Hugo Chávez: The Revolution Will Not be Mediated
I wrote the following piece for Honky, a friend's web magazine, back in March/April 2005. I'm posting it here now in response to some blogging on Chávez that's been taking place at backseatdrivers. I can't recommend strongly enough that people go to Venezuelan blogs to inform themselves on Chávez instead of relying on mainstream media such as the Guardian. I think lots of Irish people feel better informed than most because they got to see the Irish documentary (or was that romcom?) "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". I haven't been in Ireland since 2000 and I can't say that I've followed public reaction there to that production but I think I'm right in saying that it was discredited. To what extent that discreditation has been perceived as a right-wing conspiracy, I don't know, but there are serious critiques of it out there and they're worth looking at. For anybody looking to read Venezuelan political blogs, I recommend Caracas Chronicles. There you'll find links to both pro- and anti-Chávez websites.
Here in Ireland we have often laughed at the characterisation of the Irish that Hollywood has presented time and again over the years. The leprechaun voices and the invariably tipsy police captains notwithstanding, we could never argue that these mischaracterisations were insulting or serious enough for us to take more than slight umbrage at them. And anyway we’ve always had recourse to our European sense of cultural superiority over those dumb Yanks. Yet our own Eurocentrism, and that very sense of cultural superiority, leave us prone to impose, on issues that really are serious, the same simplifications when dealing with countries and continents that normally lie beyond the range of our comfortable 1st world vantage point.
Thus it is with Venezuela, the oil-rich Latin American country that was the birthplace of Simon Bolívar, the 19th century liberator of that whole continent from the yolk of Spanish colonial rule.
The first real ideological war between right and left could be said to have taken place right here in Europe. The Spanish civil war caught the imagination of many young idealists who came running from both the right and the left to fight for their cause. It is interesting that over the last 50 years that ideological war has seen itself transplanted to Spain’s old colonies in Latin American. Western Europe has lived in peace since the 2nd world war and so new generations of ideologues have been more sedentary in their participation in the good fight. Thanks in no small part to our media we’ve come to view Latin American politics as an eternal struggle between leftist saviours of the people and rightwing CIA-backed military and oligarchist coupsters. But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the media are failing to give us an accurate picture of what’s going on in that distant continent. After all, the media treatment of that original ideological battle, theSpanish civil war, was not exactly an exercise in non-bias and objectivity. George Orwell, one of many literary figures who went to fight on behalf of the country’s Republican government, wrote afterwards in Homage to Catalonia: “One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right.” He singled out the then Manchester Guardian as an honorable exception which of the larger British papers was the only one that left him “with an increased respect for its honesty.”
I wonder then what Orwell would make of the Guardian’s coverage of the contemporary situation in Venezuela. The British quality daily has been publishing articles by Richard Gott under the headlines “Racist Rage of the Caracas Elite” and “Loathed by the Rich”. Gott is clearly a subscriber to the conventional right-bad, left- good Lat-Am dichotomy, and wants to convince us that the recent history of Venezuela is a tale of the clash between a heroic champion of the non-white poor masses on one side and a white upperclass minority on the other, who up until Chávez’ arrival had been able to pocket all the wealth produced by this oil-rich nation while scornfully leaving the poor huddled masses to make do in their squalor. His analysis of the situation would appear to be backed up by the Irish-made documentary “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, which presents the current situation as Chávez’ David to the Goliath of the all- powerful “oligarchs” and private media corporations.
But the story of Venezuela under Chávez doesn’t lend itself so easily to the Eurocentric blueprint of Latin American politics. In the years when most of Latin America’s nations were under the yoke of some dicator or other Venezuela largely avoided succumbing to political extremism. It had managed to overthrow the second of its US-endorsed dicators of that century, Marco Perez Jiménez, in 1958 and up until the 1980s lived in relative peace and prosperity. The last 6 years, during which the country has found itself divided by exactly the same kind of political extremism that for so long affected its neighbours and which it had always considered itself immune to, come on the back of almost 20 years of debilitating corruption on the part of various administrations. The incumbent president, Hugo Chávez Frias, elected on an anti-corruption ticket in 1998, is the divisive figure that is responsible for the precarious political situation that Venezuelans fnd themselves in. But the over-simplification of the country’s political crisis by the anti-neoliberal, anti-globalization international left, who have been able to mine a remarkably rich seam in the anti-US, anti-Bush rhetoric of the Venezuelan president, does nothing to help us get a real understanding of what’s happening in Venezuela.
Certainly it is true to say that the military in Latin America are traditionally right-wing. History shows that the Latin American military have never been shy about trying to influence politics. Therefore it should come as no surprise to us to learn that Chávez, who received his complete formal education in the military,
was himself involved in a failed coup attempt to overthrow the government of Carlos Andres Perez in 1992. Today as president of Venezuela he and his supporters celebrate the anniversary of his coup-attempt. At the same time, they loudly dismiss the president’s critics as coup-plotters. In 1994 the imprisoned Chávez was pardoned by Perez’ successor, Rafale Caldera. During his spell in military prison he had been persuaded by supporters to embrace the democratic process and so his party, the MVR (Movement for the 5th Republic), was founded. On emerging from prison Chávez set about looking for a spiritual leader, an experienced political figure who might give him guidance. He found two: Fidel Castro and the by then long-exiled ex-dicator of his own country, Marcos Perez Jimenez. In terms of right- and left-wing politics it would have been hard to find two leaders further apart on the politcal spectrum. If you were forced to explain what they had in common, you’d be hard pressed to say anything other than autocratic tendencies. Indeed Chávez’ embrace of undemocratic figures has been a feature of his presidency. After becoming president he paid a state visit to Saddam Hussein and more recently he bestowed on Robert Mugabe the gift of the Liberator’s sword, the highest honour a non-Venezuelan can receive.
A more than cursory glance at the opposition movement in Venezuela will also cause problems for those who do not wish to see beyond the left-good, right-bad analysis. The Democratic Coordinator is the large coalition of political parties, trades unions and civic groups that have united to oppose Chávez. It is indeed dominated by Venezuela’s 3 traditional political parties and as a result suffers in prestige as these parties will forever be associated by Venezuelans with the rampant corruption of the ‘80s and ‘90s. However the rest of the parties that compose this vast umbrella group are representative of the whole political spectrum. It even counts on the support of the leftist guerrilla organization, Bandera Roja, who in the ‘60s waged war on Venezuela’s governments with the aid of Fidel Castro. And lest we think it safe to try to apply a class-war analysis to the Venezuelan situation, it is important to know that the Venezuelan Communist party was founded in the 1920s by one of the richest families of Caracas, the Machado Zuloaga. Up until recently they owned the electricity grids that supply the capital city with most of its power. Today Chávez is supported by many well-to-do Venezuelans who, it might be said, have a lite approach to left-wing politics.
The image of the Democratic Coordinator will forever be tarnished in international eyes by its involvement in the April 2002 abortive coup against Chávez. Certainly it was opportunistic and rightly should be condemned for its role. That said, the coup was not a well planned and orchestrated conspiracy hatched by the CIA and the old political elite and wildy backed by the private media groups. Rather it came about as a result of the refusal by two high-ranking generals to activate Plan Avilas, a military contingency plan to deal with excessive public disorder. This plan has only been activated once in Venezuela and that was in 1989 when looters ransacked Caracas. The order to shoot looters on sight resulted in the deaths of 277 people. Negotations between the military and the Democratic Coordinator resulted in the head of a business federation, Pedro Carmona, being instated as interim president. Carmona, however, acted foolishly and undemocratically in the immediate 24 hours after his instatement. The military men who had deposed their commander-in-chief in the interests of protecting the constitution were not prepared to go along with the establishment of a right wing regime determined to purge the country’s democratic institutions of all vestiges of Chavismo - especially if that meant shutting down the national assembly. Chávez was swiftly returned to power.
The much vilified private media corporations played a dispicable roll in all this when, in the hours when the coup began to fall apart, they imposed a news blackout on the country. This was an unpardonable attempt to influence events on their part. At the same time questions must be asked about the role played by the state-owned media. There is a media regulation in Venezuela that obliges all channels, private and state-owned alike, to carry broadcasts by the president. Such broadcasts are known as cadenas, or “chains”. Chávez’ cadenas can go on for as long as 8 hours! When shots were fired on opposition protestors outside the presidential palace on the day that Chávez was temporarily ousted, a cadena was taking place. Chávez continued to speak while the shooting went on outside his office The private media corporations, prohibited from interrupting the president’s broadcast, split their signals so as to broadcast simultaneously the shooting event outside the presidential palace and the president’s speech inside. The state-owned channels simply continued with the president’s speech.
A more successful analysis of Hugo Chávez’ administration made be made if one were to look at it in terms of Latin America’s long history of populist leaders. Thanks to its oil, Venezuela is a relatively rich state. The proceeds from the oil have traditionally been distributed by the state. Corruption amongst politicians has been rampant. There is no evidence to point to any combating of this corruption on the part of Chávez’ administration. Chávez is fond of blaming business leaders, the so-called oligarchs, for the state of corruption in Venezuela. Yet it is the Venezuelan government which has access to the vast state funds, not the oligarchs. It’s a bit like tryiing to blame Larry Goodman for all the corruption in Irish politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Chávez’ populist solutions to the problem of poverty in Venezuela have gotten welcome funding from the recent record-high world oil-prices. It remains to be seen if he will be able to sustain this funding in the event of a downturn in the oil market.
Final proof of our 1st world-centric attitude to Latin American and our inherent inability to accord to it the kind of respect that we accord to ourselves comes in the shape of a recent editorial in the Washington Post written by ex-US president, Jimmy Carter. Carter’s Center has been mediating between Chávez and the opposition for more than two years. It gave its blessing to the results of the recent referendum to recall Chávez. The Venezuelan opposition has long argued that the body that oversees electoral affairs in Venezuela is controlled by Chávez and that a politically unaffiliated body is required. The members of this council were chosen by the Venezuelan supreme court, its members in turn having been appointed by Chávez. Carter, writing in the Washington Post about the upcoming US Presidential elections expressed concern along exactly the same lines about the Florida electoral body. Arguing that some basic international conditions for a fair vote were absent in Florida, he went on to say:
“A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place [is essential] . Although rarely perfect in their objectivity, such top administrators are at least subject to public scrutiny and responsible for the integrity of their decisions. Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process.”
The kind of simplification of politics that we insist on using to analyse Latin-America would never be taken seriously if we were to apply it to our own 1st world countries. Similarly, we should not endorse any form of democracy there, which we would not be willing to endorse here. To its credit, the European Union, refused to send obervers to the Venezuelan recall referendum in August because it said that it could not accept the conditions being imposed by the electoral council. Only by confronting our own cultural ideologies and thus treating Latin-Americans equally will we achieve an understanding of the realities of those nations.
Here in Ireland we have often laughed at the characterisation of the Irish that Hollywood has presented time and again over the years. The leprechaun voices and the invariably tipsy police captains notwithstanding, we could never argue that these mischaracterisations were insulting or serious enough for us to take more than slight umbrage at them. And anyway we’ve always had recourse to our European sense of cultural superiority over those dumb Yanks. Yet our own Eurocentrism, and that very sense of cultural superiority, leave us prone to impose, on issues that really are serious, the same simplifications when dealing with countries and continents that normally lie beyond the range of our comfortable 1st world vantage point.
Thus it is with Venezuela, the oil-rich Latin American country that was the birthplace of Simon Bolívar, the 19th century liberator of that whole continent from the yolk of Spanish colonial rule.
The first real ideological war between right and left could be said to have taken place right here in Europe. The Spanish civil war caught the imagination of many young idealists who came running from both the right and the left to fight for their cause. It is interesting that over the last 50 years that ideological war has seen itself transplanted to Spain’s old colonies in Latin American. Western Europe has lived in peace since the 2nd world war and so new generations of ideologues have been more sedentary in their participation in the good fight. Thanks in no small part to our media we’ve come to view Latin American politics as an eternal struggle between leftist saviours of the people and rightwing CIA-backed military and oligarchist coupsters. But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the media are failing to give us an accurate picture of what’s going on in that distant continent. After all, the media treatment of that original ideological battle, theSpanish civil war, was not exactly an exercise in non-bias and objectivity. George Orwell, one of many literary figures who went to fight on behalf of the country’s Republican government, wrote afterwards in Homage to Catalonia: “One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right.” He singled out the then Manchester Guardian as an honorable exception which of the larger British papers was the only one that left him “with an increased respect for its honesty.”
I wonder then what Orwell would make of the Guardian’s coverage of the contemporary situation in Venezuela. The British quality daily has been publishing articles by Richard Gott under the headlines “Racist Rage of the Caracas Elite” and “Loathed by the Rich”. Gott is clearly a subscriber to the conventional right-bad, left- good Lat-Am dichotomy, and wants to convince us that the recent history of Venezuela is a tale of the clash between a heroic champion of the non-white poor masses on one side and a white upperclass minority on the other, who up until Chávez’ arrival had been able to pocket all the wealth produced by this oil-rich nation while scornfully leaving the poor huddled masses to make do in their squalor. His analysis of the situation would appear to be backed up by the Irish-made documentary “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, which presents the current situation as Chávez’ David to the Goliath of the all- powerful “oligarchs” and private media corporations.
But the story of Venezuela under Chávez doesn’t lend itself so easily to the Eurocentric blueprint of Latin American politics. In the years when most of Latin America’s nations were under the yoke of some dicator or other Venezuela largely avoided succumbing to political extremism. It had managed to overthrow the second of its US-endorsed dicators of that century, Marco Perez Jiménez, in 1958 and up until the 1980s lived in relative peace and prosperity. The last 6 years, during which the country has found itself divided by exactly the same kind of political extremism that for so long affected its neighbours and which it had always considered itself immune to, come on the back of almost 20 years of debilitating corruption on the part of various administrations. The incumbent president, Hugo Chávez Frias, elected on an anti-corruption ticket in 1998, is the divisive figure that is responsible for the precarious political situation that Venezuelans fnd themselves in. But the over-simplification of the country’s political crisis by the anti-neoliberal, anti-globalization international left, who have been able to mine a remarkably rich seam in the anti-US, anti-Bush rhetoric of the Venezuelan president, does nothing to help us get a real understanding of what’s happening in Venezuela.
Certainly it is true to say that the military in Latin America are traditionally right-wing. History shows that the Latin American military have never been shy about trying to influence politics. Therefore it should come as no surprise to us to learn that Chávez, who received his complete formal education in the military,
was himself involved in a failed coup attempt to overthrow the government of Carlos Andres Perez in 1992. Today as president of Venezuela he and his supporters celebrate the anniversary of his coup-attempt. At the same time, they loudly dismiss the president’s critics as coup-plotters. In 1994 the imprisoned Chávez was pardoned by Perez’ successor, Rafale Caldera. During his spell in military prison he had been persuaded by supporters to embrace the democratic process and so his party, the MVR (Movement for the 5th Republic), was founded. On emerging from prison Chávez set about looking for a spiritual leader, an experienced political figure who might give him guidance. He found two: Fidel Castro and the by then long-exiled ex-dicator of his own country, Marcos Perez Jimenez. In terms of right- and left-wing politics it would have been hard to find two leaders further apart on the politcal spectrum. If you were forced to explain what they had in common, you’d be hard pressed to say anything other than autocratic tendencies. Indeed Chávez’ embrace of undemocratic figures has been a feature of his presidency. After becoming president he paid a state visit to Saddam Hussein and more recently he bestowed on Robert Mugabe the gift of the Liberator’s sword, the highest honour a non-Venezuelan can receive.
A more than cursory glance at the opposition movement in Venezuela will also cause problems for those who do not wish to see beyond the left-good, right-bad analysis. The Democratic Coordinator is the large coalition of political parties, trades unions and civic groups that have united to oppose Chávez. It is indeed dominated by Venezuela’s 3 traditional political parties and as a result suffers in prestige as these parties will forever be associated by Venezuelans with the rampant corruption of the ‘80s and ‘90s. However the rest of the parties that compose this vast umbrella group are representative of the whole political spectrum. It even counts on the support of the leftist guerrilla organization, Bandera Roja, who in the ‘60s waged war on Venezuela’s governments with the aid of Fidel Castro. And lest we think it safe to try to apply a class-war analysis to the Venezuelan situation, it is important to know that the Venezuelan Communist party was founded in the 1920s by one of the richest families of Caracas, the Machado Zuloaga. Up until recently they owned the electricity grids that supply the capital city with most of its power. Today Chávez is supported by many well-to-do Venezuelans who, it might be said, have a lite approach to left-wing politics.
The image of the Democratic Coordinator will forever be tarnished in international eyes by its involvement in the April 2002 abortive coup against Chávez. Certainly it was opportunistic and rightly should be condemned for its role. That said, the coup was not a well planned and orchestrated conspiracy hatched by the CIA and the old political elite and wildy backed by the private media groups. Rather it came about as a result of the refusal by two high-ranking generals to activate Plan Avilas, a military contingency plan to deal with excessive public disorder. This plan has only been activated once in Venezuela and that was in 1989 when looters ransacked Caracas. The order to shoot looters on sight resulted in the deaths of 277 people. Negotations between the military and the Democratic Coordinator resulted in the head of a business federation, Pedro Carmona, being instated as interim president. Carmona, however, acted foolishly and undemocratically in the immediate 24 hours after his instatement. The military men who had deposed their commander-in-chief in the interests of protecting the constitution were not prepared to go along with the establishment of a right wing regime determined to purge the country’s democratic institutions of all vestiges of Chavismo - especially if that meant shutting down the national assembly. Chávez was swiftly returned to power.
The much vilified private media corporations played a dispicable roll in all this when, in the hours when the coup began to fall apart, they imposed a news blackout on the country. This was an unpardonable attempt to influence events on their part. At the same time questions must be asked about the role played by the state-owned media. There is a media regulation in Venezuela that obliges all channels, private and state-owned alike, to carry broadcasts by the president. Such broadcasts are known as cadenas, or “chains”. Chávez’ cadenas can go on for as long as 8 hours! When shots were fired on opposition protestors outside the presidential palace on the day that Chávez was temporarily ousted, a cadena was taking place. Chávez continued to speak while the shooting went on outside his office The private media corporations, prohibited from interrupting the president’s broadcast, split their signals so as to broadcast simultaneously the shooting event outside the presidential palace and the president’s speech inside. The state-owned channels simply continued with the president’s speech.
A more successful analysis of Hugo Chávez’ administration made be made if one were to look at it in terms of Latin America’s long history of populist leaders. Thanks to its oil, Venezuela is a relatively rich state. The proceeds from the oil have traditionally been distributed by the state. Corruption amongst politicians has been rampant. There is no evidence to point to any combating of this corruption on the part of Chávez’ administration. Chávez is fond of blaming business leaders, the so-called oligarchs, for the state of corruption in Venezuela. Yet it is the Venezuelan government which has access to the vast state funds, not the oligarchs. It’s a bit like tryiing to blame Larry Goodman for all the corruption in Irish politics in the 1980s and 1990s. Chávez’ populist solutions to the problem of poverty in Venezuela have gotten welcome funding from the recent record-high world oil-prices. It remains to be seen if he will be able to sustain this funding in the event of a downturn in the oil market.
Final proof of our 1st world-centric attitude to Latin American and our inherent inability to accord to it the kind of respect that we accord to ourselves comes in the shape of a recent editorial in the Washington Post written by ex-US president, Jimmy Carter. Carter’s Center has been mediating between Chávez and the opposition for more than two years. It gave its blessing to the results of the recent referendum to recall Chávez. The Venezuelan opposition has long argued that the body that oversees electoral affairs in Venezuela is controlled by Chávez and that a politically unaffiliated body is required. The members of this council were chosen by the Venezuelan supreme court, its members in turn having been appointed by Chávez. Carter, writing in the Washington Post about the upcoming US Presidential elections expressed concern along exactly the same lines about the Florida electoral body. Arguing that some basic international conditions for a fair vote were absent in Florida, he went on to say:
“A nonpartisan electoral commission or a trusted and nonpartisan official who will be responsible for organizing and conducting the electoral process before, during and after the actual voting takes place [is essential] . Although rarely perfect in their objectivity, such top administrators are at least subject to public scrutiny and responsible for the integrity of their decisions. Florida voting officials have proved to be highly partisan, brazenly violating a basic need for an unbiased and universally trusted authority to manage all elements of the electoral process.”
The kind of simplification of politics that we insist on using to analyse Latin-America would never be taken seriously if we were to apply it to our own 1st world countries. Similarly, we should not endorse any form of democracy there, which we would not be willing to endorse here. To its credit, the European Union, refused to send obervers to the Venezuelan recall referendum in August because it said that it could not accept the conditions being imposed by the electoral council. Only by confronting our own cultural ideologies and thus treating Latin-Americans equally will we achieve an understanding of the realities of those nations.
posted by purefunction at 4:07 AM
1 Comments:
Great post Purefunction.
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