Causa R-with the R, for radical, always drawn in reverse
was not long ago one of the tiny grupusculos on the Left.
Today it is a major player in national politics.
One of the stunning developments of Vene- zuela’s 1993 presidential campaign was the rise to national prominence of the self-
described “workers’ party,” Causa R. Its presidential
candidate, Andrds Velasquez, won a respectable 22%
of the vote, and the party elected nine senators and 40
congressional deputies. The party was not long ago one of the tiny grupasculos on the Left whose entire
membershipin the words of one of its founders
could fit inside a Volkswagen. Previously confined to
the narrow regional and sectoral base of trade union-
ism in the industrial state of BolIvar, Causa Rwith the R, for radical, always drawn in reversehas
become a major player in national politics. In a bipar-
tisan political system long dominated by the social democratic party Accion Democratica (AD) and the
social Christian party Copei, Causa Rtogether with
the independent presidential candidacy of Rafael Calderahas changed the rules of the game.
As the campaign progressed, it became clear that the
party was capturing the popular imaginationand the enmity of the country’s traditional leadershipfor
reasons having a lot to do with its style. In a country
where arrogant attitudes and signs of sudden wealth
are the traditional characteristics of politicians, Causa
R candidates spoke, dressed and behaved like plain and honest workerswhich most of them actually
were. The party projected a campaign style that resem-
bled the rough-hewn image most Venezuelans have of
the country’s founding party, AD, in the days of its revolutionary fervor in the 1940s and 1950s. As the
campaign progressed, one question that surfaced was
whether Causa R’s Velasquez knew how to wear a tie.
(As Velasquez returned to his post as governor of the
state of Bolivar, the question remains unanswered.)
The party’s origins date back to the break-up of the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) in the early
1970s, and the defeat of the country’s revolutionary
armed struggle. Most of the dissidents who left the
PCV, after having rejected armed struggle and uncon-
ditional loyalty to the Soviet Union and Cuba, went on
to found another group, Movement Toward Socialism
(MAS). MAS would become Venezuela’s most promi-
nent and powerful group on the parliamentary Left for
the next 20 years. At the moment of MAS’s founding in January,
1971, one of the PCV dissidents, an ex-comandante of
the armed struggle named Alfredo Maneiro, split off
VOL XXVII, No 5 MARIAPRL 1994 29
Margarita Lopez Maya is on the political science faculty of the
Center for the Study of Development (CENDES) at the Central
University of Venezuela.
Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.REPORT ON VENEZUELA
with a tiny group of followers to found the organiza-
tion that would become Causa R. A short, stocky man, with a flushed face and a somewhat disheveled
demeanor, Maneiro was born into a middle-class fam-
ily on the off-shore island of Margarita, and took pride
in telling his companeros that he was descended from
the Margariteno, Don Manuel Pla-
cido Maneiro, one of the heroes of
Venezuelan independence. He had
spent 18 years as a PCV militant,
and had become a member of the
central committee. Maneiro went
to MAS’ founding convention full of reservations. Among other
things, he feared that MAS would
include members of the PCV less willing than he, or MAS leader
Teodoro Petkoff, to make a clean break with the old Communist
orthodoxy. These reservations stemmed
from Maneiro’ s obsession with the problem of the “vanguard,” and
how to shape a skillfully led orga- nization of political militants. He thought that it was best to begin
the process with a small number of dedicated activists. During the debates in the inner circle of the
PCV, it seems that Petkoff shared these ideas, and also
agreed with Maneiro that it was time for a total break
with the Communists. Nevertheless, at the founding of
MAS, the conception that prevailed was the creation
of a mass movement that would gather into itself all
the dissidents of the PCV and would rapidly look for
ways to insert itself into the national political scene.
That meant including groups less critical of the PCV,
and seeking, for a time, conciliation between the new
group and the old party. Maneiro decided to exclude himself, and took with him only 10 other people.
From this small nucleus, comprised of middle- and
base-level activists of the PCV, Causa R was born.
The organization began not with the idea that the
party could spawn a revolutionary movement, but the reverse, that a party would be the result of a revolu- tionary movement at a certain level of its develop-
ment. Maneiro thought that people had an astonishing
capacity to spontaneously mobilize, and that it was the
role of his group to give political content to that mobi-
lization. He thought that the group should participate
in the varied forms taken by the popular movement,
with the understanding that the people themselves
would sooner or later resolve the question of their own
political direction. Instead of beginning with a given political structure, he believed that one should have
confidence in the popular movement’s ability to pro-
duce a new political leadership.’
In keeping with these ideas, Maneiro’ s small group
decided not to create a new organization with a consti-
tutive act, a bureaucracy, and statutes, but rather to
insist on the idea of a party in permanent formation.2
They thought the group should dedicate most of its efforts to con-
structing the constantly changing political vanguards that would emerge from the encounters
between the group and the leader-
ship of the spontaneous popular movements. Maneiro said that
popular leadership was produced constantly in all activities, even in a baseball game. The group set
itself the task of finding this lead-
ership. During 1971, Maneiro and his group evaluated which of the
existing mass organizations could be mobilized in Venezuela. They
chose three within which to create
a political vanguard: the student
movement at the Central Universi-
ty of Venezuela (UCV) in Cara- cas, the independent workers’
movement at the huge Steelworks
of Orinoco (SIDOR) in Ciudad Guayana, and the pop-
ular movement in the Catia district of Caracas.
I
n January, 1972, Pablo Medina, one of the mem- bers of the group, went by himself to Ciudad
Guayana with the task of creating a political van-
guard at SIDOR. Unlike Maneiro, Medina came from
a large and poor familyhe had 10 or 12 brothers and
sistersfrom the western city of Tocuyo, in the state
of Lara. He served under Maneiro’s command in the
guerrilla struggle, and never separated from him, leav-
ing first the Communist Party, and then MAS with his
“comandante.” He got a job as a worker on the night
shift, settled in the working-class suburb of Matanzas, and began to put out a newspaper called El
Matancero, named after the suburb where it was locat-
ed. The group that published the newspaper called itself Matancero as well. The newspaper was at first
clandestine because of the authoritarian union leader-
ship at SIDOR, which was controlled by a corrupt
bureaucracy, mainly associated with AD.3 Towards
1973, an electrical worker named Andrds Velasquez began to collaborate with the group, by then com-
posed of 10 workers. In 1974, Velasquez gave his first
public speech at the main gatecalled “El Porton”
of SIDOR. This principal entrance and exitthe place
Maneiro thought
that people had an
astonishing capacity to
spontaneously mobilize,
and that his group
should have confidence
in the popular move-
ment’s ability to produce
a new political
leadership.
30 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASREPORT ON VENEZUELA
where the plant workers waited for and were dropped
off by Ciudad Guayana’s buseswas an excellent site
for public speaking, especially during shift changes. Velasquez became known as “the leader of El Porton.”
Five years later, in 1977, Tello BenItez, another
leader who had come up from the popular movement,
gained a seat in the steelworkers’
union, SUTISS. From that point
on, Matancero’ s “new unionism”
began to take hold. The
Matancero activists fought for the
democratic participation of work-
ers in union decisions, and for the
health and safety of the workers in the workplacethemes not dealt with by other unionists.
They also began to develop a rep- utation for honesty, in stark con-
trast to the widespread corruption of the traditional union leaders.
BenItez negotiated at the bargain-
ing tablewith the company and
with the traditional union leader-
shipwhile Velasquez took charge of speaking to workers at
the gate. Two years later, in the elec- tions of 1979, the Matancero
slate, headed by Velasquez, won control of the union at SIDOR. In reaction, and after a
series of conflicts, the union was taken over in 1981
by FETRAMETAL, the AD-controlled labor federa-
tion with which SUTISS is affiliated. Velasquez, Tello
BenItez and a few other workers were fired from their
jobs. But in 1988, the federation let the union go, elec-
tions were held, and Matancero won again. Traditional
unionism had lost the battle; the fame and expansion
of new unionism had begun. Since that date, the Causa
R-affiliated new unionism has grouped together about
40 union and cooperative groups around the country.4 While the Causa R student movement at UCV
would eventually founder over differences of concep-
tion and personality, the group at Catiacalled Pro
Catiabegan developing community activities and political initiatives which, by the late 1970s, yielded a fair amount of success. Catia is a populous district in
the western part of Caracas. The first part of Caracas
one sees on the drive up from the international airport,
Catia is made up of thousands of shackscalled “ran-
chos”which climb the mountains, in addition to the
dozen or so “blocks,” enormous complexes of build-
ings built by the state in the 1970s to house the poor.
One of Pro Catia’ s greatest achievements was the col-
lection of 24,000 signatures in a petition calling for the reform of the law of municipal councils. This
reform would give council representation to Catia’ s
communities, along with the right to revoke the man-
date of representatives.5 Despite the fact that more than half a million people lived in Catia during the
1970sprobably over a million live there nowthe community never had a representative council. Pro
Catia also started a campaign to
acquire food storehouses for the
area; they solicited garbage com- pactors for the parish; and they
sponsored games and sporting activities for children, and per-
suaded the government to build
neighborhood parks.6 Despite the two successful
Causa R-affiliated movements the alternative unionism at
SIDOR and Pro CatiaCausa R was still a small group at the
beginning of the l980s, located in
only two points of the extensive
geography of the country. While
the group continued to encounter
a militant and radical spirit within
the popular movements, it became
increasingly clear to the Causa R
leadership that these movements were in no mood for revolution-
ary struggle, and that the path to
expanded political work lay toward the political cen-
ter.7
The group therefore began to approach certain cen-
trist political figures. After a number of tries, a center-
Left relationship developed in the 1983 presidential
candidacyannounced in May, 1982of Jorge Olavarria. OlavarrIa, the publisher of the magazine
Resumen, was from a wealthy background, and had a conservative point of view. Nevertheless, he had
played an important role in denouncing all kinds of corruption, especially in the unionism of Guayana.
OlavarrIa had defended the position of the new union-
ism, and his articles had given some prominence to the Matancero movement and its leader, Andrds
Velasquez. Supporters of Causa R were surprised by this alliance, but Olavarrfa did give the group access
to one of the most widely read magazines in the coun-
try.
J
n November, 1982, just as the new alliance was getting off the ground, Maneiro died of a heart
attack at the age of 45. It was a hard blow for the
organization, just at the moment it was beginning to
achieve some visibility. Many feared that the party would now self-destruct.8 OlavarrIa, for his part,
thought he could fill the vacuum left by Maneiro. Just
Causa R’s Andres Velasquez, 1993 presidential
candidate and governor of the state of Boilvar.
Voi XXVfl, No 5 MARJAPRIL 1994 31REPORT ON VENEZUELA
before the deadline for the registration of presidential
candidates, he placed a number of conditions for his
candidacy before the organization, among them, that he he named Causa R’s secretary. Arguing that the
alliance with OlavarrIa should only be temporary, the
founding directors of the organization, Pablo Medina
and Lucas Matheus, objected to the conditions and
prevailed.9 OlavarrIa dropped out of the presidential
race, and ran instead for Congress as a member of a
group called Opina. Following the idea of seeking out the political cen-
ter, a group led by filmmaker Thaelman Urguellcs in
Pro Catia then proposed backing the candidacy of cx- president Rafael Caldera. But the steelworkers of
Matancero. arguing that Caldera and his party, Copei,
represented the old politics, proposed instead the can- didacy of the president of their union, Andres
Velasquez.’0 When Caldcra’s candidacy was rejected, Urguelles, together with Pro Catia and the majority of
intellectuals who remained in the organization, aban-
doned Causa R. The group’s neighborhood arm and its
remaining intellectuals were now lost, and Causa R
was reduced to the founding members who had left the
PCV in 1970, plus the leadership of the Matancero
movement. The labor tendency of the organization
prevailed from this point on.
Causa R had always been a political organization
mid-way between a political party and a movement.
Unlike Venezuela’s other parties, it rejected the for-
mal trappings of a party such as statutes and bylaws, party hierarchies, and staff. Being a rather small
group. a so-called “political committee” of a dozen or so leaders was delegated to make decisions. A
“national committee” and a “national meeting” also exist, but in fact these structures were never well- known, and the criteria for representation have
neverto this daybeen made explicit)’
The group also developed a political strategy of dis-
tancing itself from the other groups that also had their
origins in the armed struggle, such as MAS. It was
likewise hesitantexcept for the brief flirtation with
the centrist Jorge OlavarrIato enter into any elec-
toral or parliamentary alliances. At the same time, the
group’s conception of ideology as a process in perma- nent construction led it to reject ideologicalor politi-
calpigeonholes.
These characteristics put Causa R in a unique posi-
tion to benefit from the historical convergence of two
political processes external to the organization. On the
one hand, in the late 1980s, the country’s severe social
and economic crisis led the Venezuelan population to
increasingly reject the tradi- tional parties and the system
they had constructed. On the
other, a wide range of decen-
tralizing political reforms [see “State Reforms that
Opened the Door,” p. 32] allowed the group to begin
widening its base at the local and regional level. In this
context, Causa R reaped high dividends because it was so
easy to differentiate the orga- nization from the dominant actors as well as the pacts they had entered into. In
1988, the party managed to elect three congressional
deputies. February 27, 1989 marked the first social explosion.
Impoverished by years of economic crisis, and feeling
betrayed by Carlos Andres Perez who announced in his
first presidential message that the government had
agreed to go along with the austerity conditions of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), Venezuelans in
cities throughout the country took to the streets to loot
all kinds of commercial establishments. The govern-
ment responded by imposing a state of siege, suspend- ing constitutional guarantees, and unleashing severe political and military repression that resulted in an
official death toll in the hundreds. The “sacudbn” or
“caracazo” served to reveal the breach between state
and society that had been developing over the past few
years. The traditional parties and unions seemed help-
less to prevent the growing misery, or even to direct or
control the unrest. Less than a year after the “caracazo,” the first
regional and municipal elections in December, 1989
reflected the degree of rejection of Perez’ AD govern-
ment. Though it had carried 19 of the 20 states in the
1988 presidential and congressional elections, AD lost
control of nine of those state governments in the coun-
U try’s first direct gubernatorial elections.12 The state of
BolIvar, for example, where Causa R had concentrated its strength since the beginning of the decade, had
always been an AD stronghold. Nonetheless, grave accusations of corruption and contentious regional
leadership struggles had thrown AD into a serious cri-
sis, and many of the party militants disobeyed the
party line and voted for Causa R.’3 Velasquez won the
governorship with 40.3% of the vote, while AD came in second with 36.69%. Causa R also won in two
municipalities: CaronI, in the state
of Bolivar, and Miranda, in the cen-
tral state of Carabobo.
Although these results seemed to
come as a surprise to the rest of the
country, Velasquez contends that the leadership of AD knew days in
advance that they faced defeat, and
were planning to fix the elections.
Causa R, prepared from its SIDOR
experience, began early in the after- noon of election day to accuse AD of fraud, while the population of
Ciudad Guayana took to the streets to back Velasquez. SIDOR was
practically paralyzed. In Ciudad BolIvar, the capital of the State, all
activity stopped, and thousands of people demonstrated. This mobi-
lization had the desired effect: AD
held a press conference soon there-
after to concede defeat.
On December 6, 1992, just eight days after the year’s second
attempted coup d’etat, Velasquez was reelected governor of BolIvar with 63.36% of the
vote. At the same time, the organization captured the
mayoralties of the three largest cities of the state of
BolIvar. These triumphs were predictable, but the mar-
gins of victory were even wider than expected, and
strikingly, Causa R did well outside of the state of
BolIvar.
In the day’s most dramatic and unexpected develop-
ment, word began circulating around mid-day that Causa R’s Aristobulo Isttiriz was ahead in the exit
polls in the race for mayor of Caracas. One more time,
rumors of impending electoral fraud mobilized hun- dreds of people who began to gather opposite the
Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) where they waited
for official electoral bulletins. Thousands of people
filled the Plaza Caracas to defend Isttiriz’ victory. That afternoon, the president of the CSE called the two
leading candidates together to sign a pact agreeing to respect the results, whatever they may be. Claudio Fermmn of AD gladly accepted. Isttiriz rejected the proposal, arguing that he had violated no rules and
that “the only thing to respect was the vote of the peo-
ple.”4 IstUriz won 34.45% of the vote and Fermmn,
32.03%. The popular sectors spilled into the street to
celebrate their victory.
VOL XXVfl, No 5 MARJAPRIL 1994 33
One of the enormous housing blocks in Cat/a, a
fertile organizing ground for Causa R.REPORT ON VENEZUELA
C
ausa R’s growing success over the past four
years has brought small, but significant changes in its objectives and discourse. In 1990,
Velasquez said that one of the fundamental ideas of Causa R was that “the workers can govern.”5 The
“working class” had been converted to “the workers,”
a formulation which would now be used in all the
organization’s discourse. This centrality of “the work-
ers” can be considered both a narrowing of Maneiro’ s
original conception of Causa R, and perhaps a narrow- ing of the group’s ultimate chances for building a
mass-based movement. But given the Marxist matrix
of Maneiro’s thought, and
given the initial proposi- tion that the group would
construct itself within the
popular movements, this narrowing is not at all
contradictory to his plans.
Indeed given the hegemo- ny achieved within the
party by the Matancero movement once the other
movements had dissolved or left the party, such a
focus makes historical
sense. Velasquez’ record as
governor of Bolivar can be considered, on a
regional scale, an embryo of Causa R’s sociopolitical project for Venezuela. In
the first place, his government has been honest (some-
thing significant in the current Venezuelan context),
and has stressed democracy, not only as a form of get-
ting elected, but as a form of governing. “Street assem-
blies,” for example, are frequently called in public squares or city streets where people hear and debate
state and local problems.
Second, given its limited resources, the state gov-
ernment has been able to provide with reasonable effi-
ciency social services, especially health, education and personal security. Visible efforts have been made
to restore public schools and hospitals to adequate
working order after years of neglect by administra- tions more attuned to partisan interests than to region-
al concerns. Finally, the state’s plans for the develop- ment of the region of Guayana diverge somewhat
from the traditional development plans of the federal
government. Instead of focusing on megaprojects to
extract and export primary goods (iron, aluminum and bauxite), Causa R advocates developing the Orinoco
River region with medium-size industry and manufac-
turing that would process the primary material in the
same state.16
In the 1993 electoral campaign, Causa R presented
to the public a “base document” outlining its project
for Venezuela. The introduction to the document says
Venezuelan society urgently needs to become “just,
balanced, tolerant, cohesive, efficient, productive and civilized.”17 To reach this new society, Causa R sees
two great tasks before it: a radical cultural transforma-
tion, and a productive revolution. The first would
encourage the democratization of social life in all its
instances: a profound educational reform, the constitu-
tion of a genuine state of law, urban reform, an anti-
corruption program, and the renewal of the idea of the
common destiny of “the nation.”8 The second
would move beyond the
rentier economy; it would
maintain the oil industry
as the center of the econ-
omy not to produce rents, but to create linkages
with other forms of pro-
duction. Causa R’s ideas, how- ever, lack theoretical
development, reflecting the pragmatic and short-
range vision of the orga- nization’s policies. The
scarce attention the party
pays to trying to incorpo- rate militant “intellectu-
als” or other educated sectors reinforces this weak- ness. With little formal education and training for
public posts, union leaders may not necessarily make
good mayors, town councilors or congressional repre- sentatives.
The success of Causa Rlike that of the Workers
Party (PT) of Brazil, and perhaps the PRD in Mexi- coreveals the desire of the popular sectors, so
badly beaten over the last few years in Latin Ameri-
ca, to find new political space within which to make
themselves heard. It’s been some time since organiza-
tions like AD and Mexico’s PRIbureaucratized and
corrupt by their long sojourns in powerhave been tuned in to the needs of the majority of the people.
Causa R is not a new political organization. It has
been working all along in unions and neighborhoods,
without betraying its principles or succumbing to cor-
ruption. What has changed is the political panorama.
Venezuelans, finding themselves poor, hungry, and orphaned by the state, reached out to the organization
that most clearly had shown itself to be free of com-
plicity with the old political system. Now that the electorate has given Causa R some power, the real
challenges begin.
The Rise of Causa R
1 .Alfredo Maneiro et al, Notas Negativas (Caracas: Ediciones
Venezuela 83, 1971), p. 39. 2.The group was then called “Venezuela 83,” after the date
when all foreign oil concessions were to revert to Venezuelan
ownership. 3.Pablo Medina, “Causa Radical: Entrevista a Pablo Medina,”
Motivos (Mexico City), No. 106 (July 6, 1993).
4.Farruco Sesto, Tres entrevistas con Andres Velasquez: 1986-
1990-1991 (Caracas: Ediciones del Agua Mansa, 1992), p. 43.
5.Medina, “Causa Radical,” p. 47.
6.” Catia: Sucursal del infierno,” Resumen (Caracas), No. 432
(February 14, 1982). 7.Alfredo Maneiro, Notas Politicas (Caracas: Ediciones del Agua
Mansa, 1986), pp. 252-257.
8.Farruco Sesto, personal interview, November 18, 1993, Caracas.
9.Sesto, interview, November 18, 1993.
10.Sesto, interview, November 18, 1993.
11 .Sesto, interview, November 18, 1993.
12.Margarita Lopez Maya, “Tensiones sociopollticas del proceso de
decentralizaciOn en Venezuela,” Cuadernos del CENDES (Cara-
cas), No. 17/lB (1991).
13.Guillermo Yepes Salas, La Causa R: Origenypoder (Caracas:
Fondo Editorial Tropikos, 1993), p. 160.
14. “Manifestacihn popular proclamO ante eI Consejo Supremo Elec-
toral triunfo de La Causa R,” El Nacional (Caracas), December B,
1992.
1 5.Sesto, Tres entrevistas con Andres Velasquez, p. 122.
16. Sesto, Tres entrevistas con Andres Velasquez, pp. 150-153.
17. Causa R, Proyecto politico para una nueva Venezuela (Caracas:
La Causa R, 1993), p. 2.
18.Causa R, Proyecto politico, p.3.
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