The Hugo Factor
Venezuela's firebrand president seems stronger than ever. Why the conventional wisdom may be dead flat wrong
CARACAS, VENEZUELA--The palm trees and 19th-century, British-made, forged-iron fountain that grace the courtyard of Venezuela's neoclassical Congress buildings offer a cool respite from the chronic noise and pollution of this capital's historic center. Today, the white-and-lime-colored structure, once the site of a convent, is home to a most unusual institution--a freely elected legislature whose 167 members are, each and every one, government loyalists.
This unprecedented situation in a nominally democratic country resulted from the December election boycott by Venezuela's opposition parties to protest what they feared would be a rigged vote, a charge some believe was a cover for their anticipated defeat. Whatever the case, their last-minute withdrawal prompted most voters to stay home and produced a rubber-stamp legislature for the country's fiery leftist president, Hugo Chavez.
Polarization. The election results further consolidated power for Chavez, who allies himself with Cuba's Fidel Castro and gleefully flaunts his bad-boy reputation with Washington. But even as he uses influence and money to push other Latin America nations leftward, political watchers say Chavez may face a serious domestic backlash. "The conditions now exist," says Luis Vicente Leon, head of the Datanalisis polling organization, "for the radicalization of the debate and the formation of extreme groups to get rid of Chavez."
This country of 25 million people--whose importance is magnified by being the world's fifth-largest oil exporter (and fourth-largest U.S. oil supplier)--has become increasingly polarized in the seven years since Chavez was first elected president. "There exists in Venezuelan society today what we have never seen before, the division and resentment between social classes," remarked a young woman who would give only her first name, Mariana.
Since Chavez took office, the country has gone through a cascade of political tumult: the adoption of a new Constitution that many consider antidemocratic, a failed coup attempt, an unsuccessful recall referendum that large segments of society say was fixed, and a costly two-month oil-workers strike. For disaffected Venezuelans, their president is simply illegitimate. "His only objective is to remain in power; he does not have a model for the country," says Miguel Henrique Otero, editor of El Nacional, one of Caracas's leading dailies. Rejecting any Chavez comparison with the early days of the Cuban Revolution, he adds: "It's just the opposite. There is no ideology--they just want to steal and get rich."
Chavez says his goal is to create a 21st-century socialism, a nebulous and ill-defined mix of Soviet collectivism, Chinese-style capitalism, and Cuban populism. To date, his socialist model has tried to sidestep private enterprise by setting up nearly 7,000 state-financed cooperatives employing some 200,000 persons, creating state enterprises, and increasing government controls on the banking sector and the oil industry, which accounts for 80 percent of export earnings. The Venezuelan president also pushed a restrictive press law through the National Assembly and packed the Supreme Court by increasing the number of its judges from 20 to 32. Four of the five members of the National Electoral Council are Chavez loyalists.
For the average Venezuelan, however, perhaps the most troublesome aspect of his "Bolivarian Revolution," named after Simon Bolivar, the 19th-century independence hero, are Chavez's harsh verbal attacks against private ownership--although, in fact, few acres have been collectivized and only a handful of abandoned factories expropriated. Chavez put a halt to the exercise and stopped talking about the issue after polls showed that the vast majority of Venezuelans favor private property. "This is not the Cuba of Batista. This is not an island," says Cesar Perez Vivas, the secretary general of the center-right Social Christian Party known as Copei, referring to Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator overthrown by Castro. "A very strong base of democratic values exists here."
advertisement
