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Venezuela under Hugo Chávez: The Originality of the ‘Bolivarian’ Project

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 13; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13563460802436624

1469-9923

Richard Gott,

Cultural and political discourse analysis

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes A recent book by the Americas editor of The Economist is highly critical of Chávez: Michael Reid, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul (Yale University Press, 2007). In spite of the author's hostility to the Venezuelan president, the publisher felt obliged to put a campaigning photograph of Chávez on the jacket to promote the book. Barack Obama, a US presidential candidate in 2008, attacked Chávez in a speech in Miami on 26 May 2008 as 'a demagogue' whose 'perilous mix of anti-American rhetoric, authoritarian government, and chequebook diplomacy' harks back to an earlier era. The view of successive New Labour ministers in the British Foreign Office, Denis McShane and Baron Triesman. See, most recently, Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (Verso, 2005). The formulation of Fred Halliday and Ervand Abrahamian. Román Martínez Galindo, Ezequiel Zamora y la batalla de Santa Inés (Vadell Hermanos, 1992). One irate Venezuelan general was briefly detained in June 2008 for suggesting that the slogan should be replaced with a declaration by Francisco de Miranda: 'Death to tyranny. Long live freedom!'. See Nicola Miller, 'The "Immoral" Educator: Race, Gender and Citizenship in Simón Rodríguez's Programme for Popular Education', Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2006), pp. 11–20. Simón Rodríguez, Sociedades Americanas en 1828 (Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1990). See my 2006 lecture to the Society of Latin American Studies. Richard Gott, 'Latin America as a White Settler Society', Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2007), pp. 269–89. For a specific analysis of the race question in Venezuela, see Barry Cannon, 'Class/Race Polarisation in Venezuela and the Electoral Success of Hugo Chávez: A Break with the Past or the Song Remains the Same?', Third World Quarterly, Vol. 29. No. 4 (2008), pp. 731–48. Rodríguez, Sociedades Americanas en 1828. See Osvaldo Sunkel, Development from Within: Toward a Neostructuralist Approach for Latin America (Lynne Rienner, 1993). Sidor had been privatised in 1997, and taken over subsequently by Ternium, a company based in Luxembourg but owned by Techint, an Argentine–Italian conglomerate. Chávez was under pressure from President Kirchner in Argentina not to nationalise the company, but eventually did so under pressure from the workers and in order to settle what was becoming a serious industrial dispute. The foreign-owned cement companies included Cemex (Mexico), Lafarge (France) and Holcim (Switzerland). Only Cemex refused to accept the compensation terms. When Chávez ordered the nationalisation of Venepal, a bankrupt paper mill, in January 2005, after prolonged agitation by its workforce, he emphasised that 'the expropriation today is an exception, it's not government policy'. See Bart Jones, Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution (Steerforth Press, 2007), p. 438. Tyler Bridges, 'Venezuelans are lining up with the economy in check, Miami Herald, 19 May 2008. Manuel Rosales, the opposition candidate in the presidential elections of December 2006, had advocated a direct monetary hand-out to the poor, calling for a 'fair allocation of oil revenues' and a minimum wage for the unemployed. The hand-out was to have been made available through a debit card, unfortunately called 'Mi Negra', with a monthly deposit provided from a fund derived from 20 per cent of PdVSA's profits. An opinion poll suggested that 59 per cent preferred stable jobs and rejected the Mi Negra proposal. Misión Robinson was called after Samuel Robinson, the pseudonym used by Simón Rodríguez when travelling in Europe in the first two decades of the nineteenth century. He had chosen the name in homage to Robinson Crusoe, pioneer of 'learning by doing'. El Universal, 9 December 2006. Steven Mather, 'Venezuelan government announces $5 billion for communal councils', Venezuelanalysis.com, 10 January 2007. The Chávez government has also had considerable success in reorganising the country's tax system, and Seniat, the national tax and customs administration, has made successful efforts to force companies and wealthy individuals to pay income tax, a development unheard of in many Latin American countries. This was eventually made effective in May 2007, when the government took over the pumping and refining facilities owned by foreign companies in the Orinoco. Most of the companies agreed to the terms, including Chevron and BP, but ConocoPhillips and ExxonMobil refused, and sought compensation. PetroSur is a political and commercial company that aims to foster cooperation between the state oil companies of Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela – PdVSA, Petróleos Brasileros (Petrobras) and Energía Argentina (Enarsa). Petrosur is required to use its energy resources, fairly and democratically, for the socioeconomic improvement of the region. Its three initial projects are in Venezuela's Orinoco oil belt, north-east Brazil's Abreu de Lima refinery, and the fields of oil and gas exploitation in Argentina. Its benefits to non-producing countries include the avoidance of the 30 to 50 per cent of the oil price customarily paid to oil trading corporations. Twelve of the 15 members of Caricom, plus Cuba and the Dominican Republic, signed the energy agreement on 7 September 2005. Those signing were Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Suriname, St Lucia, St Kitts and Nevis and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago, an existing oil producer, refused to sign. Haiti joined in April 2006 and Honduras in December 2007. Member states are allowed to repay 40 per cent of the current oil price over 25 years, while part of the cost can be defrayed by providing goods in lieu: bananas, sugar and coffee. Barack Obama, the Democrat candidate in the US presidential elections in 2008, in a speech in Miami on 23 May 2008, called for 'a new energy partnership for the Americas'. He did not seem to realise that the Latin Americans had already organised one on their own. The regional and municipal elections on 23 November 2008 would elect 22 state governors in the 23 federal states, 219 members of regional parliaments, 332 mayors, 2 city mayors (including Caracas) and 13 city councillors. 'I am obliged to slow down the pace of the march', Chávez said during this January talk. 'I have been imposing a speed that is beyond our collective capacity … I accept that has been one of my mistakes.' He warned that 'we cannot allow ourselves to be dragged along by extremist currents … We have to seek out alliances with the middle classes, even with national bourgeoisie'. Yet he also said that 'we haven't abandoned socialism. Under capitalism, a minority are very rich, the majority are poor or very poor. Only by way of socialism [can we improve the situation] little by little. The terrible inequality created during 100 years of capitalism, will not be removed in 1 year or in 10. [It will not take] as much as 100 years, but at least several decades [will be necessary].' He clearly envisaged a long haul ahead. See Stephanie Blankenburg, 'Chávez in Danger', New Statesman, 7 July 2008. Early in 2008, ExxonMobil, in steps taken in international courts reminiscent of the campaign against the Allende government in Chile after its nationalisation of foreign-owned copper companies, secured an injunction from a British judge to freeze some US$12 billion of PdVSA's assets. A subsequent appeal reversed the ruling, but ExxonMobil shows every sign of wishing to continue the legal fight.