The New Colossus: Chavez and the Democratic Revolutionaries of Latin America

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sadegh
by sadegh
23-May-2008
 

Last month saw the popular election to the presidential office of a bearded and bespectacled cleric. Perhaps an image of the former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, is what immediately comes to mind, with long trailing robes, jet-black turban and a meticulously trimmed beard. The election in question, however, was not as one’s initial reaction might lead one to think, in the Arab or Muslim world, but in the small Latin American Republic of Paraguay. The victory of Fernando Lugo, a Catholic Archbishop, to Paraguay’s highest office marks yet another victory for a diverse array of populist, leftist and so-called ‘pro-poor’ forces currently making waves throughout South America. Lugo interestingly considers himself a passionate advocate of the practice of ‘liberation theology,’ which stresses the crucial role of Christianity in alleviating the plight of the ‘tired, poor and huddled masses’, to paraphrase the19th century American poet Emma Lazarus.


Several other ‘ballot-box’ revolutions have gripped Latin America, bringing the likes of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia (the first indigenous president in Bolivia’s history), Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, and a number of others, to power on a veritable tidal wave of popular support. The professed inspiration of this new generation of Latin American leaders is the near legendary figure of Simón Bolívar, a leading figure in the liberation of several South American territories from Spanish colonialism at the beginning of the 19th century. It is his words and deeds which imbue much of the rhetorical backbone into Chavez’s own much touted ‘Bolivarian Revolution’.


The fact that an ailing Fidel Castro officially announced his retirement in February of this year after some 47 years in power seems to reinforce a growing trend; one that marks an end of the ‘old guard’ of Latin American leaders who had pursued their ideological vision by revolutionary means and militant vanguardism in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, and which began with the October Revolution of 1917 when the Bolsheviks first seized power, which went on to be partially emulated in the course of the Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong in 1949 and once more in the form of Castro and Che Guevara’s ascendance to power in the Cuban Revolution of 1959, when they ousted the authoritarian ally of the United States, General Batista. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent end of the Cold War pretty much determined Cuba’s fate, since it could no longer rely on the large Soviet subsidies to which it had become accustomed; but Castro’s exit from the political dramatis personae of Latin America, nonetheless remains a watershed moment.


ding to the United Nations over one billion people inhabit slums in the cities of the South. Those whom pack the outskirts of cities such as Caracas, La Paz, Quito, Buenos Aires and Bogotá form part of this now global phenomenon. The residents of these slums along with a broad and often loosely gathered coalition of grassroots organizations form the gamut of the social and political base of this new generation of leaders.[i] No longer content with their lot, they’ve become tired of a life stymied by abject poverty and pauperism, while a handful of individuals in the highest echelons of government continue to amass astounding wealth through backhanders and corruption; treating the public coffers as if they were their very own personal piggybanks. The world-renown urban theorist Mike Davis in his important book, Planet of the Slums, has likened these slum-dwelling masses to a volcano that could explode at any moment unless something is done to assuage the social conditions under which they presently eke out a lamentable and utterly destitute existence.[ii] Fortunately the vast majority thus far remain content to engage in the democratic process and lever those politicians into power who claim to represent and speak on behalf of their interests.


A slew of commentators have suggested that as a result of some twisted work of fate, the Iraq War has at least in part, provided Latin America with some much needed breathing room from Washington’s ever watchful and often intrusive eye, and so the opportunity to reinvigorate and embolden the democratic grass roots movements within their respective societies, which had until recent decades been suppressed and dormant due to years military and oligarchic authoritarianism. The Middle East, above all, the Iraq War, has kept US officials preoccupied for the last 5 years and will most likely continue to do so for the time being; the next 100 years if Republican nominee John McCain's vision for the future of American foreign policy vis-à-vis Iraq is to be realized.


Another contributing factor is that the new generation of political leaders that have arrived on the scene who are fully cognizant of the fact that the most expedient way of seizing power is by means of numbers. With countries such as Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala on their way to recovery in the aftermath of years of brutalization at the hands of military dictatorship, civil war, and foreign interference, a rich welter of groups and movements have been able to flourish within a democratic framework and intend to use their numbers to make up for their lack of means. These disparate set of political parties, social and community groups have sought to take advantage of the new mass politics that has arrived on the scene, with a huge swathe of the population now demanding they be heard. Politics up to now had merely been a series of more or less continuous battles amongst the criollo elite, the white descendants of the Spanish colonialists, while the Indian and African populations were forced to look on as mere spectators while they fate was decided for them .[iii] The landed classes and mine owners traditionally presided over excluded populations of poor workers on large estates, small plots and in the mining towns.


Hugo Chavez, the current president of Venezuela, is one of the most interesting and flamboyant members of this new generation of Latin American leaders. Moreover, Venezuela is the largest producer of oil in Latin America and so can’t be ignored, whatever one’s opinion might be of the Venezuelan president. Six years prior to his presidential victory, Chavez, led a band of young military officers to stage a coup against the repressive government of Carlos Andrés Pérez. The coup failed and Chavez was subsequently jailed. He was however catapulted into the national spotlight and dubbed a hero by scores of Venezuelans who had participated in the riots that had rocked Caracas three years previously and which came to be known as El Caracazo. A year later Pérez was impeached and found guilty of embezzling some $200 million in government funds. Prior to his election Pérez had railed against both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and made stacks of promises to channel Venezuela’s massive oil wealth into projects that would benefit the 60% of his compatriots who live below the poverty line. In the course of his second term Pérez had enacted a series of ‘structural readjustments’ today known as the ‘Washington Consensus’. In exchange for the $4.5 billion loan the IMF had put on the table, price controls on basic necessities were lifted and subsidies were slashed. The measures enforced by the Pérez government were not only greatly resented but would leave scars. Those who had been worst hit by such measures would later go on to vote in droves for Chavez, since it was the ‘Washington Consensus’, which Chavez would claim amongst the foremost targets of his own brand of ‘socialism for the 21st century’.


Despite vehement opposition to his plans from an extremely powerful ten percent of the country’s criollo elite, who possess of the lion’s share of Venezuela’s wealth (10% of the Venezuelan population control 50% of the nation’s wealth), Chavez’s government has sought to better the dire conditions in which some 80% of the Venezuelan populace are forced to endure. In 2003 an extensive inventory of the impact of Chavez’s economic reforms was done by two prestigious consulting firms and produced some remarkable results. The poorest half of the country has seen their incomes increase by 130 per cent in real terms. Access to clean water has gone up from 79 per cent to 91 per cent. Access to medical care has also advanced by leaps and bounds. In 1998, prior to Chavez’s election, there were 1,628 primary care doctors in the country. Today, there are 19,571; ten times as many as had existed previously.[iv] The health budget since Chavez had taken office tripled.[v] Furthermore, 1.2 million illiterate adults have been taught to read and write and secondary education has been made available to 250,000 children whose social status had previously excluded them under the old system.


Many have voiced warranted concerns regarding the role of the military in public life and some of Chavez’s attempts to strengthen the hand of the executive vis-à-vis the other branches of government, thereby weakening the system of check and balances on executive power. These are certainly a cause for concern and should continue to be assiduously monitored.[vi] The new Venezuelan constitution which was overwhelmingly approved in a referendum sought to create a more direct relationship between the executive and the electorate, which has on the most superficial level been evinced by Chavez’s hosting a weekly television and radio program Hello President in which Venezuelans phone in from across the country to air their grievances to their larger than life president.


A point however that is often overlooked is that since his convincing electoral victory in 1998, Chavez has won a further two elections with an overwhelming majority in 2000 and more recently in December 2006. He also won by a considerable margin a recall referendum in August 2004 spearheaded by the opposition, which international observers from around the world, including the Carter Center declared unequivocally free and fair. Former President Jimmy Carter himself stated that the election was amongst the freest he had ever witnessed.[vii]


Perhaps most famously, and captured first-hand by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O’Briain in their documentary film, The Revolution Will Not be Televised, the opposition, with the support of both the Spanish and American governments, led by the then head of the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce, Pedro Carmona, staged a military coup d’état with the complicity of the privately owned media, 95 per cent of which then belonged to the Venezuelan opposition. Chavez was kidnapped, but refused to resign. As millions flooded the streets of Caracas demanding their president be reinstated, the military lost their nerve and returned Chavez to the presidential palace of Miraflores.[viii] Almost none of the coup plotters were jailed, but they have continued their efforts unabated to bring the Chavez government to its knees in the form of strikes as well as more subterranean chicanery.


As the UK Independent’s Johann Hari has argued, Chavez faces an unenviable dilemma. A powerful, highly motivated and undemocratic minority outraged by the fact that their hitherto unquestioned position of power and privilege has been eroded have made it their unwavering ambition to topple the Chavez government. At the same time Chavez must avoid the steady slide into autocracy, so often paved with good intentions. There is no definitive answer to this balancing act which has been thrust upon him, only time will reveal whether Chavez in the longer term, will side with the democratic process which expedited his controversial rise to power. His respect for the results of the December 2007 referendum where he was only narrowly defeated, 51% to 49% in favor of the opposition, has been viewed as a positive sign. The referendum aimed at ending limits on presidential terms i.e. the number of times the president can run for re-election after two successive terms in office, halting the central bank's autonomy and shortening the working week. Chavez respected the democratic will of the people and thereby reassured the overwhelming majority who never wish to return to the dark days of authoritarianism and arbitrary arrest which have blighted the history of Latin America throughout the course of the 20th century.


© Sadegh Kabeer

[i] Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, Richard Gott, Verso, 2005, p272


[ii] Planet of the Slums, Mike Davis, Verso, 2006


[iii] Baseball’s Loss, Geoffrey Hawthorn, London Review of Books, 1 November 2007


[iv] Chavez must avoid the trap of dictatorship, Johann Hari, The Independent, 19 November 2007


[v] Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, Tariq Ali, Verso, 2006, p70


[vi] Venezuela: Hugo Chavez’s Revolution, Latin America Report No. 19, www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=4674&l=1


[vii] Pirates of the Caribbean, Tariq Ali, p71


[viii] A Coup Countered, Maurice Lemoine, Le Monde Diplomatique, May 2002

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Parthian and David ET, great

by Farhad Kashani (not verified) on

Parthian and David ET, great reposnces. His personal attack on me is very typicall of him and like-minded people. They always do that when have nothing logical to say back.


sadegh

Iranians cry for democracy

by sadegh on

Iranians cry for democracy and then can't even accept it when it occurs in another people's country!!! Such individuals vindicate the Orientalists claim that we're congenitally incapable of it...Thankfully they only speak for a tiny minority...Fred nothing has been disproven by these comments...Also I advise everyone to look at Fred's page and see that the guy has not contributed a single thing, all he does is write nasty little comments...the true sign of a man of resentiment in the Nietzschean sense. Again, the new generation of Latin American leaders are 'revolutionary' because they won elections VIA THE BALLOT BOX, Chavez has been elected 4 TIMES SINCE HE WAS 1998 and the elections have been subject to INTERNATIONAL MONITORING!!! David, I respect that your points are worthy of debate, unlike those of Fred and Parthian. So as I have said, the 'revolutionary' time in the Marxist-Leninist sense is dead. I made this clear - the new generation of which I am speaking are a truly 'revolutionary' break from the history of authoritarianism as seen in the regimes of the Southern Cone and the rest of Latin America. Unless you actually think the status quo ante, where fascist military juntas backed by Washington were a good thing, and if so, I would appreciate you stating so unequivocally. If not, and I don't believe you do, then I ask how can you ignore the DEMOCRATIC revolution which has taken place in Latin America and siginificantly empowered as a result the the hitherto economically deprived and electorally disenfranchised. I am writing in capitals for Fred and Parthian and all the other oversimplifiers because either you haven't read the article, or simply aren't interested in the FACTS!!! No Parthian I have never been to Venezuela, but I don't think a holiday entitles me to speak for an entire people, I am not so arrogant to make such an asinine argument and I am not gesturing in my article to speak for Venezuelans...I just thought I would share my research with others, your lack of humility is obvious and saddening...You're welcome to disagree but baseless denunciations are the sign of a mental midget...Finally, let me pose a question to you Parthian, when was the last time you were in Iran? This is a rhetorical question because I don't expect you to tell the truth. I'm guessing you've been away for quite a while, you are therefore not 'on the ground' to use your bosom buddy Fred's lame phrase and therefore aren't entitled to speak about Iran or for Iranians, according TO YOUR OWN LOGIC!!!

Kind regards, Sadegh


Fred

Pravdaesque realities

by Fred on

The insurmountable problem commentators of lefty/cyberspace Anti-imperialist persuasion face time and again is the ability of their targeted audience to cross check their conjured up “facts” with facts on the ground. The times of Pravda proscribing facts and in their place prescribing the Commie manufactured reality are long gone.  


David ET

enough with "revolutionaries" PLEASE !

by David ET on

I do not support US position toward Chavez (or Cuba) but much of their problem is also caused by their empty slogans which are intended to decieve their public.

Aligning Venezulela in American contineent with regimes miles away in Iran and terrorist groups of Middle East is NOT in the best interest of Venezuelan people!!

I am very familiar with Latin America first hand through travel and business and Venrezuela is turning to an eyesore if such policies continue.

I also was surprised to read your analysis about Lula in Brazil. I give credit to Lula for Brazil's growth but him and his party have also been extremely corrupt relying on the uneduacted in Brazil. One thing I assure yoy is that he is not a "revolutionary"!

Days of false "revolutioneries" in Latin America is thankfully over.


Parthian

Sadegh

by Parthian on

Before you write lots of theoritical things from behind your desk, and give us your political analysis which is full of bias with a little spice of anti-Americanism, I like to ask whether you have visited Venezuela? if yes, when?

I travel extensively in South America, and Central America. I Have visited Venezuela numerous times. I agree with Farhad, if this is your definition of democray, than of course I can see where your other wonderful articles where you REFUTE people are coming from. This article of course lives up to the other enlightened things you have written on Iranian.com, and perhaps even surpasses them, in the category of "slogans full of crap". Go live in Venezuela, than preach us about the Chavezian democracy. You are indeed full of crap.

 


sadegh

Not sure whether you are

by sadegh on

Not sure whether you are aware of it or not...but American coverage of Venezuela has been more akin to Alice in Wonderland...American coverage of the coup says it all...the administration's response to Pat Robertson's call for Chavez's assassination also says a lot...I saw your post of the Bloomberg article...the main concern of the essay was on the democratic tenor of Chavez's revolution. Things should be set in context, citing random articles to make a point without looking at what came before is misleading to say the least...I'm not an expert on the economics of Venezuela and while I could simply post another article in a childish game of tit for tat to refute your argument, I see little point in doing so...and don't believe citing a single article is enough to make a convincing case for anything let alone the economic future of Venezuela which has received some of the most biased and distorted coverage to yet come out of the corporate propaganda machine... 

Kind regards, Sadegh


David ET

Not exactly!

by David ET on

Dear Sadegh

Perhaps you need to read the data published by Bloomberg today also about Chavez !! Here are some excerpts about his failed economic socialism:

In a country blessed with enough crude to make it OPEC's sixth-largest producer, the store has no milk, no chicken, no cooking oil and no flour. A currency black market is thriving. Inflation hit an annualized 29 percent in April and rents in upper-middle-class neighborhoods of Caracas have soared to New York levels -- as much as $4,000 a month for a two-bedroom flat. Food producers say the seizures by the National Land Institute have made shortages worse. ``There's a flight of investment from food production,'' Petrodollar billions can buy a lot of things. As Chavez has found, well-stocked grocery shelves aren't always among them.

full article is here:

//www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601170&refer=home&sid=a6qMqmU1dCeM 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


sadegh

Do you actually read the

by sadegh on

Do you actually read the articles or just spend your time waiting for the opportunity to write silly comments beneath other people's work? I really have better things to do than debate individuals who obviously haven't even read what has been written and just relish the opportunity to make nasty and ill-founded accusations... 

 

Kind regards, Sadegh


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Sadegh, I’m glad that you

by Farhad Kashani (not verified) on

Sadegh, I’m glad that you are making it clear what you guys’ definition of democracy is. So Chavez who closed down a newspaper only because it was anti-Chavez, is a democratic leader? So for you guys fasiscm equals democracy. Furthermore, you don’t even have to go too far, just scroll down and see the news that Iranian.com (to my great surprise!) published which says 71% of Venezuelans are unhappy with ecomony. It also says there is no food and inflation is 29%. So there goes the “anti imperialist people revolution”!!! That is how all socialist revolutions end up. Just look at Russia, Eastern Europe, Cuba and North Korea.