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Title: Venezuela today
Author: Rafael Uzcategui
Date: April 6, 2008
Language: en
Topics: Venezuela, authoritarian socialism,  El Libertario
Source: Retrieved on 2020-04-06 from https://libcom.org/library/venezuela-today-complexities-outright-lies

Rafael Uzcategui

Venezuela today

1) One of the successes of the inter-bourgeois confrontation that has

been happening in Venezuela for almost a decade is the moving of the

media polarization into an international space. This biased and

infantilized point of view could well confuse some less awakened

libertarian spirits. This indeed seems to be the case with the opinions

voiced by companero Rogelio Cedeno in his text ‘Venezuela today:

Realities and half truths’, published in # 5 of the Costa Rican journal

La Libertad.

Cedeno in a turnabout of intellectual prestidigitation asks for the

social situation in Costa Rica precisely what he denies for that of

Venezuela: a non-problematic and non-Manichean point of view. While, on

the one hand, the Costa Rican movement opposed to the Free Trade

Agreement is “…a wholly plural movement that breaks with the simplistic

schema based upon the existence of a presumed polarization between left

and right”, on the other hand, in Venezuela, the forces that are not

aligned with the government represent, “…the brutal violence and

cynicism of the forces of reaction”, that desperately yearn for a return

to the days of the adeco-copeyan democracy. A strange business

this…barely a paragraph earlier Cedeno had affirmed that, “visions in

black and white are of little use to those of us who keep on thinking

and struggling for a better world.” This very same horizon is shared by

a constellation of revolutionary left-wing groups who, despite being

made invisible by the propaganda of both the private sector and the

state, reject the past as much as they do the present and continue,

against the current, to struggle for a better future.

2) Cedeno reproduces the logic and history manufactured by the

government in Caracas. Repeating the mythologizing excesses of Chavism,

he locates the genesis of, “…the political and social dynamics of the

end of the century,” and the, “…emergence of a revolutionary situation,”

in Venezuela, in the attempts at a military coup led by Chavez himself

in 1992. A simple glance at Venezuelan history would, as many diverse

studies ratify, place the foundational stone of the current situation in

the mid 80’s when, as a consequence of the economic crisis, a series of

social movements catalyzed the discontent of the average citizen which

in turn led to a brutal explosion during the occurrences of the

‘Caracazo’. During that February of 1989 a wave of popular protest

reacted to the imposition of a package of neoliberal reforms. This

social fabric expanded through various different dynamics, formally

founding the first human rights organisations, networks of ecologists

and women, student and neighbourhood associations, through employment

conflicts and countercultural niches. This subjectivity and will for

change is what Chavez capitalized on for his electoral victory.

Venezuela thus confirms the words of Cornelius Castoriadis: Popular

revolts in the Third World are always channelled and recuperated by a

new bureaucracy.

3) Venezuelan anarchists reject the coup d’etat that occurred in April

2002, as we also repudiate those that happened ten years earlier.

Similarly we have denounced the distortion and manipulation of the

facts. This is a long and complex history, but here we will only refute

the elements repeated by Cedeno. If it is indeed true that the president

counted on a certain mobilization in his favour on the 11^(th) April

2002, then quantitatively the demonstration against him was considerably

larger. On the other hand, those that died belonged to both sides, not

exclusively to the Chavez side as has been suggested- and the formation

of a ‘Truth commission’, which would have examined the events in an

impartial manner, was boycotted with the same impetus by members of the

government and by the opposition. If the demonstrations of the 13^(th)

April and the morning of the 14^(th) really were significant, they in no

way “…stopped fascism”, nor “…contained the forces of reaction.” The

coup against Chavez and his later return was negotiated across desktops

by military officials, without a single mediative shot being fired

between soldiers. The evidence is considerable, but due to lack of space

we will present just one piece: no soldier was tried for their

participation in the events.

4) The author examines the reasons why large sections of the popular

classes profess support for the president. Some answers to this question

can be found in the cultural nuances of the continent, which has

catalyzed the appearance of various populists and strong men with

widespread social support, such as Perón in Argentina and Trujillo in

the Dominican Republic. The history of Venezuela is itself, a long

succession of civil and military strongmen that counted on, in their

time, the staunch support of the popular sectors of society: Juan

Vicente Gómez, Marcos Perez Jimenez, Rómulo Betancourt and Carlos Andres

Perez. However, Cedeno, expanding the mystification of the state,

prefers linear explanations of a metaphysical nature. A population that

has been impoverished for decades projects its demands in a mass that is

personified by the figure of Hugo Chavez, transforming him into the

means by which the government can, “…respond to a series of demands and

requirements…”

Let us concentrate on this issue, for the propaganda that surrounds

social politics in Venezuela confuses local people much less than it

does foreigners. Our country is experiencing one of its most significant

economic booms of the last thirty years as a result of high oil prices.

However, considering the wealth of resources available, the social

policies that have been implemented, almost exclusively through the

‘missions’, are superficial and ineffective. It is not just we, the

anarchists, who are pointing this out; this has been affirmed by NGO’s

that monitor the human rights situation in the country. While we at the

bottom receive the scraps from the feast of black gold, a new

bureaucracy- nicknamed the ‘boliburguesía’ (contraction of Bolivarian +

bourgeoisie) — has appeared reinforcing the role that economic

globalization has assigned to us: that of providing energy in a ‘secure

and trustworthy way’ to the international marketplace. Leaving aside

questions about the social and environmental consequences of this type

of development, the President recently summed up in a phrase the project

of the red elite in power: petro-socialism.

5) Independent of the restructuring of the State, the return of

governability and the ‘democratic’ opening in Venezuela – all seriously

damaged during the rioting of the Caracazo of 1989, and a bad example

for other countries in the region -, is it possible to suggest that the

Chavez phenomenon strengthens democratic and self-determining

organisational processes? The National Executive has repeatedly imposed

from above different and successive organisational models that have

mortgaged the autonomy of the Chavista bases, eclipsing local leadership

structures, electoralizing agendas and dynamics and imposing

militarizing logic and a single party. ‘Participation’ is possible as

long as its innocuous, ‘protaganism’ non-existant. There are interesting

initiatives that exist in the grass roots structures of the Chavez

project, but there exceptionality confirms the rule: In any given field,

any initiatives are the exclusive property of the head of state.

Examples abound, like the constitutional reform that is currently being

discussed in absolute secrecy, or extraordinary powers such as the Ley

Habilitante, which gives the president the ability to pass laws by

decree. We shall refer to one of the lesser known examples. As a result

of a mandate from above, Conarepol, a plural commission was charged with

designing a new policing model for the country. To that end they

conducted 70,000 consultations with different actors over the length and

breadth of the country, including those communities affected by

uniformed violence. The entire Conarepol projected was basketed over a

single phrase, “…it’s a right-wing project”, and now a centralisation of

the police forces has been decided through the Ley Habilitante.

In this part of the Caribbean we don’t suffer ‘deja vú’ for the CNT-FAI

of 1936 nor do we allow ourselves to be confused by the re-semantization

of demagoguery. Last year 402 prisoners, coming from the popular

classes, died violently in the prisons of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’.

More than 60 leaders of trade union and neighbourhood groups were in

court because of their participation in strikes, blockades and

demonstrations to demand their rights. As Bakunin said, the people will

not feel better to see that the club with which they’re beaten with

bears their own name. We, the libertarian creoles, have assumed the

attitudes of any consistent anarchist: to confront power and stand side

by side with the oppressed, gathering together means and ends,

constructing free spaces and refusing to be either victim or tyrant. We

leave the ‘tactical alliances’ and ‘critical support’, the smokescreens

and mirrors to the politicians, of whom there are so many in Venezuela

today, fattening their egos and bank accounts, hallucinating a 21^(st)

Century socialism that is both military and imperialist by nature, with

its epicentre in Caracas.