UC Santa Cruz UC Santa Cruz Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title State and Power after Neoliberalism in Bolivarian Venezuela Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/86g3m849 Author Kingsbury, Donald V. Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ STATE AND POWER AFTER NEOLIBERALISM IN BOLIVARIAN VENEZUELA A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in POLITICS with emphases in LATIN AMERICAN AND LATINO STUDIES and HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS by Donald V. Kingsbury June 2012 The Dissertation of Donald V. Kingsbury is approved: ____________________________________ Professor Megan Thomas, Chair ____________________________________ Professor Juan Poblete ____________________________________ Professor Gopal Balakrishnan ____________________________________ Professor Michael Urban _________________________ Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Donald V. Kingsbury 2012 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures iv Abstract v Acknowledgments vi I. Introduction 1 II. Between Multitude and Pueblo 53 III. The Problem with Populism 120 IV. The Power of the Many 169 V. The Discursive Production of a ‘Revolution’ 219 VI. ‘…after Neoliberalism?’ 277 VII. Conclusion 342 VIII. Bibliography 362 ! """! LIST OF FIGURES Figure 0.1 Seven Presidential elections and four referenda during the Bolivarian Revolution, 1998-2010. 18 Figure 1.1 "Every 11th has its 13th: The Pueblo is still on the street, but today it’s on the road to socialism!" 102 Figure 3.1 “Here comes the People’s Capitalism” 201 Figure 4.1: Advertisement of ‘Mi Negra’ Program 221 Figure 4.2 ¡Rumbo al Socialismo Bolivariano! 261 Figure 4.3. Youth and Student campaign for Bolivarian Socialism. 266 Figure 4.4 Juan Dávila El Libertador Simón Bolívar 269 Figure 5.1 Looking Back 297 ! "#! ABSTRACT State and Power after Neoliberalism in Bolivarian Venezuela Donald V. Kingsbury State and Power after Neoliberalism in Bolivarian Venezuela examines the limits and possibilities of collective subject formation in the context of social transformation. It argues that the Bolivarian process was made possible by new forms of political community and collective life that emerged in resistance to the neoliberal restructuring of state and society in the 1980s and 1990s. Specifically, the cycle of struggles that began with the caracazo of 1989 opened a terrain for groups from the margins of Venezuelan society to mobilize and shape politics in that country. By the end of the twentieth century, grassroots pressure from below and the state’s abandonment of its side of the social contract resulted in a situation of ungovernability in Venezuela. The government of Hugo Chávez has worked to capture the creative energy of these elements, but has yet to definitively break with the norms and institutions of the sovereign nation-state. This dissertation presents the theoretical consequences of this undecided balance of forces as a reconfiguration of the modern dialectic between constituent and constituted power. Focusing on moments where the government has failed to capture the force of what the Marxist- Spinozist tradition has identified as the multitude, I argue Bolivarian Venezuela offers an important site from which to reconsider key elements of modern liberal thought such as the citizen, the nation, and the social contract as well as more recent critical concepts such as the multitude, hegemony, and populism. ! "! ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Any project of this length is inevitably a collective one, even if authorship is also inevitably assigned to an individual. It would be impossible for me to thank everyone who has contributed to this work – let alone to my political, intellectual, and personal formation along the way. I would like to thank all of my colleagues and students in the departments of Politics, Latin American and Latino Studies, and History of Consciousness at UCSC for the years of seminars, discussions, protests, and hours and hours of debate. Any mistakes or misstatements in this dissertation, of course, are solely my own. In Venezuela I have been particularly lucky to forge enduring friendships among comrades with whom I have worked since 2007. I would like to single out and thank Francisco Vielma and Grecia Montiel for their comradeship, assistance, laughter, and innumerable insights. My students at both the Escuela Venezolana de Planificación as well as in Misión Ribas in La Vega were constant sources of information and inspiration. Carlos Rivas, Sair Ramses, Anaida Nuñez, Mark Stulberg, Daniel Moreno, Arno Rubi, Nidia Gonzalez, Fernando Nuñez, Jesus Acosta, Nilson Delgado, Eduardo Perez (QEDP) y todo el grupo CAR: thank you for your help, your friendship, and your fight. I am grateful to George and Abbey Ciccariello-Maher for facilitating my first move to Venezuela and for providing a roof over my head as I navigated the complexities of apartment searching in Caracas and for their ongoing friendship. Robert Wood and Zen Dochterman have been valued comrades and interlocutors since my undergraduate years in Minneapolis. Thank you both. Jan Kotowski, Sarah Mak, and Alexander Hirsch have been sources of friendship, support, the collective joy of shared meals, and good decisions. Katie Woolsey has probably saved my life more times than I can count. Thank you for making this journey a pleasure. Special thanks are in order to the members of my dissertation committee, who have not only guided my scholarship and formation as an academic, but have been valued friends and allies along this often difficult path. My chair, Megan Thomas, has been tireless in her guidance, support, and attention. Her commitment to socially-engaged scholarship and to fighting for a better world are gifts I hope to repay by replicating. Juan Poblete has been a mentor, friend, and occasional teammate on the pitch since my first year of graduate school. The seminar he organized around contemporary Latin@merican Cultural Theory through the department of Latin American and Latino Studies at UCSC set me on a path of investigation I have followed since. Gopal Balakrishnan has challenged me to think of politics in Latin America in a geopolitical and philosophical context that always strikes to the origins of western ! "#! modernity and political economy. His seminars in the History of Consciousness department are sites of engagement and experimentation that will be greatly missed as I transition out of the grad student life. Michael Urban’s generosity of spirit and intellect have reminded me why I got into this life path at times when I’ve most considered leaving it. Cindy Bale, the Department of Politics Graduate Adviser, has helped me navigate the logistics of this messy process. Thank you, all of you, for your kindness, patience, dedication, scholarship, and examples. It would be an understatement to say I could not have done this without you. I would also like to thank the intellectual community here at UCSC and throughout the greater Bay area. Vanita Seth, Ronnie Lipshutz, Kent Eaton, Dean Mathiowetz, and Ben Read in the department of Politics have all played roles at key moments as I developed my interdisciplinary approach to the study of collective life. Rosa Linda Fregoso in the department of Latin American and Latino Studies at UCSC made me believe collaborative and participatory research are not only possible but also necessary. Thanks also to my original cohort, Corina McHendry, Sara Benson, Sandra Alvarez, and Cassie Duprey for stumbling through the first years of grad school together. Thank you to others who have helped me along the way: Sasha Day, Jo Isaacson, Kimberly West, and David Lau. Mark Paschal has been a friend, confidant, and fellow troublemaker along much of the way. Thanks. This dissertation has been written in the context of economic restructuring and repeated attacks on public education in the United States. Nowhere has this attack been more acute, and in few places has the fight back been more important than in the state of California. Even when I was writing directly about Venezuela, the resistance against austerity and accumulation by dispossession taking place around me has always been in the back of my mind, even when the demands of writing kept me from the frontlines of the struggle. To students, comrades, and friends past, present, and future in the fight: thank you. Theresa Enright has been a patient partner, a dedicated academic, a brilliant and challenging interlocutor, and an inquisitive spirit that I appreciate more and more with each passing day. I am eagerly anticipating many new adventures. My family started me on this journey and has sustained me even when I’ve lived continents and worlds away. Simone, Shenelle, and Sandra Sambrano accepted me as one of their own in Trinidad. My godson, Anthony Jovan Sambrano Baptiste remains a light pointing towards a better world. Rest in Peace. Thank you to Barb Spaulding, Larry Spaulding, and Don Kingsbury Sr. for helping me along, for their love, for putting up with me, and for believing in me. My maternal grandparents, John and Mary Blair, always put a book in my hands after playing in the garden or the kitchen, for which I am eternally grateful. Jeremy Kingsbury is my little brother and my hero, miigwech. ! "##! This is for my parents. ! #"""! Introduction In a series of interviews published in English in 2005, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez described an early and characteristic example of his government’s social programs. The Plan Bolívar 2000, he said, was a civilian-military plan (…) My order to my men was: ‘go house to house combing the land. Hunger is the enemy.’ And we started on February 27, 1999, ten years after the caracazo, as a way of redeeming the military. I even made the connection when I said, ‘ten years ago we came out to massacre the people, now we are going to fill them with love.