. The Venezuela media owners know how that will go: Even without "reform," the government seized Radio Caracas TV's broadcast equipment after its license expired last May, and replaced it with a pro-Ch?vez channel.
"Once he gets this, he will come after us," one TV station owner declares.
The gloomy media owners figure one way or another, Ch?vez would win on Dec. 2. International groups like the European Union who sent election observers to Ch?vez's past landslide victories weren't invited this time. "So not even the Carter Center is coming?" one of us asks. It's a rare moment of comic relief. Nobody, it seems, trusts Jimmy Carter. "That would be worse!" two or three shout at the same time.
MONDAY, NOV. 19With the start of the work week, Caracas becomes the congested, polluted, bumptious place described in the many tourist guidebooks that advise you to get on your way pronto to a lovely Venezuela resort like Margarita Island before you get mugged.
IAPA's visit is teased on the front pages of the two biggest papers, with articles and photos inside. El Universal often complains it doesn't get nearly the amount of government advertising its size would merit, but it has a big ad today: The National Assembly reprints its verbose resolution asking the government to declare our IAPA mission "non grata."
"IAPA does not defend the right of the people to be informed in a timely, accurate manner, but instead spreads lies and misinformation and justifies acts of censorship by publishers, which in fact does curtail freedom of speech," the resolution declares.
It seems I've come to Venezuela "as part of a new propaganda attack aimed at turning public opinion against the Bolivarian process." Today, we will learn that it isn't just the "oligarchic" media owners who oppose Ch?vez's reforms. We hear from a human rights organizer accused of "treason," a constitutional lawyer who calls the constitutional changes not "reform but fraud," a journalist trade union head who thinks Ch?vez will use the changes to eliminate unions.
No one from the government will meet with the hated IAPA, but the head of a pro-Ch?vez association styling itself "Journalists for the Truth" (PPV for its initials in Spanish) will. But Marcos Hern?ndez has shown up with a big group, cameras in tow, that's demanding to tape the proceedings, says the jittery secretary general of Venezuela's publishers' association. She worries they want to embarrass us by making a big scene.
After a flurry of whispered negotiations, everyone is settled in, and Maucker assures PPV that we want a dialogue. "We have common ground," he says. "Like you, we have no political power, and we also seek to serve the common good."
The response from Hernandez is an angry dressing-down of IAPA, which has insulted the nation and its journalists with its lies and references to the Ch?vez "regime."
IAPA is a creation of the CIA, declares Harim Rodr?guez D'Sant?ago of pro-government radio network RNV Circuito Radial. It's an apologist for dictators, with the blood of the 2002 coup on its hands. "In Venezuela, you can find the largest, greatest, biggest freedom of speech in the world ever," Rodriguez says with ringing voice.
Ed Seaton reminds PPV that over the decades IAPA has butted heads frequently with right-wing authoritarians such as Chile's Pinochet, Paraguay's Stroessner, and the Dirty War-era generals of Argentina and Brazil. Prensa Libre's Marroquin politely but firmly defends IAPA reports and resolutions on Venezuela, but concedes that maybe it was a mistake to use the loaded word "regime."
When our meeting is over, Hernandez steps before a throng of cameras waiting in the hall to declare that IAPA has acknowledged its report and resolutions were "wrong" ? that we had been "misled" by our Venezuelan members. It is a lie Journalists for the Truth would repeat for anyone who would listen.
TUESDAY, NOV. 20The first thing I see on TV in the morning is repeated images of a Chavista National Assembly member slapping a journalist and striking him with his own microphone.
"I just hope something like that doesn't happen here," Maucker says as we walk to a movie theatre in a shopping mall that's the site of our concluding press conference. Once more, some of our hosts pass along the rumor that the Journalists for Truth are planning a confrontation.
The press conference is thronged. "I'm always struck by how much impact we have in Latin America ? and how little impact we have in the United States," Maucker will say later.
Marroquin, who had a TV show of his own in Guatemala, is particularly eloquent. "I would only say to the Venezuela media," he says at one point, "not to fall into the despair of self-censorship."
"I think we accomplished what we set out to do," Maucker would later say. "We showed solidarity with our membership. We did not make any comment derogatory toward government, or the election process."
The government doesn't return the favor. Minutes after the press conference concludes, Ch?vez's information minister, Willian Lara, issues a statement dismissing us as "cobas" for our Big Media bosses. Take your pick: the word can mean liars or suck-ups.
On the way out to the airport, we passed a traffic circle. Someone had spray-painted a series of "No!'s" on the curb. A man in a red shirt was literally whitewashing them, one after another.
EPILOGUEAmazingly, on Dec. 1 the reforms go down to defeat, 51% to 49%. Just as surprisingly, the election council filled with Ch?vez supporters certifies the election. Perhaps most remarkably, the mercurial Ch?vez, who just 48 hours before declared he would be president until 2050, calmly accepts Venezuela's judgment.
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