Dopo tutto il Venezuela non e' un repubblica delle banane con petrolio

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>]

Venezuela: Not a Banana-Oil Republic after All
http://www.zmag.org/venezuela_watch.htm : la rivista Z-net coordinata da
Chomsky
By Gregory Wilpert April 15th

It looks like Venezuela is not just another banana-oil republic after all.
Many here feared that with the April 11 coup attempt against President Hugo
Chavez, Venezuela was being degraded to being just another country that is
forced to bend to the powerful will of the United States. The successful
counter-coup of April 14, though, which reinstated Chavez, proved that
Venezuela is a tougher cookie than the coup planners thought.

The coup leaders against President Chavez made two fundamental
miscalculations. First, they started having delusions of grandeur, believing
that the support for their coup was so complete that they could simply
ignore the other members of their coup coalition and place only their own in
the new government. The labor union federation CTV, which saw itself as one
of the main actors of the opposition movement to President Chavez, and
nearly all moderate opposition parties were excluded from the new
"democratic unity" cabinet. The new transition cabinet ended up including
only the most conservative elements of Venezuelan society. They then
proceeded to dissolve the legislature, the Supreme Court, the attorney
general's office, the national electoral commission, and the state
governorships, among others. Next, they decreed that the 1999 constitution,
which had been written by a constitutional assembly and ratified by vote,
following the procedures outlined in the pervious constitution, was to be
suspended. Also an intensive witch-hunt began, looking to arrest any members
of the Chavez government. The new transition president would thus rule by
decree until next year, when new elections would be called. Generally, this
type of regime fits the textbook definition of dictatorship.

This first miscalculation led to several generals' protest against the new
regime, perhaps under pressure from the excluded sectors of the opposition,
or perhaps out of a genuine sense of remorse, and resulted in their call for
changes to the sweeping "democratic transition" decree, lest they withdraw
their support from the new government. Transition President Pedro Carmona,
the chair of Venezuela's largest chamber of commerce, immediately agreed to
reinstate the Assembly and to the rest of the generals' demands.

The second miscalculation was the belief that Chavez was hopelessly
unpopular in the population and among the military and that no one except
Cuba and Colombia's guerilla, the FARC, would regret Chavez' departure.
Following the initial shock and demoralization which the coup caused among
Chavez-supporters, this second miscalculation led to major upheavals and
riots in Caracas' sprawling slums, which make up nearly half of the city. In
practically all of the "barrios" of Caracas spontaneous demonstrations and
"cacerolazos" (pot-banging) broke out on April 13 and 14. The police
immediately rushed-in to suppress these expressions of discontent and
somewhere between 10 and 40 people were killed in these clashes with the
police. Then, in the early afternoon, purely by word-of-mouth and the use of
cell phones (Venezuela has one of the highest per capita rates of cell phone
use in the world), a demonstration in support of Chavez was called at the
Miraflores presidential palace. By 6 PM about 100,000 people had gathered in
the streets surrounding the presidential palace. At approximately the same
time, the paratrooper battalion, to which Chavez used to belong, decided to
remain loyal to Chavez and took over the presidential palace. Next, as the
awareness of the extent of Chavez' support spread, major battalions in the
interior of Venezuela began siding with Chavez.

Eventually the support for the transition regime evaporated among the
military, so that transition president Carmona resigned in the name of
preventing bloodshed. As the boldness of Chavez-supporters grew, they began
taking over several television stations, which had not reported a single
word about the uprisings and the demonstrations. Finally, late at night,
around midnight of April 14, it was announced that Chavez was set free and
that he would take over as president again. The crowds outside of Miraflores
were ecstatic. No one believed that the coup could or would be reversed so
rapidly. When Chavez appeared on national TV around 4 AM, he too joked that
he knew he would be back, but he never imagined it would happen so fast. He
did not even have time to rest and write some poetry, as he had hoped to do.

So how could this be? How could such an impeccably planned and smoothly
executed coup fall apart in almost exactly 48 hours? Aside from the two
miscalculations mentioned above, it appears that the military's hearts were
not fully into the coup project. Once it became obvious that the coup was
being hijacked by the extreme right and that Chavez enjoyed much more
support than was imagined, large parts of the military decided to reject the
coup, which then had a snowball-effect of changing military allegiances.
Also, by announcing that one of the main reasons for the coup was to avoid
bloodshed and by stating that the Venezuelan military would never turn its
weapons against its own people, Chavez supporters became more courageous to
go out and to protest against the coup without fear of reprisals.

Very important, though, was that the coup planners seem to have believed
their own propaganda: that Chavez was an extremely unpopular leader. What
they seem to have forgotten is that Chavez was not a fluke, a phenomenon
that appeared in Venezuela as a result of political chaos, as some analysts
seem to believe. Rather, Chavez' movement has its roots in a long history of
Venezuelan community and leftist organizing. Also, it seems quite likely
that although many people were unhappy with Chavez' lack of rapid progress
in implementing the reforms he promised, he was still the most popular
politician in the country.

The media and the opposition movement tried to create the impression that
Chavez was completely isolated and that no one supported him any longer.
They did this by organizing massive demonstrations, with the extensive help
of the television stations, which regularly broadcast reports of the
anti-Chavez protests, but consistently ignored the pro-Chavez protests,
which, by all fair accounts, tended to be just as large. The television
channels claimed that they did not cover pro-Chavez demonstrations because
protestors threatened their lives. While this seems unlikely since the
demonstrators usually unequivocally want their demonstrations covered by the
media, they could have gotten protection, if they had cared to.

The Media

Nearly the entire media is owned and operated by Venezuela's oligarchy.
There is only one neutral newspaper, which is not an explicitly anti-Chavez
newspaper and one state-run television station. During the coup, the
state-run station was taken off the air completely and all of the other
media kept repeating the coup organizer's lies without question. These lies
included the claim that Chavez had resigned and had dismissed his cabinet,
that all of the demonstration's dead were "martyrs of civil society" (i.e.,
of the opposition, since the media does not consider Chavez supporters as
part of civil society), and that Chavez had ordered his supporters to shoot
into the unarmed crowd of anti-Chavez demonstrators.

The media never addressed the repeated doubts that members of Chavez'
cabinet raised about his resignation. Also, the media did not release the
names of those who were shot, probably because this would have shown that
most of the dead were pro-Chavez demonstrators. Finally, the media edited
the video footage of the shootings in such a way as to avoid showing where
the Chavez supporters were shooting-namely, as eyewitnesses reported, at
police and individuals who were shooting back while hidden in doorways.
Also, they did not show the pro-Chavez crowd repeatedly pointing at the
snipers who were firing at them from the rooftop of a nearby building.

These media distortions in the aftermath of the coup drove home the point
just how powerful the media is at creating an alternate reality. Those
Chavez supporters who were at the demonstration and witnessed the events
realized more than ever that power needs a medium and that those who control
the media have much more power than they let on. This is why the television
stations became a key target in the hours leading up to Chavez'
reinstatement. The take-over of four of the eight stations was essential to
Chavez' comeback because it showed the rest of the military and the rest of
Venezuela that Chavez still had strong support among the population and that
if the people really wanted to, they could fight for what was right and win.

Quo Vadis Chavez?

An aspect of the rise of Chavez to power that is often forgotten in
Venezuela is that as far as Venezuelan presidents are concerned, Chavez has
actually been among the least dictatorial. True, Chavez is a deeply flawed
president with many shortcomings, among which one of the most important is
his autocratic style. However, earlier presidencies, such as that of Carlos
Andres Perez (1989-1993), the killing of demonstrators were nearly a monthly
occurrence. Also, the outright censorship of newspapers was quite common
during the Perez presidency. None of this has happened during the Chavez
presidency.

President Hugo Chavez is an individual who raises the passions of people,
pro or con, unlike anyone else. It almost seems that Venezuelans either love
him or hate him. A more balanced picture of the president, however, would
show, first, that he is someone who deeply believes in working for social
justice, for improving democracy, and believes in international solidarity.
Also, he is a gifted and charismatic speaker, which makes him a natural
choice as a leader.

However, one has to recognize that he has some very serious shortcomings.
Among the most important is that while he truly believes in participatory
democracy, as is evidenced in his efforts to democratize the Venezuelan
constitution, his instincts are that of an autocrat. This has led to a
serious neglect of his natural base, which is the progressive and grassroots
civil society. Instead, he has tried to control this civil society by
organizing "Bolivarian Circles" which are neighborhood groups that are to
help organize communities and at the same time to defend the revolution. The
opposition easily stigmatized these circles, however, as being nothing other
than a kind of SS for Chavez' political party. Another crucial flaw has been
his relatively poor personnel choices. Many of the ministries and agencies
suffer from mismanagement.

Finally and perhaps the most often mentioned flaw, is his tendency for
inflammatory rhetoric. Accusations that Chavez divided Venezuelan society
with his constant talk about the rich and the poor are ridiculous, since
Venezuelan society was divided along these lines long before Chavez came to
power. However, by trying to belittle his opponents by calling them names,
such as "escualidos" (squalids), he made it virtually impossible for real
dialogue to take place between himself and his opponents.
The crucial question that Chavez-supporters and opponents alike are now
asking is whether Chavez has grown through the experience of this coup. In
his initial statement after being freed from his military captors, was, "I
too have to reflect on many things. And I have done that in these hours. . I
am here and I am prepared to rectify, wherever I have to rectify." Right
now, however, it is too early to see if he really is going to change his
ways, so that he becomes more productive in achieving the goals he has set
for Venezuela.


While Chavez' many progressive achievements should not be forgotten, neither
should his failures be overlooked, most of which have important lessons for
progressives everywhere. The first lesson is to keep the eyes on the prize.
Chavez has become so bogged-down with small day-to-day conflicts that many
people are no longer sure if he remembers his original platform, which was
to abolish corruption and to make Venezuelan society more egalitarian. While
greater social equality is extremely difficult to achieve in a capitalist
society, it is fair to say that Chavez' plans have not had enough time to
bear fruit. He has a six-year social and economic development plan for
2001-2007, of which only a small fraction has so far been implemented.
However, on the corruption front, he has fallen seriously behind.


The second lesson is that the neglect of one's social base, which provides
the cultural underpinnings for desired changes, will provide an opening for
opponents to redefine the situation and to make policy implementation nearly
impossible. By not involving his natural base, the progressive and
grassroots civil society, Chavez allowed the conservative civil society, the
conservative unions, the business sector, the church, and the media to
determine the discourse as to what the "Bolivarian revolution" was really
all about.
The third lesson is that a good program alone is not good enough if one does
not have the skillful means for implementing it. Chavez has some terrific
plans, but through his incendiary rhetoric he manages to draw all attention
away from his actual proposals and focuses attention on how he presents them
or how he cuts his critics down to size.


Finally, while it is tempting to streamline policy-implementation by working
only with individuals who will not criticize the program, creates a
dangerous ideological monoculture, which will not be able to resist the
diverse challenges even the best plans eventually have to face. Chavez has
consistently dismissed from his inner circle those who criticized him,
making his leadership base, which used to be quite broad, smaller and
smaller. Such a narrow leadership base made it much easier for the
opposition to challenge Chavez and to mount the coup.

Whether Chavez and his opposition have learned these lessons remains to be
seen. Venezuelan society is still deeply divided. One has to recognize that,
at heart, this conflict is also a class conflict. While there certainly are
many Chavez opponents who come from the lower classes and numerous
supporters from the upper classes, the division between Chavez supporters
who come from the lower dark-skinned classes and the opponents who come from
the higher light-skinned classes cannot be denied. What Venezuela needs, if
social peace is to be preserved, is a class compromise, where social peace
is maintained at the expense of a more just distribution of Venezuela's
immense wealth. However, today's globalized world makes such a compromise
increasingly difficult to achieve because free market competition militates
against local solutions to this increasingly global problem. But perhaps
Venezuela is a special case because of its oil wealth, which might allow it
to be an exception. Such an exception, though, will only be possible if
power plays, such as the recent coup attempt, come to an end.


Gregory Wilpert lives in Caracas, is a former U.S. Fulbright scholar in
Venezuela, and is currently doing independent research on the sociology of
development. He can be reached at: Wilpert@cantv.net


Nello

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