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Hugo Chávez was a Venezuelan military officer who led a failed coup attempt against the Venezuelan government in 1992 and was imprisoned for it. Several years later, he ran for President and won. The above video, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Chavez – Inside the Coup),” documents the brief 2002 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez after he had been in power for several years. The coup succeeded for a day or two and then Chávez returned to power. A reply video titled “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Lies” has been produced. However, most of its arguments deal with relatively superficial to nearly irrelevant details of the situation. One of its more serious claims is that the general strikes immediately preceding the coup attempt which had been intended to bring down the government were headed by both the business union (FEDECAMERAS) and the labor union leaders (CTV) but it does not mention that CTV, which had made major concessions to neoliberal interests in the prior decade, suffered debilitating losses of support as a result of this alliance. (See Ellner’s “The Venezuelan Labor Movement Under Chávez” for more on Venezuelan labor movement history.) This second and much shorter video, “Venezuela – Uncle Sam’s Coup,” features the work of Eva Gollinger, a dual U. S.-Venezuelan citizen who has dug up U. S. government documents related to the coup attempt. As her efforts uncovered, a CIA brief contained detailed information about the coup weeks in advance of its occurrence. The money trail behind the plot led these investigators straight to Washington, where records showed hundreds of thousands of American dollars being funneled into Venezuelan opposition groups in the year prior to the coup attempt. [END] Permalink: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Uncle Sam’s Coup