VENEZUELA'S PETKOFF From Guerrilla to Congressman
Edelman, Marc
A leader of Latin America's largest guerrilla movement of the 1960s, 55year-old Teodoro Petkoff is today a congressman representing Venezuela's third largest party, the Movement Toward...
...The state must use its enormous economic power to reorient banking away from the monopolies to serve the general interests of the nation...
...Looking back now, this took tremendous audacity...
...We need greater compatibility between planning and markets...
...But that argument ended at Nancahuazli, Bolivia, with the death of Che...
...Wounds of all types were still very fresh...
...And the regional parliaments are so useless in a super-centralized country that even AD's secretary general has commented various times that they should be abolished...
...Linked to the Soviet world, we in the PCV were standard bearers of an autocratic and undemocratic paradigm...
...Democracy was a new thing for Venezuelans, and we took up arms against it...
...We became aware of two contradictions at the heart of our struggle...
...Perhaps half of Venezuelan banking is now in state hands...
...Populism has had a huge influence throughout the 20th century...
...He was driven out by a popular uprising in 1958...
...In our country, the citizen is completely defenseless against the government...
...Sartre called Petkoff a traitor cities...
...By the time Caldera took office, it was clear that the PCV wasn't playing tricks.** A real political change was taking place...
...I'm not talking about the perversions of this or any U.S...
...When I began to talk about politics in Venezuela, to explain that the correlation of forces was changing, that AD had split...
...iCosa de locos...
...This did not happen overnight...
...In Venezuela, 60% of the economy is state-controlled-steel, aluminum, electricity, television, airlines, whatever...
...Congress...
...This might have been fine in the first years of democracy, when Venezuelans had faith in political parties, but there is now a reaction against this system, particularly from the middle classes...
...But in retrospect, armed struggle was a grave error...
...We also sought absolute independence from international parties...
...Spending cuts don't stimulate production...
...Venezuela has a democracy marked by 150 years of dictatorships...
...tA leader of the Colorado party, Josd Batlle y Ordofiez was president of Uruguay from 1903-1907 and 1911-1915...
...I travelled around the country explaining our views to assemblies of party members, something unprecedented in a communist party...
...The drop in oil prices has made everything difficult...
...Most PCV members and middle-level leaders were enthusiastic backers of Cuban policy...
...And we won that battle, making the PCV a very strange party for two years...
...It is excessively authoritarian, with power concentrated in the presidency and a crippled Congress inherited from our 19th century dictators, who always had Congresses...
...And we began to discover the difference between everyday reality and the images which are presented of these societies...
...The poor feel represented by these movements and have remained loyal for 40 years...
...The rest of the Left formed a coalition, but we feared that in it we would lose both the elections and our own identity...
...In the 1930s and 1940s, popular movements like AD and APRA, which had advanced platforms of social reform and antiimperialism, shifted to the right...
...We wanted to participate in the 1973 elections--but without engaging in the Left's traditional "unity," putting all the little fragments together to pretend it is stronger than it is...
...Lusinchi has taken International Monetary Fund [IMF]-type measures: freezing wages, "liberating" prices, restricting state expenditures-although in fairness I must say that he has kept the IMF from acting directly in Venezuela...
...These variants didn't have a common model, but were in general based on mass movements...
...The Venezuelan state is a monster...
...They couldn't grasp why there was a rebellion against a way of life "**One of the founders of the social democratic Democratic Action in 1941, R6mulo Betancourt headed a politically popular junta of young military officers and AD ac- tivists that seized power in 1945 and ran the Venezuelan government for 28 months while a new constitution was written and elections held...
...The debate took place openly in the pages of the PCV's paper, La Tribuna Popular...
...Finally, at the PCV's fourth congress, we saw that further discussion was useless and left the party to found the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS...
...But politics is always politics, and armed struggle is politics...
...Some of the old pro-Soviet PCV leaders supported Cuban positions, while others grumbled...
...This brought r UII process o reflection Iar lllU Lit PCV to suspend armed activities and to get back in politics before we disappeared completely...
...We had arguedwith reason-that our country was severely penetrated by U.S...
...In 1983, he was MAS's presidential candidate and is expected to run again in 1988...
...MAS is the only significant case of a split from a pro-Soviet party that did not link itself to the Chinese, Cubans, Vietnamese or whomever...
...We want state incentives for medium and small enterprises in order to break the monopolistic structure of the private sector...
...When I passed through Paris, I went to speak with an excellent Latin America specialist at Le Monde...
...After 1973, MAS began to change...
...I had escaped from prison a few months before and was on my way to Algeria to get some arms we had there...
...Betancourt was later elected president in 1958...
...Obviously, we have to utilize the market's capacity to allocate resources while preventing the perversions of the socalled free market...
...I was a middle-level leader of the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV), from the generation most directly and intensely involved in armed struggle...
...A monstrous state We support self-management by workers and co-management between workers and technocrats in state enterprises...
...A leader of the revolution of 1930, Getulio Vargas served as president of Brazil from 1930-1945 and 1950-1954...
...We founded MAS in January 1971, a month after quitting the PCV and only two or three years after the armed struggle ended...
...The Venezuelan experience might have helped...
...The European Left tended to see us as exotic and thought that, unlike armed struggle, political democracy wasn't realistic in underdeveloped *A prominent AD leader, Ratil Leoni succeeded Betancourt as president of Venezuela in 1963...
...He interrupted me asking, 'What kind of European story are you telling me?' He thought we were still fighting with bows and arrows...
...MAY/JUNE 1987 9 9 MAY/JUNE 1987tion in the Dominican Republic was an act of imperial abuse, but that Brezhnev's intervention in Czechoslovakia was a revolutionary act...
...So for three or four years we have been calling for state reform, for a little more space for civil society, both in the economy and in the state itself...
...This meant criticizing not only the Soviet model, but also the Cuban, which for emotional reasons is less easy to do in Venezuela...
...We considered democratic values sine qua non components of social change, unlike some who understand socialism in terms of its achievements-education, sports, healthand who consider political democracy secondary...
...How else can we understand Alan Garcia in Peru, where obviously the progressive sectors are in the leadership...
...The debt renegotiation counted on oil revenues that we obviously would never receive...
...It has contributed to implanting democracy, has fought dictatorships and to some degree is responsible for the existence today of this Latin American democracy that is so imperfect, but which in the end is preferable to any dictatorship...
...The Left had been reduced literally to dust, although the PCV still had some student support...
...We were traitors...
...When we decided to pull out of armed struggle, the Cubans became enraged and denounced us throughout the world...
...A professor of economics at the Central University of Venezuela, he is the author of several books, including Checoslovaquia, el Socialismo como Problema and i,Socialismo para Venezuela...
...The second contradiction that made us re-think things was the invasion of Czechoslovakia...
...But MAS is for widening the citizen's power of decision, giving more power to Congress, real power to regional parliaments, electing governors directly, modifying the electoral system so votes are for individual candidates, not for party slates, as it is now, and not just once every five years...
...But who in Latin America was going to study our positions at that time...
...A leader of Latin America's largest guerrilla movement of the 1960s, 55year-old Teodoro Petkoff is today a congressman representing Venezuela's third largest party, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS...
...See interview with Eleuterio Fernmndez Huidobro, Report on the Americas, Vol...
...He also reflects on the nature of Latin American populism, socialism and democracy...
...So Caldera, in the first days of his government, legalized the PCV and freed political prisoners...
...A nationalist, he advocated state control of the oil industry and was influential in founding the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries...
...Interestingly, the reconciliation process wasn't marred by hatred or acts of revenge, either by the revolutionaries or the police and armed forces, as it has been in Colombia...
...imperialism...
...We had parliamentary representatives and dealt with concrete policies, with Venezuela's immediate problems...
...How did the Left outside Venezuela view this process...
...So a large number of Christians, former AD people and those from other parties joined and were accepted in MAS...
...APRA was perhaps the first of this collection of parties.* The Communists' sectarianism led to frontal attacks on populism...
...Then the Cubans calmed down...
...That is one of the great tragedies of Latin America's popular movements which goes back to the 1920s and 1930s...
...As Communism began to make inroads in Latin America, other movements formed under leaders who had passed through the CPs, but who understood that a class party was unrealistic in countries where there were hardly even workers...
...Officially we have 15% unemployment, a barbarous figure...
...Twenty years ago you were a guerrilla leader and now you're a member of parliament...
...It was like an Ionesco play: the same day the agreement was signed, the president announced that it would have to be revised...
...Venezuela's debt is the fourth largest in Latin America...
...Its roots were in the political crisis and the enormous popular upsurge that followed the fall of Marcos P6rez Jimenez* and the rise to power of R6mulo Betancourt and Democratic Action (AD).** This gave the armed struggle a mass base, especially in the *A member of the junta which staged a military coup in 1948, Major Marcos PNrez Jimenez maneuvered himself into the presidency in 1952...
...It would be very sad if the Marxist-Leninist Left, on the basis of its old confrontation with populism, weren't open to this kind of vital possibility...
...A process of reflection Our debate in the PCV wasn't limited simply to examining political or military errors...
...Venezuela's judicial system, even the Supreme Court, is an arm of the president and totally politicized, with judges named by the political parties.* This has led to enormous corruption and dependence...
...Others-AD, APRA, and Uruguay's Colorados-were partybased...
...When the polemic with the Cubans began, we still had one foot in the war...
...t The Cuban Revolution had a great impact in Venezuela...
...Administration, just about the formal division of powers...
...We went to the polls alone and surprisingly ended up third, after AD and COPEI, with more than a million votes...
...we scarcely knew and in whose name the struggle had been waged against PNrez Jimenez...
...During his dictatorship, press censorship was established and political parties banned...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 1You mentioned that after fighting as guerrillas, the Left was able to reinsert itself in Venezuelan politics in the late 1960s...
...This division between the two main currents of popular movements has continued to this day...
...Venezuela was coming out of a century and a half of military dictatorships...
...Fidel Castro said so...
...The PCV's leadership tried to block this debate, but the discussion shifted from substantive issues to the right to question within the party...
...The state controls banking here: it is the major depositor and has acquired many bankrupt private financial institutions...
...Over time, a visceral anti60% of the economy is state-owned populism took root in the Communist movement and a visceral and very reactionary anti-Communism took root among the populists...
...But with an IMF-style policy, he has been able to boast that 'we haven't let the IMF in here.' This is important politically because the IMF is often seen as international genocide...
...Although Marxism was the ideological sustenance of practically all MAS founders, we eschewed doctrinal definitions of our party, permitting anyone to join who wanted social justice, liberty, social equality...
...In Venezuela, the struggle for democracy is not a question of redeeming democracy-we don't have a *Formally, they are named by Congress...
...the USSR and a rediscovery of Venezuela that meant breaking with old Third International analyses that saw our country as semi-feudal, when obviously there was considerable capitalist development and a very powerful bourgeoisie...
...Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1970...
...I went to speak with Jean-Paul Sartre, but his secretary sent me a message: 'I don't have anything to discuss with traitors!' Much later I received a Tupamaro t document which said something like, 'Caramba, if only we had been able to read the documents of the Venezuelan Communists.' And a Brazilian excombatant told me how useful it would have been in their tactical retreat to have studied our experience...
...Venezuela's GNP has been falling for seven years...
...In 1967, when the PCV's Central Committee resolved to suspend armed operations, Leoni's AD government cautiously began to test the waters.* The PCV created an electoral apparatus that was tolerated and then legalized, so it could participate in the 1968 elections...
...Rafael Caldera was elected president in 1968 on the ticket of the Social Christian Party (COPEI), AD's chief rival...
...What is the program of the MAS...
...Freezing salaries and increasing prices further restrict demand...
...countries...
...Perhaps Uruguay wouldn't have had a 12-year dictatorship if there had been more timely political changes...
...It has always been divided into conservative and progressive tendencies...
...But seven or eight years later, the armed movement had reached an impasse...
...Even in his book on guerrillas, Che Guevara says-almost on page one-that even in an imperfect democracy, it's useless to start a guerrilla war...
...It was a dramatic change, linked to the movement's history...
...But we were burdened by all the mythology about Cuba...
...Of course, this made populism increasingly anti-Communist...
...Our political postures have varied, but in general we have favored the democratization of property, which does not necessarily imply state ownership...
...Populist movements came to power in a few places: Vargas in Brazil,** Per6n in Argentina, Batlle in Uruguay,t APRA in Peru, AD in *Founded by Victor Ral1 Haya de la Torre in 1924, the Peruvian American Popular Revolutionary Alliance is generally con- sidered one of the most important Latin American populist parties...
...Our Congress is an important forum of debate, but it is not a power even like the U.S...
...Some had charismatic leaders, like Vargas or Per6n...
...Some time ago, MAS was suggesting things that the Chinese are now putting into practice, that Gorbachev would like to put into MAY/JUNE 1987 I Ieffect and that the Hungarians have discovered...
...Ultracentralization and ultra-planning are associated with slower growth...
...This unleashed a huge polemic with the Cubans, because our position came out of Latin America's most important armed movement [the Venezuelan...
...In this conversation with NACLA Research Director Marc Edelman, Petkoff discusses the process which led to the formation of MAS and its current program...
...We have now lived under four governments-Rafael Caldera [19691974], Carlos Andr6s P6rez [19741979], Luis Herrera Campins [19791984] and now Jaime Lusinchi...
...We had risen up in the name of democracy, not only against PNrez Jimenez, but against Betancourt, because he too supposedly intended to trample on democracy...
...XX, no.5 (September/December 1986...
...Could you comment on the division that has historically existed in Latin America between populism and Marxism...
...dictatorship and haven't for 30 years-but of transforming it...
...The state is the largest employer, the universal doctor, the universal educator, the main support for culture and sports...
...How could we convince Venezuelans that Johnson's interventSee "Guerra de Guerrillas" in Emesto Che Guevara, Obras 1957-1967...
...But at the same time we were part of a party that presented as a model society one which could not be considered democratic...
...Both sides showed remarkable political maturity, permitting a relatively smooth return to democratic normalcy...
...Our economy is heavily dominated by a few powerful groups, some of which are even strong outside of Venezuela...
...State governors are not elected, but appointed by the president...
...Many of us had travelled to the Soviet Union, Cuba, Czechoslovakia and China, or were exiled in those countries, living like common citizens...
...Transforming democracy We are strongly opposed to this government and especially critical of its economic policy, which has subordinated domestic needs to paying the debt...
...Populism speaks a language of social reform and, in some cases, anti-imperialism...
...But we were also representatives of a movement that considered intervention in Czechoslovakia revolutionary...
...MAS's initial goals were socialism with democracy, independence from tThe Movement for National Liberation-Tupamaros (MLN) were Uruguay's urban guerrillas of the 1960s and 1970s...
...The judiciary is the least autonomous branch of government...
...That is something nobody in Venezuela could understand...
...After two years, Lusinchi hasn't been able to get us out of the rut we're in...
...Some of the urban poor backed us, but most of the country didn't...
...The Tupamaros and the Brazilians were at a similar political impasse...
...Unlike other guerrilla movements in Latin America, we were not just students who went to the mountains, which is why the armed movement in Venezuela lasted seven or eight years...
Vol. 21 • May 1987 • No. 3
