Simon Rodriguez Porras Miguel Sorans Why did Chavismo fail? A balance sheet from the left opposition Simon Rodriguez Porras Miguel Sorans Why did Chavismo fail? A balance sheet from the left opposition 2018 English translation: Daniel Iglesias Cover design: Jimena de Titto Deleis, Daniel Iglesias Interior design: Daniel Iglesias www.uit-ci.org www.izquierdasocialista.org.ar LaClase.info Copyright by CEHuS , Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Buenos Aires, 2018 [email protected] CEHuS Centro de Estudios Humanos y Sociales Index About the authors ........................................................................................................................................1 Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................2 Chapter I Caracazo: a popular insurrection that changes the Country................................................................4 Chapter II 1999: The first presidency of Chavez begins...........................................................................................12 Chapter III The popular victory against the April 2002 coup and the oil sabotage ............................................18 Chapter IV From the Missions to the false “socialism of the 21st century” ..........................................................26 Chapter V The debate within the left and the Trotskyist movement ...................................................................33 Chapter VI The workers’ movement and Chavismo ..................................................................................................39 Chapter VII The creation of PSUV: co-opting and repression against the workers’ vanguard ............................44 Chapter VIII The Bolibourgeoisie and the Bolivarian Armed Forces ........................................................................53 Chapter IX The creation of PSUV: co-opting and repression against the workers’ vanguard ............................58 Chapter X The classist current in the oil industry ....................................................................................................63 Chapter XI “Expropriate it!” — The swindle of the buying of companies by Chavez ..........................................67 Chapter XII The matter of Latin American integration and relations with Cuba, China, and Russia ...............72 Chapter XIII The last years of Chavez .............................................................................................................................77 Chapter XIV Nicolas Maduro, the heir ...........................................................................................................................83 Epilogue Only true socialism is the alternative .....................................................................................................91 Chronology ..................................................................................................................................................94 Images ...........................................................................................................................................................99 About the authors Simon Rodriguez Porras is a leader of Partido Socialismo y Libertad (Socialism and Liberty Party, PSL) of Venezuela and an internationalist militant. He writes for w, on the page LaClase.info and other alternative electronic media. His articles have been translated into six languages and he has given conferences in Argentina and Brazil on the Venezuelan crisis. Miguel Sorans is a leader of Izquierda Socialista (Socialist Left) of Argentina and of International Workers Unity - Fourth International (IWU-FI). In 1979, he headed the Simon Bolivar Brigade, which fought in Nicaragua along with the Sandinistas against the Somoza dictatorship. For a few years, he lived and was politically active in Venezuela, under the Chavez government. Editorial CEHuS Page 1 Simon Rodriguez Porras, Miguel Sorans Introduction Venezuela is the centre of an important global debate. The images of thousands of humble people claiming for food or medicine, crossing by foot the borders with Colombia and Brazil, escaping from the economic and social debacle, the news of looting and repression, they illustrate the free fall to which the government, headed by Hugo Chavez and continued by his heir Nicolas Maduro, led the country. All these facts fuel the discussion about the fate of Chavismo, a political project that a decade ago still aroused great enthusiasm in important sectors of youth, trade union, and left activism in Latin America and the world. The title of this book is the question asked by hundreds of thousands of people who in one way or another sympathise with anti-imperialism and the left. Why did Chavismo fail? On the one hand, there are those who accept the theses of Maduro and Chavismo, attributing the debacle to various conspiracies and a supposed “economic war” of the “empire”. On the other hand, we have the big media and most of the governments and bourgeois political apparatus of the world, led by the United States, taking advantage of the disaster in Venezuela to conclude that “socialism” has again failed. These two explanations are wrong since they do not correspond to the reality of the events that have taken place. All the evidence show that in the Venezuela of Chavismo there was neither socialism nor “economic war”. Starting from there we, can approach a response that accounts for this other failure of a political and social model that claimed to be “progressive” and of the “left” but ruled without breaking with the capitalist frameworks and negotiating with multinationals. Extracting lessons from what happened is an essential task for all those who really want the changes that would end the domination of capitalism and imperialism. This book aims to contribute to this necessary debate. We do so from the perspective of militancy in the International Workers Unity–Fourth International (IWU-FI), a revolutionary socialist current that claims as its teacher the Trotskyist leader Nahuel Moreno, who died in 1987. We gather the experience and the struggle carried out and still being carried out by the militants of this current in Venezuela, which has the workers’ leader Orlando Chirino as its most representative figure. “Morenism” exists in Venezuela since the 1970s when Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores (Socialist Workers Party – PST) was founded. At the end of that decade, there was the confluence of PST with the group headed by Orlando Chirino, Proletarian MIR, which published La Chispa [The Spark], whose militants mostly joined Morenism. The name PST was kept and the newspaper continued to be called La Chispa. In the 1990s there was a period of crisis and dispersion, although there always developed a militancy of workers and class. The emergence of the Chavez political phenomenon and the confrontation with the pro-imperialist coup of April 2001 led to a new reorganisation from a position of class independence. In August 2002, the organisation Opcion de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Option, OIR) was formed, which began to publish Oir a los Trabajadores [Listen to the Workers], with the participation of Orlando Chirino, members Page 2 www.uit-ci.org / LaClase.info Why did Chavismo fail? of IWU–FI, and militant union fighters. In July 2005, Partido Revolucion y Socialismo (Revolution and Socialism Party, PRS) was founded to challenge Chavez for the banners of true socialism. In 2008 the members of IWU–FI form Unidad Socialista de Izquierda (Socialist Left Unity, USI), whose publication is Voz de los Trabajadores [Workers’ Voice]. In December 2010 Partido Socialismo y Libertad (Socialism and Liberty Party, PSL) was founded, being the current section of IWU–FI. Precisely the main protagonists of this book are the leaders and members of this current that today make up PSL in Venezuela. The book is the systematization of two decades of militant participation in the Venezuelan process, adverse from the left to both the Chavez government and the pro-Yankee bosses’ opposition, now grouped in MUD. It was in the heat of intense struggles in the union, student, and popular arena, and also in the tenacious effort to build a revolutionary organisation, that the documents, statements, and overviews that make up most of the sources of this book were elaborated. Thus, it is also no coincidence we dedicate this book to our seven working-class comrades killed by hired assassins linked to the union bureaucracy and the authorities of the Chavez government. Crimes which are still unpunished. It is important to clarify to readers we completed this book in February 2018. It is not a minor clarification, for the reality of Venezuela changes from one day to the next in the dizzying debacle to which it was led by Chavismo. Anything can happen, the crisis is global, and nothing remains stable; from the rate of devaluation and hyperinflation, the number of Venezuelan refugees in the world, to the situation of Nicolas Maduro’s own government. What will not change is the depletion and failure of Chavismo as a reference for Latin American and world activism. And neither will the conviction of our current change that it will be the struggle of the Venezuelan workers and people for true socialism, the only way out of the social debacle and the humanitarian catastrophe that Venezuela is going through. The editors Buenos Aires, April