Venezuela's Chavez and the US "Day Without Immigrants"
Thomas Lifson and A.M. Mora y Leon | The American Thinker
01.05.06 | Hugo Chavez of Venezuela does not lack for ambition. Sitting atop billions of petrodollars, closely allied with Fidel Castro (whose life span soon is nearing its natural end), Chavez is already sticking his nose in the business of other Western Hemisphere nations, supporting leftist candidates, Marxist rebels, aimed at toppling American imperialism, and buying far more arms than would be necessary to defend his borders.
There is every reason to suspect that Hugo Chavez may even be playing a planning and supporting role in today’s (May 1st – the Communist holiday) “Day Without an Immigrant” demonstrations.
Hugo Chavez has never shied away from interference in American domestic politics. Working with Democrat Congressmen from Massachusetts, he launched a publicity stunt sale of home heating oil at a discount last winter. He is building a base of client groups and politicans in the United States, allies to help him smooth down objections to his other activities. Investigators have barely begun to scratch the surface of his political involvements within our borders.
Communists of many stripes have endorsed today’s demonstrations, as have many other groups on the left. Many clearly see that encumbering the United States with a serious irredentist movement, powered by millions of new voters sneaking across our borders and eventually gaining the franchise, will divert us from fighting Communists and their de facto allies like Iran’s mullahs.
Some leaders like Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Cardinal Roger Mahony are distancing themselves at least from the calls for school boycotts. They are joined by other groups worried about a backlash.
But there is more reason than mere concordance of goals to suspect a serious connection between Hugo Chavez and the demonstration’s leaders.
The web site (maintained by the National Immigrant Solidarity Network” a “coalition” whose members names are not readily visible) of the May 1 “Day Without An Immigrant” protest in Los Angeles contains its very own Hugo Chavez newswire of sorts, a string of news events centered around Chavez’s Caracas-based World Social Forum in January. Click here, and note the “Americas Watch” section.
Reading the articles linked to the demonstration home page can only lead one to the conjecture that Hugo Chavez has been actively helping the planning of events like today’s demonstration.
Back in January, Hugo Chavez hoisted the 6th World Social Forum, a gigantic collection of left wing activists from all over the world. During this time, a lot of talk and a lot of planning seems to have taken place, some of it directly relevant to today’s demonstrations. The fact that the demonstration’s web page links back to articles about the Forum, completes the loop. This is not enough proof to stand up in court, perhaps, but it does demonstrate alignment.
It’s noteworthy that Chavez said at the time of the Social Forum that he didn’t want the event to be just a “revolutionary tourism” event, but a platform for more protests targeted at the U.S “imperialists.” In particular, Chavez praised the effort to stop a border fence even said he wanted to be involved with the U.S. border struggle. Other media was noted he clownishly said he’d like camp out with the illegal immigration activists to protest a proposed border fence. That issue, of course, has become white hot for the May 1 protest.
Each article linked sheds light on who’s behind this vast immigrant unrest scheduled for today.
The first article describes a series of protests being planned for March. It’s not known if immigration protests were part of it, but it’s significant that the first big immigration protest happened in Los Angeles on March 25.
In this article (scroll down), we see a Social Forum group discussing a group of Mexican (from Mexico) legislators planning a trip to Washington to lobby Congress about immigration measures. The key passage from the January meeting in Caracas is here:
In the meantime, a delegation of lawmakers from Mexico earned the backing of legislators from throughout the region in their opposition to a bill currently before the U.S. Congress aimed at extending the fences already blocking portions of the U.S.-Mexican border, among other measures.
Rafael Quintanar, a legislator from the centre-left Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in the Mexican state of Quintano Roo, told IPS: “We want to condemn the wall of death that the United States is erecting on the border, and the new immigration law,” which could come to a vote next month, and would penalise both undocumented immigrants and their eventual employers.
Another PRD representative, Emiliano Ramos, said that the party is collecting declarations of support and solidarity for Mexico from two dozen Latin American lawmakers, which it plans to send to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Another initiative being discussed at the WSF, Ramos added, is the organisation of a march from Central America to a point on the Mexican border with the United States, where a forum on migration is to be held in March.
The fence that the United States wants to throw up along the border “is the wall of indignity, death, racism, impunity and legalised crime,” he maintained.
What’s interesting about that is that Mexican legislators from Mexico have now flown up to Los Angeles to express “solidarity” for the immigrants as they try to “shut down the city” on May 1. It would be interesting to know if they were the same ones. In another item, we learn that world leftist protests are to take an “offensive phase.” At the bottom of the immigration agitators’ “Americas Watch” page, there are other items very dear to the heart of Hugo Chavez – killing free trade in the Americas – a cause Chavez has desperately been trying to push, Haiti troubles, anti-CAFTA efforts, and the offensive to demonize President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. What is significant about all of them is that all (except a lone item against Arnold Schwarzenegger) are causes Hugo Chavez has been very vocal and active in promoting. The Schwarzenegger item is probably significant because of the California aspect of the protests and ought to be watched. Schwarzenegger and Chavez’s ally Cuban dictator Fidel Castro have exchanged insults in the past. Is this sudden wave of immigration activism hitting Los Angeles and the rest of the nation something Hugo Chavez is involved in? It’s attracting a host of political opportunists anyway.
This is an issue we ought to be watching closely. If Hugo Chavez is instigating or financing any of this, then we are seeing a whole new kind of attack against the U.S.
The deeper truth is that irredentism is congenial to our serious enemies because they recognize its potential to subvert America.
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