CARACAS, Venezuela -- Carmen Godoy is sure the Yankees are plotting an invasion. She's heard her president say so over and over again in the decade he has been in power. So at yet another pro-government rally -- one at which a band played a rousing version of "Yankee Go Home" -- Godoy expressed relief that four Russian naval vessels will arrive in Venezuela next month for joint exercises with Venezuela's military. "We need help," said Godoy, 52. "We cannot wait and watch what happened to Iraq happen to us."
The message that the Bush administration has evil designs on Venezuela has been a cornerstone of state policy here, frequently repeated in speeches by President Hugo Chavez and other officials, as well as on news shows and in documentaries by the omnipresent state media. But with the president's socialist party facing tough regional elections in November, the government is ramping up the warnings like never before and taking the requisite actions against what officials say are shadowy assassination plots and U.S.-orchestrated destabilizing plans.
Nothing Chavez has done in the past, though, compares to Venezuela's $1 billion weapons deal with Russia and military exercises that are bringing Russian warplanes and ships to the Caribbean for the first time since the Cold War.
Former officials in the Chavez administration, pollsters and political analysts say the president is trying to raise the specter of U.S. meddling and whip up his followers in order to deflect attention from such issues as mounting crime, high inflation and a shaky economy. "This is something Chavez has used to his favor," said Milos Alcalay, who was Chavez's ambassador to the United Nations until 2004, when he resigned. "President Chavez has used his anti-Americanism as a form of government policy, not only internationally but also when faced with a series of errors that he cannot explain."