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Venezuela's Revolution in Decline: Beware

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Venezuela's Revolution in Decline: Beware Francisco Rodríguez served as chief economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly in 2000–04. He is currently assistant professor of economics and Latin American studies at Wesleyan University. Venezuela’s Revolution in Decline Beware the Wounded Tiger Francisco Rodríguez On Sunday, March 2, Venezuelans were understood as part of a consistent strategy to treated to a spectacle that was surreal even create external enemies that will allow him by the standards of this Andean nation. to rally support around his presidency. They Speaking on his weekly television program are the expression of the political realities of Aló Presidente , Venezuelan President Hugo eroding popular support and a collapsing Chávez announced the mobilization of ten political coalition. army battalions to the Colombian border, Indeed, attempts to provoke external and threatened to send the Venezuelan air and internal enemies have by now become force to directly attack Colombian President the order of the day in Venezuela. In re - Álvaro Uribe. sponse to growing food shortages, the gov - What made this announcement particu - ernment has threatened to expropriate the larly bizarre is that it occurred in reaction distribution companies that it blames for to an incident more than 500 miles from hoarding basic foodstuffs. In February, when Venezuela’s borders, involving the entry by a British court froze $12 billion in assets of Colombia’s armed forces into Ecuadorean the Venezuelan state-owned oil company territory in pursuit of a group of leftist Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA ) in re - guerrillas. Indeed, Venezuela’s reaction was sponse to a demand filed by ExxonMobil, so disproportionate that it decided to sus - Chávez threatened to cut off oil supplies to pend diplomatic relations with Colombia at the United States. (In contrast to previous the same time that Ecuador —the aggrieved threats, in which Chávez had spoken of cut - country in this case —was taking the less ting off supplies in response to an imagined drastic step of calling its ambassador home U.S. intervention or invasion, in this case he for consultations. Venezuela’s strong reac - promised to carry out the threat unless the tion evidenced the increasingly public na - asset freeze was lifted.) 1 And, though recent ture of its close relationship with the Revo - opinion surveys indicate that the Venezuelan lutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC ), opposition will likely emerge victorious a group which the Venezuelan government from the regional elections due to be held considers an ideological and strategic ally. later in the year, Chávez has announced that Although relations were restored one if his party loses these elections “there will week later as part of a brokered agreement be war.” 2 reached at the Rio Group Presidential Summit, it would be incorrect to interpret The Search for Foreign Enemies this incident as an isolated event. Rather, Coming shortly after the December 2 , 2007, the dispute with Colombia forms part of a referendum defeat of Chávez’s proposal to broader pattern that has emerged in the past rewrite the Constitution in order to elimi - year as characteristic of the most recent nate term limits, significantly increase exec - stage of the Bolivarian revolution. In this utive power, and pave the way for the con - pattern, Chávez’s aggressiveness must be struction of a socialist economy, these moves © 2008 World Policy Institute 45 may appear to be the desperate attempts of whelming power of Venezuela’s petro-state a strongman losing his grip on power. On to punish dissenters and reward those loyal the other hand, it is not the first time that to the regime, thus significantly raising the Chávez has tried these tactics. Indeed, one cost of opposition . of the reasons why a strategy of provoking open confrontation is appealing to the Social Policies: Myth and Reality Venezuelan leader is that it has worked Most analyses of the turnaround in Venezue - admirably well in the past. lan public opinion in 2002–03, a period In the context of the political crisis of during which Chávez’s approval ratings sig - 2002 –03, in which the government saw its nificantly increased, attribute a significant hold on power severely threatened, it was role to changes in social policies. In particu - precisely the ability to provoke the opposi - lar, it has become commonplace to attribute tion into an open conflict that saved the day Chávez’s victory in the 2004 recall referen - for Chávez. Thus it is only logical that the dum to the ambitious and high-profile drive Venezuelan leader will now be on the look - to implement a set of new social programs out for an opportunity to redeploy this tac - called the misiones (literally, “missions”) — tic. Since Venezuela’s traditional elites are no fewer than 15 programs with emphases already too discredited and marginalized ranging from adult education ( Misión to constitute a credible threat (and new po - Robinson , Misión Ribas , and Misión Sucre ), litical groups such as the student movement healthcare ( Misión Barrio Adentro and Misión have intelligently avoided the government’s Milagro ), retraining of unemployed workers provocations), the readiest enemies available (Misión Vuelvan Caras ), and sales of subsi - would appear to be external: Colombia, the dized food staples to low -income consumers multinational oil companies, and the United (Misión Mercal ). States. Interestingly, most analyses of the mi - While Hugo Chávez is certainly siones conveniently forget that these pro - wounded by the electoral defeat in the grams came into being only during 2003, December referendum, he is no more Chávez’s fifth year in office —a year that wounded now than he was in March 2002. would have also been his last , had he not At that point, opinion surveys put his ap - promoted and won a constitutional reform proval ratings percentage in the low 30s, in 1999 that allowed him to extend his stay the country had just undergone a balance of by several years. Before 2003, all Venezuelan payments crisis that had culminated in a anti-poverty programs were coordinated by harsh devaluation, and gross domestic prod - the chronically underfunded Fondo Único uct ( GDP ) had declined by 4.4 percent . But Social (Consolidated Social Fund), and the by provoking the Venezuelan opposition overwhelming majority of them consisted of into attempting an unconstitutional capture the continuation of programs started during of power, and later into calling a national the previous administration of President strike that deepened the recession, Chávez Rafael Caldera (1994–98). was able to shift blame for the economy’s The first misiones come into being almost dismal performance onto his political oppo - at the same time as Chávez reached the mid - nents while using the conflict to rally his point of his 2000 –06 mandate following the base of supporters. Meanwhile, he bought approval of the 1999 constitutional reform. vital time to deploy a new political strategy This coincidence is not trivial: the midpoint based on two key pillars: reverting the of Chávez’s constitutional term also marked widespread perception that his government the moment from which the opposition was inefficient in attacking the problems of could collect signatures to hold a binding poverty and inequality, and using the over - recall referendum on his rule. While the 46 WORLD POLICY JOURNAL • SPRING 2008 government did everything possible to lan human development indicators. 4 The fight the referendum petitions, it also knew rate of poverty reduction between 2003 and sooner or later that it would have to face 2007 has actually been less than what one elections, and that it needed a strategy to would expect given the country’s oil-fuelled revert its marked decline in popularity. The economic expansion. The distribution of in - misiones thus had as their primary objective, come has deteriorated ,5 and infant mortality political as much as social, to alter the im - has essentially followed the declining pre- age shared by the majority of Venezuelans — Chávez trend. Some health and human as well as many observers elsewhere —of the development indicators, such as the percent - Chávez administration as ineffectual in deal - age of underweight newborns or the share of ing with such key problems as poverty and families living in dwellings with dirt floors, inequality. display worrying increases. In sum, the The misiones were also created only “Chávez is good for the poor” hypothesis is months after the Venezuelan opposition’s inconsistent with the facts. strategic blunder of calling for an indefinite Despite these failures, the image of the national strike in December of 2002. The Chávez administration as having significant - failure of the strike left the opposition in ly redistributed oil revenues to the poor is disarray but still dominated by radical anti- ubiquitous. For example, editorialists at The government groups . At the same time, the New York Times have written that “unlike strike allowed the government to shift most of his recent predecessors, [Chávez] has blame for the country’s recession onto the made programs directed at the everyday opposition. The blame was well-deserved — problems of the poor —illiteracy, the hunger estimates of the strike’s effect suggest that for land and inferior health care —the cen - it cost the country upwards of 10 percent tral theme of his administration, and he has of GDP .3 But it also occurred in the context been able to use higher-than-expected oil of a recession already underway which, had revenues to advance social welfare.” 6 This it been left to continue on its own, would contrasts with the evaluation Venezuelans have significantly eroded Chávez’s themselves make of the government’s anti- popularity. poverty programs: a recent survey taken Therefore, in mid-2003, Chávez was by the Venezuelan polling firm Alfredo Keller able to use his victory over the strikers to y Asociados found that 77 percent of those convince voters that the opposition’s eco - polled thought that poverty levels had ei - nomic sabotage had not allowed him to ther stayed the same or had deteriorated effectively govern.
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