Something is going to give in Venezuela. It’s a feeling that can be perceived in the air, in talks, on the streets, in public transport, in the people… tension is everywhere. As if we were looking at a blow as it comes, in slow motion, before it impacts.
Some facts confirm this: the murders of chavists Ricardo Durán —Press Officer of the Distrital Government of the capital—, of César Ver —alternate legislator of the Legislative Council of Tachira State—, and Marcos Tulio Carrillo, Mayor of La Ceiba. Also, the disappearance of agrarian leaders, the anti-chavists that ran over two policemen with a bus, the rumours of lootings that are becoming louder, the denounce of a coup d’etat to be executed on May 15, Maduro’s call for a rebellion in case the government is lost. And the daily routine: living in Venezuela and resisting the shortage —the pressure to find out where and at what price you’re able to get food, medicines, hygiene products, water.
These are the effects of the non-conventional war unleashed against the Bolivarian Revolution, which operates simultaneously in, at least, four fronts. Communicationally, the campaign is nationwide —just like what happens in Argentina with the media group Clarin or in Brazil with the Globo Network— and even stronger in the international level: including the BBC, El País (Spain), and La Nación (Argentina). It’s intended to delegitimize the government, and particularly President Nicolas Maduro, by convincing people that there is a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela to legitimate a possible foreign intervention. Geopolitically, the strategy is to act as a pincer: opening battlefronts in the Guayana Esequiba, Colombia and the US, with the support of NGOs financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and attacking from international organisms such as the OAS. In the economic aspect, the plan is to create shortages, rise prices, destroy the purchase power —which decreased by 97% in less than 3 years—, creating long queues, trafficking goods in the black market, and generally wearing people out. The last stage, which is the most violent one, includes the infiltration of paramilitaries to dispute the popular territories and incendiary actions on the streets; as well as sieges and lootings —openly convened by leaders of the opposition— as well as the increasing killings and robberies to suffocate people on a daily basis.
The aim is to recover the government and from there, power. All methods are possible: insurreccional, coupist — with the help of a sector of the Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Nation—, or electoral. This last option, after having been ruled out for some time because of its impossibility, regained its force last December, when the right won the legislative elections. The so-called “recall referendum”, which has already started with the signing campaign, was enabled by that victory.
Numbers seem to indicate that they can succeed in calling to vote on a referendum, which requires gathering signatures of 20% of the electoral register (3,959,560 people). To achieve the recall, they need to obtain more votes than the ones that Nicolas Maduro won in 2013, i.e. more than 7,587,532. Another crucial element: if the referendum took place before January 10, and the president lost, elections would have to be convened to chose the new President of the Republic. If the President lost after that date, the Vice President would take office, and would take it from there until 2018. Politics are red hot.
This is another war plan elaborated from the US, as shown by the document “Venezuela Freedom 2 Operation”, which belongs to the Southern Command, signed by Admiral Kurt Tidd., in which he exposes the conclusions of the first phase of the operations and outlines the future steps to take in order to end with chavism in the government. The timeframe is 6 months, and the legal or electoral levels seems to be more of a screen than a real plan. The leader of the destabilization is the US, which needs to reclaim direct control over the war materials production chain, particularly, oil.
What we see in Venezuela is the impact of the new imperialist methodologies, which were also applied for example in Libya and Syria. This is creating chaos, breaking the relation between people and their government, building a scenario of ungovernability to negotiate with those who manage to take over power: the new government, paramilitary gangs, who are willing, once again, to give away the nation’s riches with no mediation.
Venezuelan Exception
Venezuela’s juncture is part of the broader political situation of reflux in the continent. It’s linked to the ongoing coup in Brazil against the government of the Workers’ Party, and the revenge being carried out by Macri in Argentina. Imperialism seeks to regain its ground, the Latin American ruling classes need to reconfigure the governments in a period of crisis of capitalism. In this context, the Revolution takes on a particular meaning: it’s the point of the continent from which the regional integration of the XXI century irradiated —through organisms such as the ALBA, the UNASUR, the CELAC, the PetroCaribe—, a regional alternative that accomplished what hadn’t been possible in decades, and even centuries.
It’s more than that: the Bolivarian process was, and still is, the only one that has put on the table the debate about power and the construction of a non-capitalist project, both at the most technical level —there are some essential documents written by Hugo Chávez on this matter— and in the level of popular practice. Since the beginning, it subtracted power from the dominant classes —bourgeois, oligarchy and imperialism— to re-distribute it to the organized people. It wasn’t about managing the State according to progressivist policies to increase consumption, but about socializing democracy and power, and ending with the bourgeoisie stability. That’s why many tools were built since 1999: from participatory and protagonistic democracy to communes, and to the building of the communal State. In Venezuela, lands were expropriated, factories too, oil was nationalized, and the political parties that had ruled the country were no longer relevant. This explains why the response by the bourgeoisie was so violent: the Coup attempt in 2002, the oil sabotage in 2003 and the referendum against Chávez in 2004 are a clear proof of this.
This explains why the revenge planned against chavism, that is, against the working-class sectors, is so brutal. Maduro said it after the legislative defeat in December: what’s at stake is not just a change in government, but a counterrevolution. In our continent, we know what this means, after having gone through military dictatorships. The dominant classes have lost symbolic, political and economic power. They seek to take it back and punish the masses.
The amount of violence of the counter-revolutions is proportional to the depth of the revolution. It took them only 3 years of non-conventional war, to erode part of what was built over the past 16 years.The ability to resist shortages, 12-hour queues to buy two or three products, a black market, the murder of leaders, psychological attacks on a massive scale, and a constant media ridiculization of the president, suggest how deep revolution is. Chavism is much more than a government, it’s an experience of participation and radical empowerment. To understand it, we must go inside the neighbourhoods, inside the fields, be in touch with life in the new communes, and see the thousands of houses built, to look at the redemption of the most humble population when Chavism marches.
Urgent Debates
There is a clear enemy. One who unleashes war, who doesn’t show itself —that’s its strategy— and whose shadow we can see in leaked documents, analyses, speeches, the sum of proof and the study of history. But there is another one, that dresses in red, sits in government seats, and has responsibilities and power. We can see it in its impact on daily life, in the inefficiency of the state, that erodes the process from within; in the trafficking of basic goods to Colombia, for which sometimes officials are arrested for corruption. The last case was called Operation Gorgojo, and the detainees were the people in charge of a state program for the distribution food, Abastos Bicentenario. After many years of economic war, we found out that one of the main tools that the government had created to fight it, the Abastos Bicentenario, was actually under control of corrupt officials. The same thing happened with the Fair Prices Law, that despite being created to compete against private-sector speculation, in fact, due to corrupt officials, secretly conceded the ability to set the final prices to the private sector for two years.
The consequences of the corruption of Chavism were severe for the grassroots. People reacted with anger, discouragement, and distrust towards the government and the Armed Forces. These elements, in the global context, started to accumulate and where part of the causes for the results of the December 6 elections: this was not a victory of the opposition but a “punishment” vote of Chavists against their leadership. The words of the government were strong the following day: cleansing, cleaning. A cleansing, mainly, of the central political mediation —the Venezuelan Socialist Party— as well as of some superstructural dynamics such as the rotation of seats, the reelections of the same people for strategic positions —government deafness, convening spaces of popular debate without actually taking suggestions into account in their decision-making. And there was a deeper debate: where should power lie in the revolution? Where does it lie and where not, and why?
These issues are now urgent. There were always sectors reluctant to promote a radical and popular empowerment process, who saw themselves as sole executors of the process from their Ministries, in leading roles, from their air-conditioned offices, in great buildings with many floors. Their favorite argument was: “The people is not ready”. For them, negotiating with the private sector, in terms of costs/benefits, was more important than building the foundations of a new order ruled by the people of the country. It was more important for them to negotiate with the private sector that blatantly opposed this process and that now controls big portions of the Government, in municipalities, ministries and local governments. These were the people against whom Hugo Chavez unleashed his last speech, and he gave his sentence with the phrase “commune or nothing”. The revolution is the dispute over the sense of this phrase and the best way to put it into practice.
These are undelayable debts. And the building of a new economic development model is also undelayable. This is a slogan that may seem easy to announce, but that in a country that for over a century was shaped on the dependence of the oil rent, it’s particularly complex. Above all, when the price of a barrel is under 40 dollars for 2 years. The state has less and less income. That why they announced that the Mega mining project called Arco del Orinoco, a future source of incoming dollars, that will seemingly go against the very Motherland Plan —a governmental plan written by Hugo Chávez to be carried out between 2013 and 2019— which says: “We have the historic task of contributing to the preservation of life on the planet and the salvation of the human race, and that means stopping the devastating force of destruction of the capitalist model”. The situation is urgent in the Venezuelan economy and has agreements with the private sector have been prioritized, as well as the search of an income source like the one mentioned. There are state accompaniments to social enterprise, recover factories, agrarian communal lands but little in comparison with what the project and the stage requiere.
It’s difficult to make forecasts about the near future. It’s certain that war will intensify and even though some sectors of chavism are looking for agreements, the counterrevolution seems impossible to stop. Reconciling is not an option. The country seems to be about to explode, and each day people ask themselves, “will it explode today?” What? An explosion, a coup, an incendiary violence, an intervention, a popular download on those who assemble parallel market networks, called bachaqueros, and who create a battle of humble against humble. In this context many scenarios are possible. For example, if the recall referendum takes place, Nicolas Maduro loses and then is elected in his place a new chavist president, instead of an opponent. Or that a sharp cycle of daily violence takes place leading to a coup to remove the President, that opens a scene of street confrontation. The situation won’t hold any longer, that seems certain.
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