Ch?vez's Staying Power
Dinovella, Elizabeth
Ch?vez's Staying Power By Elizabeth DiNovella Illustration by M.K. Perker . Rosita Toro is a thirty-six-year-old teacher with a ponytail and big brown eyes. She arrived at her polling place in...
...People partied in many of the poor neighborhoods surrounding the downtown...
...These six letters- C, H, ?, V, E, Z-is not me...
...Ch?vez's distribution of oil wealth to the poor-estimated to be about 70 percent of the population- is unique in the country's history...
...Michael Santiago, an elderly man who was born in the United States and returned to Venezuela in the 1950s, finds Ch?vez infuriating...
...on August 15...
...Meanwhile, people took to the streets to protest the coup, and members of the armed forces loyal to Ch?vez freed him...
...Already the crowd was big and rowdy, even though official preliminary results would not be released for hours...
...A few women wailed...
...El diablo has an owner from the north that is capable of anything," Ch?vez said, referring to the U.S...
...We have to abandon this idea that some will be well-off and others not...
...With help from members of the armed forces, Pedro Carmona, head of the national business association, dissolved the legislature and the supreme court and declared himself president...
...The U.S...
...Now they are doing everything possible to fleece the country and leave it in ruins...
...I spoke to her about four hours later while she was still waiting in a line that stretched for half a mile...
...Firecrackers boomed in the sky and celebratory bullets did, too...
...Huge fourteen-story apartment buildings ring this area that sits on the western hills of the capital...
...Since Venezuela is the fifth largest exporter of oil, Ch?vez was able to lavish more funds for social investment, which may have helped him expand his margin of victory...
...The crowd would stay all night and wait for el presidente to speak...
...P?rez of the Christian Democrats said this was proof of government's collusion with armed militias...
...Ch?vez invoked the "authentic Christ, the liberator of the people...
...Nothing at all," Santiago told me on election day outside of the El Llanito neighborhood polling center...
...For many years, we were marginalized from the political process," he told me inside the polling place...
...The opposition leaders and some of the foreign press were caught off guard by Ch?vez's victory, but they shouldn't have been...
...On the August 15 ballot, if you wanted Ch?vez to stay in power, you had to vote no...
...The Iraq War roiled the world oil market, sending prices up dramatically...
...Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center, along with C?sar Gaviria, former president of Colombia and current presidentof the OrganizationofAmerican States, said the vote was free and fair...
...C?sar P?rez Vivas is the secretary general of the Christian Democratic Party, one of the two major political parties that governed the country for nearly forty years...
...Chavista caravans began circulating in this public housing neighborhood...
...The first was a failed coup in April 2002...
...The crowd dispersed at the sounds of the gunshots but quickly regrouped after the gunmen fled...
...People brought out bottles of rum and whiskey and began passing them around...
...I think this is a historic process," she told me...
...In a press conference that night, Ch?vez denied the allegation...
...As president, Ch?vez talks about a "civic-military" alliance...
...We are defending our right to democracy," said Toro...
...But in the months preceding the August 15 vote, Bush did Ch?vez a favor...
...But Ch?vez has plenty of critics...
...While I interviewed people, a group of Ch?vez supporters neared the intersection, apparently out on a victory lap around the city...
...All over Caracas there is graffiti that says "Ch?vez hasta 2021," which means "Ch?vez until 2021...
...The next day, large photographs of the alleged chavista gunmen appeared on the front pages of the newspapers...
...We were high on a hill and could hear music floating up from the streets below...
...In this neighborhood, you could still buy beer despite the "dry law" the government declared for the day...
...The Bush Administration has been openly hostile to Ch?vez, who routinely denounces U.S...
...I am a human being like any one of you," he said...
...The judiciary, rarely an independent branch of government in Venezuela or in Latin America in general, could soon have a significantly larger supreme court, appointed by the pro-Ch?vez legislature...
...Shots rang out, and I jumped off the bench...
...They say the president bought off the poor with his social programs funded largely by earnings from the state oil company...
...The second attempt was a national strike that began in December 2002...
...It's not a surprise," said Alfonso Tovar of the Sim?n Bol?var Cultural Foundation...
...You have to work hard to succeed...
...At midnight, a Venezuelan community radio journalist and I started to make our way back to the downtown area by scooter...
...As a lieutenant colonel, Ch?vez first tried to come to power through an unsuccessful 1992 coup...
...We were glued to the TV, waiting for the referendum results...
...Some waited in line for eight or nine hours in the blazing Caracas sun...
...The neighborhood is a chavista stronghold, and you can see evidence of the social programs that "el comandante," as many of his supporters call Ch?vez, has funded...
...But the crowd was angry and vindictive...
...I took cover a few yards away behind another small concrete bench...
...A bullet had hit him in the leg and his blood streamed down the sidewalk...
...Ch?vez told the crowd this battle is not a personal one...
...Elizabeth DiNovella is Culture Editor of The Progressive...
...They're communist, and they came in hungry...
...After the tear gas evaporated, the opposition was left without a booth and was able only to hand out leaflets...
...Carmona's presidency lasted only forty-eight hours...
...The oil industry was nationalized in the early 1970s, but existed as a virtual cookie jar for the upper classes until Ch?vez came to power...
...And it was...
...The National Electoral Council, with a three-to-two pro-Ch?vez majority, tried to disqualify many of them, but there were still enough to trigger a vote...
...A military authoritarian-that's my definition of Ch?vez," added P?rez...
...And today it is reborn by this flood of people...
...He suggested that the attackers were perhaps in cahoots with the anti-Ch?vez mainstream press...
...It was 10:30 p.m., and I was sitting with a dozen other people in a meeting room at the foundation, which is located in the "January 23" neighborhood of Caracas...
...Hugo Ch?vez knows how to stay in power...
...At the other end of the plaza, chavista activists walked around shouting, "We won...
...government quickly recognized the Carmona government...
...The two-month strike was disastrous for the country's economy-it still hasn't completely recovered-but Ch?vez did not leave office...
...This is the same idea that Christ fought against when he confronted Roman imperialism," he said...
...According to the opposition, the shooting was the work of pro-government forces...
...Chavistas, dressed in red T-shirts and hats, decked out their cars in red, too...
...This is an ancient no...
...But given that Ch?vez has won three elections with more than 50 percent of the vote each time, it seems a stretch to classify him as a military dictator...
...The one who gives us [social programs] can take them away, too," said Belkis, a manicurist who sets up her table every weekday near the downtown's central plaza, Plaza Bol?var...
...On its third try to oust Ch?vez from power, the opposition took the legal, electoral route...
...The no of the campaign is the "no of Cristo against imperialism," said Ch?vez...
...Venezuelans came out to vote in record numbers, with 75 percent of the registered voters participating in the recall referendum that determined the fate of President Hugo Ch?vez...
...Critics say that Ch?vez is trying to stack the judiciary, and he has made his presence felt throughout the government...
...A few days before the 15th, in the downtown Plaza Bol?var, the police used tear gas to break up a confrontation...
...But in the well-off ones, the streets were empty...
...A few of us smoked cigarettes, depositing the ash in an empty soda bottle...
...Like Toro, many people had gotten up hours before dawn to make sure their votes would count...
...The demonstrators held signs declaring electoral fraud...
...At midnight, we ate boxed dinners of fried chicken and arepas, a kind of cornmeal griddlecake...
...In fact, Ch?vez consolidated his power by firing the striking oil workers and appointing his associates...
...The charismatic, left-leaning Ch?vez and his "Bolivarian revolution" won handily, capturing 59 percent of the vote...
...I went outside with a few others to check out the festivities...
...Here in Venezuela we are confronting a savage conception of privilege that dominates the world," he proclaimed...
...Eight others were injured...
...In the days after the vote, the opposition cried fraud...
...Fidel is his girlfriend," he said...
...unilateralism and praises Fidel Castro...
...We won...
...Thereisnoevidence of fraud, and any allegationsoffraud are completely unwarranted...
...The Reverend Jos...
...The 1999 Venezuelan constitution, which Ch?vez helped push through, contained a clause allowing for the populace to recall elected officials, including the president.The opposition collected millions of signatures...
...Although polls remained open until midnight due to the unprecedented number of voters, many people, including Tovar, decided that Ch?vez had won...
...Ch?vez does not mince words when describing his critics, calling them el diablo, the devil...
...He hasn't done anything in five years...
...In Venezuela, judicial power is wielded like a club, like a political horsewhip," P?rez told me a few days after the vote...
...The crowd took revenge on a man wearing a red shirt who came up from the subway station, located in the plaza...
...The two groups exchanged heated words and then started throwing rocks at each other...
...I jumped up on a park bench to get a better look...
...He was imprisoned and later released...
...This is a battle between two philosophies about life, he said...
...The August referendum marked the opposition's third attempt to oust Ch?vez...
...A young man hid with me...
...It's not a man...
...But it was unable to produce convincing evidence...
...Opposition activists tried to set up an information booth in this chavista area, and fighting between the two groups ensued...
...It's the no of Christ against leaving behind the poor...
...She arrived at her polling place in Caracas at 2:45 a.m...
...One woman died of a gunshot wound...
...We decided to move away from the hill's ledge in order to not get shot accidentally...
...Our resources are for all of humanity, not just for businessmen...
...But the election was not without incident...
...government's support of the opposition...
...The January 23 neighborhood takes its name from the date of the overthrow of the last military dictator, Marco P?rez Jim?nez, on January 23, 1958...
...We passed by Miraflores, the presidential palace...
...I don't know which one is the boyfriend, OK...
...People work less...
...Ali Rodr?guez, a former guerrilla leader of the 1960s, now heads the state oil company...
...At a huge rally a week before the referendum, he warned his followers to avoid being triumphant before the vote...
...We watched car after car cruise by on a victory lap...
...The police had to escort the man down the street, with the crowd trailing behind...
...I also attended an opposition demonstration in Caracas's Plaza Altamira neighborhood the day after Ch?vez's victory...
...We havenoreason to doubt the integrity of the electoral system or the accuracy of the referendum results," Carter saidatapress conference on August 17...
...Ch?vez no se va' ["Ch?vez will not go," his campaign's slogan] is a concept...
...And Ch?vez's close relationship with Fidel Castro disgusts Santiago...
...Gregorio Mart?nez is the head of a pro-Ch?vez group in the same section of Caracas where Toro is from...
...On the one hand, his programs have helped a lot of people, but on the other hand, they've ruined the country, too...
...They nearly tore the red shirt off of him...
Vol. 68 • October 2004 • No. 10
