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NEWS & LETTERS, May 2002
Venezuela coup attempt fails but raises key
questions
Venezuela’s elite
successfully ousted Hugo Chavez from his presidential post on April 11 in the
midst of a general strike and a massive march, only to see him reinstated less
than two days later after even bigger protests by his supporters. Governments
throughout Latin America immediately condemned the coup, while the U.S. rushed
to offer its support to the new regime on its first and only full day in power. The whirlwind of events on
those two days had been developing since last November, when Chavez used his
“fast track” powers to enact 49 new laws that have alienated landowners and
capitalists. One of those laws creates a National Land Institute whose job is to
carry out a mild land reform. All of them are intended to institutionalize
Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution,” which until November had done little
concrete to aid Venezuela’s poor, estimated at 80% of the country’s 24
million people. Pedro Carmona, head of
Fedecamaras, the largest business group, was the old guard’s hero for a day
and a half. In that brief reign he attempted to abolish the legislature, cut off
all oil shipments to Cuba (“Not a single barrel will reach the island!”),
and fire the military chiefs still loyal to Chavez. The stupidity of the U.S. in
rushing to embrace him showed how poorly attuned they are to events there.
Bush’s hatred of Chavez had intensified since he criticized the war on
Afghanistan for “fighting terror with terror,” and they’ve no doubt been
looking for ways to undermine the “Chavistas” since then. But they have
little appreciation for the support Chavez still has among the poor, who again
have shown no desire to give up on him if the only alternative is the same old
neoliberalism that they threw out with Chavez’s numerous election victories
since 1998. However, what has been even
more surprising in the days after the coup is the lack of analysis by rational
people to come to terms with what it meant. If Chavez is so popular, how was the
old guard able to bring 100,000 people into the streets on the third day of a
national strike? Most commentaries have skirted the issue by claiming there was
not quite so many that came out, and anyway the “real people” were the
bigger crowds that came out to protest the coup once Carmona took over. The bulk of the April 11 march
did come from the eastern end of Caracas, which is more affluent, whereas the
huge outpouring (400,000 according to some estimates) on the 13th was from the
western, poorer end. But this crisis is simply the latest in a string of
similiar events. On Dec. 10, Fedecamaras called a successful general strike, and
on Jan. 23 brought out 100,000 people to a “March for Freedom &
Democracy.” Both were countered by even bigger pro-Chavez rallies, but the
fact remains that Chavez has done much to alienate workers from him. Oil workers
have had their strikes deemed illegal and school teachers are sick of his
atttempts to militarize education. When 140,000 teachers went on strike in late
January, the strike was declared illegal. Overiding everything is the poverty
that has only worsened during Chavez's time in power. What saved Chavez on April 13
was not only the masses, but the fact that the elite has yet to reconstruct its
old two party system that ruled the country from 1958 to 1998. The Social
Christians and Democratic Action are still defunct, and this explains why the
bourgeoisie has turned to organizing mass events through Fedecamaras. They’re
sure to be getting some help from the U.S. in the coming period. On the other side looms a
greater question that needs to be addressed: how can Chavez’s so-called
Bolivarian Revolution, which has not been able to change the lives of the poor
in any significant way, become a real revolution? If the U.S. does not to get
its wish for another puppet “democracy” that tows the neoliberal line, the
masses that flexed their power on April 13 must follow through somehow with what
they started. —Mitch Weerth |
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