Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had advance warning of last month’s coup attempt against him from the secretary general of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec), Ali Rodriguez, allowing him to prepare an extraordinary plan that saved both his government and his life, an investigation has revealed.
Rodriguez, who is Venezuelan and a former left-wing guerrilla, telephoned Chavez from the Vienna headquarters of Opec, of which Venezuela is a member, several days before the coup attempt last month. He said Opec had learned that some Arab countries, which were later revealed to be Libya and Iraq, planned to call for an oil embargo against the United States over its support for Israel.
The Opec chief warned Chavez that the US would prod a long-simmering coup into action to break any embargo threat. It was likely to act on April 11, the day a general strike was due to start. It was Venezuela that shattered the oil embargo of 1973 by replacing Arab oil with its own huge reserves. The warning explains the swift return of Chavez to power within two days of his capture by military officers under the direction of the coup leader, Pedro Carmona. Until now, it was unclear why Carmona – who had declared himself president – and the military chiefs who backed the coup surrendered without firing a shot.
The answer to the mystery, according to a Chavez insider, is that several hundred pro-Chavez troops were hidden in secret corridors under Miraflores, the presidential palace.
Juan Barreto, a leader of Chavez’s party in the national assembly, was with the president when he was under siege. Barreto said that Jose Baduel, chief of the paratroop division loyal to Chavez, had waited until Carmona was inside Miraflores. Baduel then phoned Carmona to tell him that, with troops virtually under his chair, he was as much a hostage as Chavez. He gave Carmona 24 hours to return Chavez alive.
Escape from Miraflores was impossible for Carmona. The building was surrounded by hundreds of thousands of pro-Chavez demonstrators who, alerted by a sympathetic foreign affairs minister, had marched on it from the Ranchos, one of the poorest neighbourhoods.
Chavez, after receiving the Opec warning, hoped to stave off the coup by issuing a statement to mollify the Bush administration pledging that Venezuela would neither join nor tolerate a new oil embargo. But he had already incurred US wrath by slashing Venezuelan oil output and rebuilding Opec, causing oil prices to rise steeply to more than $20 a barrel.
His opponents had made it clear that they would not abide by Opec production limits and would reverse his plan to double the royalties charged to foreign oil companies in Venezuela.