Mr. Danger and Socialism for the
New Millennium
The Venezuelan Bolivarian revolution
by Maria Páez Victor
Z magazine, June 2006
Throughout most of its history, there
has been very little interest in North America about Venezuela
except as a supplier of oil. With the election of Hugo Chávez
in 1999 all this changed. He ushered in the Bolivarian Revolution,
founded on ideas expounded in the 19th century by Simón
Bolívar, the liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Bolivia,
Ecuador, and Perú. Its basic principles are that natural
resources are for the benefit of all citizens, the state is guardian
and promoter of civic and social human rights, and citizens are
fundamental protagonists in political life. Its foreign policy
is based on Latin American and Caribbean integration and solidarity.
With the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela has become the most
exciting, innovative, and progressive developing country in the
world.
On June 1, 2002 in a speech at West Point,
President George Bush made an unprecedented assertion that the
U.S. has the right to overthrow any government in the world that
is seen as a threat to U.S. security. This may have been startling
news to the world, but not to Latin Americans. Since 1846 the
United States has carried out no fewer than 50 military invasions
and destabilizing operations involving 12 different Latin American
countries. Yet, none of these countries has ever had the capacity
to threaten U.S. security in any significant way. The U.S. intervened
because of perceived threats to its economic control and expansion.
For this reason it has also supported some of the region's most
vicious dictators, such as Batista, Somoza, Trujillo, and Pinochet.
The Venezuelan people have chosen President
Hugo Chávez and his government in nine free, transparent,
and internationally observed elections and referenda during the
seven years since he was first elected. President Bush supported
a 2002 bloody coup against the Chavez government, financed and
supported a devastating oil lockout that cost the country $14
billion in export revenues, and assisted numerous opposition maneuvers,
disturbances, and a recall referendum. The U.S. continues to finance
the opposition there.
Recently, the Bush administration has
stepped up its aggressive stance against Venezuelan democracy.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has compared President
Chávez with Hitler and U.S. Director for National Intelligence
John Negroponte stated that Venezuela is the main security challenge
in this hemisphere. U.S. Secretary of State Condolezza Rice told
a Senate committee last February 16 that Venezuela is "a
particular danger to the region" and that she is "working
with others" to try and make certain that there is a united
front against Venezuela. To this President Chávez has responded
by saying, "Mr. Danger, you form your front and we will form
ours." (Mr. Danger was the name Hugo Chávez gave to
Bush during his 2005 visit to Latin America. Mr. Danger is a longstanding
figure in Venezuelan, a character in the novel Doña Barbara
by Venezuelan writer Romulo Gallegos. The character typifies the
scornful foreigner who usurps locally-owned land.)
The main reason behind President Bush's
aggression towards this small country that has minimal armed capacity
is quite obvious: oil. Venezuela is the fifth largest oil exporting
country in the world and is sitting on the largest oil reserves
in the hemisphere. It supplies the U.S. with 1.2 million barrels
daily; supply that has not been in any danger of stopping-until
President Bush came along.
Another reason for the Bush administration's
aggressive stance towards Venezuela is that President Chávez
has made possible a new political and economic reality that directly
challenges globalization and neo-conservative policies (or neo-liberal
as they are referred to in Latin America) pushed by the IMF, the
World Bank, the WTO, and multinational corporations. The so-called
Washington Consensus-consisting of privatization of public services,
deregulation, lifting of tariffs, unrestricted investment flows,
and free access of large corporations to public contracts and
domestic markets-were measures foisted on Latin American governments
by making them conditions of international loans and even by threats.
Touted as instruments of development,
they have been a spectacular failure by almost any indicator:
* Between 1960-80 income per person in
Latin America grew by 82 percent whereas in the next 20 years,
it grew only by 9 percent and in the last 5 years, it has grown
by only 1 percent
* In one decade, the number of poor increased by 14 million
* From 1990 to 2002 U.S. banks and multinational corporations
remitted $1 trillion in profits, interest payments, and royalties
from Latin America
* In the 1990s more than $178 billion of state-owned industries
were privatized, more than 20 times the value of privatization
in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union
None of this could have occurred without the willing collaboration
of Latin American elites and their satellite middle classes. Venezuela,
in particular, has the most Americanized middle class on the continent
by virtue of the penetration of the oil industry early on. The
sham 40-year elite-driven democracy left oil-rich Venezuela in
1998 with: *
* 80 percent of its population in poverty
* 75 percent of arable land in the hands of 5 percent of the population
* crumbling schools and hospitals
* 70 percent school dropout rate
* 7 percent illiteracy rate
* 60 to 70 percent of the people without access to basic medical
care
A study of Venezuela's elites in the 1960s by U.S. sociologist
Frank Bonilla, The Failure of the Elites, details how oil companies
and others in the U.S. community in Venezuela acted as a socializing
agent to produce leaders for Venezuela in business, politics,
the armed forces, and the police. Bonilla describes an elite whose
perspective was totally devoid of a role for the mass of the people,
that had little or no sustained contact with them, and that felt
no obligation to meet the needs of the population. Analysts observing
the Venezuelan situation ten years later described the majority
of the population as "spectators to politics, marginal recipients,
subject only to the bounty of election campaigns."
President Chávez's Achievements
Venezuelans have set up a model of electoral
revolution for participatory democracy that has reverberated throughout
Latin America and the entire developing world. This is a peaceful
revolution, or as Venezuelans affectionately call it, "la
revolution bonita" (the pretty revolution), which is now
a viable and visible alternative, a new model. It challenges the
U.S. hegemonic ideology promoted by the neo-conservatives who
control the state power in the U.S.
By using oil revenues for the public good,
the government of President Chávez has done what previous
elite-dominated governments failed to do: provide for the basic
political, economic, and social needs of the population. Oil revenue
is now used for universal health services, education at all levels,
clean water, food security, micro credits, support for small and
middle range industry, land distribution and deeds for de-facto
owners, worker cooperatives, and infrastructure, such as roads
and railways and support for independent community radio. Most
importantly, there is promotion of citizen participation in all
government programs, including policy consultation. This has never
been done before in Venezuela and is rare throughout the developing
world. As President Chávez has asserted, "Si queremos
acabar con la pobreza hay que darle poder a los pobres" (If
we want to get rid of poverty we must give power to the poor).
The results have been spectacular:
*Venezuela has been declared free of illiteracy
by UNESCO
* Infant mortality has been significantly lowered
* 70 percent of its citizens now have free health services in
their communities
* Almost half the population is studying
* Poverty dropped to 37 percent in 2005
* The economy grew by 9.4 percent in 2005, the highest in Latin
America, with most of this growth occurring in the non-oil sector
(increased by 10.3 percent, while the oil sector increased 1.2
percent)
President Chávez's foreign policy is based on Bolivar's
idea of Latin American integration. Venezuela is trading oil for
goods, oil for physicians with Cuba, and investing in joint ventures
with its neighboring nations. It has given preferential oil prices
to impoverished Caribbean countries, has set up PetroSur, a consortium
of state oil companies, and TeleSur, a regional TV channel that
will allow Latin Americans to broadcast to each other unmediated
by CNN. The achievements of its domestic policies and the solidarity-based
foreign policy of the Chávez government take on profound
significance in contrast to the effects of the Washington Consensus.
The bedrock of the Venezuelan government
is its constitution, created by an elected constitutional assembly,
with widespread public consultation and ratification in a referendum.
Lauded as the most progressive constitution in Latin America,
it has some elements that make it unique in the world. It guarantees
the rights of women as well as children; full rights over land,
culture, and language to aboriginal peoples; environmental rights;
and the enshrining of public participation. It also guarantees
social human rights, such as the right to health care, education,
work, and food. It has given the state a role as a promoter of
civic and social rights. It is unique in that it recognizes the
right of "housewives" to social benefits and it specifically
uses both female and male nouns and pronouns, thereby asserting
the active role of women. It gives constitutional parity to all
international human rights treaties signed by Venezuela-this is
the constitution that the leaders of the 2002 coup temporarily
suspended with the support of the U.S. government.
No government is perfect, certainly not
one that has inherited a weak, inefficient state bureaucracy,
which is battling underdevelopment, struggling to maintain the
rule of law amid a culture of corruption, and where key and powerful
elements of civil society are anti-democratic and backed by the
U.S. Nevertheless, the government of President Chávez has
not once suspended constitutional guarantees, despite the extreme
provocation of a coup d'etat, irresponsible media calls to violence
and racism, crippling lockouts, and street riots. While rights
abuses may occur, as they do in the region, Venezuela's record
on human rights is excellent compared to Colombia, Peru, Honduras,
México, and other neighboring countries.
In Venezuela there are no illegal political
prisoners, no secret prisons, no displaced populations, no practice
of torture, no illegal detentions, and no invasions of other countries.
With the support of the International Development Bank, Venezuela
is undergoing a comprehensive judicial reform to modernize and
correct a judicial system that had long been disreputable.
The majority of Venezuelan citizens are
judging President Chávez's government not by some ideal
concept of democracy, revolution, or socialism, but by the wasteland
of their recent history. The previous supposed democracy was a
façade for plunder and abuse by wealthy upper classes that
reaped the benefits of the nation's oil wealth while caring very
little for the impoverished majority. Neither are they following
any model from Russia, China, or Cuba. In contrast Venezuela's
Bolivarian Revolution is distinguished by eager citizen participation,
which closes any gulf between politicians and the people they
are to serve. This is the foundation for the socialism of the
21st century that Venezuelans hope to develop. Despite the best
efforts of Mr. Danger to derail them, the Venezuelan people are
going their own way and they deserve the chance to determine their
destiny in a peaceful and democratic manner.
From Maria Victor's lecture at the Walter
Gordon/Massey Symposium, University of Toronto.
Venezuela page
Home Page