Postcard from Venezuela
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
“The
construction of socialism in Venezuela is ratified, and now we will
take charge of deepening it.”
—
President
Hugo Chavez,
after learning the results of the November 23 elections.
Chavez’s
PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) won 17 of 23
governorships, approximately 60-40%. But his party lost in states
with large populations and much oil, as well in the mayor’s race
for the crowded capital of Caracas.
Consumer-dominated
societies fill spiritual voids with loud sounds and pictures: “BUY
BUY BUY!”
Consumerism
doesn’t seem compatible with historical awareness. Young
Venezuelans I met seem oblivious to their recent history. Indeed, the
majority of them were barely conscious or not-yet-born when
successive gangs of kleptocrats — calling themselves political party
leaders — stole the nation’s oil revenue. In 1989, under the
second round of super thief President Carlos Andres Perez (a supposed
socialist), repressive forces killed as many as 2,000 demonstrators
on the streets of Caracas during an uprising (the “Caracazo”) in
response to his decision that poor Caraqueños, not his wealthy
amigos, should shoulder the burden of the IMF’s austerity plan for
Venezuela.
Rich
Venezuelans and U.S. officials shook their heads in sympathy. Poor
Carlos Andres had to take desperate measures to maintain necessary
order! It was unthinkable to place the burden of doing with less on
those who had most.
From
the early 1960s through the mid 1990s, corruption and looting
characterized both Christian and Social Democratic governments.
Voters, disgusted with the larcenous behavior of one regime, would
elect a successive group of politicians to steal the oil wealth.
In
1998, Chavez won the presidency. He swore to end “elite” rule and
redirect the country’s oil wealth to education health and welfare
— to the poor.
In
ten years, hundreds of thousands have received medical care, some
education and primary forms of welfare. He and his allies continue to
win seats in free elections, and Chavez has announced he will hold a
referendum in February to ask the people to allow him to hold
presidential power until 2021.
Anti-Chavez
sentiment, which inspired a failed military coup in 2002, has grown
smarter. Newly elected opposition governor Capriles Radonsky
participated in that coup, but now he has pledged to work with
Chavez’s government to confront national problems. Didn’t McCain
say that to Obama?
The
good opposition cop finds its antithesis on the radio. On 747 AM, the
talk show host sounds like a Spanish-speaking Rush Limbaugh. “I
hate Chavez,” he screamed on December 1. Sound effects followed:
gun shots reverberated as if to enhance the drama of his soliloquy on
the evils of Chavismo, including 30,000 Cuban doctors who offer
primary care to Venezuela’s poor.
A
taxi driver in Margarita, a forty minute flight from Caracas, also
despised Chavez. Assuming I was a U.S. tourist, and thus logically
against Chavez, he sneered at “Señor Presidente.”
“Imagine,
he angered the mighty United States and invited the Soviet Union or
whatever they call themselves these days to bring in their warplanes
and ships.” Another cab driver worried about crime and expressed
cynicism about the possibility Chavez could realize his socialist
goals.
“Corruption
in this country,” said another cabbie from Margarita, “goes deep.
The cop in the street to cabinet Ministers to the President’s
family (referring to rumors of close Chavez relatives getting
business favors in the state of Barinas).”
I
look out the window at Margarita, a tropical island, once a perfect
picture postcard, with brooding mountains, flapping palm trees, warm
ocean water and tropical birds. Then came the developers who must
have hired an evil teenager with acne of the soul to design the
architecture. The rows of high-rise condo blocks should make Frank
Lloyd Wright turn in his grave. Billboards carry gaudy ads for
Digitel. Posters of busty young women in skimpy bras and dental floss
bottoms urge: “buy.” Those who “need” a second or third home
— including foreigners — purchase condos.
“How
does one go about building socialism here?” I ask my friend who
lives in Caracas.
We
see the obstacles dramatically on the downtown streets of Venezuela’s
teeming capital (4-5 million estimated), with wall-to-wall traffic
twelve hours a day, spewing pollution and noise. For $2, a Venezuelan
can fill his gas tank. How does one ban cars and shopping in downtown
Caracas and expect to get reelected?
From
a jammed McDonald’s in Chacaito we see masses of humanity,
resembling Asian cities, pushing and shoving en route to shopping.
Behind downtown, situated in a long valley, lie the barrios, etched
into the surrounding hills. In these slums live Venezuela’s poor
majority, Chavez supporters. They received little from the oil-rich
governments of the past. Chavez has put back some of the wealth in
the form of medical, educational and basic welfare programs. Cuban
doctors have built modular clinics and members of literacy brigades
have offered basic education in the poorest areas — free of charge.
In addition, the Chavez government has offered healthy meals to the
most down-trodden.
Unlike
his mentor in the socialist island to the south, Chavez won power
through the ballot box, not guerrilla war. Fidel Castro exported his
enemies, with, ironically, U.S. cooperation. Why not? In 1960, the
powerful in Washington and the wealthy exiles biding their time in
Miami, believed they could dispatch Castro and the revolution without
even sending in U.S. troops. In April 1961, the new President, John
F. Kennedy, discovered their mistake when the CIA’s exile force
fell to Cuba’s fledgling army at the Bay of Pigs.
As
W prepares his exit, Castro remains vital in his new career as a
writer (La
Paz en Colombia,
published in November). However, Chavez cannot export his enemies.
Venezuela’s elite and the U.S. government learned that lesson after
50 frustrating years of trying to overthrow the Cuban revolution from
Miami.
An
organized opposition makes political noise especially through
elections — charges and counter charges, TV, radio and billboard
ads. Imagine if Cuba’s revolutionaries would have had to transform
the island’s economic and social structure with the presence of one
million vocal opponents! Fidel had to deal with an angry Washington,
but not with the daily stings and bites of his own wealthy classes
who would pay for newspaper, TV and radio assaults and mount an
international gossip network to demonize him.
Hugo
Chavez’s socialist vision has emerged amidst a collapsing
environment and world economy, in a country whose outward culture
reeks of the worst of consumerism: maddening sounds of car horns,
traffic jams, playing to the pounding of reggaetón
reverberating over car and public speakers. Caracas reeks with
dangerous anarchy — vast areas of poverty amidst the unshared wealth
of a small minority. Consumption has become the spiritual value of
capitalism: obsession with the superficial (Venezuela supposedly
leads the world in number of boob jobs per capita).
Venezuela
is still very much capitalist, not socialist. Chavez has learned in
10 years as President that change does not come easily through
legislatures and courts when wealthy opposition politicians also use
the media to help provide a formidable obstacle course to a just
distribution of wealth.
Chavez
lacks a large disciplined cadre to carry out his policies, a seasoned
political party of people dedicated to doing nothing in life but work
to change the course of their nation’s history.
“Oil
in the hands of corrupt governments has corrupted this place,” says
Jesus Marrero, who in 1973 underwent brutal torture supervised by
Commissar Basilio. “He was obviously a big shot in Venezuelan
intelligence circles (DISIP).” Marrero belonged to the
Insurrectional Revolutionary Movement (MIR). “This man [Basilio]
radiating cold cynicism” supervised sessions for months in which
his men applied electric shocks to Marrero’s ears, testicles and
penis.
“I
escaped from prison in 1975,” he said, “and rejoined my comrades
in the mountains. In October 1976, we saw the newspaper report on the
bombing of a Cuban airliner in mid air killing everyone on board. The
newspaper photo was none other than Basilio, identified as Luis
Posada Carriles.”
Marrero
wants to testify against Posada “as soon as Obama realizes this man
is a real terrorist, unlike the Cuban Five (referring to five Cuban
intelligence agents who provided material to the FBI on Cuban exile
terrorism in Miami and got arrested and sentenced to long prison
terms in federal penitentiaries).”
Marrero
says Venezuela faces an awesome challenge. But “Chavez has
illuminated the healthy road and we must overcome the garbage that
clutters our minds and on our streets and work for justice and
equality in a green world.” I nod. He has maintained revolutionary
zeal through decades of exile in Mexico.
In
1998, he returned to work toward the same vision that enticed him to
become a revolutionary forty years earlier. He helps bring solar
energy to remote rural areas, to use the sun’s heat to make potable
water and other necessities. If Chavez wins the referendum to
continue until 2021, thousands more could join Marrero in his attempt
to bring clean energy to the needy.
Saul
Landau received the Bernardo O’Higgins award from the Republic of
Chile for his work on human rights.
