debates
A Future Without Chávez? by Daniel Hellinger | Webster University | [email protected]
The uncertainty about President Chávez’s considered supplanting representative with figure of Chávez has made them more, not health makes predictions about the participatory democracy. less difficult to overcome. proximate future difficult, but it confirms that the transition from the Punto Fijo era Complementing this shift was the creation In this limited space I cannot adequately (1958-1998) to the current Bolivarian of the United Venezuelan Socialist Party place these problems in the context of the period is far from consolidated. The (PSUV) to replace the Fifth Republic considerable accomplishments of the personal crisis of the president highlights Movement (MVR). The PSUV was to be regime, including poverty reduction and the institutional weakness of the Bolivarian an electoral vehicle for grassroots activists, rolling back the tide of neoliberalism in the Revolution, which in turn jeopardizes such as voceros, and to diminish the role of region (Weisbrot 2011). Absent this processes that cannot be reduced to professional politicians, be they oficialista context, we risk validating the media old-style populism. or opposition. In addition, Chávez called narrative and most Washington politicians, for the rapid deployment of programs of who stereotype Chávez as a Third World The political conjuncture in Venezuela “endogenous development,” emphasizing thug. Even in the academic community we today is quite different from the middle the direct “sowing” of oil profits into the tend to reduce political processes in years of the last decade. Chávez’s solid solidaristic economic sector. Private Venezuela to the character of Chávez, victory in the recall election of August 2004 property and the market would remain, but ignoring a reality that is much messier, seemed to portend the consolidation of the state would use oil wealth to promote more complex, and not subject to easy Bolivarian hegemony. The landslide cooperatives and micro-enterprises, to generalization. re-election of Chávez in December 2006, accelerate land reform, and to encourage after a massive campaign to register voters worker co-determination, leading Consider the cooperative movement. A and restore effective citizenship to eventually to self-managed enterprises. The study undertaken by the Venezuelan hundreds of thousands of barrio dwellers, resulting solidaristic sector was to coexist affiliate2 of Prout Universal (an NGO reinforced the sense that the political game with the capitalist private sector, but “dedicated to promoting a practical would have to be played within a eventually it would grow and subordinate socio-economic alternative to global- consensus defined by Bolivarianism, though the market, producing “twenty-first century capitalism”) and the International with room for an opposition. socialism.” Cooperative Alliance3 reaches the conclusion that Venezuela deserves the Chávez read his victories as mandates to Under the best of circumstances such a label “graveyard of cooperatives” because accelerate the revolution and to re-engineer transformation would not fully materialize three quarters of the 268,000 cooperatives the state. A new law encouraged the in five years. The more important question formed and registered between 2001 and formation of communal councils, local is whether Venezuelans sensed that a 2008 were no longer functioning in 2009. bodies that would be funded through the “process” toward such an outcome was However, 23 percent continued to function, executive branch and by Petróleos de underway, and it is hard to escape the meaning that the country saw a jump from Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company. conclusion that optimism is fading. The 1,045 active coops in 2001 to 62,879 in The councils would be composed of rentier mentality fostered by the oil 2009.4 That same year, Brazil had around voceros, mandated representatives from dependent economy and the low 20,000, Argentina approximately 10,000. various misiones and social movements, governance capacity of the regime partially The “graveyard” of cooperatives was also and would set priorities for projects to explain this loss of momentum, but in the its cradle. meet needs defined by the community. social media, many chavistas lay much of State and municipal boundaries would be the blame on the “bureaucracy,” the Though he remains the single most popular reconfigured, and the councils would be “Boli-bourgeoisie,” or the political class for politician in the country, it is not drawn together into networks to govern the faltering revolution.1 Many of these unimaginable that Chávez could lose next above the community level. Rather than activists absolve the president from October’s presidential election. The main envision participatory institutions as responsibility for failure to overcome these opposition candidates have attempted to complementary to representative ones, obstacles; but many others recognize that present themselves as centrists. They will Chávez, though not proposing abolition of the concentration of authority around the capitalize on the high crime rate and the National Assembly (AN), now chronic corruption, and if they are smart,
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they will attempt to lure “ni-ni” (neither in advancing new hemispheric institutions, Recently, however, Chávez has returned to nor) voters, the crucial swing bloc, by such as UNASUR, the Banco del Sur, and, a practice that helped sow the demise of the promising to improve rather than dismantle of course, ALBA, the Bolivarian Alliance Punto Fijo era—borrowing against future the most popular social and economic for the Americas. The discounted oil sold earnings from oil exports. In fact, some programs. to Cuba has generated the most headlines new investment contracts and loans have in the North, but the program of sales to been collateralized with future deliveries of Still, the prospects for the opposition other nations has been equally important. crude, an opaque arrangement that may depend in part on its ability to remain PetroCaribe has been a vital energy lifeline seriously undermine the fiscal reforms. united. Here the presence of Chávez helps to many small states in Central America These reforms have ensured state more than hurts their chances. Should and the Caribbean, and the loss of these appropriation of windfall profits in boom Chávez be entirely incapacitated, his discounts would deal a heavy blow to these times, and maximized revenues in times of absence would deprive the fractious and economies. low oil prices. With Chávez still in power, ambitious opposition of its point of unity. the signature accomplishment of his The PSUV might also fracture. The picture Upon news of Chávez’s health crisis, administration, maximizing appropriation gets even muddier should Chávez have to Stabroek News, the leading independent of oil rents, is already in jeopardy. resign or retire but not entirely leave newspaper in Georgetown, Guyana, politics. Even from a sickbed Chávez editorialized that the region should be From the founding of the Bolivarian would command enough authority to concerned that a successor might terminate movement within the military in the 1980s designate the PSUV candidate, but could PetroCaribe. The oil program has “proven to the present, Hugo Chávez has assigned the opposition remain united under such to be critical to the immediate solvency to himself a mission of national circumstances? problems of many countries in the context transformation, one that would earn for of the rise in oil prices,” and Venezuelan aid himself historical immortality—“glory” in We might also ponder what chavismo was needed for “critical infrastructure the Machiavellian sense (Zuquete 2008). would be like should it lose the presidential projects.”5 An opposition government Early signs indicate that his cancer has election. A healthy Chávez would be leader might have to think twice about cutting the intensified rather than tempered his sense of a formidable opposition determined to oil lifeline to the Caricom region, where of urgency to complete this mission. defend highly popular social programs. Venezuela has historically sought to extend For two years at least, he would command its influence. David Smilde, introducing a co-edited a majority in the National Assembly, and volume (2011), recently advised that we he would retain ability to convoke popular One of the main achievements of the devote more attention in Venezuela to mobilizations to defend land reform, the Bolivarian Revolution has been recovery of “ground-level research on the relational Barrio Adentro health program, the national sovereignty over the subsoil. The contexts in which politics occurs in communal councils, subsidized food oil reform of 2001 insured majority state everyday social life…The most tangible markets, and other signature programs. ownership in joint ventures (adhering to effects of the revolution might not be the Defeat in the presidential election could the spirit, if not the letter, of the 1976 concrete institutions and actors the force the PSUV to undertake a much deeper nationalization law) and a substantial government creates, but the development of self-examination and reckoning than increase in royalty payments (compensation new discourses, identities, networks, and chavistas undertook after the defeat of the for extraction of a non-renewable nature forms of association” (2011: 2). Julia constitutional reform package of 2007 or resource). These measures followed Buxton writes in the forward to the same the gains of the opposition in state and Chávez’s diplomatic success in volume, “A consuming focus on the figure local elections of 2009 and the National strengthening OPEC and his victory over of President Chávez in the academic and Assembly election of 2010. the three-month production stoppage policy literature further obscured the orchestrated by PDVSA executives dynamics of change at the grassroots level, Chávez’s health crisis also raises important beginning in December 2003 (Mommer while marginalizing the complexity of the questions about the future of his 2011). process of social change” (2011: xi).6 international policies. We tend to overlook the leadership role that Chávez has played
18 Over the years I have had many Endnotes References conversations with chavistas— 1 To get a sense of chavista thought beyond ambassadors, community organizers, Buxton, J. musicians, taxi drivers, professors, cabinet Chávez, consult
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