Heinz Sonntag, Edgardo Lander “The Past, Present and Future of the Venezuelan Crisis ” April 16, 2003

From left: Professors Edgardo Lander, Ramon Grosfoguel, and Heinz Sonntag met in the Ida Sproul Room of the International House on Wednesday, April 16, to discuss the ongoing crisis in Venezuela under the rule of President Hugo Chavez.

The Past, Present and Future of the Venezuelan Crisis
Olga R. Rodríguez, Graduate School of Journalism

Ever since the coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in April of 2002, the political and social crisis in Venezuela has intensified. Poverty and unemployment have increased and Venezuelans are in the midst of the worst economic crisis the country has ever experienced. The division between those who support the Chávez administration and those who are against it has deepened, and Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the national oil company, has become the battleground. In December, anti-Chávez PDVSA employees sent the country into a downward spiral when they called for a strike of the oil company that lasted more than two months. Venezuela now finds itself in what seems an unsolvable predicament.

The opposition claims that the crisis is the result of a corrupt and incapable government that was democratically elected but which has militarized almost every aspect of public administration. Chávez’ government, they say, antagonized a large portion of Venezuelan society and has become an increasingly authoritarian regime that threatens to undermine the country’s democratic history. For Chávez supporters, the deep divide is a product of persistent state deterioration that started more than 20 years ago. The crisis, they say, has been magnified by the middle and upper classes’ belief that their privileged position is being threatened by Chávez’ reorganization of PDVSA, historically controlled by the elite, and his inclusion of the poor in the political system.

On April 16th, 2003, the fierce debate occurring in Venezuela was represented in a panel at UC Berkeley moderated by Professor Ramon Grosfoguel. Heinz Sonntag, retired professor of sociology at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas and Edgardo Lander, professor of social sciences, also of the Universidad Central, presented opposing views of Venezuela’s crisis.

After 1958 when Venezuela’s last dictator, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, was ousted, Venezuela experienced two decades of democratic stability, Lander said. Continuous economic growth fueled by oil income was translated into improved standards of living. During Carlos Andrés Pérez’ administration (1973-78), massive industrialization projects were undertaken and an accelerated modernization plan was put into place. “The nationalization of the oil industry and the iron and ore mines [in 1976] was supposed to be a second independence and the way to La Gran Venezuela,” Lander said. “The cultural inclusion of racial and social democracy became part of the Venezuelan imagination. There was a general expectation about the future, but this began to change.”

Edgardo Lander, Professor of Social Sciences Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas

After the 1970’s, per capita income began a long-term decline. The state structure became more inefficient and corrupt. Traditional political parties became less like mass organizations and more like exclusive groups for the elite. According to Lander, the most important change that occurred was the extraordinary cultural and political disconnect that developed between the upper and middle classes and the marginalized sectors of society.

The discontent of the popular classes surfaced in 1989, during Carlos Andrs Pérez’ second administration. Facing heavy debt, Pérez announced price hikes on gasoline and public transportation, among other things, as part of an austerity plan mandated by the International Monetary Fund. People took to the streets in protest; looting and rioting ensued. After two days of unrest, the military was called out, and at least 400 people were killed. The events awakened Venezuelan society and began the chain of events that ultimately led to the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998.

“Hugo Rafael Chávez based his campaign, like those leaders preceding him, on the promise to solve all of society’s existing problems from poverty, unemployment, the lack of adequate health care and deficient educational services to the shortcomings, failures and corruption of the socio-economic order and the political system,” said Sonntag. “As his overall instrument he invoked a new constitution for a ‘really participatory and protagonist democracy.’ ”

Heinz Sonntag, Professor of Sociology Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas

Chávez won the 1998 election in a landslide, and his popularity quickly rose. He also received wide support when his new constitution was ratified in 1999. However, Chávez’ lack of political experience resulted in a confrontational style which has been characteristic of his discourse. Chávez’ inflammatory style has served to rally his supporters, but it has also provided ammunition to his opponents. The mass media, dominated by the opposition, has frequently used Chávez’ own rhetoric against him.

“The way in which these criticisms were received brought the first disappointments with the regime. Instead of giving coherent explanations or accepting responsibility for their wrongdoings, Chávez and his followers attacked the media, committing the additional error of personalizing these attacks by focusing on certain journalists and media owners,” declared Sonntag, who was sharply critical of Chávez throughout his talk.

Lander countered that the media has contributed to the polarization by playing a major role in the creation of a distorted image of the government as a tyrannical, authoritarian, Castro-Communist project that is menacing to property and liberty. According to Lander, the media has also promoted the vision of a mob that could at any moment assault the neighborhoods and ransack the houses of the elite.

Chávez’ confrontational style, Lander argued, is a weakness of his administration. However, the biggest roadblock his government has encountered is the anti-political, anti-state discourse of those who were connected to PDVSA. This discourse, Lander added, defined the state as corrupt and inefficient, and it seemed logical that the oil company, seen as a great modern efficient enterprise, should try to detach itself as much as possible from this backward state.

“The oil enterprise, Petroleos de Venezuela, was supposed to be a national enterprise, and national oil policy was supposed to be defined by the government through its ministry of oil and mines. But as time went by, the ‘state within the state’ started to define Venezuela’s oil policies in terms of the interests of the oil enterprise itself,” Lander said.

What has disappointed a large portion of Venezuelan society, according to Sonntag, is Chávez’ contradictory behavior. The inconsistency between Chávez’ discourse and his policies has caused the economy to deteriorate even further and slowed down economic growth, resulting in a severe increase in unemployment and poverty. “The economic and social policies of his government are basically those of previous governments, subject to structural adjustments and neo-liberal reforms, even as his ideological and political discourse condemns them and capitalism in general as savage, anti-humanist and exploitative,” Sonntag said.

Yet the main reason behind the opposition to Chávez, Lander argued, is the inclusion of the popular classes in the political system. The inclusion of popular organizations has been the most important achievement of the political process in Venezuela over the last four years. The excluded sectors of the population have acquired a sense of belonging, a sense of being part of Venezuelan society in a way that had not been the case before, he said. “The best image is to think of a party hosted by very sophisticated members of society in which a mob of smelly, uneducated, uninvited people arrive and start eating all the food, and this is the sensation that the upper-middle classes in Venezuela have about the present situation,” Lander said.

For the opposition, the solution is for Chávez to resign or allow a “revocatory referendum” to take place in August. Chávez rejected demands for his resignation or early elections, saying the constitution does not allow them. Those who support Chávez’ government ask that his “Bolivarian Revolution” be allowed to consolidate. For his supporters, mostly people in the popular classes, Chávez symbolizes a change that will translate into better living conditions.

An effort to resolve Venezuela’s political crisis was initiated by the Organization of American States (OAS). Since November, the president of the OAS, César Gaviria, has been mediating the dialogue between the government and the opposition in the hope of finding a viable solution. An end to the stalemate between Venezuela’s political rivals, however, seems elusive. On April 12, a few hours after international mediators announced a tentative pact between the Venezuelan government and the opposition, a powerful explosion destroyed four stories of the Caracas Teleport building where the negotiations had taken place.

 

Also in attendance, three distinguished Latin American scholars: (from left) Enrique Dussel, professor of philosophy at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in Mexico; Aníbal Quijano, professor of sociology at the Universidad de San Marcos in Lima and at the State University of New York in Binghamton; and Antonio Barros de Castro, professor at the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janiero, currently a visiting faculty member at the Center for Latin American Studies.