The AFL-CIO Foreign Policy Program and the 2002 Coup in Venezuela

by Kim Scipes - Worker to Worker
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CONCLUSION

In this paper, this author has taken a comprehensive look at the possibility of AFL-CIO involvement in the April 2002 coup against Venezuela's democratically-elected president, Hugo Chavez Frias. He noted that the AFL-CIO had a long-time foreign policy, that was involved previously in Latin American in general, and specifically in Venezuela. This author previously expressed concerns around the strikingly similar situation to that of Chile before the September 11, 1973 coup, that he also suggested that possibility for Venezuela, although he published the AFL-CIO's denial out of the possibility that its' statement might be correct. However, through discovering a number of independently-produced accounts and analyses--and after seriously considering the AFL-CIO's version of what happened, conveyed through the writings of Stanley Gacek--he came to the conclusion that the AFL-CIO, and specifically its Solidarity Center--played an active and conscious role in helping to create the conditions that led to the April 2002 coup attempt, and also played a similar role in trying to deny the now-established involvement of the CTV leadership in the planning and participating in at least the initial efforts that led to the coup.

Thus, any understanding of the AFL-CIO foreign policy program in the post-1995 years must specifically include its activities in Venezuela, and their similarities to previous pre-1995 operations, most importantly in Chile.
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