The Long Shadow of Hugo Chávez: A Sympathetic Book Defends Venezuela's Strongman

Gott sees Chávez's rise to power as a direct result of the violent rebellion in Caracas in February 1989, the Caracazo. This spontaneous uprising led to widespread looting and rioting before the military clamped down, killing hundreds in the process. The Caracazo protested the economic reforms introduced by then-President Carlos Andres Perez and his young, technocratic, American-trained ministers, Miguel Rodríguez and Moises Naím. These "shock troops" of the "Washington Consensus," Gott charges, sought to open up Venezuela's statist economy and impose the draconian price increases that led to the uprising. (Of course, Perez was not the only populist to "bait and switch" once in office; both Carlos Menem in Argentina and Alberto Fujimori in Peru also imposed harsh adjustment policies after taking office. But they succeeded, whereas Perez totally failed.)

Three years after the Caracazo, the 38-year-old Chávez staged his coup. His attempt to seize the presidential palace in Caracas failed, but the takeover was so successful in other parts of the country that Chávez was permitted to appear on television after surrendering to urge his co-conspirators to also give up. His appearance gave him national prominence. "The objectives we set ourselves have not been achieved ...," he told the Venezuelan people, "for the moment (por ahora)." Chávez's attempt to stage a second coup from his prison cell later that year also failed. But his phrase "por ahora" became the battle cry for his successful assumption of power through the ballot box.

Chávez's rise coincided with the disintegration of Venezuela's democracy, which was once seen as one of the most successful and stable in Latin America. Between 1992 and 1999, the party system that had run Venezuela since the 1950s collapsed. Venezuela's two dominant parties, Democratic Action and the Christian Democrats, traditionally took more than 90 percent of the vote in presidential elections and more than 80 percent of seats in the lower house of Congress. But today, they are marginal actors with little presence outside the state and local level. Venezuela lies in totally new political territory. Why this political collapse happened is therefore a more interesting question than the emergence of Chávez -- and it is not attributable only to "corruption," as Gott implies.

In this respect, Venezuela does offer at least one disturbing lesson with potentially wider implications for the Andean republics: the prospect of radical economic reform can so severely disrupt a clientelistic, patronage-driven political system that it undermines its very foundation. Venezuela is an extreme case, but it may be joined by others. It had oil to fuel its corruption and payoffs, but so does Ecuador; old-line parties have also been undermined in Colombia and Peru -- with dangerous ramifications for both countries' democratic prospects.

Still, Chávez's popularity among poorer voters is not hard to explain. By the 1990s, per capita income in Venezuela lay below its level in the 1960s; industrial wages now stand at 40 percent of what they were in the 1980s; 66 percent of the population earns less than $2 a day; and unemployment is rife. More than half of the employed population works in the informal sector. Private investment fell 25 percent during Chávez's first year in office, while the economy contracted more than seven percent and capital flight exploded despite a threefold rise in oil prices. Chávez's populist anti-oligarchy rhetoric thus finds a powerful resonance among the disadvantaged and the volatile inhabitants of the shantytowns; the poor, after all, make up more than 80 percent of the electorate. But the grim economic statistics also underline the great challenge that Chávez faces in satisfying popular demands.

Chávez has essentially dismantled Venezuela's old institutions and ratified the process through five elections. He has closed down Venezuela's Congress and Supreme Court, abolished the 1961 constitution, and renamed the country the "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela." He has also taken time out to visit China, including Mao's tomb, where he assured his hosts that Venezuela was beginning to "stand up" just as the "Great Helmsman" had done 50 years before. He went to Havana to play baseball with Castro, declaring that he found the Cuban and Venezuelan people bathing "in the same sea of happiness." And he has blocked U.S. flights over Venezuelan airspace, preventing their surveillance of Colombian drug traffickers. All this has made him widely popular with the majority of the Venezuelan people -- and vigorously hated by its elite.

THE COLONEL'S LABYRINTH

Chávez has attacked the oligarchy (much to Gott's delight), but in reality the split between the haves and the have-nots is becoming more pronounced. The oligarchy has already shifted its assets to Miami and New York, and capital flight will reach an estimated $10 billion this year -- half the amount of Venezuela's annual oil income, or a quarter of the state's total revenues. The real divide now is between the voters in the shantytowns, who support Chávez, and the dwindling middle class, which opposes him. Chávez has also brought the country's nationalized oil company under strict government control. This has helped boost Chávez's spending on social programs, but the revenues still do not cover all that he promised. Then there is Chávez's plan for integrated agro-industrial projects, which would relocate much of the urban population to the countryside. Gott's approval of this "bold plan" takes on a sinister air, given that he once praised the Khmer Rouge's anti-urban policies and was among the last major leftists to condemn Pol Pot.