Magical Illusions or Revolutionary Magic: Chávez in Historical Context
Coronil, Fernando
Throughout his remarkable crusade to fashion himself as an anti-establishment political leader, Hugo Chivez has promised to bring about a "peaceful revolution." The meaning of this promise, made...
...During an electoral contest depicted as a means to break with the past, old-style politics have returned with a vengeance...
...Popular struggles against the international debt, undignified labor conditions, ecological destruction and human rights violations will be as much a part of this collective undertaking as efforts within dominant sectors to reduce global poverty and unrest...
...Brewer, 2000...
...In 1945, AD justified its coup, in alliance with mid-level military officers, against the legitimate government of General Isafas Medina as a step towards the establishment of democracy in Venezuela...
...Hugo Chavez promises to break with the past, and his first steps have so changed the political landscape that this worn pledge carries fresh meaning...
...Memorably, in a brief 72-second televised speech conceding defeat, he took personal responsibility for the failure of the troops under his command and acknowledged the failure of his movement "for now"-leaving the implied promise of a movement that would grow and triumph...
...Its imposition of order tion, this steep decline in the bolivar has come to rep- resulted in the massacre of at least 400 people, primarresent the loss of Venezuela's exceptional status as an ily in the working-class barrios of the capital...
...The ed with the results reflected this polarization: Chdvez won 56% to Salas disaster in R6mer's 40...
...But he will come to power with a divided political movement and without a congressional majority, a result of the system of proportional yt another ring only the illusion of he a leader using his personal evitalize moribund racy...
...The riots occurred in response to movement...
...As if following an eerie script, the approval of the Constitution in a national referendum on December 15, 1999 coincided both with the worst natural disaster in Venezuelan history and with the end of the millennium...
...The demand to participate in national politics and to benefit from the nation's natural wealth helped forge a singular relationship between the democratization of political life and the constitution of a tutelary state...
...This aim has been pursued by all governments since 1936 and given various redefinitions in successive state development plans...
...Ever since Venezuela became a major oil exporter in the early twentieth century, the fusion of the power of political office and the power of oil money has enabled heads of state to appear as extraordinary figures capable of conjuring up the most fantastic dreams of progress...
...Magical Illusions or Revolutionary Magic...
...I was overwhelmed by the feeling," Garcia Mfrquez writes, "that I had just been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men...
...what seemed to be yet another deception...
...The other, an illusionist, who could pass into the history books as just another despot...
...The oil-rich state became the focus of intense political competition and the center of economic struggles...
...For many poor but resourcerich countries, the neoliberal pursuit of comparative advantages has led to a renewed focus on primary commodities as the foundation of their economies in a context in which market forces, rather than the state, determine decisions not just about production, but about its aims...
...160 (March/April 1999), p. 18...
...Since the overthrow of General P6rez d economic Jim6nez in 1958, the political id to exert parties that have ruled the coun- try sought once again to "sow the ry influence oil" by gaining control over the oil industry and using its ociety...
...NAMIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 40REPORT ON VENEZUELA Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez asks a similar question in an article based on a conversation with Hugo ChAvez during their flight back from Cuba last year...
...His very emergence as the embodiment of a collective dream of national progress is rooted in a traditional reliance on a messianic leader which has found in Venezuela's subsoil a fertile source of inspiration and rich resources with which to pursue it...
...4 Chivez recounts independence, Sim6n Bolivar-and who has that he and his fellow dissident officers were appalled denounced the devaluation as a sign of the elite's cor- that the army was used to repress the people rather than ruption and antinationalism...
...The supporting cast may come from the past, on the condition that they not be directly associated with the old ruling parties...
...Two independent candidates, Henrique Salas R6mer, a businessman-turnedpolitician and governor of the industrial state of Carabobo who represented the "Democratic Pole," and Hugo Chivez, representing the O approve a "Patriotic Pole," came to on December embody the two positions that divided Venezuelan society...
...It would be tragic if the drama unfolding in Venezuela were again enacted as if the nation's fate depended on one man's will, and if this historical opening leads, once more, to the deification of the leader rather than to collective empowerment, to fights over spoils, rather than to a renewed commitment to the pursuit of equity, nationally as well as globally...
...But if the past has handed Chivez a readymade script, the present has set a stage on which he can no longer play its assigned role...
...Neoliberal globalization has intensified the tension between the global conditions of capital accumulation and the national foundation of state , 80% of the popula- sovereignty...
...Uncontrollable floods and mudslides, aggravated by unregulated urbanization, washed away whole towns on the central coast of Venezuela, killing thousands of peodowntown Caracas reads, "Chdvez: Insecurity and unemployment ess, " in reference to Chavez's statement that Cuba navigates in a ple and redefining the geography of the area...
...Not even in Chile, the cradle of the neoliberal experiment in Latin America, has the post-Pinochet state managed to secure both economic growth and social equity...
...In contrast, dur- Ith made ing the dictatorship of General democracy Marcos P6rez Jim6nez (194858), the emphasis was squarely it also made placed on constructing the Sg nation's physical foundations or the ruling through public works and indusmonopolize trial development...
...The commanders denounced in partic- ephemeral ular Jos6 Vicente Rangel and Luis progress, or is Miquilena, Chivez's closest advisors, who embody both the ten- capable of sion between the old and the new, and between the civilian and the remarkable military factions within the magic to r ChAvez government...
...In a rare public moment of introspective lucidity, a top AD leader acknowledged this turnaround...
...As in the past, this confrontation has centered on the use and abuse of the state's resources and positions, with a proliferation of accusations of corruption among the contending candidates...
...demand for a whole range of consumer goods, from food to cars, fell by more than a half...
...1 2 The stage is now set to see whether ChAvez will be yet another magician offering only the ephemeral illusion of progress, or a leader capable of using his remarkable personal magic to revitalize Venezuela's moribund democracy...
...11 Veena Das, "Subaltern as Perspective," in Ranajit Guha, ed., Subaltern Studies VI (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989...
...After the coup, a constituent assembly was elected, a new constitution was approved, and general elections were held...
...Yet the past continues to define, often imperceptibly, the terms in which the future is imagined...
...8. Luis Lander and Margarita L6pez-Maya, "Venezuela: La Victoria de ChAvez...
...According to ChAvez, it was the failure of this pacted democracy's social and economic project that justified the coup against the Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY/JuNE 2000 37 Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2000 37REPORT ON VENEZUELA partidocracia-rule by political parties-in 1992...
...Much will depend on Chivez's commitment to include others at center stage and to disrupt a drama built upon the separation between an all powerful leader and a passive audience...
...Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2000 39REPORT ON VENEZUELA As in the past, the state may seek to extract financial resources from the oil industry, its fundamental source of foreign exchange...
...The pursuit of national progress demands a global redefinition of its aims and a transformation of the conditions for its realization...
...While oil prices have nearly tripled from a low of around $8 per barrel in February 1999, this increase in revenues has been partially counteracted by the effect of capital flight...
...Among the poor, it kept alive the hope that their modest gains anticipated more fundamental advances in the future...
...During his first year in office he has discouraged the participation of organized sectors in democratic discussion and shown little respect for institutions, often "confusing" his critique of "those who occupy institutions with the institutions themselves...
...While Chavez has promised to investigate every case of corruption in his administration, his own camp has denounced 14 cases of corruption involving the Arias Cdrdenas administration in the state of Zulia...
...Financed by a combination of petrodollars and debt dollars, the plan led to the proliferation of wasteful projects, luxury consumption and capital flight, leaving as its main domestic harvest the highest debt per capita in Latin America, a weakened economy and a demoralized society...
...2 Since the 1920s, oil wealth has helped establish a peculiar tutelary relationship between the state and society in Venezuela...
...the past...
...During the Democratic Action (AD) government (1945-48), "sowing the oil" became intimately tied to the consolidation of political democracy...
...Nationalism, which had been centrally identified with the achievement of political independence, became intimately tied to the complementary task of attaining economic development and collective prosperity...
...As if they had aged overnight after the elections of 1998, AD and Copei, the political parties that during half a century had so dominated politics that politics without them seemed unimaginable, appeared to be in their death throes...
...The recent collapse of CAVENDES, a major financial institution headed by Chavez backer Luis Vallenilla, has brought bitter memories to the fore...
...Vol XXXIII, No 6 MAY/JUNE 2000 35REPORT ON VENEZUELA Spurred by a quadrupling of oil prices and abundant foreign loans, Carlos Andr6s PNrez's plan to modernize the nation brought a massive inflow of money that intensified the pattern of waste and corruption that had come to characterize Venezuela's state-dependent rentier economy...
...23, No...
...resources to promote economic and social development within a democratic system...
...his first steps have so changed the political landscape that this worn pledge carries fresh meaning...
...AD's R6mulo Gallegos won the 1947 presidential election, but was overthrown eight months later by military officers led by P6rez Jim6nez, who claimed that AD had monopolized power and offered to establish "true" democracy...
...A shocked govern- Venezuelan bolivar traded at 4.30 to the dollar...
...See this issue of NACLA, pp...
...The legitimacy of the democratic regime came to depend not just on its formal origin in electoral contests, but on its substantive achievements--its ability to promote collective welfare through its use of oil revenues...
...defend them, and that soldiers of lower-class extraction A second turning point in Chivez's political trajec- were obliged to shoot at the poor...
...The coup attempt, followed by another failed attempt in November that underlined the regime's vulnerability, made of the imprisoned Chdvez a center of dissident political opinion...
...While as the sovereign owner of the subsoil the state has sought to obtain ever-larger rents by increasing oil prices and regulating supply, as a capitalist it must seek to obtain profits through productive investments in the global market...
...If AD's dominance, as widely believed, had rested on its ability to express the idiosyncratic character of the Venezuelan people, the people now asserted that AD had ceased to represent them...
...Yet other presidents before him, in Venezuela and elsewhere, have tried to achieve this goal, but have run up against colossal constraints...
...To sow the oil'," a phrase coined in 1936 to express the need to turn ephemeral oil revenues into lasting sources of wealth, became a political commandment...
...He pre- individual progress in a newly efficient nation...
...The state will continue to be torn by its impulse to obtain international rents for the use Despite Venezuela's oil weal of a depleting natural tion lives in poverty...
...While the executive branch of the state has tried to define national oil policy and to claim a larger share of the resources obtained by the state oil company, Venezuelan Petroleum (PDVSA), this company has sought to exert control over its earnings and investments in order to ensure its independence and its long-term profitability...
...In turn, the P6rez Jim6nez dictatorship was overthrown by a coup in 1958 by an alliance of military and civilian sectors who again offered to re-establish democracy...
...His own party, the MVR, has functioned as an electoral apparatus rather than as an independent organization capable of generating policies and programs...
...Much of the discussion that follows draws from my book, The Magical State: Nature, Money and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997...
...Ironically, the conditions that favored the development of democracy after 1958 also undermined it as a system of political representation and as a regime for economic development...
...His first year of rule, however, has consolidated his personal protagonism, creating dissension within his movement, disaffection among his professional and intellectual supporters, and a growing erosion of his popular base...
...In 1983, the massive looting and destruction...
...The meaning of this promise, made more powerful by a deep current of public rejection against the old system, has yet to be made clear...
...6. Alberto Arvelo Ramos, El dilema del chavismo: Una inc6gnita del poder (Caracas: Centauro, 1998), p. 193...
...Solutions, if they are to come, will result from the convergence of the actions of many actors on multiple national and global stages...
...was punctuated in 1983 by an unprecedented currency devaluation...
...288-337...
...The expansion of the international oil industry in a stagnant agricultural country that was ill prepared to regulate it enabled General Juan Vicente G6mez (1908-1935) to centralize political power and to appropriate for himself and his clique a significant share of the oil revenues...
...center stage belongs to new actors, as if only those who are not tarnished by the past had the capacity to free Venezuela from it...
...Even his most effective critic, Teodoro Petkoff, a socialist leader and respected intellectual, considers ChAvez an astute politician, a "sponge" who learns quickly and should not be underestimated...
...The post-boom period of economic decline and intensified political corruption under Luis Herrera Campins of Copei (1979-83) and Hugo Chivez leads a protest against the privatization of the state-owned oil Jaime Lusinchi of AD (1984-89) company in Caracas January 24, 1996...
...Just as oil wealth had allowed the concentration of political power in the figure of the president during the military dictatorships of G6mez and P6rez Jim6nez, it made it possible for the ruling democratic parties to monopolize political and economic power and to exert extraordinary influence over society...
...After he was pardoned by Caldera in 1994, Hugo Chdvez began organizing the political movement that would take him to the presidency on an anti-party platform in the forthcoming elections of 1998...
...1 4 But no local stage can produce solutions that must be global...
...The future has become the legitimating charter of Venezuelan politics...
...By the end of 1999 he had successfully achieved these ends...
...They] cannot be transformed into a life-time of love...
...and unemployment doubled to more than 20%, leading to an even larger expansion of an informal sector that already absorbed half of Venezuela's working population...
...El Polo Patri6tico en las elecciones de 1998," Nueva Sociedad, No...
...Will he be able to transform his temporary historical protagonism into a sustained rebellion from below-to turn, as it were, his one-night of love into a life-time of love...
...The 1998 electoral contest reflected both the weakness of traditional ruling parties and the growing polarization of Venezuelan society...
...1. Author's interview, Rafael Caldera, Caracas, August 28, 1999...
...After 15 months in office, uncertainty continues to define collective views concerning the times to come under Chavez...
...Retired Lieutenant Francisco Arias Cdrdenas, a leader of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement who took over the government of the state of Zulia during the February 4, 1992 failed coup, and has since been twice elected governor, became Chivez's main opponent...
...evidence of mounting opposition to his leadership, offering the outline of a troubled political panorama...
...It was a turning with political abuse and economic decline...
...During the electoral contest, discredited old actors and overused scripts ceased to have the power to suspend the public's disbelief...
...The in February 1989 on the promise of recovering pros- discourse of national unity gave way to the myth of perity and of opposing neoliberal policies...
...stituent assembly and writing a new constitution...
...This is a daunting challenge, particularly in comparison to the easier chore of presenting the brawl for positions in a declining system as a battle of positions, the squabble over its spoils as a struggle over principles...
...THE PRESENT During his first year in office as president, Chavez claimed his "peaceful revolution" was political rather than social in focus...
...Author's interview, Teodoro Petkoff, Caracas, July 30, 1999...
...An avenging angel for the impoverished majority while a demonized figure for the privileged elites, ChAvez became the expression of a class-divided Venezuela that no longer could conceal its divisions by appealing to a common vision of progress...
...2. I would like to thank Julie Skurski for her contributions to this article...
...Chivez became the embodiment of these sentiments, portrayed as both an avenging angel and a redeemer...
...As one analyst observed, in the midst of generalized disenchantment, Chivez brought back "the will to act politically...
...The result Turnaround-a shift from protectionism to neoliberal- was the attempted coup of February 4, 1992, led by ism in accord with IMF stipulations...
...As with Pdrez's "Great Turnaround," Caldera's "Venezuelan Agenda" did not counter the steady deterioration of living conditions for the majority and instead intensified a generalized discontent with the party system...
...For a perceptive analysis of recent changes in oil policy in Venezuela, see Daniel Hellinger, "Nationalism, Oil Policy and the Party System in Venezuela," paper presented at the XXII meeting of the Latin American Studies Association International Congress, March 16-18, 2000, Miami...
...Political democracy was structured as a vertical system of controls and clientelistic networks that suppressed democratic practices and undermined productive structures...
...Riding on a wave of massive popular support and appealing directly to the people through The graffiti on a wall in general elections, Chivez con- are your sea of happinE centrated on establishing a con- sea of happiness...
...Paradoxically, he faces conditions that make increasingly evident the limitations of a top-down system of rule, but that make an alternative to it difficult to imagine, given the weakness of civil organizations and the concentration of state power in the hands of the executive...
...In a lucid discussion of the historiography of popular rebellions, anthropologist Veena Das has noted that "in the face of massive institutional structures of bureaucratic domination" it is possible that "subaltern rebellions can only provide a night-time of love...
...Yet the past continues to define, often imperceptibly, the terms in which the future is imagined...
...Chivez will face even more stressful economic conditions than he has encountered thus far...
...Widespread rumors of possible coups coming from either camp have intensified anxieties concerning the electoral outcome...
...Without firing a shot and working within existing legal structures, Chavez overturned the political system and created institutional foundations for his promised social revolution...
...Yet the Venezuelan oil industry is now torn by heightened tensions...
...The opposition to G6mez's autocratic rule presented democracy as an alternative, understood as a system of political participation and economic entitlement that indistinOil weal Venezuelan possible...
...3 (1996), pp...
...Carlos The P6rez Administration attempted to erase the riots Andr6s Pdrez, the president who had propelled dreams from collective memory while promoting liberalization of prosperity in the 1970s, began a new term of office and reworking the rhetoric of national progress...
...Around Arias have gathered those who seek change, but argue that Chavez has monopolized power and turned a partidocracia into a personal autocracy...
...2 (1991), pp...
...8790...
...The 1973 oil boom exploded the limits of this Faustian exchange of oil for the illusion of progress...
...These civilian leaders became the target of Venezuela's criticism of corruption and clientelism and were blamed for mak- democ ing Chivez replace one elite clique for another...
...These converging contests require new conceptions of world development and a renewed commitment to social justice at the national and international levels...
...If Hugo Chdvez has sought to initiate a popular rebellion from above, he now faces, in Das' words, "massive institutional structures of bureaucratic domination" that are not just domestic, but global...
...As sented himself as the leader uniquely capable of social classes became increasingly polarized and corredeeming the nation, as a man interested not in using ruption more blatant-or its effects less tolerablepower to benefit from its spoils, but in making "his- Chivez's movement conspired to overthrow the govtory...
...Joining him is Commander Jestis Urdaneta HernAndez, former director of the state intelligence agency under ChAvez, who led investigations into 46 charges of corruption involving the Chivez Administration...
...For the popula- out security forces and the army...
...As a development plan, it began to take shape during the military administrations of Generals Eleazar L6pez Contreras (1936-41) and Isafas Medina Angarita (1941-45...
...At a time of heightened popular expectations, if oil prices decline in the near future, as predicted, the government will have even fewer resources to counter the economy's slump and improve the population's battered living conditions...
...Will Chivez be able to invent a new script for the role he has to play...
...By claiming that every Venezuelan citizen had the right to participate in the political system and to benefit from the nation's wealth as part owners of its subsoil, the opposition in effect depicted Venezuela as a community of citizen-landowners...
...Once in office, however, he announced with ernment and establish a constituent assembly as the great fanfare "El gran viraje"-The Great legitimating foundation for a new regime...
...Through a changing times, Luis Alfaro Ucero, AD's candidate, who was f the political abandoned by AD when it t seemed as if decided to shift its support to Salas R6mer just days before the ringing from elections, did not obtain even half of one percent of the vote...
...One to whom the caprices of fate had given an opportunity to save his country...
...6 He attained the status of an icon who represented bravery, justice and hope for the future...
...3. For an analysis of the Caracazo, see Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, "Dismembering and Remembering the Nation: The Semantics of Political Violence in Venezuela," Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol...
...Just a few months after Chivez took office, distinctive landmarks of the Venezuelan political landscape quietly crumbled...
...Through a startling fusion of the political and the natural, it seemed as if the future was springing from the ruins of the past...
...In this institutional vacuum, the military offers Chivez an organizational source of support, but one that reinforces a top-down style of rule that inhibits collective participation and mobilization...
...7 In response to growing discontent with his administration, Pdrez was removed from office on charges of corruption in 1993...
...Chivez's top advisers are two civilians with a long trajectory of opposition politics: 70-year-old Jos6 Vicente Rangel, the foreign minister and three-time leftist presidential candidate, and 83-year-old Luis Miquilena, who presided over the constituent assembly, a former labor leader and co-founder in 1946 of the anti-Stalinist branch of the Communist Party...
...Chivez promises to break with the past...
...4. I discuss some expressions of the racialization of class conflict during the Neocolonial Poetics of Subaltern States," in Laura Chrisman and Benita Parry, eds., Postcolonial Theory and Criticism (Cambridge: D.S...
...With a touch of nostalgia for a lost tradition and a tone of traditional paternalism, he observed that the people who sang and danced on the streets celebrating Chdvez were the same "negritas"--a patronizing term of affection to refer to lower class, dark-skinned women-that had once supported AD...
...A sign of the ry...
...THE FUTURE C hvez has come to power enacting the traditional script of a great leader who promises to fulfill the collective dream of progress...
...132-158...
...Yet there are signs of Chivez's political direction as well as Fernando Coronil, a Venezuelan citizen, teaches anthropology and history at the University of Michigan, where he chairs the doctoral program in anthropology and history He is the author of The Magical State: Nature, Money and Modernity (The University of Chicago Press, 1997), co-editor of States of Violence (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming), and has written extensively on issues of social theory, postcoloniality and globalization...
...This tension between its role as landlord seeking rents and capitalist seeking profits has led to an ongoing struggle within the state over oil income and policy...
...The National Congress and Supreme Court were dismantled without signs of public affliction...
...Above all, it revealed the existence of divisions within the military, the military's alliance with civilian organizations, and deep public disenchantment with the existing system of electoral democracy...
...During the Chivez regime differences between the executive branch of the state and PDVSA have been played out within PDVSA itself, leading to a large exodus of its managerial staff, bitter rivalries among its top leaders, and uncertainty concerning the future of the state's oil policy.to 0 Thus, as in other primary sectors in many countries in the world, the Venezuelan oil industry has been at the heart of the struggle between proponents of the free market and defenders of the state's right to control the econtf omy...
...Thus far, Chdvez has sought popular acclamation, not participation...
...On the eighth anniverNA3LA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 38REPORT ON VENEZUELA sary of the coup, Chivez's former IS Ch6vez y allies accused the President of betraying the ideals that inspired magician offei their Bolivarian movement...
...9 Debates about apertura--opening the oil sector to a greater role for the private sector-reflect competing conceptions of the role of the state and private capital in the oil industry...
...Arias Ctrdenas's ensuing decision to run as a presidential candidate against Chavez made manifest a rupture in their Bolivarian movement as well as the continuity of its principles: He proposed not to counter but to fulfill its ideals...
...9. Bernard Mommer provides a useful framework for interpreting the dual role of the state as landlord and capitalist in "Integrating the Oil: A Structural Analysis of Petroleum in the Venezuelan Economy," Latin American Perspectives, Vol...
...today it ment, unaccustomed to mass popular actions, brought trades at close to 700.00 to the dollar...
...With the old parties in shambles, the only real opposition to Chivez has come from within his own ranks...
...18-21...
...The economy shrank by almost 10% last year...
...Chivez has repoliticized Venezuelan politics, but under a global reorganization of power that has broken the spell of the magical state, undermining its capacity to act as the arbiter of domestic political and economic life...
...This dynamic of monetary wealth and national dreams has allowed political leaders to appear, in the words of Venezuelan playwright Jos6 Ignacio Cabrujas, as "magnificent sorcerers" endowed with the power to replace reality with fabulous fictions invisibly sustained by oil wealth...
...5. For an account of the military's objection to its being used to repress the popular sectors during the Caracazo, see Angela Zago, La rebeli6n de los Jngeles (Caracas: Warp Ediciones, 1998, fourth edition), pp...
...8 An ominous indication of this was his attack on the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) and his decision to have the state represent workers directly in negotiations with the business sector, thus eliminating the long-established practice of tripartite negotiations involving the state, labor and capital...
...At the end of that year, ex-president Rafael Caldera was elected A referendum ti new Constitution 15, 1999 coincid worst natural Venezuelan histo startling fusion oi and the natural, ii the future was sp the ruins of 1 president with a broad mandate to reverse the neoliberal program Pdrez had begun to implement...
...By exchanging the nation's subsoil for international money, the state was to use the nation's natural body to construct its social body...
...As in the financial crisis of 1994, which forced President Caldera to inject several billion dollars into the private banking system after several bank directors committed massive fraud, Chdvez has been forced to bail out CAVENDES, after Vallenilla used its resources-including large state deposits-to finance various megaprojects of his own...
...representation chosen to ensure minority participation...
...During the elections, these increasingly polarized sectors came to define themselves in relation to Chivez...
...7. For discussions of the February 4 attempted coup, see Enrique Ochoa Antich, Los golpes de febrero (Caracas: Fuentes, 1992) and Heinz R. Sontag and Thais Maingon, Venezuela 4-F 1992 (Caracas: Nueva Sociedad, 1992...
...resource, including its prerogative to set subsidized prices for its domestic products (mainly gasoline), and the need to maintain the competitiveness of its oil industry as a capitalist enterprise in the international market...
...They also point as well for ChAivez, who founded his Bolivarian disrupted the unifying political rhetoric of the domiRevolutionary Movement (MBR) in 1983--on the nant parties, as political conflict was now presented in bicentenary of the birthday of Venezuela's hero of polarized and racialized class terms...
...The doubling of ChAvez and other mid-level officers with the support of gasoline prices triggered spontaneous protests and leftist civilian groups...
...The system they established after 1958 was based on a series of pacts and agreements among centrist parties, capital and labor...
...They require alliances among contenders as well as confrontations among them...
...3 oil-exporting nation with open access to the world These events altered the widely held belief in the economy, and marked a turning point in the progres- passivity of the Venezuelan people when confronted sive delegitimation of the ruling elite...
...Chivez's popularity grew within the chasm separating the large majority that had sunk below the poverty line and a reduced upper sector that has profited from the nation's growing integration into a globalized market...
...Even in the midst of the current economic crisis, according to recent surveys, most Venezuelans believe that their nation is one of the world's richest and that if only the state managed its natural wealth properly, their lives would radically improve...
...ChAvez promises to bring well-being to the population in the context of the hegemony of neoliberal globalization...
...Ever since the nationalization of the oil industry in 1976, the project to use oil to finance the state's development has intensified the conflict within the state over its roles as landlord and as capitalist...
...After a massive capital flight of over $4 billion during his first year in office, his repeated assurances to capitalists that he will respect the "rules of the game" and the rights of private property may reduce but not alter significantly their hesitation to invest in Venezuela...
...This forged a new link between the military and democracy in Venezuela that has important historical overtones...
...Paradoxically, by voicing this familiar dream, ChAvez remains in the very past with which he seeks to break, but under new conditions that make the dream as difficult to fulfill as to abandon-and harder yet to invent a new one...
...But it possible f parties to political an power, an extraordina over s guishably fused political rights and economic claims...
...NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36REPORT ON VENEZUELA While it failed, the coup had widespread support...
...33, No...
...Similarly, new parties, such as Chivez's Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), have sought to preserve their unblemished image, making tactical alliances only with parties that had opposed the previous governments while seeking to preserve their independence from them...
...Chdvez has established a direct relationship with the people, without intermediate supporting organizations...
...Inheriting a financial crisis that led to a banking collapse and facing declining oil revenues, Caldera announced in 1996 that he had no alternative but to change his plan and implement a neoliberal economic program, his "Venezuelan Agenda...
...And it was this system that came apart with the 1998 election of Chivez, who promised, as had AD in 1945, to establish a new foundation for Venezuelan democracy by electing a constituent assembly, promulgating a new constitution and calling for general elections...
...Yet Chivez has shown a remarkable ability to adjust to changing circumstances...
...The "second independence," a slogan proclaimed by many political leaders throughout the twentieth century, referred to this ideal of liberating the nation from economic backwardness...
...As Rafael Caldera, one of Venezuela's most astute politicians, said early in the ChAvez government: "Uncertainty is the sign of the times...
...5 Seen as a betrayal of tory was marked by the anti-austerity riots-the Bolivar's socially redemptive vision of the nation, the Caracazo-that erupted in Caracas and other cities on Caracazo had a decisive influence on Chdvez and his February 27, 1989...
...In a dramatic turnaround, the man who had been demonized as a threat to democracy after the failed coup of 1992 was legitimated by the elections of 1998...
...If he is elected as predicted, Chdvez will initiate his mandate as president of the newly renamed Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela under a presidentialist legal and institutional system tailored for him by the constituent assembly, including provisions for his re-election for a second six-year term...
...The increased demand for Venezuelan oil, coupled with global economic growth during the three decades following World War II, allowed the oildependent Venezuelan economy to expand, bringing unprecedented prosperity to its middle and upper sectors...
Vol. 33 • May 2000 • No. 6
