Ricardo Hausmann’s “Morning After” for Venezuela: The neoliberal brain behind Juan Guaido’s economic agenda
While
online audiences know YouTube comedian Joanna Hausmann from her
videos making the case for regime change, her economist father has
flown below the radar. His record holds the key to understanding what
the U.S. wants in Venezuela.
by
Anya Parampil
Part
5 - The Hausmann clan versus Chavismo
During
the Chávez era, the Hausmann family was not content to sit on the
sidelines and watch him build a “21st-century socialism.”
Joanna’s
mother, Ana Julia Jatar, assumed a position as executive director of
Súmate, a U.S.-backed “civil society group” formed by right-wing
darling María Corina Machado in order to “build democracy” in
Venezuela.
In 2003,
Súmate received $53,400 from the National Endowment for Democracy
“to work on referendum and general electoral activities,”
according to a U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks.
The
initiative represented Jatar and Machado’s attempt to remove Chávez
from power through popular recall. Yet the public rejected the
referendum by a whopping 59 percent margin, in results certified by
the Carter Center and Organization of American States.
Seeking
to defend his wife’s failed project, Ricardo Hausmann co-authored a
paper that he insisted “open[ed] the door to… hypotheses of
fraud” marring the vote. His argument was thoroughly rebuked in
an extensive study issued by the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, which determined Hausmann and his co-author, M.I.T’s
Roberto Rigobon, “provide no evidence of fraud.”
Súmate’s
subsequent efforts to label the vote as fraudulent were also rebuffed
in a comprehensive report released by the Carter Center, which
concluded: “the Aug. 15 vote clearly expressed the will of the
Venezuelan electorate.” The Carter Center concluded that it
“did not observe, and has not received, credible evidence of
fraud that would have changed the outcome of the vote.”
Despite
Súmate’s failures, President George W. Bush welcomed Machado to
the White House in 2005. In the Oval Office, Bush heralded her
efforts “to defend the electoral and constitutional rights of
all Venezuelan citizens” and monitor the country’s elections.
Sociologist
William I. Robinson told Venezuelanalysis that Súmate was
part of “a full-blown operation, a massive foreign-policy
operation to undermine the Venezuelan revolution, to overthrow the
government of Hugo Chávez, and to reinstall the elite back in power
in Venezuela.”
Such
elites include multiple members of Joanna Hausmann’s clan.
“My
extended family, they go out on these protests,” the YouTube
comedian declared in her video. “My uncle is in jail for simply
being a journalist.”
That
uncle is Ana Julia’s brother, Braulio Jatar, and he was not
“simply” a journalist, but also a lawyer and businessman
jailed not for “journalism,” but rather for extortion,
fraud, and other financial crimes.
Ana
Julia and Braulio were the children of Braulio Jatar Dotti, who
served as Secretary for Parliamentary and Municipal Affairs in the
ruling Democratic Action party while it was engaged in a violent
battle against the armed Revolutionary Left Movement.
The
independent Chilean news site El Desconcierto described
Braulio Sr. as having been “in charge of eliminating the leftist
groups” in Venezuela at the time. In 1963, he literally wrote
the book on how to disable the “extreme left” and
guerillas. It was called, “Disabling the Extreme Left and the
Corian Guerillas.”
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