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University of Florida the Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela Under The University of Florida The Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela under the Socialism of the 21st Century Isamar Viveros Undergraduate Political Science Honors Thesis Supervised by: Dr. Carlos A. Suárez Carrasquillo 2018 Especial agradecimientos a mi mamá, mi papá y mi abuelita 2 Introduction Many capitalist societies facilitate housing aid for a given population, yet there is a difference between the aid that capitalist societies give and what socialist societies do. In the socialist cases, the government owns the property whereas in capitalist projects the economic aid is given to the private sector. Government own housing projects are common in most socialist or communist societies; moreover, Venezuela is no exception. The socialist government developed a housing project they want to internationalize, called the Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela. The objective of this thesis is to demonstrate that under the political model of Socialism of the XXI Century the government can create enough housing for the Venezuelan population. At the beginning of Chávez’s term, the Cámara Venezolana para la Construcción explained in a journal article that there was a deficit of 2,000,000 units. During the capitalist times in Venezuela, the housing aid was not enough (Camara Venezolana de la Construcción, 2015). Thus, this deficit drove people to build and live in ranchos. The word rancho is a Venezuelan term that refers to irregular settlements; moreover, these housing constructions have hollow bricks and cement as walls and zinc or cardboard-stone as the roof. These constructions do not meet the minimum standard of human habitability. The incompetence of the capitalist leaders, in matters of housing, made socialist ideas more attractive to the population. The Socialism of the XXI Century became the political mean to solve the housing crisis in Venezuela. Specifically, the socialist government created a project called La Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela. This thesis will try to explain if the project was 3 successful or not under the new socialism applied in Venezuela by Chávez and his successor Maduro, the current president. Historical Background At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the Venezuelan economy was based on agricultural and livestock exploitation. Even though, there was also exploitation of oil and precious metals, Venezuela’s economy survived by the commercialization of coffee and cocoa (Machado C. , 2009). The economy undertakes a radical change after 1950 when Venezuelan commerce intensified their oil exploitation. The monopolization of oil as the main revenue created socio-economic changes as the high per capita income that aided the Venezuelan citizens but harmed the agricultural production. The harmed made to the agricultural sector was a slow but constant decrease; moreover, in 1968 the agricultural production was reduced by 20% and by 1998 the production was reduced to 64% (Rodríguez, 2000). Consequently, the economic boom created a political change in Venezuela. A new way of democracy called democracia representativa, representative democracy, came after the death of the dictator Gómez and after other militarized leaders in 1958. The high oil revenues due to the Middle East organization and the nationalization of oil in the 1970s allowed the government to use the resources to aid the nation. Furthermore, the massive revenue that came to the country also brought corruption to the government. The agricultural Venezuela comes to a huge crash due to the Dutch disease that the oil revenue created. The Dutch disease refers to the negative impact on the economy of a massive rise that allows foreign policy, which in this case is the oil revenue. The consequence on 4 agriculture is that as the flow of currency enters in the country leads to currency appreciation that makes the country’s other products less competitive in the export market. Thus, the shortcomings in the agricultural sector encouraged an immense wave of farmer migration from the rural areas to the urban areas caused many settlements that were poorly planned and located in areas without enough services. The creation of settlements is called Barrios Populares and those barrios are areas where all the housing is considered a rancho. On the other hand, Venezuela faced a significant crisis as the prices of the oil barrel dropped in 1983. The government had to face a drastic reduction in the countries' revenue which reduced their ability to fulfill the needs of the citizens causing social discomfort. The problem was at its climax in 1989 when the people raised together to violently manifest against the government in a movement called El Caracazo. The Venezuelan people were desperate and aspired a political changed due to their dissatisfaction with the political system that was established at the time. The manifestations permitted the entrance of a new leader, the hero behind the movement, Hugo Chávez. Chávez in 1992 was the main leader behind a coup d’état that failed. He was imprisoned and after pardoned; moreover, as a free man, he was elected president of Venezuela in 1999 as the people put their hopes in him to change the political system. Hugo Chávez and his political ideology Chávez arrived at power with the promise of change with His proposal to substitute the representative democracy with a new model based on Simón Bolívar’s principles. However, his unexpected proximity with the Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro created a new political agenda for Chávez. He aspired to become the socialist leader in Latin America. With his new aspiration in 5 mind, Chávez starts to promote his socialism. The scholar Ernesto García (2017) avers that Chávez had delusions of greatness. García mentions the need of Chávez to be like Simón Bolívar and for that Chávez took on the task of unify Latin America under a socio-political system (García E. , 2017). Yet, according to Chávez, the socialism that he proposed is different than socialism in the past. Socialism of the XXI Century Socialism of the 21st century was a concept developed by Dieterich Stefan, a German political analyst, who worked with Chávez to popularize the idea. The concept was introduced in by Hugo Chávez in his speech on January 30th of 2005 in the V Foro Social Mundial (V International Social Forum) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. In his book, Stefan used the concept to differentiate Venezuelan socialism from the socialist movements of the 20th century such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, and North Korea. The socialism of the 21st century is also called democracia participativa, which translated means active/participative democracy. In “Aló Presidente”, which is a TV program, on March 27 of 2005, Chávez expressed publicly that Venezuela was going to become a socialist state. The socialism in Venezuela, later called Socialism of the XXI Century, is based on the original ideas of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels (Dieterich, 2007). Dietrich (2007) claims that Marx and Engels failed to create a project or plan to implement the socialist economy. He posits the need to move the market towards a socialist economic plan where the government had more control of the economic variables. Hugo Chávez defined Socialism of the XXI Century as a theory drawn from the Marxist philosophy but with a focus on four pillars: the democratic regional development, a balanced 6 economy (equity), the active/participative democracy of citizens, and the basic socialist organizations (institutionalism). Hugo Chávez elucidated the concept by explaining in many interviews that the socialism of the 21st century was based on solidarity, equality, fraternity, love, freedom, and Christianity (Chávez, 2006). During a cadena nacional, which is a joint broadcast over various media (usually radio and television) directed at the general population of a state, in 2012 Chávez claimed that the base of the socialism of the 21st century is the “Socialist Plan of Socio- Economic Development”. Dieterich expressed in 2005 that socialism of the 21st century means to substitute the status quo of the public administration and the democracy toward the benefit of the majority. ¿Qué es el Socialismo del Siglo XXI? Es una civilización cualitativamente distinta a la civilización burguesa. ¿Distinta en qué? En su institucionalidad. De ahí, que ser revolucionario significa hoy día luchar por sustituir la institucionalidad del status quo, es decir: 1. la economía de mercado por la economía de valor democráticamente planeada; 2. el Estado clasista por una administración de asuntos públicos al servicio de las mayorías y, 3. la democracia plutocrática por la democracia directa. (What is the Socialism of the XXI Century? It is a civilization qualitatively different from the bourgeois civilization. How is it different? In its institutionality. Thus, being revolutionary means today to fight for the substitution of the status quo, meaning 1. Changing the economic market for an economy that is democratically planned; 2. Changing the bourgeois administration towards public services matters; 3. Changing the plutocratic democracy for a direct democracy. (Heinz Dieterich; Ponencia en el Festival de la juventud y los estudiantes; 2005, translation by the author) 7 In his book “Hugo Chávez y el socialismo del siglo XXI” in 2007 he explains the aspects of such socialist economy. First, he avers the need of the Venezuelan people to be involved in macroeconomic decisions as well as microeconomic elements. Second, he states that the economic institutions should be ruled by the values of objectivity and equivalence. In the Socialism of the XXI Century Chávez stated that there are seven strategies to follow in order to accomplish his socialism. The strategies are (1) a new socialist ethic; (2) the search for the happiness of the people, which is the aid of the socialist government; (3) the revolutionary democracy; (4) economic socialist model; (5) new national geopolitics; (6) new international geopolitics, which is the union of Latin America under a socialist model; and (7) Venezuela as a world power.
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