Critical Times

Why would anyone want to go to Venezuela when it is so off the beaten track that most Australians travel? Well, Columbus did and quite a few conquistadors followed him. They were after El Dorado (Rivers of Gold) and almost 400 yrs later, rivers of liquid gold – black oil that is – were discovered. Still is this enough to visit a tourist backwater? Then there is the intriguing personality of the country’s leader, President Chavez. He attracts a lot of attention, much of it negative from the US Whitehouse, Australian Government and mainstream media. Foreign Minister Downer once described Hugo Chavez as ‘puerile’, for his denunciation of Bush as Mr Danger. A bit rich coming from one who saw humour in domestic violence, “…as the things that batter!” Is Venezuela just a podium for Chavez as a populist president? Apparently not, for there is something quite fundamental going on in this country and is starting to reverberate throughout the rest of the South American continent.

To find out more about this maverick country there was no better way but to visit the place. The Australian Venezuelan Solidarity Network was organising a brigade in December 2006 to coincide with the Venezuelan Presidential Elections. This was a chance not to be missed, so Max Oz caught a plane ride to this Caribbean nation in early November.

After a short time of finding my feet and doing the tourist bit of sight seeing – such as the Simon Bolivar history trail in Caracas; visiting Ciudad Bolivar, Canaima and Angel Falls – the brigade started with an orientation session at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV). Here 36 members of the brigade listen to 2 guest speakers: Dr Marcelo Alfonso (Professor in medical biology at the UCV) and Gregory Wilpert (Editor of Venezuela Analysis website).

Dr Alfonso gave a brief overview of Venezuela’s history and causes for Chavez’s Fifth Republic.

Prior to the Spanish Conquest, there were approximately 34 indigenous groups, with a population of 800,000 inhabiting the area of Venezuela. Their main agriculture produce was coffee beans and coca. Venezuela was the first Latin American country to win independence from Spain in 1810. This struggle saw 340 battles fought and half the population of Venezuela killed. During the independence 3 Republics were founded, then a 4th republic established during a Civil War, which lasted from 1830 to 1900.

Oil was discovered in 1912, during the time of the Gomez Dictatorship, which lasted from 1908 to 1935. However the economic benefits flowing from the oil production, other than paying off Venezuela’s foreign debt, were mostly reaped by US oil corporations. From 1958 onwards government in Venezuela reverted back to parliamentary democracy, as a result of the 3 major bourgeois-democratic parties – Action Democratica (AD), Comite de Organizacion Politica Electoral Independiente (COPEI) and Union Republicana Democratica (URD) – signing the “Pact of Punto Fijo”. This agreement put aside their political jockeying and laid the basis for the political tweedledum to tweedledee consensus that continued until the late 1980s. Meshed in with this was the insidious ‘clientalist’ politics of the country, where people were co-opted into AD and COPEI and bribed with a share of the crumbs from the Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) huge oil revenues. Over the next 40 years the economic and social situation for ordinary people deteriorated. During this period government swung between two parties, AD and COPEI. However economic power lay with the Transnationals and Oil Corporations.

In 1989 the AD government of Perez took office and the tidal wave of neoliberalism replaced the ‘clientalist’ politics of the past. This government implemented a strategic plan for the (neoliberal) restructuring of the economy straight out of the song sheet of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The economic strategy included – ending price controls on goods and services, devaluing the currency, large and successive reductions of import tariffs, increasing prices on public goods and services, reducing taxes on business and the wealthy and liberalising interest rates. February 27, 1989 the government’s first price hikes took affect and the people of Venezuela counter attacked with El Caracazo – protests, road blockades, street barricades, and shop invasions. Perez brought in the army to carry out a massive and violent crackdown, which by March 4 claimed at least 400 dead and injuries in the thousands.

This shocked elements of the army and was the beginning of fusing the new “street democracy” of the poor with the political movement that emerged out of the army in the early 1980s. This movement, the Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 (MBR-200), arose from the democratic aspirations of a generation of junior officers drawn from the poor masses and educated in a unique military and social setting. Hugo Chavez became the central leader of this revolutionary movement. The MBR-200 inspired by the 1989 Caracazo, planned a coup for May 1992 to coincide with a general strike. When the coup had to be put forward, fearing that the MBR-200 plans had been discovered, the organisation of the strike proved weak. Many of the officers and soldiers who participated in the coup and most of their leaders ended up in jail and were persecuted. The coup had earned them notoriety and a certain respect from the masses, who were unaccustomed to seeing any of the country’s leaders assume responsibility for their deeds. Chavez publicly assumed responsibility for the coup and became famous for accepting the punishment meted out to him.

Once out of jail the MBR-200 leadership set a course for an electoral campaign. Chavez and other MBR-200 leaders traveled the entire country meeting with communities and making links with community leaders and established in 1997, the Movimiento para la Quinta Republica (MVR). At the heart of the MVR’s political platform was the refounding of the Venezuelan Republic based on a new, democratic constitution. Polls at the time gave Chavez 8% in the presidential race. However he won the December 1998 election with a majority of 56%. The new government convoked a “constituent assembly” to draft a new constitution. The new constitution was approved by a majority of 129 votes to 2 and then approved in a referendum by 70% of the population. The new ‘Bolivarian Constitution’, named in honour of Simon Bolivar the liberator from the Colonial Spanish, established a democratic foundation for national politics not known in Latin American, where participation of the people in the development, execution and control of public power was implemented and guaranteed.

To improve the lot of the poor, Chavez turned to the the army and on February 27 1999, the 10th anniversary of El Caracazo uprising, he launched Plan Bolivar 2000. The plan mobilised the army to carry out massive social works programs – constructing housing for the poor, dealing with health and nutritional problems and assisting with a range of other public projects. Over two years Plan Bolivar 2000 built more homes than had been built in the previous 20 years. In July 2000 new elections were held and the Chavez forces won a majority in congress and Chavez was re-elected president. The Chavez government enacted 49 new pieces of legislation involving substantial reforms of the economy and the government bureaucracy – a land reform law, laws privileging small and medium industry and the Hydrocarbons law aimed at re-organising the national oil company PDSVA. These laws represented a real and massive threat to the old Venezuelan oligopoly and US imperialists.

Following the US and Venezuelan ruling class-instigated short-lived coup deposing Chavez for two days in April, 2002 and the crippling and destabilizing 2002 – 03 oil strike, Chavez’s enlightened Bolivarian economic and social programs cut the level of poverty nearly in half from around 62% to where it is today at about one-third of the population, a dramatic improvement unmatched anywhere in Latin America. Along with that improvement are the essential social benefits now made available to everyone in the country by law. In Venezuela, the Constitution stipulates that all the people are assured political, economic and social justice under a system of participatory democracy guaranteeing everyone a legal right to essential social services and the right to participate in how the country is run. The services include free high quality health and dental care as a “fundamental social right and….responsibility….of the state,” housing assistance, improved pensions, food assistance for the needy, job training to provide skills for future employment, free education to the highest level that eliminated illiteracy and much more including the full rights of citizenship for everyone including the right to vote in free, fair and open democratic elections.

Chavez wants to expand existing programs and advance his Bolivarian Project to the next level implementing his vision of Socialism for the 21st century. His December 3rd, 2006 landslide electoral victory now gives him a mandate to do it, and during the pre-election campaign announced he wanted to move ahead in 2007 with the formation of a single united political party of the Bolivarian Revolution to further “consolidate and strengthen” the Bolivarian spirit. The gathering pace of the Bolivarian Revolution, and Chavez for that matter, has now become a monumental threat to the US and Venezuelan oligarchs – a good example spreading slowly through the region inspiring people throughout Latin America to want the same kinds of social benefits and democratic rights Venezuelans now enjoy.

By Max Oz