Not a Banana-Oil Republic after All
14/04/2002
- Opinión
The Counter-Coup
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. 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 light-
skinned classes and the opponents who come from the higher dark-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
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