The Peacemaker by Eva Golinger

Dandelion Salad

by Eva Golinger
venezuelanalysis.com
ZNet
March 11th 2008

President Chávez’s diplomatic tone and calm demeanor brokered peace between Andean nations on the brink of war at the Rio Group Summit in Santo Domingo late last week, yet the media portrays him as a “dictator” and “threat to the region”.

PERHAPS the most misrepresented and demonized figure in the media today, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, recently became a symbol of peace and diplomacy at the Rio Group Summit in Santo Domingo this past March 7. Chávez’s diplomatic, affectionate tone and his call to peace between sister nations calmed tensions between Colombia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, which just hours before had been on the brink of war after Colombia unilaterally violated Ecuador’s territory without permission or notification in order to bomb and assassinate a leader of the Fuerzas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) who was camped with a group of visiting Mexicans on the Ecuatorian side of the border. All those stationed at the FARC camp were killed, with the exception of three women, including one Mexican, who were injured and left by Colombian soldiers to die but were later rescued by Ecuatorian armed forces. Chávez, who had ordered his troops to the Colombian border and warned President Uribe of Colombia that a similar attempt to violate Venezuela’s sovereignty would be met with force, was quickly labeld by the international media as a “warmonger” and “responsable” for the conflict in the region. Colombia’s government, publicly backed by President Bush himself, accused Chávez and President Correa of Ecuador of aiding and funding the FARC, a group labeled “terrorist” by the United States, Colombia and the European Union, and even went so far as to implicate Chávez in the proposed sale of uranium to the FARC in order to build dirty bombs. These unsubstantiated – and extremely dangerous – allegations fall right in line with the increased efforts of the Bush Administration to label Chávez’s Venezuela as a nation that supports “drug trafficking”, “terrorism” and “money laundering”, and to classify Chávez as a “dictator”, “authoritarian” and “threat to U.S. interests.”

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