This piece was published in the May/June 2000 issue of the NACLA Report.
“The corruption took all the money, so President Chávez has a serious problem,” said an elderly man, one of hundreds of pensioners protesting in downtown Caracas on a warm summer day in March 1999. “In reality,” he continued, “there is no money, but the President is looking for it. And I know he will find it because he is a very intelligent man.”[1]
This comment, laced with references to the corruption that has characterized Venezuelan politics in recent years and with confidence that things under current President Hugo Chávez Frías will improve, highlights several of the main features of Chávez’s astonishing popularity. The reference to “the corruption” is highly illustrative of how the average Venezuelan citizen perceives establishment parties and the political system in general. Not only are the traditional political parties that have dominated Venezuelan politics for the past 40 years, Democratic Action (AD) and the Social Christian Copei, considered corrupt, they are also blamed for the deep socio-economic crisis that has plagued Venezuela for the past two decades. While acknowledging that it will not be an easy thing to do, the pensioner’s expression of confidence reflects the hope of millions of Venezuelans that Chávez will overcome both the corruption and the misrule of the traditional parties while resolving Venezuela’s economic crisis and social malaise.
After a year in power, Chávez and his program for change retain a great deal of popular support. This begs the questions: What makes Chávez deserving of such popular fervor? And perhaps more importantly, where are the changes attempted by this charismatic leader taking the country? To understand President Chávez’s continued high standing with Venezuela’s popular sectors, we will outline the different elements that contribute to his popularity. We will also evaluate the changes implemented by the government so far, based on its goal of constructing a new political hegemony—that is, a new political system based on new understandings of power and authority and an alternative model for development.
Over the course of the past 18 months, Venezuela has experienced no less than five electoral processes. Aside from the first of these, the November 1998 elections for members of Congress, state governors and legislative assemblies, each electoral process has served to establish and solidify popular support for Hugo Chávez.
Chávez won the December 1998 presidential election with 3,673,685 votes, or 56.2% of the valid votes.[2] In each subsequent vote, Chávez has won more than 3.3 million votes, out of a total number of actual voters that has fluctuated between five to seven million (due to changing abstention rates). After taking office in February 1999, Chávez announced a referendum to approve the holding of a National Constituent Assembly to rewrite the country’s Constitution. The referendum, which took place in April 1999, was overwhelmingly approved with 3,382,075 votes (81.7% of the valid votes).[3] In July, Assembly members were elected, and Chavismo won another overwhelming victory: 125 of the 131 candidates elected were members of the President’s coalition, the Patriotic Pole. And in a referendum held last December, the new Constitution was approved by 3,301,475 votes.[4]
The majority of these more than three million “hard votes” for Chavismo come from the popular sectors. The upper and middle classes, on the other hand, are more likely to vote against Chávez. While official electoral data does not provide categories to analyze the results using class-based categories as indicators, we can obtain a sense of the different bases of support for Chávez by sampling the three municipalities of Chacao, Baruta and El Hatillo, which form the eastern part of the metropolitan area of Caracas and contain the highest-income population of the city.
In the presidential elections of 1998, Chávez’s principal opponent, Henrique Salas Römer, won 40% at the national level. In the three municipalities of Chacao, Baruta and El Hatillo, however, he won a substantial majority, with 60.4%, 65.9% and 71.9% of valid votes respectively.[5] In the April referendum, while 81.7% nation-wide voted in favor of creating a Constituent Assembly, in Chacao, Baruta and El Hatillo, only 55.8%, 52.4%, and 45.1% voted in favor of the President’s proposal.[6]
In the Constituent Assembly elections, the Patriotic Pole’s candidates did not fare well at all in the high-income districts. In fact, the most-voted Patriotic Pole candidates came in ninth in Baruta, sixth in Chacao, and fourteenth in El Hatillo. This is remarkable, given that the Patriotic Pole’s candidates won the top ten slates from the state of Miranda, in which these three municipalities are located. The stark difference between national-level support for Chávez and his candidates in contrast to upper-class support for the opposition reveals a marked polarization along class lines in Venezuela.
As Venezuela braces for yet another election, in which, as mandated by the new Constitution, all elected posts, from president to a new unicameral congress to local-level mayors, are up for grabs, Chávez remains highly popular. Divisions have emerged within his movement, most notably the defection of retired Lieutenant Francisco Arias Cárdenas, a former Chávez ally and a co-conspirator in the 1992 coup attempts, and now Chávez’s principal rival for the presidency. Arias Cárdenas has cut into Chávez’s support, but public opinion polls held in March and April place Chávez well ahead in the run-up to the May 28 election.[7] In light of these figures, the President’s leadership seems to rest on solid ground—at least in the short term.
Rarely in contemporary Venezuelan history has a charismatic leader with such strong popular support as Chávez elicited such repudiation from intellectuals and from the upper and middle classes. Elite disdain for Chávez became evident when, after serving two years in jail for his involvement in the coup attempts, he became publicly involved in politics in 1994, but has turned visceral since he was elected president. The print and electronic media are fiercely critical of Chávez, expressing a permanent rejection that is curiously at odds with the popular support evidenced for him in elections and the opinion polls. If an outside observer picked up a Venezuelan newspaper or tuned into a Venezuelan news program, he or she would receive an image of a leader who is repudiated by the majority of the population. Yet the President is widely popular, and the disapproval of him and his government seems to be concentrated primarily in the 20% of the population who are relatively well-off. The opinion of this 20%, however, carries significant weight, making it crucial to understand why a man so popular among the poor and working classes is so vehemently rejected by the well-to-do. But first, we must ask what it is about Chávez that the popular sectors find so appealing.
Chávez effectively articulates an aggressive anti-system discourse, which resonates with a population that is fed up with the status quo. In his public speeches, Chávez constantly attacks traditional political elites, who he and his followers call puntofijistas in reference to the Punto Fijo Pact of 1958, the first step in the construction of Venezuela’s two-party democratic system. Chávez uses the term “puntofijistas” to minimize the pact’s importance in ending years of dictatorship and establishing the bases of democratic rule, associating it rather with the corruption and clientelism that developed later. He portrays himself as an outsider, untainted by traditional politics. Popular sectors identify with his working-class roots, and he constantly refers to the need to incorporate excluded social sectors in national development. He also skillfully manipulates powerful symbols and cultural references that tap into Venezuelan nationalism. His military background also seems to be an attribute, as does his youthful image and his informal, pedagogic style of addressing his audience.
Any Venezuelan can immediately identify Hugo Chávez as a man of common extraction by his physical features: “Tall, broadly built, but not stout, he has the look of a nineteenth-century Venezuelan mestizo that has not intermarried with European migrants who arrived during the course of the twentieth century. He has black curly hair, narrow eyes, thick lips, and a streamlined nose.”[8] This precise physical profile could be easily used to describe Venezuelans of mixed Black and Indian ancestry found within the dominated sectors of society throughout Venezuelan history. In addition, as a llanero—a man from the plains of central Venezuela, where untrained, poorly-equipped troops played a very important role in the war for independence—Chávez evokes images of heroic, untamed and irreverent characters in popular culture. He deliberately seeks to invoke pride in his listeners by linking today’s working classes with heroic nineteenth-century narratives, especially those of the struggle for independence and the Federal War of 1859-1863, suggesting that today’s militants are the direct heirs of the brave soldiers who fought in these wars.
Indeed, Chávez has carefully constructed a political discourse based on symbols and images reinterpreted from historic and cultural references that have great popular appeal. For example, the ideology of his first political movement, the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement 200 (MBR-200) was a “tree” based on “three roots”—Simón Bolívar and two other nineteenth-century Venezuelan heroes, Simón Rodríguez and Ezequiel Zamora.[9] In 1997, after the National Electoral Board refused to allow the MBR-200 to register because it used the name Bolívar, Chávez renamed it the Movement of the Fifth Republic (MVR), another name with great symbolic potential, and which, when abbreviated, is almost the same phonetically as MBR. The new name is, in effect, a proposal to found a new Republic by abolishing the “fourth republic,” which was founded in 1830 with the separation of Venezuela from Gran Colombia—the short-lived country consisting of present-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama that won independence from Spain in 1821—and which presumably disintegrated under the puntofijista democracy.
Nationalism lies at the heart of the Chavista symbolism. In the new Constitution, the Republic has been rebaptized the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. The government has also made many attempts to make February 4, the date of the first failed coup led by Chávez, part of the pantheon of national holidays. This continual use of nationalistic symbols has contributed to the emergence of a kind of patriotic culture in the country. It has become routine practice in any public act of importance, especially in support of or opposition to the government, to display the national flag, sing the national anthem, and wear red, yellow and blue, the colors of the Venezuelan flag.
Another key component of Chávez’s popularity is his oratory style and the confrontational content of his speeches. Chávez uses aggressive, dismissive language against well-known personalities and traditionally powerful groups and institutions, displaying a level of belligerence that is unprecedented in recent Venezuelan public life. Shortly after he was inaugurated president, for example, Chávez engaged in strong verbal confrontations with Congress and the Supreme Court, and threatened to shut them down. (This did occur, but later, by order of the newly approved Constitution.) He also openly defied the National Electoral Board when it fined him for his active campaigning for candidates for the Constituent Assembly. Chávez first asked where he should go to pay the fine, then challenged the Board, saying it would have to put a muzzle on him or put him in prison “because I will keep talking to the people.”[10] After one of many head-on confrontations with the Catholic Church hierarchy, Chávez claimed that certain bishops were possessed by the devil. He has even accused the Venezuelan Confederation of Workers (CTV), the largest labor union federation, of being one of the “most corrupt expressions of the political elite.”[11] He has also clashed with intellectuals and national and foreign journalists.
This contentious discourse has been clearly directed toward confronting and excluding traditional elites, considered by Chávez and his movement as a corrupt oligarchy. Chávez does not hold back when confronting his political opponents, using adjectives like the “negative ones” in reference to those who campaigned against creating a National Constituent Assembly and “puntofijistas” to vilify a range of political actors that may in fact have very different political histories. In effect, the President puts a wide variety of actors into the same sack because he views them as his opponents.
Simultaneously, Chávez seeks to include the popular sectors, highlighting “the people” as the subjects of history and the agents of transformation. Chávez places his persona in this discourse as merely a “piece of straw in the wind,” a Venezuelan expression which suggests that his role is minimal in the larger process of social and political transformation. Chávez spares no chance to reiterate this idea, as he did during a recent clash between the top advisors of his party and his government: “The process does not belong to me. It belongs to the people… I do not have obligations to anyone but the people.”[12]
Chávez has resorted to a number of other ways of establishing a rapport with Venezuelan citizens. He frequently uses baseball images—a favorite sport among Venezuelans—and has played the game in public on more than one occasion. The pedagogic style of many of his speeches, which are often accompanied by graphs and maps, is aimed at making them accessible to the average Venezuelan, while at the same time lending transparency to the actions of his government. Finally, the use of military images and symbols—battles, tactics and strategy, the ambush, unsheathing the sword, putting one’s boots on—are means to transmit ideas of order, discipline, efficiency, ability, organization and planning.
These very elements provoke, to varying degrees, rejection, disdain and even indignation among Chávez’s enemies. The upper and upper-middle classes in particular reject Chávez’s efforts to appeal to the poor, reflecting a class and racist bias toward excluded social sectors. For them, references to “the people” as the principal actors in the new political process are read as evidence of demagogic populism. Chávez’s informality is identified with improvisation and his military language as an expression of authoritarianism. His use of humor is seen as a display of vulgarity, and his references to baseball are seen as improper, lacking the sobriety befitting a statesman. His pedagogic tone is perceived as primitive and unnecessary, and his lengthy presidential speeches are attacked as little more than endless, empty rhetoric.
Chávez clearly sees his government as constituting a new political system based on new understandings of power and authority. At a little over a year in power, it is still too early to say where this process of change is headed, both because of the short period which has elapsed since his election and because of the turbulence of his administration. But it is an unquestionable reality that, as a result of the five electoral processes held over the past 18 months, the traditional political elite that dominated Venezuelan politics and society for the last 40 years has been displaced. This in itself is astonishing, because despite the weakness and decomposition evidenced by the old elite in the past 15 years, it did not seem possible that there could be such a rapid shift in political power. The two pillars of the Venezuelan biparty system, AD and Copei, find themselves practically reduced to empty shells, lacking new leaders and bases of support of any relevance. Both parties are so discredited that the presidential candidates opposing Chávez in the May elections have dismissed the possibility of being publicly backed by either of them.
Given the weakness of the traditional parties, Chávez was easily able to achieve his immediate short-term objectives: convening a Constituent Assembly and getting a new constitution approved, which the President saw as the first steps in the refounding of the Republic. As with the displacement of the old elite, the approval of a new constitution in such a short time was surprising, but key to consolidating Chávez’s power. At the same time, however, the haste with which the President and his allies drafted and sought approval for the new document generated conflict and tensions, and many were dissatisfied with what they perceived as weaknesses in the final text. The possibility of drafting a new constitution based on a broad societal consensus was aborted as pro-government Assembly members realized that the sooner the document was finished and the referendum held, the more favorable the outcome would be to the government.
Chávez’s larger objective—consolidating a lasting political project—may flounder on the rocky shores of alliance building. The Patriotic Pole (PP), an alliance composed of Chávez’s MVR, the Homeland for All (PPT), the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), and other smaller, mostly leftist, groups, was established just before the regional elections of November 1998. Relations between these political organizations were never smooth. A year and a half into the Chávez Administration, debates to establish a common program have largely been abandoned. The political ambitions of the individuals leading the different parties have not made matters any easier. Jockeying over who was chosen for the various electoral posts up for grabs in the May mega-elections caused serious fractures in the alliance, if not a definitive rupture.
In the wrangling over the May elections, for example, the MVR showed little interest in supporting the re-election bid of three incumbent state governors who belong to the PPT, clearly the most significant group in the Patriotic Pole after the MVR. Just two weeks before the mega-elections, in a move that may have long-term consequences for governability, the PPT withdrew its support for the President in his bid for re-election. All along, PPT leaders grumbled about decisions they saw as marginalizing their candidates and threatening the promise of a popular, democratic project. Last December, PPT secretary general Pablo Medina made a public statement expressing his concern that the military was gaining undue influence in the new administration. He also criticized the military’s failure to coordinate relief efforts with the governor of the state of Vargas, PPT militant Alfredo Laya, in the aftermath of the December floods. Coming in the wake of the defection of Arias Cárdenas, this split could prove costly to the Patriotic Pole.
The MAS avoided similar problems by reaching a last-minute agreement with the MVR. Tensions soon erupted, however, leading to defections within both parties. As a result, the Patriotic Pole may lose several state and city governments it currently controls in the May elections, and will probably not do as well as expected in other contests.
Conflicts within the MVR itself are perhaps the most evident sign of the problems within the pro-Chávez alliance. The most significant rupture took place on February 4, 2000, the eighth anniversary of the failed coup, when the party’s main leaders, Yoel Acosta Chirinos and Luis Miquilena mutually accused each other of engaging in corrupt dealings. Chávez tried, but ultimately failed, to resolve the conflict. Acosta Chirinos, one of the commanders of the February 4 attempted coup and a long-time colleague of President Chávez who came to be national coordinator of the MVR, left to back Arias Cárdenas’ candidacy, taking with him a significant part of the MVR’s original military wing. Miquilena, a long-time leftist, has occupied important positions in the new administration, first as Minister of the Interior and Justice, then as president of the National Constituent Assembly; he is now president of the “congresillo,” the temporary Congress appointed by the Assembly to legislate until new congressional elections take place this May. Given the absence of mechanisms to resolve conflicts within the MVR aside from the direct intervention of Chávez himself, there remain serious doubts about the ability of this electoral movement to consolidate itself into a viable political party.
The other key component of the new government is the military. More military officials, both retired and active-duty officers, hold government posts today than at any other time since 1958. This presence has been an important source of support and stability in the process, but it has also caused unresolved tensions regarding different conceptions of the process between the civil and military sectors of Chavismo and within the military itself. The fact that both of the principal presidential candidates are of military origin has heightened the tensions within the military, a situation that will not be resolved until the role of the military is clearly defined.
These differences aside, it is important to note that there is one issue that seems to draw consensus rather than conflict among the different groups linked to the Chávez government—oil policy. Since the beginning of Chávez’s presidential campaign, his team of advisors opposed the apertura petrolera, the oil policy of the 1990s which sanctioned the selling of shares in the state-owned oil company, Venezuelan Petroleum (PDVSA). Not only was oil a strategic concern of the state, they argued, but oil wealth should be effectively channeled to promote socio-economic development. In March 1999, under the firm guidance of Energy Minister Alí Rodríguez, a veteran oil expert and PPT activist who was recently named president of OPEC, the newly appointed board of directors of PDVSA implemented production cuts agreed to by OPEC and other independent oil-producing countries in order to boost oil prices on the international market. With these cuts and the beginning of economic recovery in East Asia, the price of oil began to rise from the average of $8 per barrel in February 1999 to $23 per barrel in January 2000. While this shift in oil policy represents a clear defense of national interests, however, it is not enough to support the Chávez government’s ambitious development model’s social goals.
Indeed, its oil wealth notwithstanding, Venezuela is undergoing a deep economic recession. In 1999 the gross domestic product (GDP) fell an estimated 7.2% and the fiscal deficit was 3.1% of GDP. Unemployment reached 15.4% at the end of the third quarter—the highest rate in four decades—and the informal sector now constitutes 51.7% of the employed population. The strong decline in internal consumer demand caused a marked decrease of economic activity: 10% in manufacturing, 20% in construction and 16.5% in commerce.[13] There were some positive signs in 1999: Inflation remained low, there was a surplus in the balance of payments ($724 million), the fiscal deficit was lower than originally estimated and international reserves remained stable. But these indicators are largely attributable to the increases in oil prices and a policy of fiscal austerity that belies the government’s stated commitment to devise economic policies that improve the well-being of Venezuela’s poor. On the contrary, 1999 was one of the most difficult years the popular sectors have had to endure in the past two decades of crisis and transition.
This dire situation was compounded in December, when one of the worst natural disasters in Venezuela’s history struck. An atypical weather phenomenon caused persistent unseasonal rains, producing flooding and the overflow of rivers in various regions of the country. Hillsides in Caracas were washed away and in the state of Vargas, where the rainfall in two or three days exceeded the annual average, mudslides and flooding caused thousands of deaths. The topography of the central coast was irreversibly altered; poor neighborhoods, middle-income housing developments and entire towns were buried by the mudslides and more than a third of the state’s population was left homeless. The investment necessary to rebuild and relocate families that lost their homes adds an extra burden to the substantial sums already necessary to reactivate the economy. The way the government confronts the consequences of this tragedy will say much about its social sensitivity and its commitment to the people.
A year and a half into his government, President Chávez has carried out several of the political objectives proposed by his movement, but few achievements in economic policy that point to a sustainable model of development. Yet even though poverty increased and unemployment rose during the government’s first year in power, expectations remain high among the popular sectors. Chávez’s charisma, his communication skills and his appeal to ordinary Venezuelans have given him political capital to advance in pursuit of his political and social project.
The government’s second year is dominated by two priorities: winning the May mega-elections and reactivating the economy. Chávez and his movement see these elections as a means of finally displacing the country’s old political elite and replacing it with fresh leadership that supports their project. The challenge by his former comrade-in-arms aside, Chávez remains comfortably in the lead. Still, tensions, disputes and defections resulting from the process of choosing candidates for the over 6,000 posts up for grabs have weakened the Chavista alliance, and it will certainly not do as well in May as it did in last year’s election for Constituent Assembly members. That means Chávez and his allies will have to contend with the reality of negotiating with other actors—old and new—who oppose the Chavista project. The opposition is too weak to pose any credible challenge to the new hegemony represented by Chavismo. Nor is it likely to serve as an effective counterweight in defense of democratic institutions and civil liberties should these come under attack by authoritarian elements within the government.
Plans to ensure the other priority, the reactivation of the economy, are already underway. In February, President Chávez called a series of press conferences in which, accompanied by high-ranking government officials, he presented his plans to jumpstart the economy by reactivating manufacturing, tourism and agriculture. The government is making an effort to clearly link macro-economic policy with other goals in energy, infrastructure and social welfare. The viability of Chávez’s larger social and political project will depend on his government’s success on the economic front, which will be measured by improvements in the life conditions of the 80% of the population living in poverty. In this context, some economic benefits must be felt soon if the government is to avoid squandering the substantial political capital it has enjoyed until now.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Margarita López-Maya is a research historian at the Center for Development Studies of the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) in Caracas. Luis E. Lander is a social researcher at the Economics and Social Science Faculty at the UCV. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
NOTES
1. Base de Datos Marco Cultural de la Protesta Popular Venezolana en la Era Neoliberal (Marco Cultural, 1999), p. 359.
2. National Electoral Board, “Resultados electorales,” Boletín Indra del 10 de diciembre (Caracas: Dirección de Estadísticas Electorales, 1998).
3. National Electoral Board, “Resultados electorales” (1999).
4. National Electoral Board, “Resultados electorales” (1999).
5. National Electoral Board, “Resultados electorales” (1999).
6. National Electoral Board, “Resultados electorales” (1999).
7. The results of five polls were published in El Universal (Caracas), April 14, 2000, pp. 1-12.
8. Angela Zago, La rebelión de los ángeles (Caracas: Fuente Editores, 1992), p. 14.
9. Angela Zago, La rebelión de los ángeles, pp. 37-38.
10. El Nacional (Caracas), June 15, 1999, p. A1.
11. El Nacional, July 7, 1999, p. E1.
12. Interview with Hugo Chávez in El Nacional, February 12, 2000, p. D1.
13. Reported by Venezuela’s Central Bank in El Nacional, December 27, 1999, pp. D5-8.
