Chavez calls for a 'Battle of Ideas' to combat United States interference

(Kiraz Janicke): Speaking at the Cultural Encounter for the Integration of the Peoples of Our America, in Buenos Aires, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for increased Latin American integration and a "battle of ideas" in order to combat United States interference in the region.

The US has launched a colossal media war against the peoples and governments of Latin America Chavez said, because "We have left behind being the US' backyard, this is why they attack us so much."

"They bombard us without clemency, the minds of children, young people, men and women to try to convert us into human beings without a past, disconnected from reality, and into people without a future."

However, he argued, "We have the right to a future, to have a homeland, to create the great homeland. I believe that the next 500 years will depend on what happens in these years, as the panorama of the Conquest [Spanish colonization] changed our map, imposed on us a course, as what happened 200 years ago marked the course of the last two centuries, now we are again in a definitive epoch."

Reaffirming his commitment to socialism as "the only path that will permit us to save the world, because capitalism is the path of the destruction of life and the human species," Chavez stressed that, "Only the conscious peoples, in organization and in motion can make history, therefore the consciousness of our peoples, of our nations, is essential."

This is precisely why North American imperialism attacks and bombards us using their "cultural artillery" ... to placate and divide the peoples, Chavez argued.

"Through offices, analysts and millions of dollars, the United States carries out a media war against our peoples and governments. With different intensities and variants but in exactly the same format," he explained.

The Venezuelan people and government have been subjected to a fierce media war for the past 10 years which was intensified in the last few months, with a dirty psychological war appealing to peoples fears, aimed neutralizing the Venezuelan people, Chavez said. This was one of the key reasons for the electoral defeat of the proposed constitutional reforms during the referendum on December 2 he explained.

Chavez also warned that Venezuela possesses documents to show that "the United States has plans to invade Venezuela." He also said, "the gringos have plans for a coup against Evo Morales."

"They aim for civil wars to then justify the ‘blue helmets' [of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force] or a national intervention."

While the major attacks are aimed principally against Venezuela and Bolivia, Chavez said it is likely that a rightwing campaign of destabilization will intensify against the Constituent Assembly process in Ecuador.

"In Ecuador the Constituent Assembly is beginning, and it is probable that the conflict will intensify; as in Bolivia, where they carried it to such extremes with the manipulation by imperialism and its lackeys through the media war, that is one of the harshest and toughest confrontations of ideas."

Each government cannot confront the threat of imperialism on its own, Chavez argued, rather it is necessary to unite forces and create an "anti-imperialist international of the peoples," to confront imperialist aggression.

"If the empire attacks us, we cannot remain limited to separate resistance. We will have to create an international resistance of workers, of soldiers," he argued.

Chavez indicated that he had spoken of the idea with Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, Rafael Correa, president of Ecuador and Ignacio "Lula" Da Silva, President of Brazil.

However, the changes and transformations occurring in Latin America are "irreversible, Chavez assured. The newly created Bank of the South would push forward Latin American integration he said, and build on previous initiatives such as PetroSur, a project for regional energy integration and development, and TeleSur a Latin American television network.

Other projects Chavez pointed to include the University of the South and the ‘social missions' of the South, initiatives oriented towards combating problems of social exclusion, illiteracy, malnutrition as well as ensuring access to health and education for the peoples of the region.

Chavez, who attended the swearing in of newly elected president of Argentina, Christina Fernandez de Kirchner, and the creation of the Bank of the South on Sunday, also told Argentine business groups at a meeting at the Hotel Sheraton in Buenos Aries on Monday, that relations between Venezuela and Argentina would be strengthened, "politically, socially and economically" under the leadership of Christina Kirchner.

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