Vzla: Chavez's little helper

Brooklyn immigration lawyer Eva Golinger usually spends her time navigating government bureaucracy to get visas for musicians from Latin America, such as the Grammy Award-winning Los Fabulosos Cadillacs.

But since a 2002 coup in her mother's homeland, Venezuela, Golinger has become alarmed at what she says is U.S. government funding for groups there that aim to overthrow the elected president, Hugo Chávez. She has spent months digging out 2,000 pages of documents on U.S. financing of groups opposed to Chávez.

In mid-February, Golinger's findings helped prompt Chávez to charge that the Bush administration is "using its people's money to support not only opposition activities but acts of conspiracy." That charge has helped revive tensions between Chávez and the White House.

The money that alarms Golinger is disbursed by the private but congressionally funded National Endowment for Democracy, which says its mission is "to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts." The endowment is giving $922,000 to Venezuelan groups this year and handed out $1,046,323 last year, according to Chris Sabatini, its senior program officer for Latin America.

When business and military leaders ousted Chávez for two days in April 2002, two men whose organizations were funded by the National Endowment for Democracy or its grantees were named to the junta's cabinet: Leonardo Carvajal of the Civil Education Association was offered the post of education minister, and Leopoldo Martínez of the right-wing Primero Justicia party was named finance minister.

"How can they [the endowment] say they are supporting democracy when they are funding groups that backed the coup?" Golinger asked.

Sabatini said there is no evidence that endowment-backed groups directly participated in the coup, and said the endowment made clear to all the groups it works with that it opposes unconstitutional actions. He said the endowment no longer funds Carvajal's group.

Another group, Sumate, which got a $53,400 grant in September, is helping petition for a recall referendum against Chávez by "collecting and processing signatures," the group says. Sabatini said the group is merely monitoring the referendum process and ensuring that citizens get to exercise their constitutional rights.

"There is no ideological content to our work except working with committed democrats in countries where democracy is developing or under siege," Sabatini said. He conceded that no pro-Chávez groups get endowment funds, but said none has asked for any.

Chávez's accusation that the Bush administration is promoting conspiracy against him came shortly after Golinger sent him documents she obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the charge was Chávez's attempt to divert attention from the recall referendum. "It's not the first time he's made accusations, but I have to say, they're not serious ones," Boucher said.

I wonder what she thinks of Chavez's undermining of Venezuela's constitution; of the tortures; of the soldiers who were burned for dissent?