Chavismo: More than a personality, less than a revolution
by JEFF WEBBER
We might think of denunciation in the pages of the New York Times as an almost necessary if insufficient indication that a major social movement or process of social change demands the support and solidarity of the international Left. Vilification in the world’s most important newspaper often lays the necessary ideological foundations for subsequent subversion of whatever regime or social movement is being vilified. There are no ironclad rules in politics, but if this one provides any guide, Venezuelan chavismo requires our attention and critical engagement.
In the presidential recall referendum of August 15, 5,800,629 Venezuelans voted to retain Hugo Chávez, while 3,989,008 wanted him out. A 19% margin of victory is a resounding one for Chávez and his “Bolivarian Revolution,” first brought to power democratically in 1998. Yet in his initial on-line report, Juan Forero, the New York Times’ Latin American correspondent, saw the results as somewhat more ambiguous. He editorialized, “But the voting, if anything, showed clearly that millions of Venezuelans – not just the very rich, as Mr. Chávez contends – want him out.” The rest of the silly world believed, however, that the referendum demonstrated the depth of chavismo’s appeal among the poor majority, especially the urban underclass of Caracas’s shantytowns.
This victory was attained in the face of a private media dominated by anti-chavista opposition supporters. It also represented yet another shutdown of the opposition’s determined efforts, both legal and (more often) otherwise, to squash the Bolivarian experiment: first, a short-lived coup in April 2002, supported by the US, followed secondly by the state oil company’s (PVDS) executive lock-out of workers (erroneously referred to as a “strike” by some) from December 2002 until February 2003 (supported by the collaborationist Venezuela Workers Confederation – CTV), and, most recently, the constitutional attempt to remove Chávez through the referendum recall.
Of course, when the opposition lost the referendum, they simply cried “fraud,” and denounced the results. After all, among those proclaiming the fraud-free and completely legitimate referendum results were former American president Jimmy Carter’s “Carter Center,” and the Organization of American States (OAS), both well-known hotbeds of radicalism.
Anti-Imperialism and the Regional Context
On April 13, 2002, the day after the coup, a New York Times editorial celebrated the outcome: “With yesterday’s resignation [sic] of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chávez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona.” The editorial then correctly pointed out exactly why the Empire should care: “Washington has a strong stake in Venezuela’s recovery. Caracas now provides 15 per cent of American oil imports, and with sounder policies could provide more.” Thanks to chavista elements within the Venezuelan military, and, more importantly, mass mobilization by the urban poor, Carmona’s regime lasted but two days followed by the reinstatement of Chávez.
As we did after the coup’s defeat, the referendum result this summer ought to be celebrated by anti-imperialists across the globe, even while we avoid exaggerating its implications for “revolution” within Venezuela. The Venezuelan Right and the Bush Administration in the White House together misread the capacity of the Bolivarian base and the popularity of el presidente himself.
In many ways the foreign policy of Chávez’s regime is its strongest component. Prior to Chávez, Venezuela had been something of a rogue, for example, within OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), overrunning its production quotas under pressure from the United States with the effect of reducing oil prices. Since Chávez took office Venezuela has played a leading role in OPEC helping to drive up the price of oil. Revenue from crude has been critical to rejuvenating social programs and creating new ones.
Regionally, Venezuela has been at the forefront of criticizing the foreseeable implications of the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, and instead reaches back to the integrated Latin American vision of independence hero Simon Bolívar. Chávez envisions a Latin America with its own common market and trading alliances, a united front against the behemoth to the North, and an independent force within the world economy. Actual movement toward this end is limited, however, not least because the “centre-Left” regimes of Kirchner (Argentina), Lula (Brazil), and Mesa (Bolivia) have acted more as obstacles than allies in a number of ways.
Chávez has also had close relations with Cuba, selling petroleum to the Caribbean island at a reduced rate. In exchange, Cuba has been instrumental in several of the social efforts of the Chávez regime, adding a Communist bogeyman to the discourse of the Venezuelan and American Right. This month the US State Department expressed its worry over a large Cuban presence in Venezuela and the deleterious consequences this may have on the democratic system in that country. Employing some of Fidel’s usual virulent tools of subversion, Associated Press (October 9, 2004) reports, “Cuba has dispatched thousands of health care workers, teachers and sports trainers to poor neighbourhoods in the country.”
Finally, and most importantly, Chávez has defended the sovereignty of the Third World and condemned imperial invasions by the United States. Most recently, as Justin Podur reported from a press conference in Caracas the day after the referendum, “Unlike virtually every other world leader, [Chávez] spoke openly against the US war in Iraq by actually mentioning the Iraqi victims who have been massacred by the thousands.”
At the same time, we shouldn’t exaggerate the anti-imperialist nature of Chávez. Clear limitations become evident when, following James Petras, we recognize “the divergence of tactics between an ideological Washington and a pragmatic Wall Street.” While the Republicans, Democrats, Congress, and the President have all supported the by-any-means approach to removing the Venezuelan version of tyranny and evil, “major US and European oil companies and banks have been engaged in stable, sustained, and profitable economic relations with the Chávez government…. Major US multi-national oil companies project between $5 billion and $20 billion in new investments in exploration and exploitation.”
History, Class Polarization and Political Vacuum
Typically, mainstream-media and academic accounts of the current situation feature Chávez as the puppet master behind the country’s pains, and the primary explanatory factor behind Venezuela since its history ended in 1998. The truth is more complicated. Social forces and class warfare run far deeper than the man himself.
For most of Venezuela’s history since 1958 presidential power has oscillated between the social democratic Acción Democática (AD) and the social Christian Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI). The so-called “pacted democracy,” a system known as Punto Fijo, entailed the exclusion of the Communists, the convergence between the two parties ideologically and programmatically, and the cooptation of labour through party control of the CTV and the selective dolling out of state patronage.
Economically, the state intervened substantially in the economy and protected national industry. Meanwhile, because Venezuela was a leading exporter of oil for much of the period since 1925, economic growth rates were quite steady, unlike in much of the rest of Latin America. So, while poverty persisted under the “pact,” there was sufficient oil-capital to lubricate social programs and quell serious politicization of class conflict.
This was the case until 1986, when oil prices plummeted and the entire economic edifice on which the elected oligarchy was constructed began to come apart. Signs of serious social polarization articulated in politicized class conflict would be a few years in coming, however. Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989-1993) was elected president on a populist platform, specifically against neoliberal structural adjustment policies. However, after he was elected he instituted a slew of orthodox neoliberal stabilization measures that resulted in the furious eruption of the urban slums of Caracas in what came to be known as the Caracazo. The riots were violently repressed by the military, with medical personnel estimating 1,000 to 1,500 dead, the official number being much lower at 287. With a few punctuated breaks of heterodoxy, neoliberal economic policies were pursued with force under subsequent administrations.
The cracks in the economic system were plain to see. Since the mid-1980s dramatic changes in the class structure of Venezuelan society were evident. There was a huge exodus from industrial and agricultural jobs into the service sector, and a move from formal modes of employment to precarious employment in the urban informal sector. Demographically, the changes in the class structure precipitated a wave of rural-to-urban migration with some analysts estimating that 600,000 people left the countryside for the urban slums from 1989-1992. Meanwhile, poverty increased and inequality reached unprecedented heights.
This socioeconomic backdrop explains the corresponding decay in the Punto Fijo system and the delegitimization of the two mainstream parties, and to a lesser but real extent “political parties” in general. It was out of this social milieu that Chávez emerged, winning the support of the poor with his anti-establishment, anti-corruption, and anti-neoliberal political message. Of course it was his lack of political-party affiliation, and image of “outsider” (Chávez is of indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan heritage), that facilitated his rise to power. At the same time, it is his lack of an institutional party base, and coherent ideology that contributes to the wavering of the Chávez regime in power, and limits the hope of radicalizing the process of social change.
Jeff Webber is a PhD Candidate in political science at the University of Toronto and a member of the Toronto branch of the NSG.