Venezuela, Paraguay and the future of Latin America and the Caribbean

By Jesús Arboleya Cervera

HAVANA – The results of two controversial elections have reignited the debate over the future of Latin America. In Venezuela, the left triumphed but the slim margin of victory has led many to interpret the result as the beginning of the end of the Bolivarian Revolution, and with it the failure of the integrationist process in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In contrast, the right won in Paraguay, legitimizing a coup d’état that was repudiated by all the countries in the region. Paradoxically, the result has been the eventual reincorporation of that country to the organisms of integration from which it had been excluded. Both cases illustrate the complexity of this integrationist process and force us to analyze its components.

In Venezuela, Latin American integration is related to the deep transformations that have occurred since Hugo Chávez’s victory in 1999. As usually happens, its radicalism has been conditioned more by the forces it has had to confront than by the original design of its leaders.

What was a nationalist movement with social concerns that hoped to transform a reality marked by a 28 percent of extreme poverty in a country rich in oil and other natural resources became a socialist revolution because American imperialism and the Venezuelan oligarchy left it with no other alternative.

When today we talk about violence, crime, administrative corruption and political ignorance in Venezuela, we may be talking about problems that the Bolivarian Revolution has been unable to solve in full, but in no case has it been a product of the revolutionary process itself.

On the contrary, Venezuela qualifies as one of the Latin American countries where neocolonialism showed its worst consequences. Only starting from that point can we understand that reality.

The Venezuelan oligarchy was born of the plunder of the oil wealth. It never tried to develop the industry, and the nationalization of petroleum helped increase its profits, in a scheme of exploitation where the big U.S. companies remained the major beneficiaries.

That was the price the U.S. had to pay the oligarchy to be guaranteed control of the country, but the oligarchs failed to do even that. The overflow of money reached certain sectors of the middle class whose existential objective was to imitate “the American way of life.”

When the sight of the hillside slums became much too embarrassing and offended their good taste, the wannabe Americans looked toward Miami, where they deposited their savings, bought houses or spent their money in a “more civilized” environment.

One characteristic of the Bolivarian Revolution is that it has barely nationalized the assets of the oligarchy. In fact, with the exception of luxury properties, there was little for the Revolution to nationalize. The truth is that both the oligarchy and the middle class have benefited economically from the Bolivarian Revolution, but – to prevent the nation’s decapitalization – the government has regulated the outflow of that capital, something that runs counter to these people’s dreams for their future.

The Venezuelan oligarchy is not willing to invest in Venezuela, though it has more than enough opportunities, simply because it is not in its nature.

Clearly, nearly 7 million Venezuelans are not bourgeois, not even middle-class, though the growth of the middle class has benefited from the reduction in poverty, which today affects barely 7 percent of the population.

Evidently, many poor people also voted for the right, and the reason lies as much in the limitations and mistakes of the Revolutionary Government as in the ideological and cultural consequences that still reproduce themselves in the domestic political arena.

Another characteristic of the Bolivarian Revolution is that, despite all the subversive attempts, the political forces on the right remain almost intact and act in many ways upon the daily life of Venezuelans, especially through the mass media, which in great part they continue to control.

However, when some say that “almost” half of all Venezuelans voted for the right, they forget that more than 50 percent of the population voted for the Socialist Revolution. That outcome was unthinkable 14 years ago, when those people seldom bothered to vote.

It is surprising because of the conditions under which the revolutionary process developed, especially when Hugo Chávez’s physical disappearance introduced another political factor that hinders the revolutionary forces.

It used to be said that without Chávez the Bolivarian Revolution would not survive. Well, it has survived, and therein lies the great triumph of the recent elections. It is now up to the Venezuelan revolutionaries to surpass themselves and continue to move ahead with the social process and the people’s participation to consolidate a power that they attained by following the rules of their own enemies.

The United States should weigh what will happen in Venezuela if the right ever wins and tries to revert the people’s achievements.

No doubt, Venezuela brings a distinctive quality to the integrationist process of Latin America and the Caribbean. The ALBA [Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America] presupposes a joint vision and a political project that’s more encompassing than other mechanisms of regional integration but does not contradict them.

And those other mechanisms are not divorced from the ALBA’s aims, as can be seen from the attitude assumed in the face of putschist efforts by the right, as in the case of Paraguay.

At one time, the Paraguayan right impeded Venezuela’s incorporation into Mercosur, but now Paraguay must accept Venezuela’s membership if it wants to rejoin Mercosur, which Paraguay will inevitably do.

This shows that the Latin American countries are not forced to choose between the United States and other alternatives, but that the U.S. option has insurmountable limitations as a result of the problems the U.S. itself faces and the relative erosion of U.S. hegemony in the region.

Integration, therefore, responds not only to the people’s interests but also to the interests of Latin America’s national bourgeoisies – unless they’re as obtuse as the Venezuelan bourgeoisie.

Latin America and the Caribbean know that their own causes are being debated in Venezuela, which explains the unanimous support given to Nicolás Maduro, again leaving the United States totally isolated in the region.

That support provides a factor of legitimacy and cooperation that strengthens Venezuela’s revolutionary process and again shows the U.S. government evidence that changing its policy toward Latin America and distancing itself from Latin America’s anachronistic oligarchy suits its own interests, as predicted by John F. Kennedy more than half a century ago.

Otherwise, even if the oligarchs win, they lose.