Master’s Thesis in Cultural and Social Anthropology

“It is the looking-glass world!” / “¡Es el mundo al revés!” Venezuelan politics and middle-class life in times of chavismo

(by Ralph Steadman from a 1972 edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland)

Supervisor: Dr. A.T. Strating Student: Mariana Abi-Saab Arrieche Second readers: Student number: 10839658 Dr. B. Kalir [email protected] Dr. E.G. Gomez Llata Cazares

Amsterdam, 11th of December 2015

A Venezuela y su gente, en compensación por los años de ausencia.

ABSTRACT

Venezuela is broadly described by academics and non-academics as a polarized society. It would be out of the conceived reality of the country to talk about the current Venezuelan socio-political context and not recognize a division between those who are against the government (the opposition) and those who are in favor (the Chavistas). The present research aims to study the way politics and political identities are experienced and negotiated in the everyday life of middle- class Venezuelans. Moreover, it explores what this can tell us about the Venezuelans identified as Opositores. During almost four months of ethnographic field research in Venezuela, I observed and inquired into close relationships and family life with specific attention on those relationships composed by people with different political identities. This meant placing everyday experiences of what it implies to be a Chavista and an Opositor, in present day Venezuela, under a magnifying glass. This process enabled the study of a double movement: one related to the ways politics is present, and influent, within the private spaces of Venezuelans’ cotidiano, and another that pertains to how people negotiate the presence of politics in micro and private domains. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital has been key to show how economic assets, race, the level of education, and other characteristics add value to a person’s, or group’s, ‘social capital’. By looking at Venezuelan middle-class’ specific understandings of status and class, it was possible to identify that the process of political identification in Venezuela is one in which people not only differentiate themselves from the others’ political choices, but also from their cultural capital. Studying Venezuela’s context has been a strategic way of shedding light on the way people make sense of their world, build chains of arguments, create discourses, deal with taken-for-granted understandings that do not fit with reality, and embrace positions and identities. Finally, this analysis adds to studies that focus on people faced with the dilemmas of crossing the divide between two different, even opposite, worlds.

Keywords: Venezuela, chavismo, middle-class, politics, family life.

PREFACE

I’m convinced I had no agency in choosing my research topic. Venezuela and its socio-political reality chose me many years ago. Venezuela had always caused me sleepless nights. For many years, it has hurt, but also empowered me. I was born in Venezuela and lived there until I was almost 18 years old. The years of my adolescence corresponded to the first six years of Chávez’s government. During this period I engaged in political activism against the government, participating in various protests led by the student movements. In 2005, I moved with my nuclear family to Brazil. During the years of my BA studies, my academic life was also focused on the Venezuelan socio-political situation. After so many years of collecting and reflecting on data while looking for answers, I continued to defend the same arguments and critiques without finding any new response. I have felt throughout this passed years mixed feelings including frustrations, powerlessness and mostly a lack of understanding of what has happened in the country. I constantly wondered how we got to where we are and, more specifically, why chavismo (still) exists and is (still) in power. It took me several years to understand I needed to come back to Venezuela and listen to “the other side”. I needed to approach those who support the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. When I started to design my research project, it did not take me too long to realize how challenging it would be. For more than 16 years, which represents almost all of my conscious political life, I had criticized the Chavista government in Venezuela. All my references about the country and its political situation had been constructed under the lenses of those who were extremely disappointed by the rise of chavismo. But, I also had two things in my favor: first, I had an interesting position of an outsider and an insider, having lived many years abroad; second, I had learned a new set of tools and anthropological methods that could assist me in the process of giving faces, expressions, names and stories to that which was incomprehensible. The journey I was undertaking, ultimately, was one of ‘making the strange familiar’. Knowing the Venezuelan ‘temperament’, I foresee that many of my informants might feel uncomfortable with the analyses I will present. However, I deeply hope they can understand that this study is not a matter of personal criticism, but an exercise of trying to raise the right questions. In any case, I would like to make explicit in advance, that my intentions have never been to cause any harm or personal judgement. I would not be overstating this if I said that undertaking this field research was an opportunity in a lifetime to go back to my country and make peace with it. It gave me the great opportunity, after ten years, to be with my family again, celebrate my siblings’ birthday, participating in the spontaneous Sunday meetings at my grandmother’s and sharing our lives once again. Additionally, I was enabled to perceive again Venezuela’s beauty, to recognize and enjoy the richness of its people and to feel proud of where I come from. That is why this research certainly talks about and reveals me in many different ways. Venezuela used to make me have sleepless nights. Now it makes me dream. AKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am profoundly grateful to each one of the Venezuelans who gave me the possibility to know and reach his/her stories, opinions, positions, feelings, intimacies, struggles, experiences and reflections. Thank you for your time and trust and for making this research much easier with your spontaneity and openness. In the case this study has a value, it is a direct result of your participants on it. All shortcomings are obviously my fault alone.

To my beautiful country, for receiving me with wide open arms through the strong rain, the majestic of the Ávila and its, the clear light, and the sublime sunsets.

To the Venezuelans, for making me learn what viscerality is, for your contagious passion and for having given me countless examples of empathy, an essential asset for this research and for anthropological endeavours in general.

To Prof. Strating, Alex, for welcoming with enthusiasm and wise criticism my ideas and for raising always the right questions. This journey was much more pleasant thanks to all your motivation, sensitivity and stimulating words.

To the University of Amsterdam for making possible this academic and personal adventure of one year and a half in Amsterdam.

I have a tremendous personal debt with the people who gave me the good fortune of having close during all this process that started many months before coming to Amsterdam, and also includes my fieldwork period. To each one of you, who helped me in Brazil, Venezuela and from elsewhere; and you who unexpectedly transformed Amsterdam in a more welcoming and warm place to be and to learn, I am extremely thankful: Mari, Gabi, Tayná, Dani, Andrés, Yonca, Natalie, Marina, Thalita, Diego, Michelita, Joam, Juanfri, Alejandro, Pichu, Ferni, Mauri, Caro, Neni, Werner, Yuli, Stephy, Mina, Carmen, Traci, Lucrezio, Cristine, Saima, Fabienne. My especial gratitude to Lu for being my cómplice and my shoulder and for fulfilling my soul of peace.

To all my family in Venezuela, los Abi-Saab and los Arrieche, for making me feel at home. Profound thanks to my grandmother, Rosa, a woman with a contagious brightness. Abuelita, this work is dedicated also to you for being my best partner in the field. I feel blessed for having had the opportunity to share these months with you and being part of your daily adventures.

Finally, to my parents, Salim and Milagros, my brother, Javier, and my sister, Rosana, because with each one of you I have lived and understood what the amor infinito is. I will never be able to thank you enough for believing in me, for all the love I have received and for the sound support you represent in my life. ¡Los amo! Content

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1.1. Situating the Research: the what and whys ...... 1 1.2 On Operationalization & Methods ...... 4 1.3 Theoretical Approach ...... 9

2 POLITICAL DISCOURSES AND IDENTITIES IN TIMES OF CHAVISMO ..... 14 2.1 A Brief Context of a ‘Divided Country’ ...... 15 2.2 Everyday Life in Current Times of Chavismo ...... 19 2.3 Making Sense and Taking Position: Political Discourses and Identities ...... 22

3 VENEZUELAN FAMILY LIFE & POLITICS ...... 31 3.1 When Family is First: on the Politics of Venezuelan Middle-class Families ...... 31 3.2 Politics at the Dining Table vs The “We Do Not Talk About Politics” Agreement ...... 34 3.3 Strategies To Be Related To a Close and Similar ‘Other’ ...... 41

4 ON MIDDLE-CLASS OPPOSITION TO CHAVISMO ...... 47 4.1 “Are You a Chavista?!”: Lack of Understanding and What Else? ...... 47 4.2 The Cultural Capital of Gente Bien vs Chusma: Class, Status and Race in Venezuela ...... 49 4.3 “We Do Not Sell Our Dignity for a Misión”: On Being a Middle-class Opositor ...... 56

5 CONCLUSIONS ...... 62

AFTERWORD ...... 67

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 678

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1. Situating the Research: the what and whys

It was just my second weekend in Venezuela. On a Saturday evening, I went with some of my family members to the Teresa Carreño Theater, the most important in the country. One of my cousins was going to be part of a flamenco spectacle with la Macarena, a very famous dancer. Tickets were very expensive. The elegant public was divided between those who were going to see their young daughters, nieces, girlfriends or granddaughters; and those who were there to see the Macarena. Yet, the group was homogenous in that everyone was from the upper-middle-class. We were seated waiting for the show to start, when the recorded masculine voice that normally announces the sponsors of the spectacle started: “El gobierno Bolivariano de Venezuela…” That was all I could hear. After those five words, a completely unexpected commotion happened. A collective and very loud booing invaded, almost in unison, the whole theater. I had certainly witnessed some other booing before, but for some reason this, in particular, felt disproportionate. I was amazed by how strong it was, I felt it took ages to finish. I was so uncomfortable that I could barely move or actually see anything. Then, I made an effort to come out from my commotion and start observing what was happening. With a lot of effort, I saw a man who was also evidently uncomfortable, as well as a very welldressed grandma booing with passion… Ufa! The recording message ended, and so did the loudjeer. While destabilized dancers came to the scene, I could only say to myself: “So this is it, Mariana. Welcome to Venezuela with sixteen years of chavismo.”

Venezuela is broadly described by academics and non-academics as a polarized society (Eastwood & Ponniah 2011; Corrales 2011 and 2005; Corrales & Penfold 2011; Ellner 2008; Ellner & Hellinger 2003; Wilpert 2011). It would be out of the conceived reality of the country to talk about the country’s current socio-political context and not recognize a division between those who are against the government (the opposition or anti-Chavistas) and those who are in favor (the Chavistas1 or Oficialistas). On the one hand, the latter, the Chavistas, support what they defend as the changes resulting from the government and its socialist-inspired Bolivarian Revolution, like a new level of political participation, new social policies, the increase of national pride, of knowledge of the country’s history and of civic engagement (Tinker Salas 2015: 164).

1 I use the term ‘Chavista’ being conscious of, and critical to, the misuse the opposition has given to the word as an insult addressed to the people supporting the government. My decision to use it relies on the fact that this is the emic term people use to identify themselves, especially after Chávez’s death as a way of giving visibility to his legacy.

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On the other, the former, the Opositores are an extremely disappointed group of Venezuelans that see the government as corrupt, mismanaged, not let by meritocracy, and the cause of a significant decrease in the quality of life of the Venezuelan people. During the Venezuelan Chavista governments,2 dating from 1998 until today, the leaders of the opposition, as well as the leaders of the government, developed political discourses that have moved away, by othering, one group from the other. Each group has been systematically constructed, during the last sixteen years, through the use of binary representations of perpetrators versus victims, friends versus enemies, Venezuelans versus betrayers, suggesting an irreconcilable and inassimilable ‘other’ to the ‘self’. As Robert Samet put it: “there is no opposition without the ‘abomination’ of Chávez and his supporters. Likewise, without the opposition of ‘escuálidos’,3 the Chavista movement would lose all coherence” (Samet 2013: 529). The ethnographic episode at the Teresa Carreño Theater clearly illustrates this scenario. The mere mention of the Bolivarian government (which is a reference to chavismo) can make hundreds feel more than uncomfortable. The Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronil describes such a division as:

Two opposite poles dominating political life in Venezuela […] A generalized Manichean mindset tend[ing] to push and flatten every position towards the extreme ends and nuanced views [being] often dismissed or cast aside as camouflaged versions of either pole… It is as if a storm of clashing slogans had suddenly fallen upon Venezuela and split it into two. Divided by verbal fences, Chavistas and anti-Chavistas inhabit mutually hostile social worlds. Enclosed by barbed words, each world treats its reasons as Reason itself and adversaries become enemies. The ground of reasonable discussion vanishes (Coronil 2008: 3).

Studies or versions challenging this common vision on Venezuela’s socio-political context are very limited. It is worth mentioning that the production of qualitative and ethnographic studies about general subjects in urban Venezuela, as well as about its contemporary political reality, is reduced.4 Likewise, it is rare to find either quantitative or qualitative research within any of the social sciences that look beyond the two poles of the Venezuelan political spectrum. 5 The

2 The references to chavismo in this research, include both the Presidential periods of Hugo Chávez (from his election in December 1998 until his dead in March 2013) and the current Presidential period of Nicolás Maduro (in power since April 2013). 3 Chavistas call people of the opposition of escuálidos (squalid or languid). 4 Safe for Fernandez (2004); Valencia Ramírez (2005); Sánchez (2008); Samet (2013); Velasco (2011, 2015) 5 Safe for works such as: Coronil (2008); Acosta-Alzuru (2011); Duno-Gottberg (2011); Samet (2013); and to some extent Tinker Salas (2014)

2 reflections of Coronil are probably one of the few that illustrate the degree to which politics influences private domains in Venezuela:

… The mutual demonization and erosion of shared sociality has saturated not just the public sphere but the private domains of family and friendships… It is telling that the exacerbation of disputes among relatives and of divorces among couples has brought into being a code of conduct common during social crises but unfamiliar in the olden Venezuela charmed by the illusion of harmony: No politics allowed at home. Ironically, while the country has been heavily politicized, in many social gatherings of kin and friends politics has become a taboo subject (Coronil 2008: 3, emphasis in the original).

Coronil’s descriptions encourages us to reflect on whether it is possible to identify nuances within what, at first glance, seems to be either black or white in the country’s socio-political context; layers to what has been presented as unitary; and meeting points for what is normally described as unassimilable and mutually exclusive. Additionally, it seems relevant to further inquire into the everyday experiences of politics in micro and private spheres. What strategies do people use in close relationships with those who have a different political opinion in order to avoid conflict? How do such an interactions influence our political identities and vice-versa? When I started to design my research and to talk about it in informal conversations with colleagues and friends, many people were interested in the idea that I would be looking at how politics takes place in private spheres, such as families. It also struck me that colleagues and teachers specifically from Latin America seemed to feel personally identified with the subject. As reactions, I ended up hearing very interesting and passionate stories of family dinners, Christmas reunions and electoral periods in countries such as Bolivia, Mexico, Ecuador and Argentina, when heated political conversations made some members of the family leave the table, go for some air outside or come to the conclusion that “we should not talk about politics again.” Episodes like those are definitively not restricted to Latin Americans, nor to families. However, they made me wonder whether there is a particular way politics is experienced in family interactions worth exploring and made me consider that the study of Venezuelan family life could be an interesting and potential fruitful approach to understand the ways the current socio- political and economic context is present and experienced in Venezuelan’s everyday life. During almost four months of fieldwork in Venezuela, it was through the participation of everyday family life that I started to identify a deeper degree of frustration and uneasiness in dealing with supporters of the opposite site of the political spectrum from the side of the

3 opposition towards chavismo, than the other way around. I wondered why it was so difficult for Opositores to understand and deal with the fact that chavismo is in power. What were the social structures behind such a difficulty?

In this vein, the objective of this research is to offer an answer to the following question: how is politics experienced and negotiated in the everyday life of middle-class Venezuelans and, more specifically, what can this tell us about the Venezuelans identified as Opositores? In doing so, it aims to contribute to anthropological studies addressing the role of politics in people’s private and everyday life. It also offers relevant ethnographic illustrations on the way people make sense of the world through categories and symbols and how they experience and negotiate taken-for- granted understandings that do not fit with reality. Moreover, Venezuela’s context is presented as a good example for illustrating the way build chains of arguments, create discourses and embrace positions and identities. This study also steps into the debate the entanglements of political identities with social structures such as class, social status, and race. Finally, this analysis adds to anthropological studies looking at people who face the dilemmas of crossing the divide and bridge the gap between two different, even opposite, worlds. In order to find answers to these questions, the next sections of the present Chapter will introduce the methods undertaken to collect such data, as well as the theoretical assumptions that will assist in the analysis of the data collected. Subsequently, Chapter 2 will present a contextualization to the current Venezuelan socio-political and economic context, and a first discussion on the Chavistas’ and Opositores’ dominant political discourse. Chapter 3 will illustrate the way politics is experienced and takes place within everyday family life, offering a magnifying glass looking at the presence of politics in the micro level and to agency through the observation of people’s maneuvers. Lastly, Chapter 4 will focus on the way in which middle- class’ understandings of class and status id interrelated to the processes of political identification and othering of Opositores towards Chavistas, thus, highlighting the influence of macro level structures on such processes.

1.2 On Operationalization & Methods

“Make the strange familiar and the familiar strange” is one of the main aims of anthropological work. I personally consider this research pushed me to undertake both movements. On one hand, I stepped out of my personal proximity and involvement with anti-chavismo, acknowledging actions I realized I did not agree with and casting doubt into some taken for granted explanations on the context of the country. On the other hand, I stepped into chavismo

4 opening up the possibility to truly listening and even accepting different versions of the same reality. The preparation for the fieldwork started around eight months before going to Venezuela, when I began to discipline myself to access and reading both Chavistas’ and Opositores’ sources, writers and opinions. This already introduced me to the high level of complexity and opposing messages I was going to face in the field. As Robert Samet mentions:

[N]early every issue of political import in Venezuela appears in split screen. A visitor cannot help but notice that the state press and the private press seem to report from two different worlds. It is not simply that these outlets have different standards by which they define newsworthiness but that they have different beliefs about what is factual (Samet 2013: 535).

With that in mind, I arrived in Caracas the 28th of May 2015. During my three and a half months of fieldwork, I stayed at my grandparents’ house in Macaracuay, a middle-class neighborhood in the East of Caracas.6 In Caracas I undertook the majority of my interviews, observations, and informal conversations. I traveled several times within the country, including three trips to Barquisimeto aiming to meet with the members of the Rivero family who live in this city. They are the only participants of the research who live outside of Caracas. Even with a preparation of around eight months, my starting point to access Chavista informants was still very different from the one to access anti-Chavistas. On one hand, by staying on my grandparents’ house, and as a consequence of my inner circle of friends and relatives in Venezuela, I was naturally inserted in an environment of the opposition to the government. The four people who live at my grandparents’ house and all the people who visited it (around nine different people per week) were open and vocal anti-Chavistas. For the first three weeks of fieldwork, I had already undertaken very relevant informal conversations, as well as interviews with informants from this political side. I actually felt I achieved the saturation point regarding their perceptions before my first month in Venezuela. On the other hand, the process of accessing Oficialista informants was very different. As I did not have any friend or close relative who supported the government, I had to be much more proactive and it took me more time to achieve such an access. Before arriving in the field, I had already started a snowball sampling to identify potential informants who were Chavistas. From this sampling, a friend from high school introduced me to Daniel, who was the first

6 Macaracuay is an upper-middle-class neighborhood that today is not considered as good as before, because of the presence of a public supermarket and the big lines formed around it.

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Oficialista I interviewed. Some days after our first talk, Daniel invited me to a meeting of social scientists in the ministry of Comunas, which is in charge of grassroots initiatives and organization in the country. This is considered a ‘Chavista ministry’ since it is an innovative idea of social organization proposed and created during Chávez’s government. Daniel’s invitation gave me the opportunity to get in touch with members of this group of Chavista social scientists and through knowing one person who supported the government it was easier to get to know others. Additionally, other contacts were gradually popping up from the sampling, while I also contacted distant relatives who supported the government to undertake informal conversations and, in some cases, participant observations and interviews. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that from my snowball sampling I could not access informants from Caracas’ lower classes, whether they were Oficialistas or Opositores. Due to this, my research population focused only on the middle-class for both Chavista and opposition supporters. This was an important definer of the course taken by the subject of my research since I experience an unexpected journey in which through the study of political identities in Venezuela, I ended up learning a lot about Venezuelan middle-class in general, and middle-class opposition to the government, in specific. After the fieldwork, during the process of writing, the question “What do you mean by ‘middle-class’?” was posed to me many times. I thought that using the emic approach to define my informants as they define themselves was the most appropriate. This is still in part true and continues to be one of the reasons for the use of this term. Equally important are the information of socio-economic characteristics that I observed and received from my informants, which complemented their own identification. All along this study, such characteristics describe who my informants are and why they belong to the middle-class. Examples of this are where they live; where their parents live; whether they go/went to public or private schools/universities; whether the current economic situation of the country affects them, or not; and if yes, how?; their patterns of consumption, traveling, eating in restaurants; whether they have had to adopt any restrictions recently to such patterns; whether they use any of the public services/programs offered by the government; among other characteristics. I consider that these descriptions are what better describe what is meant by ‘Venezuelan middle-class’ in this study. It is worth mentioning, however, that recent qualitative studies on Venezuelan middle-class are almost inexistent.7

7 It is worth mentioning that recent qualitative studies on Venezuelan middle-class are almost inexistent, safe for Mora Salas (2007). The qualitative academic interest has focused the lower class in Venezuela, in specific with relation to social programs during the Chavista governments, like in the case of Fernandez (2004); Schiller (2011); Velasco (2011, 2015).

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I personally felt very comfortable when talking with people of the middle-class. I might have been perceived as a little bit alternative for my interests, my way of dressing, having lived abroad so many years and patterns of consumption (much lower than middle-class Venezuelans), but I did not feel any of these aspects created distance from my informants. I felt they recognized me as one of their own. Nothing more, nothing less. Before going to the field, I did not know how relevant the (notions of) class, social status, and race of my informants were for the discussions of this research. This is why I did not undertake a systematic enquiry on self-identifications of race. I already foresee this might be one of the methodological weakness of the present study. This is why I preferred not to make any reference about the race of my informants, since it would have been defined only from my own observations and definitions. An implication of this could be that (self)definitions and identifications on race might have introduced a more interesting debate on potential ambivalences and contradictions. During my months in the field, I undertook participant observation in activities such as watching television news broadcasts with informants, discussing political events, participating in family/social conversations and events (family meetings and meals; the celebration of birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, welcome and farewell parties). In particular, participant observation of groups’ activities was a very effective method to identify dominant discourses and common visions. Similarly, informal conversations were also useful to have access to less well-thought or structured opinions, such as the way people associate the level of education or racial markers with their understanding of political identities in Venezuela, as will be elaborated in Chapter 4. With the consent of my informants, I recorded twelve informal conversations, as well as registered many others in my fieldnotes. I also observed political activities as marchas, public events, and the behavior of people in private and public places with political symbols. Furthermore I undertook semi-structured interviews, including group interviews, with nineteen informants. 8 Through the semi-structured interviews, I explored, among other issues, how people saw the Venezuelan socio-political and economic context; the way they perceived politics in their lives; what they understood about the other political side (and what they did not); the strategies people use in their everyday life to avoid conflicts in close relationships with people supporting the opposite side of the political spectrum, among other subjects.

8 I translated the quotes, interviews’ extracts, fieldnotes and observations selected for the study. I counted with the English review of several friends fluent, and in some cases native, in English. Nevertheless, I am aware translation is imprecise at best. Many words or phrases have a unique cultural-political meaning in Venezuela that is lost even when using the most precise English equivalent. For the cases when translation do not do justice to the term or expression, I italicized the word/sentence in Spanish, except for the words chavismo, oficialismo, Chavista/s, Opositor/es and Oficialista/s, which are in Spanish but not in italic to facilitate the fluency of the reading.

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The four methods I used (semi-structured interviews, informal conversations, participant observation, and observation) offered me access to key information. Nevertheless, in the cases I was able to use two or more methods with the same informant for data triangulation, it allowed me to have a deeper overview of their opinions and experiences, as well as to compare what they say they do with what they actually do. Before going to Venezuela, I started a personal blog9 where I wrote weekly, even after the end of the fieldwork, aiming to share and better process subjects of my research, but also more personal feelings related to coming back to Venezuela after so many years.10 This allowed me to feel that I offered something tangible to the participants of the research, as well as to my own family and friends. Moreover, the blog was a space in Spanish where they could understand better what I was doing, which shaped my interpretations were taking and also, as occurred in several occasions, a site for them to state their own opinions and feedbacks. As I was interested in observing and studying people’s cotidiano, daily-life experiences, I realized the best way to access and accomplish this aim was observing and participating in family dynamics, including my own family.11 Among the several experiences on the field, I passed through a process that started with being a visiting relative and then, progressively becoming part of the everyday life of my own family. After a lot of considerations on how to write about family members in general and about my own in specific, I started questioning, on one hand, whether changing their names and keep my informants in anonymity was enough to avoid further frictions in already sensitive family issues; and, on the other hand, if doing so represented a serious omission or not.12 After reflecting deeply on it, I decided to change the names of my informants; and based on the acknowledgment that even among my closest siblings 13 I still played a double role of an outsider/insider, I also decided not to mention which of the participants of the research are my own siblings. Undertaking ethnography within families and especially one’s own is quite delicate and exhausting. Politics inside families resulted in a much more sensitive topic than expected before fieldwork. In many occasions I was eager to relax after a whole day of work by having dinner with my cousins or meeting some friends and these ended up being key occasions for intense ethnographic work. I also found it was interesting to experience a difference between talking about politics with the members of my own family than with friends or people who are not very

9 The name of the blog is: Mi Querencia: de las experiencias y emociones de volver a Venezuela. See: www.venezuelamiquerencia.com (visited on 05 December 2015). 10 As mentioned in the preface, before the fieldwork I lived ten years abroad. 11 When I refer to “my own family members” I am not considering my “nuclear family” (father, mother sister and brother) who is currently living in Brazil, but the relatives who are still living in Venezuela. 12 Even if, in some cases, I had only seen some of my siblings a couple of times in my life. 13 Meaning my grandparents, the sisters and brothers of my parents and my first cousins.

8 close. It seems like there are more possibilities to disagree outside the family circle. For instance, only members of my own family were the only ones who found it strange the questions I raised in group discussions, or the fact that I was in contact with Chavista people. It was common to receive misleading comments like: “Have you already become a Chavista?” or even some patronizing ones like: “We need to explain you what the real situation of the country is.” Differently than I naïvely expected, even after months of preparation, months of fieldwork, as well as months analyzing data and writing, my willingness to understand chavismo and opposition was achieved in different degrees. I was able to inquire deeper layers of complexity, ambiguities and even intimacy of the opposition’s side. This is the reason why Chapter 4 is mostly dedicated to the perceptions of Opositores toward Chavistas. Even if this journey resulted in an approach and better knowledge about chavismo (maybe even too close for some of my Opositores friends and relatives to feel comfortable), the Chavista world still kept some degree of exoticness, as an incentive for potential further research.

1.3 Theoretical Approach

Identities and social structures

In Symbols, conflict and identity, Zdzislaw Mach presents a study on contemporary issues regarding identity in social contexts of change and conflict. In the most general terms, for Mach, identity “involves a definition of an object of our perception, and thus forms and essential basis of our action in relation to this object” (Mach 1993: 5). In being so, identity is not a ‘natural’ intrinsic quality of an object prior to relations with other objects, but is actually a result of action, or rather interaction (ibid.: 5). Messages are sent, received and interpreted in processes of exchange, making of identity a dynamic, processual, and contextual phenomenon.

By ascribing certain qualities to people or groups or by including them in well- defined categories, people organize their social world and classify it and in such a way a conceptual symbolic model of the world is formed … People think and act in relation to the world according to this symbolic model… (ibid.: 6)

In accordance to Mach’s perspective, both symbolic and social structural components participate in the processes of creation, maintenance and reinforcement of identity (ibid.: ix). Considering that my research population was very much defined by its class, several concepts from Pierre Bourdieu’s theory on social class are relevant to introduce. In accordance with Bourdieu, the characteristics of a social class fundamentally come from the distinction between its condition and its position. The conditions are the several kinds of material conditions of existence, very much

9 related to economic assets. The position is the place occupied by the class in relation to the other classes (Bourdieu 1969: 88-89). Moreover, social space is an important concept introduced by Bourdieu as a symbolic space in which social proximities and distances are defined, meaning that not everyone can group together (ibid.: 89). Social groups can also be distinguished by their social status: the positive and negative privileges in a social consideration based on ways of living, formal ways of education, hereditary/professional prestige (ibid.: 88). This is the basis of Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital, which are “the distinctive forms of knowledge and ability [people] acquire […] from their training in the cultural disciplines” (Bourdieu 1984: xviii). It represents the “sum of valued knowledge, styles, social and physical characteristics and practical behavioral dispositions within a given field” (Bourdieu 1984 cited in Hage 2000: 53). To Bourdieu, the educational variable, meaning the cultural capital is as important as the economic. For Ghassan Hage, who uses Bourdieu’s theory for developing his argument about the White Nation Fantasy in Australia, this is a cumulative, rather than an either/or logic of ‘capitals’. Each one of these capitals has a specific value. Thus, there is the possibility of accumulation, continuum, of a set of qualities or capital. Hage uses Bourdieu’s cultural capital to introduce the concept of ‘whiteness’, which does not refer only to the skin color but is “an aspiration that one accumulates various capitals to try to be [white]” (Hage 2000: 60). Through my observations and interviews, I could recognize ways in which people from the middle-class separate themselves and their groups from others by the level of education, race, economic assets and ways of living. I defend that middle-class’ specific understandings of its group play a role in the creation, re-creation and maintenance of political identities in the country. When analyzing such a role (Chapter 4) the concepts on class condition, position, social status and social space and cultural capital introduced by Bourdieu, will be of great use.

On dominant discourses

Anthropological schools have taken as one of the central discussions of the discipline the way concepts of culture, ethnic classification, and identity are easily essentialized and fixed, reducing “anybody's behavior to a symptom of an equation” (Baumann 1996: 6). This is what Baumann describes in his ethnography, Contesting Culture, which studies a multi-ethnic town on the outskirts of London. Quoting Berger and Luckmann, Baumann defines reification as “the apprehension of human phenomena as if they were things, that is, (...) the apprehension of the products of human activity as if they were something other than human products - such as facts of nature” (Berger & Luckmann 1967: 106-107, cited in Baumann 1996: 12-13). The systematic reification of

10 categories facilitates dominant discourses to take place in societies, politics, and media, as described by Baumann in Great Britain (ibid.: 20). A dominant discourse is an understanding that seems to make sense to everyone (of a specific group) by presenting ‘logic’ and ‘simple’ explanations, like equating a specific political opinion to certain patterns of behavior, socio- economic background, the level of education, race and other categories. Interestingly enough, these equations also create a hermetic symbolic order that seems not to leave any space for doubts, middle grounds, weighted positions or loose ends. I suggest that today in Venezuela there is a reification of a discourse that presents the country as divided into two groups that seem to work as a black-and-white syntax of binary antagonism. This discourse reinforces, as well as has been reinforced by, the way political leaders of the country and the media have portrayed chavismo and opposition. This means, the way they have constructed images of selfing/othering such as: “we want the best for Venezuelans, they want the best for themselves”; “we are ethical, they are corrupted”; “we want peace, while they are violent”; “we represent el pueblo (the people), they represent the elite.” In Venezuela, people in favor of the government, as well as people against it seem, in a first sight, to be thereby frozen into unchangeable categories. 14 The taken for granted association, explanations, and understandings that assist in making sense of the political side people embrace are, thus, the dominant discourses. Classification is the basis of human knowledge and of cultural construction through which people make order of the world (Jenkins 1997). “From the most general point of view, identity is a result of classification of the world” (Mach 1993: 5). In the ethnographic research of Milena Veenis in former East Germany, the author affirms “people simply need to categorize, classify and draw boundaries in order to discriminate (between just and unjust, dirt and cleanliness, us and them)” (Veenis 2012: 28). In his same vein, the automatic associations that take place when someone identifies him/herself as an Oficialista and is equated to ‘an ignorant’, to a ‘resentido social’ (social resentful) or to an ‘enchufado’,15 as will be seen in the next Chapters, are examples of the process of reification of such categories, classifications and boundaries. The same happens when a Venezuelan identifies him/herself as an opponent of the government and is automatically equated to a person who is ‘rich’, ‘right-wing’ and ‘against el pueblo’. Furthermore, Veenis also highlighted the need of inquiry by anthropologists on how people manage to convince themselves that their constructions – for instance who they are – are

14 For studies on Hugo Chávez’s discourse analysis see: Romero (2005); Aponte Moreno (2008); Abi-Saab (2012). 15 Enchufado is the term given by Opositores o anyone getting benefits by working along or doing business with the government. This person is normally not a vocal Chavista supporter (would not go to the marchas, dress in red, or defend the government in social meetings), but s/he might vote for chavismo based on (economic) convenience. This term suggests corruption behind the association or filiation with the government.

11 real and whether and how everyday life confronts such categories and classifications with the inadequacy of this undertaking (ibid.: 27-28). Aiming to identify relationships and dynamics in which such automatic associations are challenged, several of the people who participated on the research actually do not fit within the dominant discourse that characterizes Chavistas or Opositores in Venezuela. Some of my informants were middle-class and well-educated Oficialistas; as well as some were left-wing Opositores. Even more relevant, many of the participants of the study have close relationships with people supporting the opposite side of the political spectrum, in some cases they went to the same schools, belonged to the same social class, or even to the same family. In consideration of this, it seems relevant to enquire on how people experience and negotiate when the categories with which they make sense of the world and justify their positions in it do not fit. One of the few couples in Venezuela composed by public figures with opposing views, from which one is a Chavista and the other an Opositor, is the case of Isabel González and Andrés Izarra. González was a public journalist of the TV news program Aló Ciudadano in Globovision, a program transmitted every day that openly criticized government’s policies.16 Plus she was the step-daughter of one of the main political leaders of the opposition, Antonio Ledezma. Izarra was a recent Minister of Communication, as well as of Tourism, and is a vocal supporter of the Chavista governments. When their union came to be publically known there was an uproar in social media and González complained about having being insulted in a café and having had the tires of her car cut.17 The constructions of a polarized society make difficult the understanding of a marriage composed by a Chavista and an Opositor. Thus, the González and Izarra’s couple challenge the process of reification and dominant discourse with which people make sense of the political scenario of Venezuela. Being faced with logics and categories that do not fit is in some occasions, as will be presented in the following Chapters, maneuvered and negotiated by people, while in others experienced with frustration and lack of understanding.

Rethinking identity constructions

The specifications of similarities and of differences are two interdependent processes of identification. One does not make sense without the other (Jenkins 1997: 7). Classification into who ‘we’ are and who ‘they’ are, although universal, does not happen always with the same intensity (Mach 1993: 10). In the process of identifying others, people create distance. This

16 After the closure in 2007 of RCTV, the Venezuelan most popular TV channel, Globovisión became be the only channel openly critical to the government. This was until 2013 when the channel’s owners changed and its political approach became less critical. 17 See http://www.reportero24.com/2015/03/una-pareja-inusual-la-hija-del-alcalde-ledezma-y-el-ministro- Chavista/ (visited on 05 December 2015)

12 separation does not necessarily mean antagonism or hostility. In accordance with Mach perspective, groups usually adapt to each other, establishing norms of contact. Nevertheless, “when one of the groups regards its position as unsatisfactory and its interests as threatened, then a relatively well-balanced accommodation may easily be transformed into conflict” (ibid.: 15). Interestingly enough, among the characteristics selected to define the other only certain traits and features are chosen and used in this construction of othering (ibid.: 7). Mach’s work encourages anthropological research to address part of our work in identifying which traits are chosen, why and with which implications. Baumann’s book, Grammars of identity/alterity (2004), offers a relevant discussion aiming to differentiate and present layers to the notion of ‘othering’, which has been used as a blanket term to define alterity and excluding difference. The author recognizes that even if the structures/grammars look, at the first sight, binary, responding to logics of ‘good versus bad’, ‘friends versus enemies’, ‘victims versus perpetrators’, when looking deeply:

[B]inary divisions of the world had little chance of capturing the richness and sophistication of ‘other’ people’s taxonomies… A division-in-two will intrinsically raise the awkward question of what may be in the middle. Binarisms inevitably raise the possibility of tripartition, and anthropologists have a long tradition of recognizing this (Baumann 2004: 35).

In each one of the grammars studied by Baumann, the author identified ternary structures that challenged binary opposition of mutually exclusive poles, by recognizing a third representation besides the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Ternary structures and layers in the process of selfing/othering are key for rethinking and broadening the dominant discourse of a Venezuela that is politically divided into two incommensurable groups. The speeches of political leaders and media in Venezuela are constantly pointing at binary notions that often present extreme logics of perpetrators and victims. Under these scenarios, it is worth asking whether Venezuelans have internalized what Baumann calls “anti-grammar” or “non-grammar” expressed in logics such as: “they are a threat for our existence.” Is it possible to identify ternary structures in people’s experiences and references to those supporting the opposite side of the political spectrum?

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2 POLITICAL DISCOURSES AND IDENTITIES IN TIMES OF CHAVISMO

Fieldnote: After three months of fieldwork, I thought I was ready to pack my bags with a sense of mission accomplished. I made my interviews, registered my observations, organized my fieldnotes and felt I had achieved some understandings about Venezuela’s context and the way people experience it. But today's Venezuela is so irreverent and volatile, that when I thought I had achieved some degree of understanding about her, she shook herself, mocked all my certainties and made me feel as if I had to start from scratch.

Venezuelan government’s decision, at the end of August 2015, to declare a state of emergency, the closure of part of the border with Colombia and the deportation of hundreds of Colombians, coincided with the final phase of my fieldwork. 18 It left me speechless. I thought I had understood some initiatives from el processo.19 But when I wrote the fieldnote above I had the feeling as if I lacked understanding and needed to come back to earth and revisit the complexity of the current Venezuelan socio-political context. During the three previous months of my stay, I had seen the denouement (or not) of several major political events in the country. 20 It would be inaccurate to say events and happenings in Venezuela change quickly. This could give the impression that conjunctures are quickly overcome and that lessons are quickly learned. However, my perception is that what happens in Venezuela is been accumulated constantly – piled up on each other – without a proper closure. The ease with which new conjunctures take the spotlight and many important, even urgent, happenings (like the diplomatic dispute with Colombia) are constantly emerging is overwhelming. This is why I found important to dedicate some words to set up the tone and recognize the complex phenomenon that represents the Venezuelan context today. The next sections of this Chapter will focus on the current socio-political and economic scenario in Venezuela. I have selected key descriptions for general understanding of such context, as well as of the present study. Nonetheless, the next sections do not intend to simulate or substitute the richness of information received in a normal day in Caracas by walking in the streets, taking the camionetica or the metro, talking with random people or just listening to other people’s conversations. This by no means substitutes what the Venezuelan people would say for themselves. The next pages are small windows into a huge world.

18 The Venezuelan closure of the border with Colombia started the 19th of August, 2015 and lasted more than 30 days, when the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of both Venezuela and Colombia finally agreed to normalize the border. As will be explained further on, the official reasons given by the Venezuelan government were they were fighting against para-militarism and the high rates of smuggling in the region. See Cronología: Por una frontera de paz entre Venezuela y Colombia, Telesur Noticias, 16 September 2015. http://www.telesurtv.net/news/Cronologia-Por-una- frontera-de-paz-entre-Venezuela-y-Colombia-20150908-0047.html (visited on 05 December 2015). 19 Referring to the socialist-inspired Bolivarian Revolution designed and inaugurated by Hugo Chávez. 20 For example, some events were the government’s preliminary elections of the National Assembly; a diplomatic controversy due to border disputes with another neighboring country, Guyana, and a mediatic campaign to raise awareness on this issue; I also saw the critiques received by the opposing coalition regarding the lack of gender balance and representation among their candidates for the National Assembly.

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2.1 A Brief Context of a ‘Divided Country’

The Socio-political divisions within Venezuela are not something new. Like in many other societies, the historical process of its construction has been characterized by divided groups. The civil wars after Venezuela’s independence from Spain, in 1810, were consequences of the struggle between liberales and conservadores. Similarly, even nowadays, there are still many references made by politicians and common people to the way the country was “divided” less than two decades ago, during the democratic period that started after the Pacto de Punto Fijo21 agreement, in 1958. This Pact is also known as the start of the Cuarta República (the Forth Republic), when two leading political parties, Acción Democrática (AD) and Comité de Organización Política Electoral (COPEI), ran the country. AD and COPEI alternated control of the government for the next forty years. This politically separated Venezuelans between adecos and copeyanos (Boudin et al. 2006). Since 1998, when Hugo Chávez was elected President of Venezuela, the country started a new political process that today, sixteen years later, continues to divide Venezuelans between those who support the government and its socialist-inspired Bolivarian Revolution; and those who contest the government and its initiatives. Chávez was a Lieutenant-Colonel who became nationally known for a brief television appearance in which he took responsibility for an unsuccessful military coup attempt in 1992, against the President Carlos Andrés Pérez, from the AD party. The coup aimed to support constant protests against the neo-liberal economic policies implemented by the Pérez’ government. It was carried out by organized movements of the political left. Chávez was sent to jail but was acknowledged as a national hero because of the way he accepted his defeat. In a famous speech, he used the phrase “por ahora” (for now), that later would become a popular motto in political campaigns. Chávez was released after the impeachment of President Pérez, and in December 1998 was elected the new President with 62% of the votes. He immediately called for a referendum to reform the constitution, introducing key changes such as the name of the country; the centralization of important executive government roles; the abolishment of the bicameral legislative, creating instead a unicameral national assembly; the extension of the presidential term to six years, allowing for one consecutive reelection. After one year, a new constitution came into effect in the now called Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. 22 In April 2002, President Chávez was

21 The Punto Fijo agreement was a formal arrangement for the preservation of the rising democratic regime among three main political parties: AD, COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática (all non-communists parties). 22 The Bolivarian political ideology is part of the legacy and tribute to Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), known as El Libertador. In Venezuela’s cultural history, Bolívar was the leader of South American liberation of the Spanish colonial rule (specifically, of present-day territory of Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador). For a deeper analysis see The cult to Bolívar (Carrera Damas 2013) and also The Politics of Identity: Bolívar and Beyond (Capriles 2008).

15 briefly removed from office after massive protests against his government. This episode is called by the oficialismo as a coup d’état while the opposition called it “a vacuum of power.” Two days later, Chávez returned to power, thanks to widespread popular protests and the support of members of the military. After this episode, the President developed a stronger posture against the opposition, especially in his speeches, and the Bolivarian Revolution’s process of implementation was intensified. Social programs, known as misiones, were founded in 2003, aiming to address the citizen’s most pressing needs, including free primary health care, literacy, housing, food, redistribution of land, and other additional benefits (Boudin et al. 2006).23

The Chavismo Divide

“To say that Venezuela today is polarized is tantamount to a cliché”, says Miguel Tinker Salas at the beginning of his book, Venezuela: What everyone needs to know (Tinker Salas 2015: 7). This is because a lot has been said by academics and nonacademics regarding the so-called Venezuelan polarization (Al Jazeera 2014; Eastwood & Ponniah 2011; Coronil 2008; Corrales & Penfold 2011; Ellner 2008; Ellner & Hellinger 2003; Wilpert 2011).24 In contrast, it was very common in my interviews with Chavista supporters to hear that the notion of a polarized country is a projection of the international media and the opposition. From their perspective, the aim of such projections is to call for an international intervention in the country. Additionally, they claim that it is part of Venezuela’s culture cultural in to “fight like dogs”, then “pretend like nothing happened, play dominoes and have a beer together.” On the other hand, it was also interesting to note that some Opositores also see a potential decrease in the socio-political polarization due to the fact that “nowadays many Chavistas (Chávez’s supporters) are not maduristas (supporters of Nicolás Maduro).” Before his death, in March 2013, Chávez named Nicolás Maduro as his successor in the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV, for its acronym in Spanish). One month after Chávez’s death, Maduro won the Presidential elections against the opposition’s candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski by only 1.5 points. In terms of political opinion, the population was equally divided between those who were against and those who were in favor of the government, both at a national level, and, in specific cities, such as Caracas (where I undertook the majority of

23 In 2006 sixteen misiones were functioning. 24 There are many studies on Venezuelan socio-political polarization, especially offered by Political Scientists. They are also divided between scholars who support the government and scholars who criticize it. Authors such as Javier Corrales (2011), who is mostly opposed to the Chavista government, defends that this polarization has been the government’s deliberated effort to create divisiveness as an electoral strategy. For authors that are sympathetic to the government, such as Gregory Wilpert (2011), explanations point for instance the intransigence of the opposition as an explanation for the government’s radicalization.

16 my field research) and Barquisimeto (where some of my informants live). This is evident in the last results of the presidential elections of April 2013:

Voted for Capriles Voted for Maduro (in favor of Radonski (against the the Chavista government) Chavista government) National Results 50.61% 49.12% Caracas (Capital District) 51.32% 48.19% Lara State (where 47.71% 52.02% Barquisimeto is the capital)

Table 1 Table Own Elaboration. Source: National Electoral Council (CNE Poder Electoral) official website.25

Supporters of the government call the political context of the last sixteen years “the (Bolivarian) Revolution” or “el proceso” (the process). The opposition calls it “la situación del país” (the country’s situation). These linguistic dichotomies already say something about the way people perceive and make reflections on the Venezuelan context. In the case of the opposition, “la situación” gives the idea of something not very defined and very general. Meanwhile, “el proceso” allows space to underplay problems and/or delay changes proposed by the Revolution. To offer a detailed description of the supporters of each side is not a simple task. The conventional understanding is that the lower classes support chavismo while the upper and middle-classes oppose it (Lupu 2010; Castañeda 2006; Cannon 2008). Therefore, Chavista adherents have been in many occasions treated in relation to class and the level of education. “When ‘the poor’ are mentioned [by the opposition], they are often represented as an uncritical mass whose connection to chavismo is largely emotive” (Wilde 2014). More critical and comprehensive studies have pointed out an interesting diversity of social backgrounds, historical experiences, and political orientations among those identified as Oficialistas. Nevertheless, not much has been written or said about the heterogeneity of chavismo, including middle-class Chavista supporters.26 One of the few studies on this regard was done by Cristobal Valencia Ramírez, who considers that there has been a mis-characterization of the Chavistas as by being “typically depicted by the opposition, media, and some academics as young, poor, politically unsophisticated, antidemocratic masses that prefer political violence to democratic and constitutional processes” (Valencia Ramírez 2005: 81). In his qualitative research,

25 See CNE’s official website: http://www.cne.gob.ve/web/index.php (visited on 05 December 2015). 26 Safe for works: López Maya (2002); Valencia Ramírez (2005) and Tinker Salas (2014).

17 the author explored the origins, aims, and experiences of Chavista organizations and individuals. Valencia defends that Chavistas are organized in various social and economic levels, with diverse reasons for personal involvement with the Bolivarian Revolution (ibid.: 95). Similarly, Tinker Salas lists among others, left-wing and nationalist groups; intellectuals; indigenous and Afro-Venezuelans communities; people who had lost faith in the political process during the Fourth Republic; the military; those who have participated in the political and social mobilizations that occurred during the Chavista governments such as the consejos comunales (community councils); and those who participate directly in and benefit directly from social programs like the misiones (2015: 164-168). It is especially interesting to note Tinker Salas’ comment regarding the support of some middle-class segments to the government:

[W]ho are motivated by a moral commitment to improve people’s conditions and a basic nationalist pride that seeks to advance the nation as a whole. This support within the middle-class is an important factor beyond just the number of people involved, for these sympathizers include intellectuals, professionals, trained artists, and others whose talents have greatly aided the overall movement (ibid.: 168).

What seems apparent, as Tinker Salas put it, is that Chavistas: “are not simply anonymous uneducated masses drawn by the rhetorical persuasion of a charismatic leader. They are also not merely supporting the government because they are recipients of state-funded social programs” (Tinker Salas 2015: 163-164), as has been stated by so many authors and opinions, especially those describing chavismo as a populist government.27 As for the opposition, it is worth noting that this is also not a monolithic group. Even though the upper and middle-class and business elites are the most visible Opositores, the Chavista governments have also received critiques from both the right and the left-wing. Unlike chavismo, the opposition is not associated with any single person or political proposition but, rather, with a heterogeneous and complex range of interests from owners of capital, such as the private press, the Catholic Church, the two parties that ruled Venezuela during the Fourth Republic (AD and COPEI) and almost half a dozen newer parties, and also a large range of political ideologies —neoliberal, social democratic, even dissident Marxist (Samet 2013: 529). All of them converge in the strident rejection of the governments led by Chávez and Maduro. There is also a sector of the population that belongs neither to one side nor to the other. They do not have much visibility at the political arena and are not politically organized. The composition of this group is heterogeneous; it can include actors who do not feel represented,

27 See Laclau 2005; Brading 2012; Samet 2013; Myers 2014.

18 who are conflicted, or simply apolitical. They could also be ex-Chavistas or ex-Opositores who have been disappointed with their political leaders. This group is known as the ni-nis.28 It is worth mentioning that during my fieldwork there were very few occasions in which I met a person not identified as a supporter of either chavismo or the opposition. The only time this occurred was during a day-trip with a group of traditional Venezuelan dancers. Two out of six said they were from “the middle.” It is interesting that only in exceptional occasions someone would self-identify as a ni-ni or from “the middle.” As mentioned in the introduction, when quoting Coronil (2008), in Venezuela there is a difficulty in accepting middle-like positions. This is related to the polarization of the country, but also to a cultural rejection to being apathetic. Such a political position would be potentially considered in Venezuela a lack of care or affection towards one’s own country.

2.2 Everyday Life in Current Times of Chavismo

This section will introduce four conjunctures of the country identified as the main socio-political and economic concerns of Venezuelans nowadays. Two main economic situations currently affect the inhabitants of the country, independently of their political tendency or social class. These are, the shortage of essential products and food (like personal hygiene products, rice, milk, meat, corn flour, sugar, beans, oil, among others) and price inflation. Everyday discussions on how to find basic food products, as well as on the high costs of living can be heard in both political and common arenas of society. Because of these shortages, there are constant colas (long lines) that go around blocks outside of (public or private) supermarkets and people can spend many hours a day just doing groceries. Some of them are trying to buy what they need; others have used this situation as an opportunity to resell items at considerably higher prices. The latter are the so called bachaqueros, in reference to the idea of bachacos, insects, that load a lot of food on their backs. Given this situation, the government has implemented restrictions to rationalize distribution and consumption of essential goods, aiming to restrict people from buying more than they need. If the product happens to be available in the supermarket, people can buy a restricted quantity of it per week and only during one of the corresponding days according to the last number of their ID. Moreover, the practice of bachaqueo was made illegal; this allowed for imprisoning anyone caught reselling any product in Venezuela. Hereof, the closure of the border with Colombia was the government’s answer to the high rates of smuggling of subsidized products by the Venezuelan government, especially gasoline, in the region. The bachaqueros there,

28 To refer to those who support neither one side nor the other.

19 both Colombians and Venezuelans, acquired the subsidized products in Venezuela and resold them in Colombia, increasing the shortage of products. With regard to inflation, it is important to say that not all products have higher prices. There are some products that have been regulated (like personal hygiene products including soap, deodorant, shampoo, toothpaste, diapers) and others have been subsidized (like gasoline, meat, rice, bean, sugar, eggs, milk, corn flour, and oil) by the government. Those ended up getting extremely cheap in comparison with the rest of products and are the most vulnerable to the present shortage. The rest of the products are reaching almost surreal prices, especially if they are imported (like fruits, clothes, and electronic devices). Some analysts position Venezuela as the country with the highest inflation rate in the world, reaching 59.3%.29 Even if the government promotes the increase of salaries on a regular basis, the purchasing power is lower than the rise of inflation. During the first ten years of the Chávez’s regime (1999-2010), purchasing power had decreased 162% (Chaplin 2014: 94). The economic conjunctures seem to affect deeply, Venezuelans’ everyday life. I could observe how people do not only spend a lot of their time trying to maneuver the situation, but also their energy and thoughts. Interpretations on why this is happening depend on the political opinion of who you ask. The opposition calls this situation an “economic crises”, alerting to an imminent collapse of the country´s economy; while the government has called it an “economic war”, alerting to a conspiracy against chavismo. According to the opposition, the shortage is a result of the economic measures implemented by the government, especially the control of currency exchange, in place in Venezuela since 2003, and the regulation of prices. These measures have affected the production line of many products. Moreover, they blame the government’s expropriation of private properties and its inefficiency, waste and mismanagement of resources. On the other hand, for a Chavista, the current economic conjuncture is a result of private industries and entrepreneurs trying to create instability in the country by not offering the goods they have in stock and promoting discontent with the population. Plus, speculation, especially stimulated by websites operating outside of the country, like Dollar Today,30 can also be perceived by the government and its supporters as being part of the “economic war.”31

29 See La inflación en Venezuela se ubica en las más alta del mundo, Datanalisis, 15 July 2015. http://www.datanalisis.com/948/la-inflacion-de-venezuela-se-ubica-como-la-mas-alta-del-mundo-con-un-593/ (visited 16 September 2015) and La peor inflación del mundo, El Universal, 6 January 2014. http://www.eluniversal.com/opinion/140106/la-peor-inflacion-del-mundo (visited on 01 December 2014). 30 See https://dolartoday.com/ (visited 05 December 2015). 31 For more comprehensive explanations regarding the different political perspectives, consult these two videos aiming to illustrate the current economic situation in Venezuela: ¿Por qué continúa el desabastecimiento en Venezuela? (Why does the shortage in Venezuela continues?), El Tiempo, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkN_MgaWIoQ (visited on 05 December 2015) and

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Besides the economic situation of the country, there is also a high rate of urban violence. According to the United Nations Office on Drug and Crimes’ Global Study on Homicide 2013, Venezuela ranks the second in the world with the highest risk of violent deaths, with a rate of approximately 54 murders per 100.000 inhabitants. The report affirms that “Venezuela is the only country in South America that has had a consistently increasing homicide rate since 1995” (UNODC 2014: 33). During my fieldwork, it became clear the ways in which urban violence has changed the routine of Venezuelans. An example of this are the security measures put in place, such as never visit some regions of the city, don’t stay out late and never stop on a red light. It was interesting to observe that people from the upper and middle-class in Caracas do not know how to use public transportation. Supporters of the opposition claim that the government is responsible for such violent context in the country. It is common that news channels that are critical to the government release weekly statistics on the number of bodies received at the main Morgue of Caracas (Bello Monte). Each time someone comments on a violent death, kidnapping or robbery, she/he is indirectly complaining about the government’s inefficacy on this regard. This year, the government created a plan against urban violence, the Operación para Liberación del Pueblo (OLPs). According to Chavista supporters, the opposition distorts the subject of urban violence, aiming to give the impression of chaos in the country and neither recognizes the benefits nor supports the government’s initiatives to diminish violence, like the OLPs. The fourth and last conjuncture are the limitations to the freedom of speech and press. This is one of the issues most raised by the opposition. On the one hand, the increase of government-sponsored media with government propaganda is evident. The closure of RCTV in 2007, the most popular TV channel in Venezuela up to date, raised massive protests all around the country and is still today one of the main reasons to critique the Chavista government as being undemocratic. Throughout the fourteen years of Chávez’s government, the President developed an unprecedented frequency and quality of communication with the population by TV, radio and public speeches. Venezuelan journalists and linguists experienced difficulties in keeping up with his speeches due to their large number and long durations. According to the historian Enrique Krauze, “Chávez inaugurated a unique style: he rules ‘live’ in front of the cameras” (Krauze 2008: 90). This practice has been imitated and continued by the current Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro. During my stay in Venezuela, I watched several TV programs led by the current Chavista leaders. Today, not only the President has a program, like Chávez used to have his ‘Aló Presidente’ on Sundays, but also, Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, and the

¿Qué está pasando en Venezuela? (What is happening in Venezuela?), Universidad Popular del Buen Vivir, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Dq9crHp7k (visited on 05 December 2015).

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Speaker of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, have also their own exclusive weekly programs.32 On the other hand, since 2002, the commercial media, both print and broadcast, “dropped all pretenses of objectivity and began in large measure to assume the mantle of the opposition” (Tinker Salas 2015: 151). It is also true that a big part of the upper and middle-class population watches international programming offered by satellite and cable. Moreover, the usage of social media in Venezuela, such as Twitter and Facebook, as sources of information is among the highest in the world (ibid.: 7). As mentioned by Samet in one of his former quotes, the result of this is that news and information seem to be reported from two different worlds in which “dueling narratives about violent crime, health care, urban infrastructure, the impact of social programs, and the state of the national economy reflect two conflicting attempts at constituting reality” (Samet 2013: 535).

2.3 Making Sense and Taking Position: Political Discourses and Identities

What are the Chavistas and Opositores’ dominant discourses? In other words, what are the simple and sometimes taken-for-granted logics through which they make sense of the political scenario and justify their position on it? Moreover, what are the implications of such discourses? This is what the following ethnographic vignettes aim to illustrate.

Bolivariano, socialista, revolucionario, Chavista

Vicente (self-identified as Chavista, 38 years old) works in a bank that used to be part of a multinational and which was nationalized, after expropriation by the State. His life changed after Chávez took power. He was always very Bolivarian [meaning he admired the life, achievements, and ideals of Simón Bolívar] and liked the fact that Chávez brought back to life Bolívar’s legacy. Vicente remembers when Chávez did his televised speech after the attempted coup in 1992, recognizing the responsibility for the defeat in front of the country. To him, that was something never seen before. “I liked the man, when he was released from jail, he proposed to change the Constitution and he did it, right?” In his view, the old parties did not like Chávez because he did not offer them jobs or positions in the government, as they were used to. Then, he liked the fact that “Chávez came to improve everything: the laws, the education, health, housing, and represented hope to that entire population who had never been visible to society before, like the guy of the barrio (slum), the moto-boy, the lady who sells empanadas, the delivery man…” Chávez represented an awakening to the country and even beyond, to the rest of Latin America.

32 The President’s Program is called ‘En contacto con Maduro’ (In contact with Maduro) and is broadcasted on Tuesday evenings; the First Lady’s TV program is called ‘Con Cilia en Familia’ (in Family with Cilia) and is on Sunday evenings; Cabello’s program is called ‘Con el Mazo dando’ (roughly translated as Fighting with the hammer) and is broadcasted on Thursday evenings. All the programs are forecasted by the channels owned by the government.

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According to him, if the oligarcas33 take the power back, all the social programs built by la Revolución would be destroyed. Vicente recognizes the importance of Chávez’s charisma to lead: “era un ser de luz, un hombre del pueblo (he was an enlightened being, a man of the people)”. Chávez’s death was a very traumatic episode.. He suggested knowing, along with other Chavistas, that Chávez was poisoned, probably by the United States. “They killed him as they sent to kill Bolívar, we know that.” He does not consider himself to be a radical Chavista because it is not through politics that he creates bonds with people. He actually does not enjoy talking about politics all the time, “like many people do.” When he refers to the current economic situation, Vicente accepts there are some limitations of consumption: “now you do not have as many brands of shampoos as before, for instance, but that is not necessarily a serious problem. That represents a problem for the escuálidos, who have capitalistic and individualistic patterns of consumption. Plus, they exaggerate all the time.” On this regard, the government should take a stronger position against the economic war, the bachaqueros and the people smuggling in the border with Colombia. There is an irrational component on Vicente’s political position, and he acknowledges it: “It is the same as love, you cannot really explain it.”

Vicente is very well informed of el proceso. His political discourse as a Chavista is one of active affirmation of the social improvements achieved by the government. He can easily list all the misiones and social policies developed during chavismo and can give vivid examples of people who have benefited from them. Moreover, his feeling of engagement shows that he has been empowered by the Bolivarian Revolution. When he says his life has changed, it is because he found something to support, something to believe in that shaped the way he sees politics, the country and its society.

“This is not living, this is surviving”

Juan Manuel (self-identified as Opositor, 27 years old) is a business graduate from a private University in Caracas. Since his graduation, he has been unemployed for some periods and working in private companies for some others. Juan Manuel complains a lot about the country’s inflation: “I cannot leave my parents’ house because it is impossible to rent an apartment in Caracas with the money I earn. I am a professional and I cannot even eat at restaurants.” He has a girlfriend, Laura, who would like to leave the country because of the urban violence and the low quality of life in Venezuela. In order to do so, they would need to get married before. Juan Manuel agrees with the idea of the marriage, but he has mixed feelings about leaving the country. On one hand, he does not have many friends or social life in Caracas anymore, because a big number of friends have migrated: “Everybody is leaving, no one is left.” On the other, he loves his country: “Venezuela is Venezuela, you know?” The current economic situation affects him directly: “How is it possible that I cannot buy what I need, when I need it? Plus, I

33 Chavistas call people of the opposition who were in power before of oligarchs

23 cannot even have access to foreign currency. This is a regression for a country that used to be very rich.” Juan Manuel also complains about the bachaqueros: “They can earn in a week what I earn in a month. That is so unfair! The other day María, our former housemaid, called asking for places to stay in Madrid. She earned all that money to travel bachaqueando. I would need ten years of work in order to be able to buy a ticket to Spain. Can you believe that?!” In his view, the country has been blinded by Chávez’s charisma and social resentment. He also recognizes there are smart people supporting the government, but those are the boliburgueses34 and the enchufados, people who are getting richer and richer through the government, since the system has provided a space to do so. “The bigger problem here is that there are no moral values anymore.” From his perspective, all the people who are taking advantage of the government and the economic crises are the ones voting for chavismo and that is why things will not improve soon. A few years ago, while he was studying at the University, Juan Manuel joined the student movement participating in several waves of protests against the government and even considered joining a political party. Now he says he would not go to the streets in protest, after the strong repressions protesters received from the government during the guarimbas.35 When asked about what the solution is, Juan Manuel does not hesitate, he knows he has to vote against the government next elections and convince as many people as possible to vote as well. His girlfriend, on the other hand, sees no point in voting and suggested she might not do it. “If you do not vote, there will not be a marriage, it is as simple as that”, said Juan Manuel to Laura – half joking, half seriously.

Juan Manuel’s political discourse as an Opositor is based on complaints related to structural limitations to achieve personal expectations as a young professional adult belonging to the middle-class. Such expectations could be summarized as being economically independent and having a better quality of life. Since he has not successfully achieved that, he seems to have a feeling of failure in comparison to the bachaqueros, enchufados and boliburgueses, who, in his view, do not deserve what they have, but still ended up having much more than him. Moreover, from his perspective, such limitations are the government’s responsibility.

“People have been brainwashed”

Carmen (self-identified as Chavista, 55 years old) works as an independent lawyer. She has received several offers to work along with the government in public institutions and with politicians, but in her opinion she “can help more by being outside, you know?” Since she was young, at the University, Carmen supported left-wing parties. To her, chavismo represented a change in politics from the years of neo-liberal measures and corruption of the Cuarta

34 Boliburgués is how the opposition calls Chavistas who by working in government institutions and supporting the Revolution have made a lot of money and now belong to the upper and upper-middle-class. Similarly than the term enchufado, being identified as a boliburgués suggests corruption behind the association or filiation with the government. 35 Violent protests against the government that took place at the beginning of 2014. For more details see McGrail (2015).

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República. Moreover, before chavismo people were disappointed regarding politics and did not vote, nowadays, everybody talks about politics, knows the dates of next elections, and who the candidates are. She recognizes that recently things have not been going very well in the country, but she does not identify better propositions from the leaders of the opposition: “What is their plan? What are the projects to solve the problems and build a better society?” What Carmen sees are the escuálidos only complaining and being unable to recognize anything positive from the current government, not even what has been acknowledged by international organisms like the United Nations and others. Private and international media have a big responsibility on this “brainwash.” This is the “psychological and mediatic war that makes people bitter and ill. When I see people checking their cellphones, I know they are on Twitter checking the news.” Carmen complains about the upper and middle-class people still going to good restaurants, still having good cars and traveling, so “they do not have real arguments for complaining.” She is also amazed by the easiness with which “educated people” believe rumors and biased information circulating on social media. In her view, this also explains people supporting the guarimbas and then claiming that the government was repressing the students. “They all follow the same scripts, they all repeat the same things. Can you believe that people did not want to change their light bulbs to energy-saving ones, as proposed by the government because they said there were cameras inside?! Can you believe that?! Es el mundo al revés! (It is the looking-glass world!). It is not possible to talk with people like that, there is no space for debate.”

Even if Carmen supports the government, she is also disappointed with what is currently happening in relation to economic domains in the country. Nevertheless, what is clear from her political discourse is that her support of the government is based on arguments against the leaders of the opposition, who do not offer solid political alternatives, and, in a deeper way, against the image she has of the Opositor. From her perspective, the opposition is made of people manipulated by the media, who are constantly complaining against the government without any justifiable basis.

“Éramos felices y no lo sabíamos” (We were happy and didn’t know)

Carolina (self-identified as Opositora, 45 years old) is an architect graduated in a public University of Venezuela, who used to work in a public institution directed by Chavista supporters. She recognizes that social policies like the misiones have increased access to education and health, but not to education and health of quality: “and then you have a medical doctor earning millions of Bolívares, but who does not even know how to treat a patient, because he has only studied a couple of years during his entire life.” Moreover, even if the misiones are clearly praiseworthy, for Carolina the government has used the access to the population, through the social policies and through government-sponsored media, to wash their brains and guarantee votes in their favor. “Through the constant message of social resentment of the government, they became too radical. With that, the bridge was broken.

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Now they will never vote for us, nor will we vote for them.” From her perspective, the government has only implemented populistic policies and created parasitic supporters by giving the fish without teaching people how to properly fish. This has made people conformist and always expecting to receive from the State (regalado, as a hand-out) instead of earning what they deserve. Additionally, the government has been extremely inefficient: many of the private properties and enterprises expropriated by the government have gone bankrupt; the production of PDVSA, the main oil industry of the country which was nationalized by Chávez’s government, has decreased because of unprepared people appointed in important positions. Carolina is aware of the limitations of the leaders of the opposition: “I am sure Leopoldo36 and Capriles would not have been good Presidents, as Maduro is also not good, but voting for the opposition is the democratic way I find to get chavismo out of the way.” She complains a lot about the bad situation of the country, especially urban violence. She has been robbed several times, many of her friends have been kidnapped, and the son of a close friend was killed one year ago. “Before Chávez éramos felices y no lo sabíamos, and now with Maduro, we are even worse.” According to her, it is very difficult to find a Chavista who supports the government with conviction: “either they support chavismo as a result of ignorance, or they are making money by doing so. You would not believe the amount of money they are making out of it. They are the ones with access to dollars! If you go to the good restaurants, the good beaches, the good hotels, in Venezuela or abroad, all the military and the boliburgueses are there.”

The political discourse of Carolina as an Opositora is based on a strong criticism to anything related to chavismo. She cannot see anything positive in the last sixteen years of government, not even the misiones since they have been distorted to achieve other ends. Even when she has not been directly affected by the bad economic situation of the country, she still experiences the fact that chavismo is in power in a very negative way.

The emic perspective of the ethnographic vignettes illustrates recurrent patterns of understandings and classifications, of identification and perceptions among Chavistas and Opositores concerning the current Venezuelan socio-political and economic context. Several aspects of the vignettes deserve to be highlighted. It is evident that supporters from both groups present strong criticism and complaints about their own leaders and their proposals and policies. It is interesting to observe that this is not a strong enough argument for supporting the other side of the political spectrum. In reality, the rejection to belong to the other group is in many occasions stronger than the criticism to their own group. This could be considered a clear evidence of the gap between chavismo and opposition, characterized by very low mobility between the two poles of the political spectrum. A misperception regularly expressed by the

36 Leopoldo López is leader and founder of the opposition political party Voluntad Popular. López was imprisoned at the beginning of 2014 for having participated in the protests against the government, guarimbas, which for that date triggered a wave of violence and partly paralyzed the country.

26 supporters of the opposition during the interviews was to think that by “making people realize”, for instance, the incompetence of the government, Chavistas would vote for the opposition. In this way, Opositores are frequently underestimating Chavistas’ own opinions on the government’s limitations.

Moreover, the work of Robert Samet defends that “following the figure of the victim reveals an important similarity between chavismo and the opposition (…) both sides see themselves as victims who mobilize the force of popular sovereignty against the abuses of power” (Samet 2013: 527). From the vignettes, it is possible to identify what I call “reverse mirror-arguments.” These are perspectives shared by both groups, but in which the ‘they’ and the ‘us’ depend on who is talking. For instance, both my Chavistas and Opositores informants said: “they always twist what we say or are brainwashed”; “they repeat everything they hear without any basis or confirmation”; there is also a common feeling of “if they are in power, we have no opportunities in this country”; both would agree with the affirmation “they are all corrupted”; or the idea “they do not love Venezuela (like we do)”; “unlike them, we want peace”; “it is impossible to have a dialogue with them. We are open to recognize mistakes, but they aren’t”; and I heard supporters and leaders of both groups quoting Eduardo Galeano’s book “it is the looking-glass world”,37 emphasizing their lack of understanding on how the other group sees things, or to describe what is happening in the country. It was very revealing to hear the same arguments by people with opposite opinions, but mutually accusing each other. In the view of the Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronil, “these clashing images are specular, mirror images of each other that share the same assumptions and Manichean structure” (Coronil 2008b). When I commented this observation with informants, family or friends they all seemed very surprised by the finding. From my perspective, this points to the fact that Chavistas and Opositores are not actually listening to each other’s arguments. It seems like each group is speaking out its own complaints and views among their own members without addressing it to the other group. Thus, each side has a deep lack of knowledge about the other’s perspective. One of the implications of such understandings is that in the current Venezuelan context the process of making sense of the political scenario, which leads to political identities, both limit and reinforce interactions among people with different political opinions. When it comes to middle-class Opositores with the profile of Juan Manuel, it is possible they do not have close

37 The expression in Spanish is “es el mundo al revés.” Galeano’s book in Spanish is entitled Patas arriba: La Escuela Del Mundo Al Revés, while in English is Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World. It is a reference to Lewis Carroll’s book (1871), Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

27 relationships with people who support the government. Maybe he knows about an aunt who is Chavista, or a former housemaid, or a friend of a friend, but he is not close to any of these people. In the case of Carolina, since she studied in a public University and worked in a public institution she might have a close relationship with a limited number of Oficialistas, but this might be the exception to the rule. It is very likely that the rest of the Chavista people she knows are colleagues from work, with whom she does not relate closely, or old friends from the University with whom she only has contact through social media. On the other hand, it would be common to hear that Opositores from the middle-class in general have friends with whom they go (or used to go) to the protests against the government and with whom, during social events, they would spontaneously talk about politics for hours. The case of people with the profile of both, Carmen and Vicente, supporters of the government from the middle-class, would be very different. They would probably have close relations and bonds with other people with their same profile, but it would be almost out of reality to think they would not have close relations with any friend, family member, or neighbor of the opposition. In many cases, this would bring to light some dilemmas and sensitivities in everyday interactions. The ways people negotiate and find strategies to avoid conflicts within such relationships will be the subject of discussion of the next Chapter.

In regards to the Oficialistas, I recognized in my interviews and observations how people who support the government almost do not mention the current President Maduro. Chávez still seems to be the solid bond of chavismo and this has been very much explored by the leaders governing under his legacy. In the Chavista side, symbols play a very relevant role in creating and maintaining discourses and identities. The resignification and rewriting of Venezuelan history, as well as the redefinition of patriotic symbols, such as the national flag and shield, have taken place over the last sixteen years in Venezuela. During my stay in the country, I also observed how common it was to find the color red, representing chavismo, and political symbols of the government (like images of Chávez and Simón Bolívar) in the streets of even small towns in buildings, buses, metro stations and public squares.38 The relevance of symbols and rituals in such processes of identification has been widely discussed in very rich anthropological literature (Cohen 1979; Cohen 1985; Mach 1993; Kertzer 1988). Similarly, David Kertzer studied in his book Ritual, Politics and Power (1988), political forms, symbolism and rituals are relevant for understanding the role of politics in people’s lives.

38 For visual examples, access the following blog publication: “Cuando las paredes hablan (de política) sin parar.” http://venezuelamiquerencia.com/2015/08/21/cuando-paredes-hablan-de-politica-sin-parar/ (visited on 05 December 2015).

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Symbol systems provide us with the primary means by which we give meaning to the world around us; they allow us to interpret what we see, and, indeed, what we are. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this symbolic process is its taken-for-granted quality. People are not generally aware that they themselves endow the world with their own constructed version of reality (Kertzer 1988: 4).

Symbols instigate social action and define the individual’s sense of self. They also furnish the means by which people make sense of political process, which largely present itself to people in symbolic form (ibid.: 6).

In the current Venezuelan political context, wearing specific colors (such as red for chavismo and blue or white for the opposition), as well as participating in marchas (demonstrations/ protests), public events and even neighborhood meetings are practices with political meaning. As a personal example, the first years of Chávez’s government corresponded to the years of my adolescence, which I lived in Venezuela in an anti-Chavista environment, as mentioned before. When I was almost eighteen years old, my family and I moved to Brazil. It took me several years of living outside of the country to be able to wear red dresses because of its association with chavismo. There is a clear majority of political symbolism in the hands of the government all around the country in both public or private spaces and now even more after Chávez’s death. Chávez’s images, phrases, recordings and even his voice singing the national hymn are present all around the country. The opposition has not been able to gain spaces and divulge their own symbols and rituals. For instance, they have tried to promote the use of other colors in opposition to the Chavista red (like blue, white or the three colors of the flag, la tricolor) but with limited success. What does occur is that the presence of Chavista symbols reinforces the anti- Chavista’s discontent and rejection of the government, just as the ethnographic episode in the Teresa Carreño Theater illustrates. Confronting, ignoring, or even ridiculing, Chavistas’ symbols are illustrations of the way Opositores give a role to symbols within their processes of identification.

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This Chapter has presented a historical background and a contextualization of the current conjunctures that are part of the Venezuelan socio-political and economic context. This has been done knowing that everyday experiences, which are one of the main focuses of this research, are intimately related to such contexts, as has been observed in the vignettes and will be unpacked

29 further in Chapters 3 and 4. Even if social division seems to be recurrent in Venezuela, and even though Chavistas and Opositores seem to disagree in almost everything, few would dispute the fact that chavismo has represented a turning point for the Venezuelan society. Interpretations on whether or not this turning point has been for the better is where sharp disagreements and heated discussions lie. The four vignettes presented in this Chapter have illustrated how, as explained by Baumann (1996), the common understandings and dominant discourses of the socio-political situation and economic context of the country differ, depending on whether people are in favor or against the government. People take for granted several aspects of this context, reifying easy associations, simplifications, and essentializing views about the other group. Among them, the assumptions that only ignorant people, resentidos sociales or enchufados and boliburgueses support the government, as seen in Eduardo and Carolina’s vignettes; discourses that accuse all Opositores of acting and thinking in the same way, as mentioned by Carmen; or in Vicente’s ungrounded belief in Chávez’s poisoning. As Mach (1993) and Kertzer (1988) have argued, in this Chapter it has been analyzed how colors, images, speeches, changes of the patriotic symbols and the rewriting of history incorporate a set of symbols that is an important part in the process of construction and maintenance of chavismo as an identity. Unlike chavismo, the opposition is not associated with any single person or ideology but, rather, with a heterogeneous collection of institutions, parties, and public figures. At a first glance, the opposition could be understood as an ‘anti-identity’ in which many other identities converge on the basis of what the group is not, what they do not want to belong to and what they complain about. Nevertheless, as can be seen in this Chapter and in the ones that follow, there are clear dominant ways in which the opposition understands and experiences politics in Venezuela. The way chavismo and opposition are related to fixed specific notions of who a Chavista is, and who an Opositor is, elucidates the potential difficulties Venezuelans might face when in close relationships with members of the opposing group. These are occasions in which the categories they use to make sense and organize the context that surrounds them might not fit. This will be discussed in the following Chapter through the analysis of cases in which family members support different sides of the political spectrum.

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3 VENEZUELAN FAMILY LIFE & POLITICS

3.1 When Family is First: on the Politics of Venezuelan Middle-class Families

Luisa, a 29-year-old mother, is part of a large family, los Rivero, of around 35 people. Her mother Luz is in her 60s and is the oldest of eight sisters and brothers, who were raised in Barquisimeto.39 Within the family, they call themselves by the last name of the husbands to identify the nuclear family they are referring to. Only los Pradera Rivero (Margarita, Eduardo and their two daughters, Andrea and Lisbeth) support the current government of Venezuela and recognize themselves as Chavistas. The rest are Opositores. Through previous conversations with family members, I knew there had been some frictions between los Pradera Rivero and the rest of the family about politics during family meetings. When talking with them, they spontaneously said they were very close to Luz and her daughter Luisa, even when Luz was considered an “ill” (meaning radical) Opositora. After coming back from living for a year in Spain, Luisa has been living at her mother’s house with her husband, Rodrigo, and her baby daughter for the last three years. I went to talk with Luz at her house a Saturday afternoon, and Luisa seemed very interested in my conversation with her mother. She insisted on our meeting to happen. She arranged the way for me to go to her mother’s house, and prepared lunch for us. After one hour and a half of my conversation with Luz, Luisa made the following intervention: Luisa: So, what happened to me… I was going to tell you, was that on Rodrigo’s birthday many members of his family came to celebrate, so I told them: “it is really forbidden to talk about… about the subject [politics].” This was for not making anyone feel uncomfortable because personally I do not like making anyone feel uncomfortable. But then, there was this neighbor of mine, who is also nastily Opositora. Luz: She is like me, you are going to say… Luisa: No, but it is very annoying when they do what you do. You have to see what is behind, put things into perspective… [Then Luisa saw me again and retook the story]. Then, I told her [to the neighbor]: “Julia, come here” and I brought her to the kitchen. But I did not see Aunt Margarita was coming just behind. I told Julia: “Do not say anything else. In our family, we have as rule not talking about politics because they are Chavistas.” Aunt Margarita listened and I felt very bad because it is like saying they have some kind of illness. And during the whoooole evening, I did not even drink a soda, I did not eat, I threw up...

39 The fourth main city of Venezuela.

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Luz: Margarita only listened the last part “because they are Chavistas.” So, she thought Luisa was judging them. Like saying: “Look she is saying we are different. That it is for her [Julia] to discriminate us.” Luisa: It was terrible! Andrea [one of Margarita’s daughters] got up and walked out… and then, Aunt Margarita […] The problem is that it is almost uncontrollable. When someone starts talking about politics it could be at the beginning, at the end, or at the middle of the party, then they expend the whoooole evening talking about it. It is unstoppable, until someone gets mad, gets up and leaves. Or we have to be the whole night, [like] during Rodrigo’s birthday, taking care everybody is doing well.

Rodrigo’s birthday episode is not an unfamiliar event; on the contrary, this is exactly what people have in their minds when thinking about families divided because of politics. This event happened five months before my talk with Luisa and Luz, and I could still see how affected Luisa was. What happened on her husband’s birthday was definitively a bad experience she tried to avoid in all possible ways.

In urban middle-class Venezuela, family is at the core of social relationships. Family bonds are created and maintained through habitual activities such as eating together at home or in restaurants; communicating experiences and life changes; celebrating birthdays, achievements, and special dates; and sharing knowledge and opinions. Having a common place to meet at any time or for any occasion, without restrictions or worries, like the house of one’s grandparents or an uncle or aunt, is a valued part of routine family interaction. “I know they will always be there for me as I will be there for them” is a common phrase used by people when describing family relationships. Family is so at the core of social relationships in Venezuela that when people want to emphasize their closeness to someone, they commonly say “s/he is more than my friend, he is like my sister/brother” or “s/he is almost part of the family.” People also transform good friends into relatives by selecting these friends as godfathers and godmothers of their children. This makes the parents and the godparents became compadres and comadres, and creates a bond for the rest of their lives, just as with family. In her qualitative study, Leonor Mora Salas (2007) discusses middle-class Venezuelan interpretations of family and shared meanings between its members. Family was described as a human meeting point in which values, affections, and rules define it as a particular group of reference from which each individual reproduces the collective identity of origin (ibid.: 62). Some of the ideas and concepts about the middle-class Venezuelan family as given by Mora Salas’ informants were: “the territory where human beings find what is unconditional”; “what you have

32 until the very end” (ibid.: 65); “the irreplaceable bond” (ibid.: 71); and “the core then projected in the different spaces of human acting” (ibid.: 64). Interestingly, the First Lady’s weekly TV program, “Con Cilia en Familia” (in Family with Cilia) has as the central actor, as its name suggests, the Venezuelan family. During the first episode of the program in May 2015, the First Lady, Cilia Flores, mentioned the following: “family is the most important for society, for the Revolution and for the Patria (homeland).”40 This could be interpreted as a recognition of the family network for the success of the political process proposed by chavismo, confirming the central role of family within the Venezuelan society.

In Performing Kinship: Narrative, Gender, and the Intimacies of Power in the Andes, Krista Van Vleet studies family and kinship relations within the community of Kallpa of the Sullk’atas region, in the northern part of the department of Potosi, Bolivia. The author introduces her understanding of relatedness as a network of support and tension, collaboration, and conflict. Similarly, I propose that Venezuelan families enforce an important structure of protection and support to its members, but also create a dynamic in which social appearances, judgment, demands, and expectations have roles. Van Vleet’s appreciation of relatedness sheds light on the complexity of family interactions:

Rather than being based on some essential biological relationship or on static social structures, relatedness emerges among individuals who have differing life experiences and move within and between communities that are marginal to but not isolated from national discourses or global processes. Even in small complex communities, people express and enact a complex heterogeneity of identities and ideals, material needs and political concerns, dreams and lived experiences (Van Vleet 2008: 2).

From Luisa’s story, it is possible to acknowledge the key role of family in her life. The image of her feeling sick after the party’s incident is explicit. She tried to preserve family above anything, her logic being “family is first”, but she was confronted to something almost “uncontrollable.” Is there then sufficient space within the Venezuelan family for the expectations and understandings of dissimilar identities, ideals, and perceptions of life? Having a good family life and relationships is something that matters greatly to Venezuelans, but that seems not coming necessarily naturally.

40 Con Cilia en Familia: Primer Programa ¡Completo! Domingo, Multimedios VTV, 03 May 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvHHt5rOveY (visited on 01 December 2015).

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How do people maneuver within a situation in which members of a family who come from the same “core”, in the concepts of Mora Salas, support and defend opposing and conflicting positions, like in the case of families composed of both supporters of chavismo and opposition to the government in Venezuela?

Luz, who self-identified as an Opositora and the closest sister to the Pradero Riveros, commented about her sister Margarita:

How come that having been raised by the same mother and the same father, having studied in the same schools, having had the same opportunities, suddenly, from one day to another, when Chávez appeared, Margarita decided to be a Chavista… How come? That is something you cannot… you don’t understand!

Similarly, Tania, Eduardo’s first daughter from a previous marriage, who also self-identified as an opponent of the Venezuelan government, commented:

The only person who thinks like that [who is in favor of the government] and is in my life is my dad, and that is because he is my dad. I have no choice; he is my dad and my blood. […] To know that my dad – a professional man, a man who has studied at the University and who knows how the economy of a country works – still believes in this absurd [political] system, makes me feel bad! It frustrates me deeply and I prefer not to talk with him about it, you know? I mean, I'd rather not ask [why he supports the government] because it would make me feel worse than I already feel about this whole relationship.

As Luz and Tania’s comments suggest, it will be observed that members of the family recognize and accept this complex heterogeneity of opposing political identities in a more ambivalent way than they accept and reinforce their familial bonds and loyalties.

3.2 Politics at the Dining Table vs The “We Do Not Talk About Politics” Agreement

On a Sunday evening in Barquisimeto, ten of us were sitting at a round table in a Chinese restaurant. I had joined a group of the Rivero family members for dinner. This gathering included the Pradero Rivero, meaning Margarita in her 50s; her husband Eduardo; their two daughters Lisbeth and Andrea, in their 20s; Margarita’s sister Eugenia, in her 60s; Eduardo’s oldest daughter from his first marriage, Tania, in her 30s; Eugenia and Margarita’s cousin Consuelo; and two of Margarita’s nieces. Earlier that day, I had joined the Pradera Rivero family in their community activities in a poor area of the city. As the guest, the family had given me the honor of choosing the type of food that evening. Among the options they gave me - Arabic, Chinese, or sandwiches - I choose Chinese, which is one of my favorites. When

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we arrived in the restaurant, it was nearly empty, so we were able to talk more freely about what we had done that day. The following is a diagram of how we were seated:

Eugenia

Andrea Consuelo

niece 1 Lisbeth

niece 2 Tania

Eduardo me Margarita

Image 1: Distribution at the table in the Chinese Restaurant

The waiter took our orders quickly. Each of us ordered drinks before the dinner. The restaurant had almost all the juices we were looking for: peach, strawberry, passionfruit, pineapple. - “Can I have a bottle of water, please?” Was the request of Consuelo, the cousin of Margarita and Eugenia. As soon as the waiter answered that they did not have water, Eugenia got up from the table, saying: - “I will go to Farmatodo to buy a bottle of water.” The Farmatodo is a chain of drugstores in Venezuela, well known for also offering many basic products that one can buy outside of regular working hours.41 A store was located just in front of the restaurant. Consuelo also got up from the table, saying she would join Eugenia (because of security reasons, I assumed). Tania, Eduardo’s daughter, quickly asked: - “¿En qué número termina tu cédula? (What number does your ID end in?)” Immediately both Eugenia and Consuelo looked at Tania and sat back down. Eugenia said: - “I cannot believe they will ask for my ID just for buying a bottle of water! ¡Es el colmo! (This is really too much!)”

41 “Going to the Farmatodo” is kind of trendy for middle-class Venezuelans. As a drugstore that sells much more than medicines and is open late, even on Sundays, it is very practical. Farmatodo today is also seen as a politicized entity against the government. Knowing of its popularity, Farmatodo has been under the government’s supervision since 2014, and in 2015 it was prosecuted by the government by allegations of irregularities in customer care in the distribution of essential items.

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Tania listed the ending numbers of IDs that were allowed to buy essential goods that day. I thought her tone of voice was a little higher than normal, and she seemed to put a lot of emphasis on talking about this. I felt something heavy in the air. I realized the rest of the family barely moved or spoke while Tania, Eugenia, and Consuelo talked about the possibility of buying water or not. They seemed to emphasize the restrictions that the government had dictated to Farmatodo and supermarkets at the beginning of the year to rationalize the distribution and access to products. Eugenia and Tania were explaining this to Consuelo, who, like me, had been out of the country for a while. But by doing so, they were creating some tension at the table, and they knew it. - “I do not think they will ask for your ID.” Said Eduardo, interrupting them finally. Tania and Eugenia immediately turned to stare at him. Tania was very straightforward and said: - “I work just beside a Farmatodo. I know what I am telling you, Dad. They will ask for their ID.” Margarita, her stepmother, then suggested: - “Why don’t you try to go there and see if you can buy it?” After a few tense moments, Tania remembered that she had some bottles of water in her car, and so she went to get them, and we resumed our dinner. We never found out if they would have needed to show their ID or not to buy a bottle of water…

This episode would not reveal much about everyday politics in Venezuela, nor within families, if it were not for the tensions that arose when talking about the restrictions on consumption and rationalization of goods between supporters and Opositores of the current government. At the table at the Chinese restaurant, the Pradera Rivero family supported the Chavista government; while the rest of the family members were Opositores.

From all my previous experiences in Venezuela during Chávez’s government, and even during the years living abroad, I communicated frequently with my grandparents and closest siblings in Venezuela and got the impression that talking constantly about politics was intrinsic to everyday interactions between family members and friends. I have the distinct memory of my father forbidding my grandparents from talking about (Venezuelan) politics during their visits to our house in Brazil, saying they seem to get ill from only talking about it. At the same time, at the majority of social events I went to during my field research (family meetings, anniversaries, birthdays, graduation parties, farewell parties, welcome parties), it would never take very long for the invitees to start discussing politics in a completely open way. Such discussions could go on for hours, touching upon recent political events and news, criticizing or even joking about

36 politicians’ speeches and positions, and discussing socioeconomic difficulties, among many other topics related to politics and complaints about the government. During my fieldwork I observed that by mentioning something regarding “la situación del país” (the country’s situation), people tacitly positioned themselves as Opositores, and interacted with others, even people they did not know, based on comments about the price of a product, or the difficulty to obtain goods, or the time expended in a cola. Such comments could often be heard by paying attention to other people’s conversation, or while walking on the street, riding public transportation, or waiting in line to buy something. Even when this tacit way of discussing politics takes place commonly among unknown people, deeper political discussions frequently take place among people with close relationships and in private and trusted environments. Venezuelan living rooms and kitchens, dining and restaurant tables, television news viewing, and family and social events seem to be the sites and occasions for political conversation, debate, interchange of information, and even confrontation. As long as the members of the families or groups are all Opositores, it is assumed that these scenarios are appropriate for the discussion of politics.42

As mentioned in the last Chapter, upper and middle-class Venezuelans of the opposition do not commonly have close relationships with people who support the government, and if they do, it would be a case of an exception to the rule. From my research, Opositores were limited in their reasons as to why someone would support the government, beyond the person simply being ignorant, an enchufado, or a resentido social. All these are reasons with a negative connotation that reinforce and are reinforced by not having close relationships with Chavista people. But in the cases in which my Opositor infornmants happened to be close to a supporter of the government, this Chavista person was most probably from the middle-class and was usually considered as not having any of these three negative characteristics. These were occasions to challenge the dominant discourse by anti-Chavistas about Chavistas.

When asked about the way they deal with political divergence within family and avoid conflicts, both Tania (Eduardo’s first daughter) and Luz (Margarita’s closest sister) said all the brothers and sisters of the Rivero family had agreed to no longer talk about politics, just as Luz put it:

42 Similarly, the quantitative and qualitative study of Israelis' political discourse in Palestinian and Jewish families developed by Rivka Ribak (1997), Socialization as and through conversation: Political discourse in Israeli families, identified that Israeli living rooms and news viewing were common sites and occasions for discussions of politics in Israel. In the study, Jewish and Palestinian families were observed and recorded as they watched television news and discussed it following the program.

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At the beginning [of Chávez’s government] it was very tough, it was division, division! … It was so difficult that we could not share anymore. Then, it was decided, ‘no more talking about politics.’ Every time we were in a family gathering, we talked about everything but politics… It was an agreement among all of us, for them not to feel bad because there was a moment they were not coming to the [family] events anymore.

I knew about the “we do not talk about politics” agreement long before doing fieldwork, but I still wondered how it could actually happen in Venezuela, where everybody seems to have the need to constantly talk about politics. Moreover, I was also conscious of other, less explicit ways that one could communicate and convey their opinions and “say things without saying anything.” So, during my fieldwork I was attentive to these two points. The Pradero Rivero confirmed that some years ago the family relationship within the Rivero family was passing through a difficult and sensitive phase. In their view, some years ago the Pradero Rivero felt excluded during family events when the Opositores, meaning all the rest of the family, started talking about politics. Eduardo Pradera commented: There was a moment when it was intolerable. We went to a gathering or to a small party and they started to talk about politics. Who? The Opositores! Then, they made grupitos and grupitos (small groups) and the rest of the family was lynched. How unpleasant!

Nevertheless, both sides of the Rivero family agreed that family dynamics and interactions are, to some extent, currently better. In effect, during the episode of the water bottle, the words “government”, “Chávez”, “Maduro”, or “crisis” were never used. So the tension I felt could have been mine alone. Nevertheless, by interviewing Margarita and Eduardo, and analyzing the restaurant’s episode, I came to better grasp that the presence of politics in everyday family interactions was more complex than just agreeing to avoid it at the dining table:

Margarita: We talked to Luz and said we felt excluded [during the family gatherings], even lynched… But that of stopping to say bad things about Chavistas in front of us has not really happened. As a matter of fact, the other day they gave me a ride and in the car there was Eugenia and… I think also Pancho [a brother-in-law]. And they did not stop saying ugly things and more ugly things [about the country and/or the government]. I was very quiet and they did not even realize it.

Eduardo: That is a form of aggression! Since I give you a ride you will have to deal with all my craziness and I can attack everything you believe in.

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Listening to both sides of the same family with different political opinions made me realize that those who support the government (the Pradera Rivero) were not included in the family’s “we do not talk about politics” agreement. This was illustrated not only by the communication gap between the Pradera Rivero and Luz but also at Rafael’s birthday party episode, where all were aware of Luisa’s request, except for those supporting the government. I also came to understand that the “we do not talk about politics” agreement actually meant “we try not to argue about politics within the family”, therefore “we try not to talk about politics when the members of the family who support the government are present”, and consequently, “we do not talk about politics in the open way we would like to.” What happened in the car with Margarita and the Chinese restaurant episode were clear indications of the subtle ways in which Opositores complain about the government by saying “ugly things” about the sociopolitical and, especially, economic situation of the country without actually accusing the government or saying the words of complaint. These are the famous “puyas” or “puyitas”, as I wrote in my fieldnotes after talking with Lisbeth, one of Margarita’s daughters, which are indirect ways to provoke someone (like with a plectrum or a sharp object). Through them, the Opositores can indirectly “attack” Chavista supporters and think they are leaving a seed in the Chavista’s heads (without them realizing it) that would make them change their mind about the government. These ethnographic events point to what seems to be the Opositores’ deep need of constantly expressing, even if tacitly, their dissatisfaction with the current state of the country. Sometimes, this attitude is taken for granted, and Opositores do not seem to realize that they are constantly bringing up the subject of politics. Do government supporters feel this same need? I noticed that middle-class Chavistas were more discreet in talking about politics than middle-class Opositores. Chavistas did not seem to need to be as vocal, tacitly or explicitly. Several of my Chavista sources even mentioned that they do not enjoy talking about politics, and they would only say something about their political opinion if they are explicitly asked. This was confirmed by their anti-Chavistas counterparts. In addition, I would say that if middle-class Chavistas had the same attitude as middle-class Opositores, then Chavista siblings in the Rivero family would have been incorporated into the family’s “we do not talk about politics” agreement, considering that bringing the issue up could also come from the Chavistas’ side.

It is worth mentioning that today it is common to hear that families of the upper and middle- class are divided because of emigration by its members. Researchers affirm that the rate of

39 people migrating from the country has reached a figure never before seen in its history.43 In 2014, at least 1.5 million Venezuelans had migrated out of the country, representing almost 5% of the total population. This is a high rate, especially considering that the country used to receive millions of migrants in the 20th century. An important characteristic of this trend is that almost 90% of Venezuelans who have emigrated have at least a bachelor’s degree and belong to the middle-class. Herein, virtual spaces like WhatsApp (instant messaging) family groups, e-mail lists, and Facebook groups play an important role in facilitating communications and interactions among members of upper and middle-class Venezuelan families. In this vein, another way people are constantly communicating about politics despite “Chavistas being around” is through virtual groups’ interactions and social media. Such spaces open interesting points of discussion. Firstly, the apparent ignorance of the “we do not talk about politics agreement.” Then, the role of humor and finally the role of rumor. To illustrate this, I will quote Margarita:

Margarita: To me those [WhatsApp] groups, what I do not like is they are created to talk and be in touch. Within the group, we know each other, so everybody knows that… that from the group we are the only Chavistas and [even though] they still say ugly things. I don’t care if they talk against the government, but by saying offensive things just because we think differently, they should realize what they are doing.

In several of my conversations with Chavista informants, the discussion of politics within virtual groups was mentioned as something Opositores seem to do regardless of the opinion of those who support the government. I personally have seen and received through the different social media I belong to, many videos, messages and comics that could be easily considered offensive against Chavista supporters and leaders, as Margarita mentioned. Moreover, Venezuelans – and especially Opositores – approach their own situation through humor. This is spread and shared through videos, comics and written jokes through all the social media. i There are also many ludic theater pieces that satirize or reflect on the ‘Opositor’s situation, the stories of migration and the socio-political conjuncture.ii Nevertheless, this is a humor indirectly addressed against the government. I observed mostly avoidance of the subject of politics as a way to maneuver the tensions. This is very similar to the description given by Radcliffe-Brown (1940, 1949) on joking relationships, in which within family relationships

43 See: Talento de exportación, El Universal. 7 September 2014. http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/140907/talento-de-exportacion (visited on 01 December 2014). See also: La fuga de talentos en Venezuela con Román Lozinski y el sociólogo Iván de la Vega, Runrunes, 04 February 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgvWTWVWXBw (visited on 05 December 2015).

40 people either avoid conflicts by censoring topics of conversations/behavior or make jokes, as a way of ordering a relation of social disjuncture (divergence of interests).The only occasion when I witnessed direct humor between a Chavista and an Opositor was the case of two neighbors, with around eighteen years of close friendships. They were both political activists of each side. They told me they call each other “my horribly chavista/opositora friend.” The on-line way of producing and sharing information gives space to low levels of veracity. In many occasions, I received messages saying Caracas was in state of emergency, or that streets had been closed which I later discovered was not true. Similarly, Carmen’s comment in the vignette of Chapter 2, suggesting people did not want to change their lightbulbs because they claimed there were cameras inside, was a result of rumors. What is interesting about rumors is not the rumor by itself, but is that people do believe because it ‘makes sense’. So there is an evident previous disposition to believe certain things and not others, but also a preconceived world in which even absurd rumors can be part of the reality.44

3.3 Strategies To Be Related To a Close and Similar ‘Other’

The “we do not talk about politics” agreement is one, and maybe the most common, of the strategies that siblings and friends use to manage different political identities. But it is also interesting to examine others. The following vignette of a couple with different political identities helps to illustrate such strategies:

Nelly and Sebastián have been together as a couple for the last sixteen years. Their relationship started at the very beginning of Chávez’s government. They share everyday life. They are close to each other’s families and friends, and Sebastián helps raise Nelly´s sons and granddaughter. Regardless of their different political identities Nelly and Sebastián openly talk and, consequently, discuss about politics. “My friends cannot understand how we are still together, they all ask me how I can do it, and whether Sebastián is still a Chavista,” Nelly told me. She recognizes it has been difficult to deal with the differences of their political opinions. Several times, their relationship came to an end, directly or indirectly, because of political climax events in the country. “Like last year during the guarimbas, we were not together for almost three months because of a comment Sebastián said about

44 A very interesting work regarding the role of rumors during crises was developed by Veena Das (1998). The author argues that “the movement of images between emergent discourses of militancy and the diffused understandings of events in rumors circulated during crises create the conditions under which social groups become pitted against each other in fear and mutual hatred, constructing images of self and other from which the subjectivity of experience has been evacuated. In this social production and circulation of hate, the images of perpetrator and victim are frequently reversed, depending upon the perspective from which the memories of traumatic events and of everyday violence are seen and re-lived” (Veena Das 1998: 109) Thus, the role of rumors on the process of othering in Venezuela seems to be of relevance for further academic exploration.

41 the guarimberos,45 even knowing my son and I were some of them.” Although Nelly and Sebastian are an old couple, they do not live together. Nelly acknowledges that the situation would be even more difficult on an everyday basis if they lived together. “We never say it openly, but I think we both know we could not live together. As soon as I arrive in his house I turn off the TV. I will not spend the whole weekend listening to Venezolana de Televisión.46 But I can do it because I am a guest, otherwise it would be harder to negotiate,” said Nelly. In Sebastián’s description on how to negotiate contrary political opinions within the relationship, he said, “hay que hacer de tripas corazón (you have to bite the bullet), I breathe and I have learned to put my mind in a blank state in order to overcome some sensitive situations with Nelly, as well as in family and social groups.” Interestingly, they both can predict the criticism they may receive from the other. Sebastián mentioned, “Yes, I know that Nelly thinks this government is taking the country away from her hands and does not offer anything to the upper and middle-class.” Meanwhile Nelly said, “I know that in Sebastián’s view we pay too much attention to the news in social media, and he might be right, but the opposition does not have any other option to get informed.” Sebastián and Nelly have confessed to each other certain criticisms and opinions about, respectively, the government and the opposition, that they would never repeat to others. Moreover, Nelly emphasizes that she tries to support Sebastián when they are at social and family gatherings. “There are moments when I also yield, in order to maintain our relationship. When people attack him, I remain silent, even when they may think I am also a Chavista.”

Before and during my fieldwork, whenever I mentioned wanting to research close relationships with opposing views, including couples of one Chavista and one Opositor, I was often told that I was trying to find “a needle in a haystack.” Finding couples with such a profile is viewed as almost an impossible for the majority of people. Once I found them, people could not understand how these couples could maintain their relationships, just as Nelly’s friends expressed. People would often assume that one in the couple had changed their political view, or was not a ‘real’ Chavista or Opositor. As shown in Nelly and Sebastián’s vignette, even if they do not agree, they know and give the impression to understand the arguments and points of view of their counterparts. Internal and tacit rules play an important role in the interactions of the couple. Not mentioning to outsiders what was confessed in private seems to be important. Not participating or taking sides when one of them is attacked in a conversation is another internal rule in the couple’s case.

45 People who participated in the guarimbas, the violent protests against the government that took place at the beginning of 2014. 46 Venezolana de Televisión is a public TV channel that has openly supported the Chavista governments for more than a decade. Its programming mostly offers government propaganda or criticism of the opposition.

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Nelly said about Sebastián during her interview, “At least I can have a conversation about politics with him. Even if he does not agree, at least he listens to me.” Similarly, Sebastián said, “At least my wife is not as radical as others.” Through these comments, support of the partner when others attack him/her, and recognition of the partner’s viewpoint and arguments, dominant discourses are being reshaped in practice. Close relationships with different political opinions especially among siblings, challenge, at least partially, the dominant discourse of two incommensurable worlds of opposing political identities in Venezuela. As opposed to people who talk about an abstract ‘other’, those in such a close relationships have a firsthand knowledge of this ‘other’. Thus, there is a possibility to diminish the gap of communication, mentioned in Chapter 2, between the chavista’s and the opposition’s world. As mentioned in the Introduction, at the first sight the dominant discourse of chavismo and opposition seems to respond to what Baumann’s book, Grammars of Identity/Alterity (2004), calls binary grammars – logics of ‘good versus bad’, ‘friends versus enemies’, ‘victims versus perpetrators’. But when looking deeply within close interactions of Chavistas and Opositores, ternary structures are being implemented, fleeing from such Manichean logics. Close relationships make it easier to humanize the distant ‘other’. Moreover, when Nelly and Sebastián mention that they have to hacer de tripas corazón, or yield, they are putting family and close relationships in a place of loyalty and solidarity above their political identity. This is done in order to manage their differences and maintain good relationships. By doing so, they are challenging binary and Manichean logics of othering. The way Nelly and Sebastián have managed their differences over all these years provides interesting data to identify the borderlines of dominant political discourse in Venezuela. But Nelly and Sebastián not living together because she is an Opositora and he is an Oficialista is meaningful. This suggests that the degree of proximity in such cases of divergence has a limitation that must be respected for the relationship to endure. This clearly illustrates how politics can interfere in private and micro domains of Venezuelans’ lives.

Not only does family provide the space and dynamics to discuss politics and life in general, it also allows people to feel comfortable in expressing stronger, more severe opinions and judgements. As mentioned at the beginning of this Chapter, family is a network of support but also of expectations and demands that shape the interactions among its members. Many dynamics, tensions, and differences have placed in parallel within family interactions. For different reasons, siblings do not always find common strategies to help them maneuver better with their diverse opinions and identities. During a family discussion, I came to realize that even

43 when some people do find ways to navigate within a world that does not fit their categories and associations, other people experience a lot of frustration in relation to the existence of a similar and close ‘other’. The following ethnographic episode offers new layers of discussion and problematization about the way politics is experienced by Venezuelans Opositores nowadays:

One Sunday afternoon, several members of the Alfaro family met in the house of their parents without any particular purpose, as they usually do. Including me, there were nine people in the living room, talking about future plans and the 80th birthday party of their father. Amalia (56), who was just beside me, said something that suggested she was leaving, but immediately she sat again and putting her hand on my arm asked me, “How is your project going? Is it going well?” Octavio (49), the boyfriend of Camila (48), Amalia’s sister, heard her question and took the opportunity to raise his own to the rest of the group, saying “Hey family! Let’s think about something regarding Mariana’s project: How come that there are people of the oficialismo who are not receiving any benefit from the government and still support it? What do you think?” I thought it was curious he raised this question because I knew from where it came. Octavio was always very interested in my research. Since my arrival, he told me several times, “I do not understand what you are trying to study. What is it that you are trying to discover about chavismo? What (good) answer could you find? It is clear that people who support the government are either ignorant or enchufados (people getting benefits from the government).” I found his questions and lack of understanding interesting by themselves, but it took me a while to give him an answer. After some weeks of fieldwork, Octavio asked me again, and I told him, “I have been in touch already with people as well prepared as you and me, who are not receiving anything from the government and who support it. So I guess there is something more than ignorance and clientelism in chavismo.” I imagine my previous answer was still not enough to him, because here he had asked again, now in front of the family. People started talking quickly, even members of the family I did not usually hear talking about politics. They were not specifically answering the question but presenting their opinions. After ten minutes of discussion, Federico (56), Amalia’s husband, addressed Octavio’s question: Federico: From the original question. Let me tell you, the question has no answer. Diego: I agree with Federico! Federico: And I'll tell you why: If a person thinks that this is the solution [chavismo], I mean an intelligent person […] Because these people, I'm not depreciating their intelligence or not, but education does matter. A person like Uncle Jacobo, who is super prepared, super intelligent, who once thought Adecos and Copeyanos were worthless and then said "I'll support this guy [Chávez]” and along the way it has been showed how it [Chávez’s

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project] was distorted and is good for nothing, and he still supports it… there is no explanation for that. Diego: That's right! Federico: If it were the case of being one of them who say so [points to Petare, a popular barrio in Caracas close to the house of los Alfaro], maybe [there would be an explanation] because they are still waiting for the hand-outs, but a person like him, I do not accept it! I just do not accept it! The great majority of middle-class Chavistas I was in contact with experienced their close relationships with others who had a different political opinion in a less conflicting way than did middle-class Opositores. Among the Chavista informants I interviewed, only one expressed a lack of understanding about how one of her brothers was an Opositor. When I asked Jacobo what he thought about the fact that the whole family supported the opposition, including their own daughters (who are actually opposition activists living in the United States), he said, “God bless them, everyone has the right of believing in what they want.” As mentioned in the last Chapter, middle-class Chavistas not knowing any opposition people from their same milieu is almost impossible. Thus, considering that the close and similar ‘other’ is always visible and vocal, Chavistas must constantly employ coping strategies. Within the Alfaro family and the people they interact with, the only person who fits into the category of a “Chavista convencido” (a convinced Chavista) 47 is Jacobo, one of the brothers of Amalia and Camila’s father. Federico’s comment received several words of agreement from the group, and the political discussion continued. Why is it so difficult to accept or understand that people “as smart as you”, “as educated as you”, “coming from the same mother and father, having studied in the same schools and having had the same opportunities” have different opinions than yours? What are the social structures behind such a difficulty that makes common and educated people of the Venezuelan middle-class, like the Alfaro and Rivero families, establish such a degree of othering and unacceptance? This will be explored in the next Chapter.

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In this Chapter we have seen the ways politics is present in private and micro spaces and interactions such as family life. Similarly than reported by Leonor Mora Salas (2007), for the middle-class Venezuelans who participated in this study, family is at the core of their lives and social relations and is an important bond that people prioritize and value. Family also provides the appropriate dynamic and space to discuss life and politics in an open and reflective way.

47 Meaning Chavistas who are not ignorant nor enchufados/boliburgueses in the view of the Opositores.

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By looking at the presence of politics in family life, the particular characteristics in which Opositores and Chavistas experience politics in their cotidiano have been examined. This approach has also helped to get a better grasp about how dominant political discourses are experienced, especially in cases where their categories and associations do not fit with reality. One of the things I valued the most about undertaking this research was realizing that by studying the close relationships of siblings and friends with different political identities, I was giving attention to something that actually troubled people’s life. Different identities and political opinions inside a family represent a constant tension, a problem on the table that makes people feel they must avoid, ignore, disguise, or negotiate at all costs, in order to preserve the family. Strategies of negotiation are undertaken by Venezuelans who have close relationships with people supporting a different side of the political spectrum. This ‘magnifier glass’ observation revealed that despite tensions in such relationships, people on an everyday basis find ways to avoid conflicts by negotiating and maneuvering their identity differences. This is similar to what is argued by the theory of social navigation proposed by Henrik Vigh (2009), which recognizes people’s capacity to create strategies and tactics for adapting to their context, is an interesting lens to see how agents find ways to move and interact in what are considered “contradictory” social environments. Examples of this include reducing the amount of discussion about politics, as the Rivero family agreed to do under the notion of “we do not talk about politics”; censoring the topic, as Luisa tried to do at her husband’s party; or talking openly about political opinions but under certain internal rules and willingness to yield, as with Nelly and Sebastián. On one hand, close relationships among Venezuelan siblings with different political opinions can challenge and reshape the dominant discourse of political identity in Venezuela. As Baumann proposes in Grammars of Identity/Alterity (2004), ternary structures and the process of humanization are occurring within the processes of identifying themselves versus others. This makes it possible for people to sometimes escape Manichean logics and dichotomist structures when relating with a close and similar ‘other’. On the other hand, the observation of family interactions has been an efficient approach to also recognize the limitations of the strategies undertaken. We have seen in this Chapter that some people deal with political differences in an ambivalent and even conflicting way. Thus, more complex ways of relating with a close and similar ‘other’ that contradicts people’s discourses and categories can also characterize close relationships among people with different political identities in Venezuela as we will continue seen in the next Chapter.

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4 ON MIDDLE-CLASS OPPOSITION TO CHAVISMO

4.1 “Are You a Chavista?!”: Lack of Understanding and What Else?

Daniel (31) is a Venezuelan middle-class social scientist, self-identified as a Chavista, who after finishing his studies in France decided to go back to Caracas to work. In one of our several conversations, he described the amazement middle-class Opositores have when they realize he supports the government.

Daniel: When there was the issue of guarimbas, Maduro met with all the Mayors of the country. The first to speak was the vice-president Jorge Arreaza. The first thing he said was – and I thought it was quite right – that one of the main problems of the opposition in the current political context is that they do not recognize chavismo as a legitimate political entity. He said “all of us experience it when they cast doubt on our position as a Chavista and people say ‘but how can you be Chavista?!’ etc., etc.” This is the same from my own experience as a Chavista who was born and raised in Valencia48 in a specific social and economic environment [middle-class] [...] I don’t know how would it be in areas such as Apure or Cojedes [Venezuelan states/provinces], where chavismo has almost 100% of support. I do not know whether they would see someone of the opposition as if they were weird, like “it’s not possible!” But, at least to me, when I meet someone of the opposition I say “of course! That’s normal.” Almost half of the country is against the government, and maybe even more – [but] let’s see the next elections. I do not think it is so strange there are opposition’s supporters. This is diametrically opposed to my friends or acquaintances, or when people introduce me. It happens to me often when people introduce me [to new people]. I was invited to Diana’s party and one of her friends said, “Oh! Do you support the government?”, I said “yes”, and it was like I said ... I don’t know ... [I could see Daniel was looking for the right analogy] Like me saying… “I eat soap..”. like: “Wow! Seriously, man? As if I tell you I use a typewriter instead of a computer... and then you say ... “Wow! Seriously??” That really struck me. I mean, what's so strange? Chavismo has been sixteen years in power, you can blame it on anything you want... but it does exist! You can say there is corruption, mismanagement, you can say a lot of things ... But why do you look so surprised that there are people who support it?

Daniel was not the only informant who shared a similar experience. In fact, each one of the middle-class Chavista informants of this research mentioned a situation like this. Eduardo, from the Pradera Rivero family, said: “People tell you with an expression of surprise and even disgust: ‘Chavista??!! Still?!’. And then I ask back: ‘opposition?! Still?!’”

48 Valencia is the third main city of Venezuela. It is 200km away from Caracas.

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Similarly, when I asked Sebastián, partner of Nelly and manager of a multinational organization, how it was when he mentioned he supported the government in social meetings and groups, Sebastián opened his eyes, moved his whole body towards me, positioning above the table closer than expected, and said loudly:

¡¡¿¿TÚ ERES CHAVISTA??!!! (ARE YOU A CHAVISTA??!!). This is what I have been listening since 1999. “Are you a Chavista??! But you do not look like a Chavista!” [he repeated with exaggerated moves in his face, like imitating someone]. This is because being a Chavista here means for this group [upper and middle-class Opositores] having a morena skin, meaning having a lot of melanin in your skin, having curly hair and being at least without one of your teeth in your oral cavity.

In this same vein, I found very interesting that in discussions of these experiences, several of my Chavista informants – those who were more vocal – complained about not feeling as if they had the space and possibility to use Chavista symbols (like red hats, red T-shirts, T-shirts with the eyes or signature of Chávez or symbols of chavismo) as they would like to. “If you are with a Chavista T-shirt in a middle-class neighborhood of Caracas, like Santa Rosa de Lima or El Cafetal you would be at minimum lynched”, said Sebastián during his interview. Moreover, Eduardo gave me a vivid example from one of his friends from Barquisimeto city, who after losing a bet had to go to one of the main malls of the city dressed as a Chavista (red t-shirt and red hat with symbols of the Bolivarian Revolution). After that, Eduardo’s friend called him saying: “People said many ugly things to me. It was a horrible, horrible experience!! Now I understand you.” Getting to know how middle-class Chavistas felt about the treatment they receive from Opositores was revealing to me. From the Opositores I was in contact with during my fieldwork, I did not hear any complaints about Chavista supporters disqualifying or attacking them. Additionally, from the Chavista participants of this research, I also did not observe the same degree of lack of understanding about the reasons as to why Opositores were against the government. Then, I started to identify a deeper degree of frustration and uneasiness in dealing with supporters of the opposite site of the political spectrum from the side of the opposition towards chavismo, than the other way around. Since the question raised by Octavio that Sunday (Chapter 3) seemed to not have any answer in the Alfaro family, I questioned whether the inquiry should be addressed aiming to understand the Opositores instead of the Chavistas. In other words, since no logic or reason seemed to be substantial enough for explaining the existence of a ‘convinced Chavista’, I

48 wondered why it was so difficult for Opositores to understand and deal with the fact that chavismo is in power, as well as with the existence of ‘close and similar Chavistas’. What were the social structures behind such a difficulty? It might be the reason as to why there are so many questions people are unable to answer lies in the incapacity of the one asking the questions to comprehend and accept the answers. The common experience of my Chavista informants regarding the Opositores’ amazement when knowing they were Chavistas, plus the assertive question asked by Daniel “what's so strange? Chavismo has been in power for sixteen years... It does exist”, in combination with the unacceptance manifested by Federico in the Alfaro family’s living-room (Chapter 3), reinforced this idea. Consequently, I felt the need to focus on a deeper analysis on the way politics is experienced by Venezuelan middle-class Opositores.49

4.2 The Cultural Capital of Gente Bien vs Chusma: Class, Status and Race in Venezuela

Gabriela (28), self-identified as an Opositora, is a young middle-class international analyst who works for a Deputy from an opposition’s party. During an informal conversation we had in a fancy café in Las Mercedes neighborhood, in Caracas, Gabriela shared an episode of confrontation she had with a Chavista car watcher while parking her car. The guy was wearing a red Chavista T-shirt and for some reason they started to argue:

Gabriela: I tried to ignore him, but the guy continued to discuss and to provoke me. Then he said “haiga” instead of “haya”50 [a common mistake in Spanish by Venezuelans], so I could not hold it. I told him: “Se dice ‘haya’ no ‘haiga’ en español. Compra un librito, pa’ve si aprendes” (it is “haya” instead of ‘haiga’ in Spanish. Go buy a book to see whether you learn”)… Do you know what he told me? “¿Y con qué se come eso?” (what do I earn from that?). Then I understood there is no way to change that people. This guy earns more than I do watching cars. Me who has a degree and is undertaking a Master’s. They are ignorant and they want to remain like that. That is the reason why este país está como está (this country is the way it is) and things do not change. They are always going to vote for chavismo.

Gabriela’s story remained with me until today. I realized there was something very significant from this incident. The amazement I felt came from a comparison I was mentally doing with what I have seen and heard during the years living abroad. In Brazil, people of lower classes also

49 Nevertheless, this is not to say there is not much more to explore about the way Chavistas experience politics or feel regarding Opositores. I would suggest further research should be developed analyzing, for instance, whether middle and lower class Chavistas feel frustration or a similar degree of unacceptance towards the existence of Opositores of the same class. 50 The present subjunctive in Spanish for ‘there is’ and ‘to have’.

49 make many grammatical mistakes when talking, but that would be hardly a reason to criticize or ‘attack’ someone. In both countries ‘speaking correctly’ versus speaking ‘malandreado’ (like gangs do) reflect the level of education people have and of where they have been raised. It is, therefore, an aspect people use to distinguish themselves from others and to recognize someone’s position in society. Nevertheless, I would say the image of someone sending another person to read and learn in the patronizing way Gabriela did, would be very difficult to see in Brazil, or at least of what I know of the country. What can explain that Gabriela had such an attitude? What amazed Gabriela to the point she felt offended and needed to attack back? Moreover, what makes such an attitude be socially accepted; to the point Gabriela shared it with me still amazed by the car watcher’s answer, but without any reflection on her own behavior? As seen in previous Chapters, chavismo has been a movement that valorized ‘el pueblo’ against the ‘oligarchy’ and ‘the elites’ that have been in power during the years of the oil boom. In Venezuela, as in much of Latin America, the figure of ‘el pueblo’ carries strong racial and socioeconomic connotations, which chavismo framed into a powerful, positive political identity. Robert Samet defends from this point that “chavismo does not simply ‘represent’ the discontent of the popular classes but produces it as an expression of its own political legitimacy” (Samet 2013: 529). Nevertheless, despite the explicit political equation of chavismo with the popular classes, it is not clear that it is disproportionately supported by the urban poorer Venezuelan, with darker skin (ibid.: 529).51 The Chavista approach to ‘the people’ has been interpreted by the opposition as an active intention of the government to raise class and racial fissures and to create “social resentment” among Venezuelans of the lower classes against those of the higher classes. On one hand, it is clear that the appearance of Chávez on the political stage profoundly challenged “held individual and group assumptions about Venezuelan society, class and social relations… national identity [and] racial constructions” (Tinker Salas 2015: 12). According to Kenneth Roberts, Chávez’s rise, therefore, signified “a re-politicization of social inequality in Venezuela” (Roberts 2003: 71). On the other hand, to suggest social antagonisms were artificially manufactured by Chávez, fail to recognize that class and racial divisions existed throughout the entire course of Venezuelan history from the period of the colonization. Miguel Tinker Salas has dedicated several of his works (2009, 2015) to explain the ways in which the oil industry has played an essential role in generating expectations for continued growth and social mobility in Venezuelan society. The export model that the oil industry engendered led many social sectors to develop

51 This contradicts the work of Barry Cannon (2008) and others that emphasizes a correlation between class and race in being against or in favor of the government.

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“faith in the tenets of the capitalist system, a free market, the importance of private property, and a strong sense of individualism” (2015: 6). Moreover, it is relevant not to underestimate “the spell that oil cast over the nation, both in the immense profits the elites derived and the privileged lifestyle enjoyed by those employed in the country” (ibid.: 7-8).

On Venezuelan Middle-Class

In Gisela Kozak’s book, Ni tan “chéveres” ni tan iguales (2014), as well as in Carola Chávez’s52 work, ¡Qué pena con ese señor! (2011), the Venezuelan writers ironically describe the customs and manners of the Venezuelan middle-class. Both coincide in observations regarding middle-class consumption patterns (like the importance given to having a car, traveling abroad, and to consume imported products), priorities (family life, education, having a job, taking care of their health and physical aspect), values (religion, morality, democracy, justice, meritocracy, freedom), concerns (having a good quality of life and that their children have a better quality of life than they do), (lack of) mobility (the circuits they move for reasons of habit, consumption and safety) and middle-class efforts to be surrounded by people of the same or higher class. In reflecting deeper, Carola Chávez considers the Venezuelan middle-class more as a state of mind than a socio-economic category:

The middle-class works this way: I am here and I admire those who are above me and reject those who are below. So there are thousands of layers of contempt and rejection. But there is also fear. The middle-class has a constant fear because it has a past of poverty or of having belonged to a strata below. There is a shame of the past of having grandparents who used to be from the rural areas or from lower strata. Poverty is understood as a failure, there is a shame to be poor. The middle-class is convinced that the poor are poor because they want to. Since they are the result of stories of people who got ahead in life they do not accept people remain poor over the years. “Tienen el rancho en la cabeza” (the shanty town is in their own heads), they say. Additionally, the middle-class has something very cruel: they have to live with the commitment of having to step up in social strata.53

If that is so, what are the structures that lead people to act like that and what the implications of such acts? In effect, the stories of getting ahead in life are a common characteristic of middle-

52 Coincidently the lastname of the writer is the same than the President’s. To avoid confusion, when referring to the writer I will always mention her first name. 53 This is a transcription of part of a talk Carola Chávez offered at the Forum Thinking and Action about the middle- class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2spijIL2ey0 (visited on 05 December 2015).

51 class Venezuelans. One of Leonor Mora Salas’ informants mentioned: “I come from a middle- class family and what I have seen is work and efforts to get ahead in life, and of course, this is like a cassette, it becomes a project of life” (Mora Salas 2007: 65). Furthermore, the author mentions that there seems to elicit specific expectations of the middle-class family as the “manager of the emergent strengths that drives and produces changes in the country” (ibid.: 71). Similarly, Kozak highlights the social pressure to ‘become a professional’, felt through all the Venezuelan strata, but especially within the middle-class (Kozak 2014: 127). Thus, there is a valorization of the efforts and journeys that have made possible to these families superarse en la vida (getting ahead in life). These middle-class’ social expectations and pressures explain the interpretation and amazement of Gabriela with the answer of the car watcher that suggested that he was not interested in getting educated or ahead in life. Middle-class understandings of the importance of being “educated” and “prepared”, is something that is not much elaborated upon by those studying class and social status in Venezuela.54 Nevertheless, from my field experience I have observed that these understandings have an important role within the social antagonisms of the country, as well as in the dominant political discourse that distinguishes chavismo from the opposition, as will be presented below. For instance, the misiones (social programs) of education aiming to prepare students from alphabetization until the University have been very much criticized by the opposition as being “inefficient” and “mediocre” because they are shorter than the traditional system of studies. According to the upper and middle-class “they do not represent the same effort.” But this is affirmed without necessarily having proper understanding and knowledge of it, falling again under the logic of rumors.55

That Sunday at the Alfaro’s living-room, Camila inquired in front of all the family members:

Camila: How many years have you studied, Mariana? Tell me, how many? I felt under pressure to think properly, but I said something like “more than 20.” Camila: Do you think it is normal that you are going to be equal to the guy Chávez gave access to alphabetization and who in three weeks finished elementary school, in five weeks finished

54 This, in turn, could serve as a starting point for further investigation on the distinctions promoted by specific notions of social status related to education and professionalization within the middle-class. 55 The difference between public or private education in Venezuela is also a big definer of economic conditions, thus a definer of cultural capital, even within the same class. Public education is acknowledge as having ‘good reputation’ when undertaken at the level of University studies, but not during elementary or secondary school. In this same vein, neither my informants (not even the Chavistas) nor my circle of siblings, friends or acquaintances has studied in any of the educational misiones or in the Universities founded by chavismo (UNEFA, Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela). The only people I had contact with who have participated in a misión or in these Universities were from the lower middle-lower class.

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high school and in two years is a lawyer?56 This guy now has the right to earn the same you do. 57 You, who are the one que se ha quemado las pestañas! (who has done the efforts!). Plus, did you hear what the Minister said? That the guy who sweeps the road should earn the same a Medical Doctor does! Since the barrendero (road sweeper) prevents the diseases while the Doctor treats them.58 Do you think that is fair? I don’t think so; I think that is very unfair.”

Being educated seems to automatically give a certain level of social status within Venezuelan society throughout rights over the rest of the population. These are the positive privileges Bourdieu referred to when explaining social capital based on formal ways of education and professional prestige. This explains why Camila felt my right to be differentiated from people who have studied less than 20 years is being violated by the social programs and by those in government. From Camila’s perspective, the position and social status – in Bourdieu’s terms – of the educated and professional Venezuelan class are being threatened, especially because hierarchies between classes could be diminishing as a consequence of the government’s hand- outs.

On Race in Venezuela

In 1944, poet and political figure Andrés Eloy Blanco coined the term café con leche (coffee with milk) to describe a Venezuelan racial context in which miscegenation had taken place (Tinker Salas 2015: 79). The concept of café con leche gained widespread acceptance under the assumption of an ethnic conflict resolution in a homogenous nation of mixed-race people. “We see ourselves as a café con leche people that have integrated white and black into a distinctive and harmonious mixture” (Duno-Gottberg 2011: 273). However, the mestizaje (miscegenation) is considered by some authors as “a myth of democracy or racial equality, which served to mask racial discrimination and the socioeconomic situation” (Cannon 2008: 736). In this same vein, several authors (Ellner & Hellinger 2003; Ellner 2008; Cannon 2008; Duno-Gottberg 2011) call attention to the fact that the socio-political analysis developed in the

56 This is an exact transcription of what Camila said that afternoon. These are not necessarily the official years of schooling of the misiones. The information available in the website of the misión Ribas (social program concerning the third phase of the elementary school until the high school) is that it takes four semesters to have the high school diploma. See: http://www.misionribas.gov.ve/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=783&Itemid=18 (visited on 01 December 2015). For learning more about the misiones see Hawkins et al. (2011). 57 I could not confirm such an affirmation, but it is true that some new labor laws promote the diminishment of the distance among people’s salaries, especially within the public sector. 58 Camila is referring to the declarations of the Minister of Agriculture and Lands, José Luis Berroterán. For watching the Minister’s declarations see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXVI6bs5fzM (visited on 05 December 2015).

53 era of Puntofijismo/Fourth Republic under the myth of mestizaje downplayed the role of race and inequality as sources of social and political tension in the country. Nevertheless, it is clear that the color of one’s skin and the features associated with it are socially relevant even, and maybe especially, in mestizo societies such as Venezuela. In Gisela Kozak’s words:

From early childhood, we are used to think about the idea of miscegenation as a fundamental characteristic of being Venezuelan, and it certainly is. But the greater appreciation of certain physical traits over others is more than evident in the path of our vision of men and women: their work, level of education, place of residence and, unfortunately, his/her political position (Kozak 2014: 107-108).

In Venezuela, as well as in many other countries, there is a historical association of the Black with backwardness that still today remains strong. Generally speaking, it is believed that “the darker the skin, the more likely that that person belongs to the poorer sections of society” (Cannon 2008: 734) and the greater the chances of this person being associated with criminality, a malandro. In the Kozak’s Chapter entitled The boyfriend of my daughter or: me, a racist?, the author illustrates in a anecdotic note the story of the boyfriend of a friend’s daughter who "just by his skin color, it is assumed that he does not study, has no future, lives in subhuman conditions and is a prospective criminal” (Kozak 2014: 114). Even by people of color and those in the lowest strata of the middle-class there is a constant interest in “maintaining certain physical traits in their offspring” (ibid.: 108). This sheds light on a more complex scenario in which the preferences for white features are present even among mestizo people and so is the case for the (subtle and internalized) discrimination it entails. Not only is color associated with social classes, but Afro-Venezuelans are also associated with the ‘ugly’ (Ishibashi 2003: 34).59 Consequently, it is of no surprise that in surveys on ethnicity within Venezuela, those who identify as ‘Afro-Venezuelan’ (4.2%) are in a small minority, of much lesser significance to those who identify as ‘White/Caucasian’ (35.8%) (Cannon 2008: 737). Similarly, the election of a President who was not white, in the case of Chávez, gave space to the rise of racial fissures to pop up. Herrera Salas (2005) and Duno- Gottberg (2011) point to the racism and classism directed towards President Chávez and his supporters from the opposition, which utilized a great number of adjectives for the purpose of

59 Jun Ishibashi’s article, Towards an Opening of the Debate on Racism in Venezuela, shows how Afro-Venezuelans are associated with stereotypes of fecklessness and indolence through the media. “The ‘white’ is normally the symbol of the beautiful, the rich, the pure and the sophisticated, while the ‘black’ is the symbol of the ugly, the poor, the impure and the non-sophisticated” (Ishibashi 2003: 34).

54 berating the President, by routinely referring to him as ‘Indian, monkey and thick-lipped’ (Herrera Salas 2005: 82). Even more significant, the people I was in contact with during my fieldwork – even Venezuelans of African descent – usually did not recognize the class or racial divisions illustrated above. In many occasions, I heard people affirming “in Venezuela we are not racist, or classist, like in other countries like Colombia, Peru or the United States”, and with that any potential debate on this subject was closed. The Venezuelan researcher Duno-Gottberg argues that since the race issue is “theoretically resolved through the notion of mestizaje, not only we refuse to talk about it but we react defensively to any attempt to rethink our racial democracy” (Duno- Gottberg 2011: 273). Thus, there is something similar to a state of denial, a probable consequence of the lack of social debate and consciousness, regarding class and race in Venezuela that needs to be urgently addressed. From my own observations, I can say it is socially accepted to mention in informal conversations how ugly a soccer player is because of his dark skin and his curly hair; or to hear comments like: “es negrita pero simpática” (she is dark-skinned but friendly) when talking about the housemaid; or even to naturally talk about the ‘niches’, ‘tukis’, ‘monos’, all derogatory ways to make distinctions between ‘la gente bien’ (‘good people’, referring to people of the same or higher class and the level of education), and the chusma (scum). Moreover, I observed a constant and explicit avoidance of being in the same space with people of lower classes aiming to preserve what Bourdieu calls social space, illustrating the clear contempt against those from lower strata mentioned by Carola Chávez. Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital is of great use for better understanding and exploring the dynamic in place. Cultural capital plays an important role not only by differentiating people, through their economic assets, race, or the level of education, but rather through the accumulation of (some of) them, plus other concepts of ‘capital’. For instance, characteristics like the way of dressing, the way of speaking (like in Gabriela’s story), taste, physical appearance (related to race, but also to other aspects such as having all of one’s teeth, as suggested by Sebastián) add value to the cultural capital each person or group has. The way this set of ‘capitals’ is accumulated in Venezuelan society is interestingly illustrated when people describe, for instance, ‘a robber who did not look like a robber.’ One of my informants described an incident saying: “The guy did not look like a robber. He was polite, spoke properly, was well dressed and had a quicksilver bag.” All the characteristics this person had accumulated a specific capital that made it difficult to believe this person could be a robber. Similarly, this is what happens when an Opositor meets an Oficialista who ‘does not look like one’. There is such an

55 intense process of construction of Chavista supporters as people of lower cultural capital that when Opositores meet someone who supports the government and is similar to them (in terms of accumulated capital) it creates a high degree of amazement “like if I say I eat soap”, in Daniel’s words.

4.3 “We Do Not Sell Our Dignity for a Misión”: On Being a Middle-class Opositor

According to the Opositores’ view, many of the political proposals of the Bolivarian Revolution have given space to challenge, in Bourdieu’s terms, middle-class’ condition, position, social status and social space, all important features that differentiate people and create distance from the rest. Middle-class’ conditions (economic assets) have been affected during the last years by the economic context of the country and the measures undertaken by the Chavista government. Examples of this are the expropriations (for instance of private industries/entrepreneurship, apartments, pieces of lands), the restrictions to the access to essential and imported products and foreign currency, as seen in Chapter 2 and 3. The same happens with Opositores constantly complaining about the misión vivienda, 60 since the building of communitarian houses inside middle-class neighborhoods devalues people’s properties and disrupts middle-class’ social space. Furthermore, through the social programs implemented and the economic system by chavismo – which mostly benefit and are used by the lower classes – the government contests the value given by the middle-class to the personal effort (education, work) and meritocracy. This value is related to the accumulation of cultural capital, which defines people’s social status and position. The threat to meritocracy explains the feelings of injustice experienced by Camila when reflecting on a misión in education that allows people having a diploma after less schooling years than the regular educational system. Similarly, explains the frustration of Gabriela when concluding that a car watcher earns more than she does. Furthermore, this also explains better Juan Manuel’s feeling of injustice in Chapter 2, when he knows the ex-housemaid is traveling to Spain, while it would take years to him (who has a degree) to buy the same ticket. Correspondingly, comments like “the problem is that the vote of an analphabetic is worth the same as the one of a professional person, as myself” are commonly heard. As Federico commented that same Sunday in the living-room: “Just because they are poor todo es regalado (they receive all these hand-outs). But the government doesn’t offer them any education or ask for any compensation. ¡Todo es regalado! So let’s all be poor!”

60 The misión vivienda is the national program aiming to build and offer houses. Its aim is to build 3 million houses. See the official website: http://www.mvh.gob.ve/ (visited on 05 December 2015). In Caracas these houses or buildings are all around the city and can be easily identified since they have Chávez’s signature, also known as “la rabo de cochino” (the pig’s tale).

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The accumulation of cultural capital creates social expectations and pressures, especially over the middle-class that is supposed to get ahead in life and that has to at least maintain the same capital/status than their fathers. Such expectations are in many occasions transferred by the members of the middle-class to those around them (like in the case of Gabriela towards the car watcher), but especially to those who are leading them. People expect those in charge of the country to have as much, if not more, accumulated capital than theirs. Since Chávez was a military of the lower-middle-class from the rural area of the country (Barinas State), this explains that Opositores frequently cast into doubt his competence to develop their work at the government’s institutions. More recently, current President Maduro has been frequently disparaged by the media, common people and even by several of my informants for having worked as a subway car driver and by the several public mistakes he has committed.61 One of my informants mentioned: “I apologize with the truck drivers, but further studies are needed in order to be a President.” The opposition’s view of the lack of professionalization of those who are leading the country the last sixteen years is blamed on Chavista supporters. This is why Opositores easily associate the support to chavismo as a consequence of ignorance within the logic of “only ignorant people can choose unprepared people to lead a country.” Accordingly, there are two observations of the Venezuelan analysts Miguel Tinker Salas interesting to present. Firstly, the idea of a “distinction between an educated and enlightened opposition fighting to save the country and defend democracy and an uneducated multitude led by charismatic yet unscrupulous popular leader” (Tinker Salas 2015: 172). This is similar to the notion of “respectable citizens” mentioned by Samet as “the only thing that holds the opposition together besides its strident rejection of chavismo” (Samet 2013: 529). Secondly, there is also the thought that “members of the current opposition often complain about having ‘lost their country’, and hope to recover the ‘old Venezuela’” (Tinker Salas 2015: 13). These ideas can be observed in the messages of the leaders of the opposition, but also in the expectations of its common supporters. Both perspectives are very much related to Bourdieu’s concept (1996) of field of power used by Hage to describe the dynamic within the ruling class.

Various people holding various capitals which give the power vis-à-vis the rest of society but which are not of equal value within the field of power itself. In this sense, members of a ruling group are unequally endowed with capital and power and are competing among themselves for domination within the field (Hage 2000: 55).

61 President Maduro has been popularly called “Maburro” (Madonkey) or “autobusero” (bus driver) by the opposition.

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Gramsci defines the State as “the entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules” (Gramsci 1973: 244). Within the opposition, mainly middle-class, it is still not part of ‘normality’ that those with the political power are not the ones who, in their view, have the dominant cultural capital, since they are not the most ‘educated’, ‘hardworking’, ‘prepared’, ‘presentable’. This is why Venezuelan State’s practical and theoretical activities are constantly being cast into doubt by at least half of the population. Gramsci’s ‘active consent’ is still far from taking place in the country since the opposition considers the fact that chavismo is in power a looking-glass world. Using Bourdieu’s concept of field of power, Ghassan Hage introduces the concept of governmental belonging, which is “not only the position of cultural dominance but also the power to position others within the field” (Hage 2000: 55). In this sense, the “respectable citizen” and the “educated and enlightened people” embodied by the Opositores suggest owning the capital and cultural dominance for ruling the governmental belonging in Venezuela. Nevertheless, the opposition is actually being excluded of the field by the Chavista supporters who are the ones in power de facto. In Cannon’s words:

Hegemony most often favors the State, elites, the high-ranking military, big business, and the church. In the Venezuelan context, hegemony and resistance (counterhegemony) take on new meanings. Their conceptual meanings do not change; hegemony is still the process by which one social group gains supremacy or domination over others, sometimes by armed force (citing Gramsci, 1973). However, in the Venezuelan case the State is no longer the sector that hegemony favors and those favored by hegemony – the dominant bloc – do not control the formal apparatus of the State (Cannon 2008: 80).

All this explains better the Opositores’ feelings of frustration, lack of understanding, unacceptance and resistance, even after sixteen years of chavismo in power. Similarly, for the middle-class, values and morals are very important for social life. From my observations, I can say that being an Opositor is in many occasions not only considered a matter of political choice, but a matter of individual principles, something that defines the kind of person one is, almost like a fundamental question. As Camila put it during the Sunday’s family conversation: “I understand that some people vote for chavismo because they receive housing, education and health, but we do not sell our dignity for a misión.” Expecting something different – in terms of politics – than what chavismo offers and represent seems to be coherent and even a condition to

58 the cultural capital middle-class opositores have and the class they belong. It is in this way that specific understandings of class and status reinforce even more the process of internalization of political discourses and identities in Venezuela. As seen in previous chapters, for the majority of the Opositores who participated on this research, the only reasons as to why people would support the government is one of the following three: they are “ignorant people” victims of populistic measures, they are receiving benefits by supporting the government (like the enchufados or boliburgueses), or they are addressing their ‘social resentment’ against the upper and middle-class. All these reasons point to a ‘profile’ of Chavista supporters with very low cultural capital that include easy associations with the poor, uneducated and a darker-skinned population. Anything different from this picture seems to be conflicting to Opositores. This makes even more difficult to accept and deal with the cases and relationships in which the categories and associations do not fit. Like in the cases presented in Chapter 3, in which people who “do not look like a chavista”, meaning close and similar partners, friends and siblings from the middle-class, with light skin and who are not receiving anything from the government are actually Oficialistas. The current socio-political context in Venezuela is one in which socio-historical prejudices like classism and racism have not stopped with the Bolivarian Revolution, but instead now overlap new prejudices. Gisela Kozak states:

In Venezuela, political positions are deducted today from the skin color and the surname. We are worse than before because now we assume that every Arabic person [meaning in Venezuela a moreno guy with beard] is Chavista. We suppose that the housemaid and the peddler are Chavistas, that all Jewish are Opositores and that anyone with a rare surname is a foreigner even if his/her family has ten generations in Venezuela (Kozak 2014: 117).62

Going back to Gabriela’s ethnographic piece, its relevance relies on the fact that she established associations about the car watcher by assuming, from his T-shirt and his way of speaking, he was a Chavista from the lower class and with a low level of education. Since the car watcher made a grammar mistake and showed not being interested in ‘getting educated’, his political opinion (vote) and – in an automatic extension – the political opinion of all the people who support the government are, in Gabriela’s view, harmful for the country. In her own words, “That is why

62 Kozak’s quote suggests that this “racialized markers” are not only addressed from the side of the opposition towards chavism. Similarly, Duno-Gottberg mentioned such markers are also used to describe the opposition through the emergence of an illegitimate political subject: el escuálido (the squalid or languid)” or the “white elites” that have exploited the country for centuries (Duno-Gottberg 2011: 280). Nevertheless, for the purpose of this research, I had to keep the focus on the perceptions of Opositores towards Chavistas.

59 things do not change.” In this specific case, notions coming from the dominant political discourse of who a Chavista is, was reinforced by an understanding of class related to cultural capital and dominance. Thus, her experience was an illustration of the way structures of social stratifications and differentiation, present in the Venezuelan society, are interrelated with processes of political identification.

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Presenting middle-class expectations, priorities, logics and understandings has been key to identify an ambivalent dynamic of the Venezuelan Opositores to the government. On one hand, there is a posture of victimization, from which the anti-Chavistas feel threatened, disappointed and powerless against sixteen years of chavismo in power. “We were happy before and didn’t know”, “There is no future for us here”, “This is not living this is surviving” are comments often made by Opositores, as seen in previous Chapters, that illustrate such a position. On the other hand, many of the Opositores see and present themselves with an empowered, even sometimes superior, posture as rulers of the cultural capital, agents of change and hope, and as those who deserve to lead the country. The lack of understanding and the amazement felt by Opositores towards chavismo and middle-class Chavista supporters became evident from the comments and reflections of the Opositores themselves, but also from the stories of Chavista supporters regarding their experiences of interaction with anti-Chavistas. With this in mind, this Chapter focused on specific middle-class’ notions of social status, position and class aiming to better comprehend the way politics is experienced by Venezuelan Opositores. Using Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital has been key to show how economic assets, race, the level of education, the way of dressing, the way of speaking, physical appearance, among others characteristic add value to the cultural capital each person or group has in Venezuela. This accumulated capital legitimizes some – while delegitimizes others – to rule. The class in control of the field of power, in Bourdieu’s terms, or the governmental belonging, in Hage’s terms, is expected to be the one with cultural dominance. Nevertheless, this is exactly what does not take place in Venezuela nowadays since those ruling the country – from the middle-class’ perspectives on what is valuable – are the people who have low cultural capital. The opposition, which is mainly composed by those who believe to ‘deserve’ and ‘being prepared’ to rule the country, feels actually excluded of the field of power by the Chavista government and supporters. This sheds light on some of the reasons as to why the Opositores present such a

60 high degree of frustration, uneasiness and lack of understanding since under this perspective the situación del país is neither fair nor logical. The notions of class related to cultural capital and dominance are intertwined with the process of political identification. Such notions reinforce in many occasions the feelings of rejection towards what Opositores do not want to belong to, or do not want to be identified as, thus intensifying the social polarization in Venezuela. This sheds light on a more complex image of the way political discourses and identities are constructed and internalized in current political times of chavismo in power, as well as how deep the gap is between Chavistas and Opositores. The process of political identification in Venezuela is one in which people not only differentiate themselves from others’ political choice, but also from the level of education, race, economic assets, way of living, in sum, from their cultural capital.

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5 CONCLUSIONS

Although moving to the middle, away from these extreme caricatures is perhaps the beginning of wisdom, it is not a matter of shifting from Black or White to gray, or from Red or Blue to any other one color, but of breaking out from this Manichean, fundamentalist framework. In brief, the point is not to see gray, but to grasp the vibrant colors of a complex reality; if we are to find any truths, we must seek them in life’s rich complexity—and often, through significant details (Coronil 2008b).

Studying Venezuela’s current socio-political context has been my strategic way of discussing, understanding and responding to how people make sense of their world, build a chain of arguments, create discourses and embrace positions and identities. The call of the Venezuelan anthropologist Fernando Coronil was an inspiration for the present study in two significant ways: firstly, due to his attention on the need to move to the middle and, secondly, due to his urgency to grasp the vibrant colors of a complex reality. Even if many interpretations and senses could be given to such propositions, I believe that any social scientist would agree that those two fronts need to be addressed when studying the Venezuelan context. Throughout this study, I have found some ways to tackle Coronil’s call, while inquiring the ways politics is experienced and negotiated in the life of middle-class Venezuelans. We have seen in this study how being a Chavista or an Opositor goes far beyond an ideological choice. Taking either of these political positions defines who people are. Politics have such a significant place in people’s life that this specific identity – the political – is of major importance within society. For many Venezuelans having a political position is not actually an option, it is rather taken-for-granted. In order to get a better grasp of how deep the gap is and whether there are meeting points, even if not acknowledged, between Oficialistas and anti-Chavistas approach politics and political identities in Venezuela, it was key to recognize the (lack of) knowledge and understanding, miscommunications, mirror-arguments and reifications between both groups. Moving to the middle included the identification of informants, who would potentially challenge, bridge, negotiate or reinterpret the deep divide that dominant discourses have constructed about Venezuelan politics and political identities, like middle-class convinced chavistas, and people with close relationships with different political views. By doing so, my research cast into doubt assumptions about chavismo and the opposition, as well as about Venezuela as an extremely polarized society.

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For instance, the idea of close relationships among people with opposing political positions, including couples where one is a Chavista and the other one is an escuálido/a,63 was inconceivable for the majority of people I contacted in Venezuela before and during fieldwork. It represented finding “a needle in a haystack.” In the same way, many of the opposition’s supporters I had contact with did not have any close relation or could not mention any person within their inner circle of acquaintances who was a government supporter. Similarly, the idea of finding middle-class ‘conviced’ supporters of the government (meaning, who were neither enchufados nor boliburgueses) was unreasonable to many Opositores. These are clear evidences of a divided country where perceptions have been constructed as opposing, mutually exclusive, incompatible and irreconcilable. Such perceptions have an important impact on, as well as are reinforced by, the lack of close interactions with one another and on what is considered as possible, real, and believable. The move to the middle was also tackled by focusing on the participation of politics in family life, especially of those families whose members have different political identities. This gave insight to this study through a proper magnifying glass looking at the spheres of the cotidiano, everyday, experiences of what it means to be a Chavista or an Opositor. The use of this magnifying glass also made it possible to study a double movement: the one related to the ways politics is present, and influent, within the private spaces of Venezuelans’ cotidiano, and another that pertains to how people negotiate the presence of politics in micro and private domains. The first movement – the way politics influences people’s life – was observed during (family) gatherings, close interactions, conversations, discussions, celebrations and meals. While the second – the way people maneuver politics in their life – came to light through the analysis of agreements, internal rules, feelings, reflections, avoidances, rumors and humor. It was observed that despite the existence of tensions people find ways to avoid conflicts in an everyday basis by negotiating their identity differences. Aiming to shed light on the vibrant colors of a complex reality this research closely observed the way politics is experienced specifically by those of the middle-class opposition supporters. Examples of this is the Opositores’ deep need to constantly express their thoughts and feelings about “la situación del país”; the frustration and uneasiness that characterized many of their political experiences; the reduction to only three reasons as to why people would support the government (ignorance, convenience or social resentment); the lack of understanding of chavismo in power for sixteen years; and the unacceptance of middle-class, educated and “convinced” Chavistas. Why are Opositores experiencing politics in such a way?

63 Here I am intentionally using the way chavistas call opositores.

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By observing social antagonisms that are taken for granted, it was possible to recognize that the process of political identification in Venezuela is one in which people not only differentiate themselves from the other’s political choices, but also from their economic assets, race, the level of education, the way of dressing, speaking, physical appearance, among others characteristic. Thus, specific understandings of class and status reinforce the of internalization of categories and associations within the process of creation and recreation of political discourses and identities. This is deeply intertwined with what Bourdieu explains as important features that define a class as different from the rest: the cultural capital. Venezuela is currently one of the few countries where the field of power, in Bourdieu’s terms (1996), or the governmental belonging, in Hage’s terms (2000) is not held by those who accumulate the dominant cultural capital. The opposition’s supporters, mainly composed by those who believe they ‘deserve’ and ‘are prepared’ to lead the country, feel actually excluded by chavismo. It is in this vein that having focused on the Venezuelan middle-class was a great opportunity to better explain the complexities of such a peculiar context.

Mach (1993) defended that identity is a result of classification, which is the basis of human knowledge and cultural construction to order the world. Moreover, the author highlighted the fact that the classification of who we are versus who they are does not always entail the same intensity. In that sense, the specific process of selfing and othering taking place in Venezuelan during the last sixteen years needs some special attention. On the one hand, it is true that, in Baumann’s terms, the implosion of grammars with the extreme logic: “we must live, so they must die” (Baumann 2014: 42) has still not occurred in Venezuela. Venezuelan’s opposite identities do not talk about each other (and I hope they will never do) in a dehumanized way, as a metaphor for extermination. On the other hand, since political identities in Venezuela are intertwined and reinforced by other socio-economic identifications, the degree of othering seems to be particularly intense. This could be one of the reasons as to why the existence of ternary grammars within Venezuelan political discourses is very limited and when they exist supporters of both sides frequently fail to recognize them. Therefore, the specific process of selfing and othering taking place in Venezuelan needs our especial attention as social scientists and citizens of the world. Approaching a move to the middle and highlighting the vibrant colors of Venezuelan complex reality is beyond being one of the results of this study, it has also been one of its cross-cutting aims from its beginning. Having Venezuela as case study has been my prerogative to identify nuances that at first seem to be opposing or conflicting, meeting points between things that are seen as inassimilable and mutually exclusive, and more layers to what has been presented as

64 unitary. This is not to suggest that extreme poles do not exist, but that other realities with vibrant colors – beyond white, black or gray – also can and need to be told. Giving visibility to the stories of people facing the dilemmas of bridging the gap between two different, even opposite, worlds is urgently needed. This reflection could be extrapolated to similar scenarios across the world in which identities shape the interpretations of everyday facts and define the narratives of who the victims and the perpetrators are. For instance this study could shed some light on the opposing positions of those who support Morales’ government in the Plurinational State of Bolivia and those who are against it, or on the recently intensified political polarization in Brazil and Argentina, on the political and nationalistic disputes in Northern Ireland and Spain, or on the opposing views between Palestinians and Israelis, just to mention some examples.

This research has been conducted as thoroughly as possible within the limits of time, space, and scope. By trying to answer the questions that guided this research, many others arose. Nonetheless, some ideas on how to potentially overcome social antagonisms also came to light. I hope each one of these new academic questions will be answered by future work that is deeply informed by ethnography and people’s own voices. I believe further research should be developed in order to analyze whether middle and lower class Chavistas feel frustration or a similar degree of unacceptance towards the existence of Opositores of the same class. Similarly, the role of rumors in the process of political othering in Venezuela, as well as the ways in which each group presents themselves as victims or perpetrators, as Veena Das (1998) suggests in her work, seem to be of relevance for further academic exploration within the Venezuelan context. Regarding potential solutions, it is urgent that both sides step out of their own worlds in order to start listening to each other, recognizing meeting points and developing empathy. This will certainly be a very difficult process, but my experience during this research suggests that it is possible. The best way to get some distance from one’s own side is to start listening with respect and seriousness to the other one. Moreover, for weighing up positions it is necessary to acknowledge the defects and limitation of one’s own side, as well as the qualities from the other. Additionally, the creation of meeting points, spaces of exchange and acknowledgment between people with diverse political identities, but also between people of different social classes and the increase of mobility within Venezuelan cities seems to be more than necessary in Venezuela. This would diminish miscommunications, stereotypes, and lack of understanding and knowledge. Finally, social debates regarding class and race needs to take place urgently. The

65 acknowledgement of its history and memory related to race, class and other social antagonisms would open up the possibility to better integration and inclusion.

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Hace ciento treinta años, después de visitar el país de las maravillas Alicia se metió en un espejo para descubrir el mundo al revés. Si Alicia renaciera en nuestros días, no necesitaría atravesar ningún espejo: le bastaría con asomarse a la ventana. Al fin del milenio, el mundo al revés está a la vista: es el mundo tal cual es, con la izquierda a la derecha, el ombligo en la espalda y la cabeza en los pies.64

The people I wrote about here and who participated in this research, independently of their political identities, continue to be faced by what in their views is un mundo al revés, a looking glass world. A world in which, differently than the one of Alice, do not need of a mirror in order to be accessed. They continue to have a problem on their table within their families and private and intimate relationships and spaces. Certainly, Venezuelans’ experiences and stories do not finish here, people will continue to balance between social structures and their own ways to maneuver such situations, remaking or reinforcing their understandings of the world. Nevertheless, in the majority of the cases such experiences and stories are, and will continue to be, piling up without the proper closure or comprehension. The complexity of the Venezuelan context will continue to amaze us if we do not take the proper time and distance to decipher it.

64 Eduardo Galeano (2001), Patas Arriba. La Escuela Del Mundo Al Revés (Upside Down: A Primer For The Looking-Glass World). http://www.ateneodelainfancia.org.ar/uploads/galeanoescuela.pdf (visited on 10 December 2015)

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AFTERWORD

After listening to so many and distinctive versions of the same reality, I believe it is usual that the researcher starts to construct opinions, embrace positions, and have an urgent need to communicate them in different spheres. Anthropological endeavors make possible to empty ourselves, and then fulfill us again with recreated perceptions of the world. But it also makes us doubt about many of the certainties we used to have. Even if on the one hand I ended up having less convictions about who/what is ‘right’ and who/what is ‘wrong’; on the other this journey allowed me to be more in peace with different, even opposite, opinions to my own and, as a consequence, I became happier with my own visceral and polarized country. I’m convinced any move to the middle in the academic or socio- political sphere needs to take place (from the start to the end) in the personal and micro level, by trying to balance each argument, to analyze them from all possible perspectives, and to distance ourselves from our own sides, then approach the other and then do exactly the opposite, over and over. I found myself unable to answer, along with many others, why the implosion of grammars, civil war, or direct violence do not take place in the country if two opposing worlds are barely living in a same space. But the truth is that it has not taken place and nobody wants it to do. So we must identify the invisible bridges that unify Venezuelans, which seem actually stronger than any of its historical social division and go far beyond the political division between the opposition and chavismo. On one hand it is clear that the Venezuelan middle-class has certainly been affected during times of chavismo in terms of (mostly economic) restrictions and (political) interventions in the cotidiano of its members. The expectations they have as a class, such as getting ahead in life, being economically independent at a certain age, having access to a certain quality of life and comfort, have been profoundly limited by the chavista governments. People have experienced what in my view is a very deep situation of hopelessness and feeling of lack of future, expressed in many cases by migration out of the country. Opositores feel frustrated and powerless. On the other hand, more active agency is needed from Venezuelans. For instance, the discourse of the opposition and Opositores constantly making the government responsible for even micro and private occurrences, creates a big distance between what happens in the country and what we can all do about it. The Chavistas in many occasions down play the inefficacy and corruption within the government when they should be the ones asking more from their leaders. We all need to feel committed to improve the conditions of the country. Equally important, people in Venezuela need to reclaim de ability to see beauty around them again, know Venezuelan cities

67 better and explore them. Stories about people coming back to the country need to be heard and get visibility. Venezuelans need to start acknowledging good things again, in general, as a very first step to believe in the possibility of a better future for the country.

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i As examples see the videos on Youtube: ‘Pero Tenemos Patria’ https://www.youtube.com/user/PTPatria and ‘Isla Presidencial’ https://www.youtube.com/user/IslaPresidencial; ‘El Chiguire Bipolar’ http://www.elchiguirebipolar.net/ (all visited on 05 December 2015). ii As example, during my fieldwork I went to three pieces of theater on this vein entitled: Tequila and Run (about a couple migrating from Venezuela to Mexico); Desperate Venezuelans and Not even migrating we leave.

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