Venezuela: new perspectives on politics and society

Published by Latin American Perspectives, Issue 142, Vol. 32 No. 3, May 2005, dedicated to Venezuela

By Steve Ellner * and Miguel Tinker Salas*

"Mass disturbances in opposition to government-imposed austerity measures in February 1989 (the Caracazo) and the democratic government's ensuing brutal repression exposed serious fissures in the Venezuelan political system. Venezuela has long been promoted as a model democracy for Latin America, but it soon became obvious that below the surface Venezuelan society exhibited a deep social divide and that the political system had become unresponsive to the needs of most of the people. This disparity was only made worse by the popular perception that, as a world supplier of oil, the country had ample resources to redress poverty. Recurrent national scandals involving government corruption and the collapse of banking institutions and the complete impunity surrounding these cases further incensed most Venezuelans.

As the country experienced an intensification of class polarization, the continued growth of the informal sector, and a growing wave of social protest, it increasingly resembled others throughout Latin America. The social tensions evident in society were reflected in popular culture, including various musical genres, such as 'llaner' music, salsa, and ' gaita' s (as Light Carruyo shows in this issue). Two unsuccessful military coups in 1992 also put in evidence the widespread discontent.

Throughout the 1990s the traditional political class scurried to repair the system without fundamentally addressing the causes of the problem. Yet even under these circumstances, many political leaders at all levels assumed that no fundamental change had occurred in Venezuelan politics. This complacency explains why Venezuela's largest party, the social-democratic Acción Democrática (Democratic Action-AD), nominated a lackluster old time politician (Luis Álfaro Ucero) as its presidential candidate in 1998 in spite of the formidable challenge posed by the candidacy of Hugo Chávez. The election in 1993 of the octogenarian Rafael Caldera, former leader of the Christian Democrats, at the head of a diverse coalition of traditional political figures and former leftists, had initially increased the expectation of some degree of reform. In the end, however, his presidency served to expose the rigidity of the political system and the calcification of the traditional parties that had held power since 1958. Venezuela became the only country in Latin America in which two presidents in the 1990s won elections on anti neoliberal platforms only to end up embracing neoliberal strategies.

The escalating political crisis and the election of Hugo Chávez Frías, with his policy favoring the poor, forced scholars to reexamine many of the widely held assumptions concerning the country and its once heralded democratic institutions. Chávez's opponents resorted to social stereotypes including racially tinged propaganda aimed at the president and the lower classes, which constituted the core of his supporters. Reliance on the race card further challenged the notion that Venezuela was and had long been a racial democracy.

The belief that Venezuela after 1958 represented a model to follow or an exception to developments elsewhere in Latin America (known as the "exceptionalism thesis") eventually proved untenable for scholars as well as policy officials in Washington. For his part, the new president seldom missed an opportunity to highlight the opportunistic nature of the traditional political class and the failures of the once-powerful parties.

The previous issue of Latin American Perspectives (March 2005) addressed the major tenets of the Venezuelan exceptionalism model, including the view of Venezuela as characterized by low levels of social and political conflict. The contributions to this issue focus on the presidency of Hugo Chávez, which has exposed the desperation of the dominant political parties, AD and the social Christian Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (Committee of Independent Political Electoral Organization-COPEI), and their efforts to avoid the loss of power at all costs. These parties and their largely elite and middle-class constituency have pursued insurgent action including a bloody military coup (April 2002), a work stoppage that paralyzed the national economy (December/January 2002-2003), and violent street actions (known as the plan guarimba ) intended to produce an atmosphere of ungovernability. Their efforts run counter to any notion that these traditional political sectors possess a deeply held democratic tradition-a cornerstone of the exceptionalism thesis. Rather than respecting the democratic process, these parties and the groups that support them appear to be more concerned with recapturing the state apparatus to maintain the privileges to which they have become accustomed during the past 40 years. Still largely united by their hatred for Chávez and their desire to reclaim the presidency, they have proved incapable of developing an alternative political strategy to redress Venezuela's deep-seated social ills. This is partly attributable to the fact that they refuse to accept the gravity of the problem of social inequality and racism and to recognize that these issues predate Chávez's accession to power. They are also united in their rejection of the new social expectations that the Chávez government has generated among the poor. A significant sector has failed to put forward alternatives to Chavismo, thus leaving the impression that it longs for the Venezuela of the 1970s and 1980s and is unable or unwilling to accept that the nation has changed in fundamental ways.

Although the election of Hugo Chávez dispelled the misconceptions regarding Venezuela's long-standing status as a model democracy, other equally problematic assumptions are now being used to analyze events in the post-1998 period. The notion that elections, when they do not produce the desired results, do not represent the "real" democratic will of the people has heavily influenced reporting in the popular media. Venezuelans who have voted for Chávez on multiple occasions or attended mass rallies are generally categorized as lower-class, ill-informed, or, worse, simply an ignorant mass that willfully succumbs to the whims of an all-powerful charismatic leader. Invariably, supporters also tend to be racialized and depicted in stereotypical fashion. This perspective is reminiscent of approaches used in the scholarly literature to discount the followers of populist leaders from Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico to Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina. In both of these cases, race and lower-class status were also conflated to stereotype adherents of these populist leaders. At the root of this approach continues to be a failure to recognize the country's real social ills.

After 1958, U.S. policy heralded Venezuela as a critical ally and a model democracy for the region. U.S. interests in Venezuela were driven by practical policy concerns. Ruled by a social-democratic party that ostensibly used oil resources to ameliorate social disparity, Venezuela served as an alternative to more radical reform such as that taking place in Cuba. Equally important, its pragmatic leaders avoided showdowns with foreign oil companies and pursued a policy that ensured stable oil prices and production levels.

Little has changed in this regard. U.S. policy toward Venezuela is still driven by self-interest rather than grandiose notions of 'democracy promotion,' as William Avilés and Christopher Clement point out in this issue. In the current context, the United States has attempted to depict Venezuela as part of a larger Latin American axis of evil linked with Cuba as well as with insurgent movements throughout the continent.

Chávez is portrayed as Fidel Castro's protégé or, worse, a mere puppet of the Cuban leader. The Washington Post has urged the Bush administration to take a tough stance against Chávez and reclaim a perceived loss of U.S. authority over the region (January 14, 2005). The newly appointed secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, has repeatedly characterized Chávez as responsible for political instability from Ecuador to Bolivia. Luiz Inácio 'Lula' da Silva, the president of Brazil, has been presented as the rational reformer and Chávez as the erratic and unbalanced radical ( Los Angeles Times , January 28, 2005). In Venezuela as elsewhere, the United States has talked about democracy promotion while funding efforts to undermine the elected Chávez presidency.

The collection of articles in this issue addresses these emerging issues and serves to dispel new misconceptions. Daniel Hellinger provides a timely analysis of the recall elections held on August 15, 2004, and the regional elections of October 15 of the same year. He assesses the political climate in Venezuela leading up to the electoral contests and analyzes the role of class and regional factors in the outcome. He describes the strengths and weaknesses of Chávez's electoral strategy and the declining influence of the opposition forces grouped in the Coordinadora Democrática (Democratic Coordinator-CD).

The massive outpouring during the recall election highlights the strength of the Chavistas, while the abstention evident in the October regional elections points to a potential weakness of the movement. William Avilés counters the notion of U.S. democracy promotion in Latin America by addressing the fallacies of the democratic-peace thesis-the idea that because of shared norms democracies do not fight wars against each other. He shows that in Colombia, a country that by and large had faithfully followed U.S. policy, Washington worked to destabilize the government of Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) to win concessions in the drug war.

In Venezuela, where the government has openly criticized U.S. action and opposed neoliberal economic programs, it has not only exerted pressure but also directly funded opposition groups intent on ousting Chávez, even when that meant subverting the very democratic process it claimed to uphold. Christopher Clement challenges the notion of democracy promotion as it was applied to Latin America in the 1980s, whenever social protest and outright rebellion challenged the established order. Beyond its political content, democracy promotion was seen as a way of facilitating the emergence of neoliberal economic policy in the region. His study provides a succinct critique of the Reagan-era National Endowment for Democracy (NED). He traces the network of institutions that receive NED funding in the United States and Venezuela and shows how the Bush administration has used NED funding to support the undemocratic opposition to Chávez. He ends by questioning the likelihood of U.S. tolerance for democratic governments in Latin America if figures like Chávez are elected. Cristóbal Valencia Ramírez provides a unique perspective on the composition of the Círculos Bolivarianos (Bolivarian Circles) that support the Chávez presidency and the broader process of social change under way in Venezuela. He challenges the representation of members of the Círculos as poor, uninformed, and illiterate masses easily manipulated by a charismatic president who is tantamount to a caudillo. He also challenges the notion that the Círculos are state-financed organizations that would disappear without government support.

Employing a case study approach, he shows that many members of the Círculos Bolivarianos have a long history of political activism and maintain a degree of autonomy from the Chávez party and government. Light Carruyo focuses on a Venezuelan regional popular song form known as the 'gaita' that originates in the petroleum-rich state of Zulia. The 'gaita' fuses African, indigenous, and Spanish traditions and has customarily been thought of as Christmas music because that is the time of year when it is most heard, but from the beginning it has provided a forum for expressing dissatisfaction with the government. Carruyo shows that 'gaita' served as a vehicle for Zulians' concerns and helped shape a set of shared regional experiences. Her study focuses on the presidencies of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989-1992) and Rafael Caldera (1993-1998), a decade of growing political dissatisfaction and polarization that is reflected in the 'gaita's of the period. Breaking out of its regional confines, the 'gaita''s continued popularity speaks to its ability to embody political and social experiences familiar to most Venezuelans. Antonio Velasco Castro provides a new approach to the process of privatization that took place in Venezuela before the election of Hugo Chávez. He offers an implicit critique of proponents of neoliberalism and globalization whose calculations conspicuously overlook the real-life situations that present themselves. Whatever the alleged abstract virtues of privatization, in practice it has produced widespread corruption and has been engineered in closed rooms without national or popular participation. Velasco points out that these deficiencies must be factored into any evaluation of privatization and that, when this critical approach is applied, the purported benefits of privatization fail to materialize. By demonizing Chávez, the media in Venezuela and elsewhere as well as some scholars have reached easy answers and in so doing have promoted widespread misunderstanding.

The Chávez phenomenon is more complex than is generally recognized, as these essays and particularly the ones by Valencia and Hellinger demonstrate. This very complexity opens great possibilities for researchers, providing them with opportunities to go beyond long held assumptions and contribute to a much-needed clarification of issues".

*Steve Ellner has taught at the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela since 1977.

*Miguel Tinker Salas is an associate professor of history and Latin American studies at Pomona College.