The U.S. government offered as rationalization for its action, which was announced in a presidential memorandum on September 10, the accusation that the administration of Hugo Chávez had failed to crack down sufficiently on “human trafficking.”

A report released by the State Department in June alleged that “Venezuela is a source, transit, and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation.” The report added that “Brazilian and Colombian women and girls are trafficked through Venezuela.”

“This is an attempt at blackmail,” Venezuela’s deputy foreign minister, Arevalo Méndez, said in a statement released in Caracas September 13. He said Bush’s order is an example of “feudal imperialist policies.”

Méndez said his government has been working hard to stop “human trafficking” through its territory. “We recognize we have a problem,” he said, “but it has neither the magnitude nor the nature that Mr. Bush’s government claims.”

A statement by Venezuela’s permanent mission to the United Nations in New York the next day said the White House order was unjustified and unusual. The communiqué pointed out that the government of Venezuela is a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Organized Transnational Crime and the Protocol to Prevent and Penalize Human Trafficking, but Washington is not.

The White House order was the latest salvo by the U.S. rulers against the Chávez administration since a large majority in Venezuela defeated a presidential recall referendum in August aimed at removing the elected government. The pro-imperialist opposition coalition Coordinadora Democrática, which spearheaded the failed recall effort—the third attempt to topple the popular government in two years—is led by weighty sectors of Venezuela’s capitalist class and has had Washington’s support.

Measures passed by Venezuela’s government since 2001, such as an agrarian reform and a law tightening state control of the country’s natural resources, especially oil, have angered most local capitalists and their allies in the United States. The establishment of normal trade and diplomatic ties with Cuba, and the work in Venezuela of more than 15,000 volunteer doctors and literacy teachers from Cuba for the last two years, is also behind the unceasing hostility by U.S. imperialism against the government in Caracas.

Chávez, who is visiting the United States to appear at the opening session of the UN General Assembly, is scheduled to speak September 20, 7 p.m., at a public meeting at New York’s Riverside Church.

The address of the church is: 490 Riverside Drive between 120th and 122nd Sts. For tickets and information call: 1-800-436-7082; pin: 2065949 and #.  
 
 
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