by Tim Weiner
New York Times, April 14, 2002

MEXICO CITY -- When is a coup not a coup? When the United States says so, it seems -- especially if the fallen leader is no friend to American interests.

What else to call the fall on Friday of Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez? An armed transition of power? By any other name, though its European and Latin American allies deplored it, it was a consummation devoutly wished for by the White House.

"The actions encouraged by the Chavez government provoked a crisis," the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said on Friday. That sentence was spring-loaded, given the history of Latin American coups tacitly encouraged or covertly supported by the United States.

For Washington, the real crisis in Caracas was Mr. Chavez. It ended with his leaving office at gunpoint. Now 1.5 million barrels of Venezuelan oil a day will keep flowing to the United States. And none will go to Fidel Castro's Cuba -- Venezuela's new leader, an oil man, immediately declared that tap shut.

In Latin America, the United States has long preferred friendly faces in presidential palaces, playing reliable roles, whether or not they are wearing uniforms. It supported authoritarian regimes throughout Central and South America during and after the cold war in defense of its economic and political interests.

In tiny Guatemala, the Central Intelligence Agency mounted a coup overthrowing the democratically elected government in 1954, and it backed subsequent right-wing governments against small leftist rebel groups for four decades. Roughly 200,000 civilians died.

In Chile, a C.I.A.-supported coup helped put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power from 1973 to 1990. In Peru, a fragile democratic government is still unraveling the agency's role in a decade of support for the now-deposed and disgraced president, Alberto K. Fujimori, and his disreputable spy chief, Vladimiro L. Montesinos.

The United States had to invade Panama in 1989 to topple its narco-dictator, Manuel A. Noriega, who, for almost 20 years, was a valued informant for American intelligence. And the struggle to mount an armed opposition against Nicaragua's leftists in the 1980's by any means necessary, including selling arms to Iran for cold cash, led to indictments against senior Reagan administration officials.

Among those investigated back then was Otto J. Reich, a veteran of Latin American struggles. No charges were ever filed against Mr. Reich. He later became United States ambassador to Venezuela and now serves as assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs by presidential appointment. The fall of Mr. Chavez is a feather in his cap.

THERE is so far no evidence that the United States covertly undermined Mr. Chavez. He did a decent job destabilizing himself. But the open White House embrace of his overthrow will not be lost on Latin American leaders who dare thumb their noses at the United States, as did Mr. Chavez.

Yes, he was freely and democratically elected, and his starry-eyed visions of a united South America unshackled from the dominance of Washington's power did not bother the administration much. But his selling oil to Mr. Castro? His alliances with his brothers in petroleum production, Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi? His not-so-tacit support for the Colombian rebels? And the potential threat he posed to thousands of American gas stations?

Above all, the United States wants stability in its backyard. Mr. Chavez did not fit in with President Bush's vision of "the century of the Americas" in "a hemisphere of liberty."

The Organization of American States, the most venerable alliance in the Americas, has a new Democracy Charter, signed by every one of its members, including the United States, on Sept. 11. It requires strong action against military coups. Yet, in all likelihood, it will be ignored in Venezuela's case, because Washington wanted Mr. Chavez gone.

Today, armed dictatorships cannot flourish as easily as they did in the cold war. Ideologies have little power left in Latin America. But civil institutions have less. Laws, legislatures and legal mechanisms have been starved by strong armies and weak democracies. The promised land of political empowerment pledged by free traders still seems far away. And in Venezuela, despite its oil, more than 85 percent of the people are still dirt poor.

"Venezuela has been in and out of crises like this for 50 years, with arrogant elites overthrown by popular uprisings whose leaders become arrogant elites," said David J. Rothkopf, chairman of Intellibridge, a Washington consulting firm run by former senior intelligence and foreign policy officials. "The only cure would be to extract all the oil from Venezuela at once."