1
The turbulent, protracted Venezuelan crisis, which
in fundamental ways continues to intensify, could perhaps be
better understood if we view it as the result of the
unwillingness of a rentier society and its petro-state to
undertake the reforms that might reverse a long, painful process
of decay. The rentier nature of Venezuelan national life,
characterized by the total disregard of the cultural relationship
between hard work and well-being (Ball 1994, 31), as well as the
key features of its petro-state —the "magical state"
(Coronil 1997)—, have been discussed in detail elsewhere,
and it does not seem necessary to repeat that analysis here (Karl
1994 and 1995). Suffice it to say that the Venezuelan democratic
experiment between 1958 and 1998, gradually became especially
vulnerable to the impact of three factors:
1) The bewildering ups and downs in the price of oil.
When it went down, the petro-state, addicted as it is to an
unceasing supply of money to spend, turned to foreign borrowing
as an alternative source, soon aggravating its own fiscal
condition. When the price went up, the country's political
leaders abandoned any intentions they might have had to introduce
economic reforms that are unacceptable to a population spoiled by
governmental paternalism as a way of life.
2) The essentially utilitarian nature of the political
culture, the public's weak normative commitment to democracy and
the rule of law, and the resulting gap between the expectations
fanned by an irresponsible political elite, and the actual
performance of the petro-state (Romero 1997, 25-28).
3) The messianic-fundamentalist mentality ("Bolivarian
Fundamentalism") predominant within influential sectors of the
Venezuelan military, an ideological-political factor that has
played and still plays a crucial role in shaping the country's
recent political evolution.
(*) Ponencia dictada en la Universidad de
Harvard
The hour of reckoning for puntofijista democracy
(thus called after the place _Caldera's own home in Caracas_,
where one of its foundational pacts was signed in 1958) came in
1989, when the recently inaugurated government, amidst
expectations of a speedy return to the bonanza of the early
1970s, finally had to face up to the fact that the international
banks were unwilling to go on footing the bill of the Venezuelan
state's wasteful ways and almost insane prodigality. It would be
a mistake to think that the Pérez government, which tried
to implement the economic "package" of pro-market reforms, did it
because the President liked it and had become a convert to
neoliberalism. The reforms were undertaken because there appeared
to be no more options to tackle an economy in ruins. To undertake
the reforms was an act of statesmanship, carried out by the wrong
person, in highly unfavorable circumstances, considering the mood
of the public at that time. Simply
put, the people were not prepared to accept that the
rentier "development model" had collapsed. They did not
want to change it then, just as they do not want to change it
now. And why should they? a large number of Venezuelans may
reasonably ask, given that they believe there is nothing wrong
with the rentier model itself, nothing that cannot be
cured once corruption is eliminated, and petroleum wealth fairly
distributed by the state, thus making them quite happy and
prosperous again. (International Republican Institute and
Consultores-21 1996, 50).
Pérez's catastrophic failure signaled the end not
only for pro-market reforms, but also for any real possibility
that Venezuelan society could for an extended period of time be
willing to realistically appraise the root causes of its
impoverishment. It was now open season for seeking scapegoats.
First came Caldera and his anti-corruption crusade, in 1993 and
1994. It is well known that corruption plays an unusually large
role in most Venezuelans' minds, for they cannot find an
alternative explanation for the contradiction that, according to
the prevailing myth, the country is "rich" but the vast majority
of the population is poor. For nearly three years, Caldera
attempted to restore the old system and make it work again: an
impossible task no doubt. He was forced, as Pérez was
before him, to realize that no matter how hard he tried, there
was no way the rentier, oil-based "development model"
could make the country prosper again as it apparently did for
some time. That it would only deepen our dependency on a single
commodity and make us even poorer. Too late, the Caldera
government introduced a half-hearted program of reforms, the
Agenda Venezuela of 1996-1997 that was, again, received by
the public as no more than another act of betrayal by a corrupt
political elite. The door was open for the man who, this time,
while perhaps not capable of making the country thrive again
quickly, at least would wreak revenge on those who brought us to
the sorry situation we now find ourselves in: Lieutenant-Colonel
Hugo
Chávez.
2
It is easier to determine what has died in Venezuela over
the past three years, than to ascertain what exactly is being
born. Our forty-year old, oil-financed democracy of pacts between
elites is dead, certainly, but there are plenty of contrasting
views as to what is replacing it. I shall argue later that what
we are witnessing is the transition from one type of flawed
democracy to an even more perverted one, to an increasingly
plebiscitary and militarized regime that in some relevant aspects
is _and looks like_ a degraded version of puntofijismo.
But before considering the "Chavista revolution" in more detail,
it could prove useful to place the Venezuelan situation within
the wider Latin American context.
It has become customary, when discussing democracy in
Latin America today, to refer to our political regimes as
"hybrid", "exclusionary", "authoritarian", "frozen", "tutelary",
"crisis-prone", and other such adjectives. Do these
qualifications tell us anything that we did not already know
about the realities of democracy in several of our countries? I
do not think so. The fact is that not much is new as far as the
quality of democratic existence in Latin America in general, and
Venezuela in particular, is concerned. There is usually a lack of
historical perspective in the prevailing emphasis on the "hybrid"
nature of political regimes in the region, where a number of
countries may be accurately characterized as semi-democratic,
rather than fully democratic, "because of constraints on
constitutionalism, contestation or inclusiveness, including
outright electoral fraud and manipulation" (Hartlyn and
Valenzuela 1994, 106). Some of our democracies are indeed flawed
and perverted, and probably becoming more so under the pressures
exerted on most countries in the region _including Venezuela_ to
achieve a more competitive insertion in the world economy (Romero
1996b, 84-86). As John Sheahan puts it, the citizens in the U.S.
and other advanced Western democracies "can under normal
conditions take for granted that their own structure of
protection for personal freedoms
is firmly established. That assumption is not valid in Latin
America" (Sheahan 1986, 184). It is not valid now, it has not
been valid in the past _with very few exceptions_,and it may be
considered at least doubtful whether it will become valid in the
near future.
I would not want to argue that there is nothing new in
what has been happening, both politically and socioeconomically,
in Latin America over the past fifteen years or so. Some of the
changes, however, are not so much a question of substance as of
degree. Look at the pro-market economic reforms, for example.
They have been common currency throughout the region for decades.
What is new is the intensity of the pressures on Latin American
nations to open and modernize their economies accepting the
realities of globalization. Until the early 1980s (in the
Venezuelan case, until the end of the decade) a few Latin
American countries were able to minimize the impact of painful
reforms through borrowing. In the changed international
environment, however, these countries have been forced to choose
from only stabilization and structural adjustment, along the
lines of the "Washington consensus" (Conway 1995,
156).
Will the economic reforms now underway in some Latin
American countries lead to prosperity and freedom? My view of the
matter is that the need to undertake fundamental economic
reforms, to modernize our economies and make them more productive
and competitive is an unavoidable reality for the region;
nevertheless, most emphatically, we must be aware not only of the
demands and costs, but also of the opportunities of
globalization. There is, however, no escaping the realization
that the democratic regimes charged with the task of reform keep
finding significant obstacles along the way. The impact of market
forces on traditionally closed societies can be
highly destabilizing, creating competitive pressures on
paternalistic states and protected economies. Venezuela, for
instance, has lived for decades under the shadow of economic
statism and political populism, and the country's inhabitants
have grown accustomed to the comfortable subsidy of an overvalued
currency. But the current transformation of the world economy
into a dynamically integrated system could bypass entire
countries or large parts of their populations, shifting them
"from a structural position of exploitation to a structural
position of irrelevance" (Castells 1993, 37).
The inability of a number of countries to respond
successfully to the challenges of globalization is leading to a
variety of collective reactions, with great disruptive potential.
Castells mentions three: the first is to establish new linkages
with the world economy via the criminal economy of drug
production and trafficking, illegal arms deals, and even commerce
in human beings. The second is the expression of utter
desperation that has transformed entire regions _mainly in
Africa_ into self-destructive battlegrounds. A third reaction is
the rise of ideological/religious fundamentalism, in opposition
to a "development model" which threatens long-held cultural
beliefs and identities (Castells 1983, 38-39).
There is a fourth reaction, moreover, that emerged in
Latin America in the late 1980s and during the 1990s, when
economic setbacks and persistent social inequalities encouraged
the demand for authoritarian leadership: el retorno del
líder _the return of the leader
(Zermeño 1989)_, of neo-caudillos such as Fujimori and
Menem, who have
played the part of Weberian plebiscitary figures, preserving a
semblance of democracy and implementing painful but indispensable
economic reforms, while at the same time strengthening their
personal power.
Hugo Chávez belongs in this company, but with a
difference: rather than attempting to introduce market reforms,
Chávez sees "neoliberalism" as an enemy. His "revolution"
represents a more radical reaction to the impact of
globalization, an attempt not only to exempt us from the demands
of capitalist productivity and global competition, but also to
lead us down the uncharted path of a new, original, "true
democracy". It is no wonder that this renewed experiment in
populist utopia-building is taking place first in Venezuela, a
country that has been able to postpone _thanks to oil_
acknowledgement of the unraveling of the statist model, and where
there is little awareness that we cannot continue living forever
in an economy based purely on redistribution rather than wealth
creation.
3
For a while during the past decade the very idea of
military rule looked thoroughly discredited in Latin America.
Also, after the terrible experiences of defeat and repression in
the 1960s and 1970s, the coming apart of the Cuban and Nicaraguan
revolutions, and the worldwide collapse of the socialist utopia,
many thought that the Latin American left had learned the correct
lessons: "Democracy, despised and decried by the left during the
1960s and 1970s as an empty procedure, a fallacious formality,
was discovered anew in the prisons and torture chambers of
diverse dictatorships…Procedural democracy _discovered
through their painful learning process_ was not the empty shell
it had once seemed" (Gorriti 1994, 170). For some time, these
developments lessened the threats to democracy from the military
and the revolutionary left. But popular disappointment with the
slow pace of economic reforms, the increase of poverty in the
region, and a crisis of identity within the military, are slowly
changing the situation.
The left is now re-emerging, and in some cases
_Venezuela and Ecuador are
examples_ it has forged links with radicalized sectors in the
armed forces. This is, to be sure, a revamped left, that no
longer disdains "formal" democracy but embraces it as a kind of
instrument to achieve a new utopia: democracy without capitalism.
The main target of this newly-formed radical coalition of the old
left and military radicals is the market system, which it calls
"neo-liberalism", while at the same time elevating nationalism to
center stage. As Fidel Castro
_much admired by Hugo Chávez_ put it in his speech at the
4th Sao Saulo Forum in 1993: "Neoliberalism means the
total plundering of our peoples". What the new anti-market
coalition proposes is "real democratization" as a way forward, a
definition of democracy that goes beyond procedural terms and
includes a "surplus of meaning" in terms of ideals of social
justice and equality (Panizza 1993, 266). Chávez reflected
this when he said _just to give but one instance_ that "(The poor
in Venezuela) cannot buy meat; they cook the banana
peel…to substitute for meat, to give to their children
because they have none…Thus, there isn't democracy
here" (Quoted by Norden 1995, 20).
The rejection of markets, of capitalism and of
globalization is giving rise to a confused but nevertheless
significant grouping of military and civilian radicals who know
very well what they are against ("empty" democracy, capitalism,
neoliberalism, globalization), but seem to be quite vague as to
what they stand for. By and large commentators of this tendency
speak of a radical democracy that has yet to be conceptually
fleshed-out (Rénique 1994, 65); others refer to a nebulous
socialist democracy or a democratic collectivism inspired by the
Indian communities of Latin America (Petras and Morley 1992,
1-3). The argument is that representative democracy, as it exists
in the advanced West, though in some ways desirable, is not
sufficient. One must go further to achieve "authentic",
"participatory" or "true" democracy (Maingot 1994, 179). This is
precisely what Hugo Chávez has been insisting upon ever
since he first had the chance to address the Venezuelan people in
1994. But it remains impossible to this day to find anything like
a clear definition of what this "true" democracy would be like,
or even what is meant by direct participative democracy, an
obscure notion much talked about in Venezuela these days and
which has found its way into the new Constitution (Art. 70). Nor
is it at all clear how the new radicals propose to avoid the
well-trodden path by which elimination of free markets leads to
the elimination of democracy and individual liberties _that is,
the road beginning in anti-capitalism and concluding in a
dictatorship of a "popular democracy" type (Romero
1996a).
In the Venezuelan context, the bitterness of a people
convinced that forty years of puntofijista democracy were
no more than a continuous process of looting by corrupt
politicians, has been compounded by the populist appeal of
Bolivarian Fundamentalism, the official ideology of the "Chavista
revolution", an ideology which to a significant extent
articulates the frustrations of the millions of marginalized and
poorest Venezuelans. According to this vague view of things, just
as Bolívar
achieved independence from Spain, so today's "true
revolutionaries" must fight for independence from
"neoliberalism". This means above all the elimination of the
"corrupt elites" that dominated Venezuela over the past four
decades (a mission largely accomplished already), and the
transformation of society according to Bolivar's
teachings. And what are these? Chávez's own highly
distorted and simplistic interpretation of Bolivar's doctrinal
legacy, starts from a crudely conceived nationalism, which sees
Venezuelans as the virtuous victims of corruption and foreign
interests. The nation is perceived as embodied in the state, and
the state is incarnated in the leader who, as the people's
protector, must develop a direct relationship with them,
non-mediated by institutional constraints (Ceresole 1999). It
corresponds to the state to control the
"strategic sectors" of the economy, to direct its
course.
On the international, foreign-policy front, the basic
ingredients of Chávez's vision are these: First, The
United States is not an ally of Venezuela, but an adversary; it
is enormously powerful but is also showing signs of
"geo-strategic weakness"; the Venezuelan "revolution" must
capitalize on that
weakness, although for the time being Washington's
wishes must in some cases be accommodated. Second, the Cuban
model is worth imitating; Cuba is a true
ally of Venezuela, and _in Chávez's own words_ we are
"sailing together along the same course towards a better future".
Third, Venezuelan oil policy must revitalize the OPEC cartel,
striving for higher prices through strict adherence to quotas,
rather than increasing volumes of production and searching for
new markets.
This is not, on the face of it, a particularly well
thought out, ideologically sophisticated political and economic
program, while at the same time it must be said that one is hard
put to try and discover any such clearly formulated program
behind the "Chavista revolution". What we find, rather, is an
emotional response to a situation of profound discontent on the
part of a people, 87% of which think that the changes they would
like to see do not depend on their own will and personal efforts,
but must be implemented by a strong, benevolent and paternalistic
government (El Nacional 19 October 1999, C/2), a people
who believe the "Chavista revolution" will finally deliver the
goods and fulfill their long-postponed expectations of material
well-being. To them, to the great majority of Venezuelans, the
"Chavista revolution" represents an additional attempt, perhaps
the last one, to find the magic formula that will secure a fair
and efficient distribution of the country's "riches" among its
inhabitants.
4
The reality of military nationalism joining leftist
anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism is nothing terribly new in
Latin America. What gives some originality to the Venezuelan
situation is the highly charged political messianism of the
Bolivarianos, the core-group of Chávez's military
followers, and of Chávez himself. Other aspects of their
behavior belong to the well known pattern of military
interventionism in 20th century Latin America: "Everywhere
officers seek to prove the worth of the institution and expect
civilians to prove their own worth" (Nunn 1995, 28). What else is
new? Hugo Chávez is promising paradise around the corner
to Venezuelans: this is what all puntofijista rulers did,
ever since Pérez assumed power for the first time in 1973
and soon received a massive influx of petro-dollars, which was
rapidly wasted. This time, however, there is a much wider gap
between the people's illusions and the realities of the
"revolution", between Chávez's initial prospects and the
actual circumstances of a changed international
environment.
The original chavista project was conceived, in
the early 1980s, for a world that no longer exists, a world in
which the Berlin Wall was still standing, where political
radicalism and revolution were still fashionable among
intellectual elites in Latin America, the U.S., and Western
Europe, and where the socialist utopia still held its spell.
However, faced with a new, unfriendly environment, the "Chavista
revolution" is fast developing into a confused, anachronistic
response to the challenges of life in the 21st century. There is
a vast, daily-growing abyss between rhetoric and fact in
Chávez's Venezuela, where the main feature still
distancing the new regime from puntofijismo _apart from
the much stronger military involvement in politics_ is the
defensive nature of chavista populism, in contrast to the
assertive and ascendant populism of the past (Barrios-Ferrer
1999, 9). In other words, while under puntofijismo in its
glory days there was a coalition of the middle and working
classes, fighting together to create a system of redistribution
and political participation, under chavismo we are
contemplating the disappearance of what little was left of the
middle and industrial working classes, and the attempt by the
millions of marginalized poor to recover hope, by giving
Chávez all the power he has asked for in the new
Constitution, expecting that he will shore up the shattered ruins
of the rentier model.
Chávez's political base of support lies with
those masses of poor Venezuelans, who also voted for Pérez
in 1989 and Caldera in 1993, and with the same objective in mind:
to insulate us from the demands of a world perceived as hostile,
making our dream of oil-financed welfare for all come true. The
military have also backed Chávez, at least until now, but
the signs of discontent in the armed forces multiply daily. At
first they regained political power and prestige, together with
major institutional prerogatives, among them total autonomy from
civilian control; but it is highly doubtful that a majority in
the officer corps identify with the more radical aspects of
Chávez's rhetoric, his anti-Americanism, his sympathies
with Castro and the Colombian guerrillas. Furthermore, the
military can accept Chávez's policy of resentment only as
long as it does not reach them too. Other components of
Chávez's platform: opposition to continued privatization,
military-run social support for the poor, creation of reserved
areas for indigenous peoples, are probably seen with a mixture of
reservation and concern by many in the armed forces, who wonder
where this is all this leads to in the end.
For all his rhetoric, Hugo Chávez cannot flee
from the world we live in. He remains as dependent on the
international financial markets as his predecessors, as Venezuela
needs to have access to the
global capital
markets if we want to grow economically in the coming months and
years. Chávez has risen to power by promising Venezuelans
to increase their standards of living, but "He cannot deliver the
latter without either cutting dramatically into investment for
development or by borrowing in the international markets. If he
genuinely implements all of his policies, the foreign markets
will close off to him. He will then be forced to turn oil
revenues toward consumption, creating economic crises a few years
down the road" (Global Intelligence Update, December 30,
1999). Already the economic results of Chávez's first two
years in power point
toward what may be in store for us further down the road. During
his first year the economy fell 7.2%, unemployment increased from
11.4% to 15.4% (although there are reasons to doubt the accuracy
of this particular official figure, given the high number of
daily bankruptcies in industry, commerce, and agricultural
businesses); household consumption was down 4.8%, and gross
capital formation 24.9%. Depressed demand helped to reduce
inflation from 29% to 20%, but imports fell $ 3,065, or 20.7%
(Veneconomy Weekly, January 12, 2000). The lack of
international and domestic investors' confidence in Venezuela can
be illustrated by just one fact: for the first time in many
years, possibly ever, the price of Venezuelan debt bonds went
down, despite the fact that the price of oil significantly
increased. With the new, much higher oil prices, the Venezuelan
government became "rich" once again, for a while, but the society
still was, and has remained, poor. In the much-changed conditions
prevailing in 2001, the country's economic and social
deterioration is reaching boiling point.
Politically, the "Chavista revolution" has produced a
new Constitution, considered by many —rightly, in my
view— as a disaster in its own right. Hastily drafted,
after little meaningful debate, by an
assembly 95% of which was composed of the President's followers,
the new document is even more statist and populist than the one
it replaced. In sum, the new chavista constitutional
precepts correspond perfectly to O'Donnell's definition of a
"delegative democracy", one in which the president "governs as he
sees fit, constrained only by the hard facts of existing power
relations and by a constitutionally limited term of office"
(O'Donnell 1994, 60). The fact, really, is that according to the
new Constitution the president is for all practical purposes
all-powerful, and checks and balances are weakened to an
extreme.
Hugo Chávez has won all the elections and
referenda he has called forth. He has done so, however, in the
context of a persistent 50% or more of electoral abstention, and
with the persevering opposition of at least 30% of the active
electorate. The electoral system now being used has been designed
to facilitate hegemonic supremacy by the President and his
movement, with little respect for minorities. One wonders what
they want this enormous power for, given the meager results the
chavista revolution can show on the social and economic
fields. This feverish process of concentration of power brings to
mind the metaphor of the driver of a car heading out of control
in an unknown direction, down a precipitous mountain road, and
seeking desperately "to capture the wheel; for if he could but do
this, his inevitable descent would represent order and not chaos"
(Kissinger 1977, 205). Before becoming President, Hugo
Chávez bitterly criticized the elitist and monopolistic
political controls exercised by the old puntofijista
parties; but his government has not improved on these at all. It
can cynically be asked: why should he change those politically
corrupt practices, considering that they had an almost flawless
forty-year old record of successes? In its political dimension,
too, the "Chavista revolution" is still very much attached to the
unattractive legacy of four decades of mediocre "democratic"
ways, predicated upon distrust of the people by their rulers, and
the systematic predation of the petro-state.
5
During the "puntofijista" period a number of legal and
political mechanisms were implemented to achieve civilian control
of the military. For some decades they worked with remarkable
efficiency, but along the rosy path they decayed in step with the
decadence of the system itself. Now the rise to power of Hugo
Chavez has ushered in a deep upheaval in the scheme of
civic-military relationships in Venezuela. Its impact can be
measured, on the one hand, by the increased level of
politicization of the armed forces, and, on the other, by the
dismantling of the institutional setup of civilian control
designed to rein them in. In relation to the first of these
premises, the new regime has changed the emphasis on the mission
of the armed forces from being strictly a defensive force to that
of aiding "development" and committing itself directly to the
revolution's goals of social change (through the so-called
"Plan
Bolívar 2.000"). Quite visibly already in this respect is
the appointment of many officers to administrative posts in the
government, both, at the national and at the regional level,
where they have been assigned responsibility for executing
ambitious plans of social and economic support for the populace.
Some of these changes have even attained constitutional ranking
(see articles 328 and 330 of the Constitution of the Fifth
Republic). In relation to the second premise above, that of
civilian control, the new Constitution eliminates parliamentary
control of promotions in the armed forces, leaving them fully to
the discretion of the military institution itself, except for the
top ranks of general and admiral which are now exclusively
reserved to the President of the Republic. Furthermore the
Constitution aims to unify the armed forces under a single
command structure, changing in the process the traditional
designation "Fuerzas Armadas" to "Fuerza Armada
Nacional", which no doubt, on first sight, might seem a positive
functional development, were it not for the fact that its true
underlying, solidly political intention is that of bringing
centralized control into the hands of the head of state. To sum
it up, under the new state of affairs the only elected figure
with a constitutional link to the armed forces, and we are
talking here of a crucial link, is the President himself
(Trinkunas, 2.000, 35-36).
The increased military participation in government
affairs is bound to intensify the level of political activity and
awareness of the officers, much to the unavoidable detriment of
their professionalism. Moreover, the new president has indicated
quite clearly his avowed intention to disregard the norm, enacted
in the new constitution, to the effect that active military
personnel are barred from being candidates in elections at all
levels. Riding roughshod over the constitution seems to be one of
his favorite sports. Indeed, we have already witnessed the case
of a high ranking officer involved in the proselitizing program
"Plan Bolivar 2000" applying for dubious, fast track retirement
in order to present his candidacy to the governorship of one of
our states. One can easily imagine the deleterious effects that
this process will have, rather sooner than later, in terms of the
necessary unity, stability and operational capability of the
military sector. It is quite revealing to observe the numerous
scandals already being denounced at all levels, as far up as the
office of the former, alas, General Comptroller, in relation to
discretionary spending by the military of enormous sums dedicated
to the execution of "Plan Bolivar 2000". A serious danger is
lurking here of further stoking up corruption in the armed
forces, the opposite always being, no doubt, a difficult
proposition, as a consequence of its politization, all in
accordance with the ideology of the chavista
"project".
Just as the general population would seem to be
gradually questioning the revolutionary deportment of the
government, on account, mainly, of its meager socio-economic
results, it would seem reasonable to assume that discontent will
increase in the armed forces towards a "project" that collides
head-on with cherished values, traditions, principles and
alliances cultivated for long time in their midst. From
relatively minor concerns, such as the use by the president of
military uniform, that of lieutenant colonel, in public
appearances, an action which violates in the eyes of many
officers the core principle of military hierarchy, to the more
serious of discontinuing the important, annual joint maneuvers
"UNITAS" and "Red Flag", of the Navy and
the Air Force, respectively, to which one may add (insult to
injury) the presidential decision of December of 1999 to reject
the US offer of humanitarian aid after the natural tragedy
occurred in our north coast, aid, let it be remarked, coming in
the shape of two warships fully loaded with equipment and
engineers of the US army; all this, let me repeat, must have
impacted in a negative way our military structure.
The armed forces are being threatened in their dignity,
in their professionalism, in their operative capacity, and in
their institutional mission. In a society plagued by insecurity
and fear, subject to constant violation of its territory by
Colombian narcoguerrillas, harassed by unceasing criminal
violence, our soldiers ironically find themselves selling
vegetable produce in low income areas and repainting little
school buildings, while watching wide-eyed how their hierarchical
essence deteriorates with the glorification of the subversive
officers who took part in the 1992 coup d'etats, and experiencing
concurrently the silent humiliation of those who, on the
contrary, in 1992 remained faithful to their institutional oath
and defeated the uprising (a military victory later turned into
ashes, courtesy of the miopia and pettiness of the civilian
leadership of the time). The consequences of politicization "from
above", on the other hand, could hardly have been more harmful
and perverse in its effects on the operational capacity of the
Armed Forces. Numerous have been the admonishments in this
respect. The Venezuelan military, that had achieved, by its
professionalism and combat readiness, a preeminent place in the
Latin American context during the period of "puntofijismo", is
today, sadly to say, stripped by the revolution of their true
role, turned gradually into a sort of popular militia,
manipulated for social-economic proselitizing of the polulace,
while symultaneoulsy highly valuable and costly weapons systems
rust away on account of their misuse in "Plan Bolivar 2000", or
as consequence of neglect and lack of resources for adequate
maintenance. Step by step, the Venezuelan Armed Forces are
ceasing to be an instrument to preserve our sovereignty and
constitutional stability to become mere instruments for a
personalist political project that pretends, not only to subject
society to a state of permanent internal conflict, but, also, to
realign the country geopolitically as a fixture in a new
"multipolar" axis confronting the United States of
America.
What to do? How should the Venezuelan Armed Forces face
up to these dangers? To begin with, they must fully analyze and
comprehend the nature of the threats hovering over them: a threat
to their dignity, a threat to their profesionalism and
operational capabilities, a threat to their unity and
institutional mission. If this is a fair rendering of their
plight, as I do firmly believe it is, then it behooves the Armed
Forces to mind three fronts: first, to defend its dignity and
preserve its unity, clearly disassociating itself from a
political project that perverts its essence, leading it to an
abyss; second, to recover its operational capability, seriously
degraded by a demagogic strategy whose end goal, no doubt, is to
weaken the military sector so that it cannot be a significant
obstacle to the personalist concentration of power; and, third,
to prevent the radical, ideological anachronism of the new
political leaders from carrying out their project to align
Venezuela in a new geopolitical axis, together with Castro's
Cuba, the fundamentalist states of the Middle East, the Colombian
guerrilla organizations FARC and ELN
and other revolutionary movements in Latin America, converting
our country into a regional and global subversion
center.
What is a revolutionary? Henry Kissinger once remarked
with perspicacity that the answer can not possibly be easy, for
otherwise revolutionaries would seldom be successful, as their
adversaries would have clear, ample warning of the threat and
would act decisively against them (Kissinger, 1976, 394-395).
History is evidence, moreover, that revolutionaries are
victorious not precisely because they practice deceit about their
goals, but because their enemies don't take them seriously. Only
when it is too late, in retrospect, when the consequences are
already irreversible, does it become clear that the declared
revolutionary objectives were to be believed. Hitler's case is
one of the more revealing: he always said and wrote what he
planned to do; he did not deceive anyone, yet few believed him.
The communists proudly declared that they disdained to hide their
intentions, but Lenin was shuttled in 1917 by the German High
Military Command from Switzerland to Russia in a sealed train
car, surely congratulating themselves on their clever
Machiavellian move. On the other hand the bolshevist leader had
sarcastically announced that "we will sell the last capitalist
the rope with which we will hang him". Admittedly, Fidel Castro
dexterously dissembled for a short while, nonetheless he is also
a good example of the political and psychological difficulties
that becloud minds in every attempt to timely detect, and
contain, a revolutionary menace. Let us be reminded too that in
1958 the newly constituted Venezuelan democratic goverment
shipped arms to the Sierra Maestra, to the romantic bearded men
who then proceeded, also with ample help from certain sectors of
the US, to topple the hated Batista, while Washington just folded
its arms as the guerrillas advanced on Havana. It is not a
question of stupidity, but of shortsightedness, or shall we say
blindness?
Not wishing to minimize the obviously changed post cold
war circumstances, it is still a fact that Latin America as a
whole is facing a new, very serious revolutionary menace embodied
in the radical, messianic Chávez leadership. No matter
that Chávez has time and again stated what he believes in,
and why he believes it, no matter that he has announced time and
again, he is not one given to understatement or economy in words!
in numberless speeches what he intends to do, and has dispelled
any lingering doubts about his peculiar convictions, somehow
through a classical denial mechanism there are those who still
cling to the hope that these pronouncements are the product of
some passing virus fever, that
he will in the end turn out to be no more than a new mild version
of Menem or Cardoso, who will surely abandon populism and the
fiery leftist rethoric for Wall Street's hymns.
It is just an illusory hope, but regrettably it has not
been easy to convince the self-deluded that Chávez must be
approached seriously, that his words are to be taken at face
value, that they are not the dreams of an adolescent who shall
mature once he knows which side the toast is buttered on. The
naked truth is quite different. Chávez is a true
revolutionary well steeped in the two-steps-forward-one
step-backwards school. It should be evident for all to see that
he acts out firm convictions with a clear strategy. But, mind
you, this is not meant to say that his ideology is coherent, or
that his cherished beliefs can pass muster before a rigorous
philosophical test. On the
other hand the inherent confusion and scant academic value of his
Weltanschauung does not vouch for its harmlessness, quite
the contrary. Chávez fancies himself as the torch bearer
of a revolutionary mission, a reincarnation of Bolivar, sword in
hand, ready to sunder the chains of the new empire. In truth his
"Bolivarianism" is more an emotion than a well established social
theory, it is rather a search for an imaginary glorious past, a
monument to dead ideas, to quote Walter Raleigh's scathing
condemnation of Milton's Paradise Lost. On the other hand,
if he does not really know very well what paradise regained
should hold, he is more precise in what he hates: Western style
representative democracy, which he qualifies as "false"
democracy; capitalism and free markets, which promote in his
opinion "social injustice", though he tolerates markets out of
opportunism, for the time being, "por ahora" to ape him;
political pluralism, which he combats every day, slowly
throttling opposition to his government; and the centers of
"unipolar" power, concretely, the USA and its allies. Chavez's
geopolitical vision projects a radical transformation in Latin
America, led by "Bolivarian armies" in alliance with Castro's
Cuba, the radical Muslim states (Irak, Iran,
Lybia), as mainstays of a revamped OPEC together with Venezuela,
a newly belligerent Russia, and communist China. In the
global struggle against "savage neoliberalism" any ally is
welcome so long as it shares the same enemies: the USA, Israel, the
"oligarchies" of Latin America. Thus Chávez simpathizes
with Colombia's
guerrilla movements, nay, supports them, witness the rejection of
US overflights, makes common cause with the subversive Ecuadorian
military, and votes for Cuba and Iran when their human rights
record is assailed in the UN. It follows too that he rejected
American aid on the ocassion of the natural catastrophe that
befell Venezuela in December 1999, while at the same time
welcoming and abiding the continued presence of hundreds of Cuban
"physicians", regardless of repeated protests on the part of the
Venezuelan Medical Federation.
Whether the foregoing is a fantasy for some, or a
nightmare for others, is a moot point, it is clear that
Chávez firmly believes in the apparent mishmash of ideas
outlined above. If European leaders at the point of deciding to
enter the great war had been asked in 1914 to appraise the
doctrines of an obscure Russian agitator exiled in Switzerland,
they would very likely have laughed them off as a fairy tale for
children. Likewise, if some astrologer in the US State Department
had predicted in 1959 that a Marxist Fidel Castro was to govern
Cuba for the next 41 years, would he not have been consigned for
psychiatric treatment? Not to mention the gruesome, outlandish
speeches of that beer hall orator of the Munich twenties exciting
to paroxysms his audiences with the prospect of the annihilation
of the jews. Were they taken at face value by Germany's
conservative elite?
Times have changed. We live in the internet era.
Revolutionaries encounter higher hurdles to be cleared. Democracy
and free markets are the codewords of a globalized reality. True
enough, but are we to accept that the path ofhistory is linear?
Are we so naive to suppose that these are times of increasing,
irreversible achievement of perfect freedom? Such illusory
beliefs are actually dangerous. Latin America is facing difficult
times ahead as it gropes to find an adecuate response to the
increasing tensions tearing at the social fabric, imposed by the
challenges of globalization. It is in fact the singular
significance of leaders like Chávez, that would be
invented if they did not exist, that they promise the vast
incomprehending majorities relief and protection from those
challenges. In these circumstances the call of a radicalized
ideology can spread like wildfire on a dry parched prairy. At the
very least Chávez represents the return to a demagogic
destructive populism, but he poses a more complex threat of a
fundamental geopolitical nature. Neither Washington nor a good
number of Latin America leaders, not to speak of so many fellow
travellers who sing the praises of the strong man who insults and
offends them on a daily basis, seem to have adecuately realized
the actual dimension of the Chávez phenomenon. He,
meanwhile, gradually advances toward his goals, beclouding with
half truths the vision of his potential adversaries. He persists
in his unswerving course, passionately, steadfast. Not all of us,
let it be said, will be surprised when Hugo Chávez' true
colors are clearly revealed for all to see.
6
In a book first published in 1938, Crane Brinton argued
that revolutions have a three-stage process of development:
moderate, extremist, and "Thermidorian" (rule by one man:
Napoleon,
Stalin, Mao, Castro) (Brinton 1962). It would appear, according
to the evidence now available, that the "Chavista revolution" has
mixed up the three stages into one; it combines fiery rhetoric
with practices that are rooted in the past, and shows unequivocal
signs of personalization and concentration of power at the
presidential level. I do not think that what is happening in
Venezuela can legitimately be branded a "revolution" in any
rigorous sense of the term (Kaplan 1973). Nor does the
chavista experiment represent "reequilibration" of
democracy in Linz's sense, that is, a political process that,
"after a crisis that has seriously threatened the continuity and
stability of the basic democratic political mechanisms, results
in their continued existence at the same or higher levels of
democratic legitimacy, efficacy, and effectiveness" (Linz 1978,
87). What we are observing here is neither renewal nor
reequilibration of democracy; it is not yet a revolution either,
but a process of uninterrupted and protracted political,
socioeconomic, and cultural degradation of an entire
rentier society, obsessively searching for the mirage of a
vanished prosperity. Venezuelan society today is a bewildered and
embittered one, that has deposited its illusions in the hands of
a military caudillo, after having lost all faith in the
traditional political class.
The paradoxical nature of the chavista political
process lies in the fact that, in spite of its revolutionary
ambitions, it represents in essence another effort to restore the
old statist-populist system in Venezuela, trying to make it
function under different historical conditions _domestic and
international. The new regime is in some crucial respects similar
to the old one, although in the prevailing circumstances, with
the traditional parties and institutions gone, we are witnessing
a process of personalization and militarization of power
relationships, that had been brought under some control under
puntofijismo. The popularity of one man among the
impoverished masses, and the institutional weight of the armed
forces as a "last resort", guaranteeing a precarious social truce
and a minimum of order, are the two pillars of the
chavista regime. Apart from these, there is little else.
Given that Hugo Chávez is apparently convinced that he is
on the right track, and consequently does not see the need to
modify his policies, I think that what we can expect to happen in
Venezuela in the coming months and years is the continuation of
our political, socioeconomic and cultural degradation, a
situation that will aggravate the resentments and frustrations
simmering in our society.
In theory, Chávez has three options: first, to
muddle through, much as his predecessors during the
puntofijista period did, hoping to prolong the
plebiscitary legitimacy of his rule; second, to radicalize his
"revolution", intensifying political repression and military
control; and finally to go against the structural grain of
rentier economics and the petro-state. The last option is,
I think, out of the question, for it would require telling the
truth to a people that are not willing to hear it, and
particularly not from somebody like Chávez, who came to
power to fulfill a dream. On the contrary, Chávez wants
control, and the rentier economy, that concentrates
economic power in the state, gives him a great deal of political
leverage. In the economic field, muddling through will be tried,
until the inevitable erosion of Chávez's popularity
_already much in evidence in late 200_ and the enduring crisis
open the way for more momentous decisions in a "revolutionary"
direction.
To sum up: I believe that Venezuelan society has
experienced over the last few years what Karl Deutsch
would call a process of "pathological" political learning. Let us
understand here the term "political learning" as a process of
cognitive change "through which people modify their political
beliefs and tactics as a result of severe crises, frustrations,
and dramatic changes in the environment" (Bermeo 1992, 274). This
process of societal learning can assume several forms _creative,
pathological, or merely viable. In the first case, the society's
learning process increases its ranges of possible intake of
information from the outside world. If the learning process is
pathological, it reduces the society's subsequent capacity to
learn, to adapt itself to new circumstances and overcome new
challenges. Finally, if the learning process is merely viable it
neither adds nor detracts from the society's subsequent
capacities for learning and self-steering (Deutsch 1963, 169).
What Venezuelan society has done is to encapsulate itself in the
old certainties, turning its back from a changing
world.
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