POST-CHAVEZ VENEZUELA: Hugo Chavez crossed the Kafkaesque corridors of power of Caracas, of Cuarimare, the playground of those who profited from the petroleum revenues of the Venezuelan ancien régime. A hallucinatory hysteria pervaded the ruling classes of what was then one of the most reactionary countries of South and Central America and the Caribbean when Chavez presented a leftist challenge to the country's conservative ruling clique. The poor anticipated participating in the decision-making process of Venezuela. The rich refused to give up power. Contradictory levels of consciousness made the country a most ambiguous, sometimes incomprehensible conundrum. But the new cult figure on the block was no fluke. Venezuelan public opinion is fast shifting to the left and in a more Pan-Latin American, nationalistic direction. Other Latin American nations are undergoing their own nationalist resurgence. The Latin American leftist parties rely for their legitimacy on democratic elections and on a combination of high economic growth and nationalism. Venezuela is no exception. The Venezuela of Chavez has staked its future not only on oil, but on democracy and populist socialism. The logic is straightforward. Venezuela's oil revenues must be utilised for the uplift of the country's poor and disadvantaged. This view is popular among many in Venezuela. But, it has received a far cooler welcome in the West and among Venezuela's own compradore class. The apotheosis of the problem of matching Venezuela's populism to jurisdiction is the paradox in which petroleum profits are earned but no real economic growth takes place. One should be wary of such alarmism. Chavez, during his 14-year rule halved unemployment. The poor of Venezuela were the major beneficiaries of his populist policies. Chavez's hand-picked successor Nicólas Maduro will almost certainly prevail against an opposition that is widely perceived to be right-wing, reactionary and whose Machiavellian tactics drew sharp criticism from the country's poor. Maduro's main opposition rival and contender to the Venezuelan presidency is Israel's man in Venezuela, Henrique Capriles Radonski, son of an Ashkenazim Jewish mother and a Sephardim Jewish father. Capriles characteristically claims to be a devout Roman Catholic in a predominantly Catholic country. Henrique Capriles' religious background is of no particular importance had he not advocated the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel after Chavez had severed diplomatic relations with the Zionist state following the 2008-2009 Israeli aggression against Gaza. What is it about Israel and the Palestinian question? Why does the prickly subject make something wake up in people, not just in the Arab and predominantly Muslim countries, but among all-peace-loving people the world over? Surely, domestic concerns will take precedence over foreign policy issues in the 14 April Venezuelan presidential elections. In last year's 7 October presidential polls Capriles stood against Chavez as head of the Democratic Union coalition and he lost. Capriles garnered 44 per cent of the vote, however. But, analysts presume that the presence of Capriles as a presidential candidate would at least provide the Venezuelan opposition with something it has lacked until now, a plausible candidate to replace Maduro as president of Latin America's leading oil exporter. In his first public address after the passing of Chavez, Capriles gave few details of his political platform, but signalled his strong desire to curtail the powers of the underdog. Long before his passing, Chavez alluded to the right-wing opposition's leadership problem by praising Maduro. And, according to opinion polls, Maduro remains a strong favourite to retain Venezuela's top job after the 14 April presidential polls. Maduro's championing of the disadvantaged came amid signs that Capriles is moving further to the right, possibly increasing the number of votes in the centre that will be up for grabs. “He was a bus driver, how they mock him, the bourgeoisie,” Chavez once described his successor in jest. Chavez has set a precedent, and a “bus driver” a member of the proletariat is destined to be the president of a country with one of the world's largest oil reserves. The attempted overthrow of Chavez in 2002 by reactionary forces was reversed by the inhabitants of the impoverished barrios of Caracas rallying to the cause of Chavez. Capriles is fond of calling Maduro names but every time he opens his mouth on the subject of socialism he reveals his unfamiliarity with what has actually been happening in Venezuela in the past decade. Of course there are those among the most feverishly capitalist Venezuelans who speak of nothing else but lambasting Chavez, Maduro and the underdog. The documentary by John Pilger entitled The War on Democracy pinpoints the political dilemma of Capriles. Venezuela's poor “describe a world not as American presidents like to see it as useful and expendable, they describe the power of courage and humanity among people with next to nothing,” Pilger explains.
SOCIALIST SOCIALITES: “In sadness and in tribute to my friend Hugo Chavez, I join with millions of Venezuelans, Latin Americans, Caribbeans, fellow US citizens and millions of freedom-loving people around the world in hope for a rewarding future for the democratic and social development charter of the Bolivarian Revolution,” Hollywood heavyweight, African American actor Danny Glover declared at Chavez's funeral in Caracas. Political philosophy has been the controversial subject of a group of powerful, decidedly pro-people cinematic socialites in Hollywood. They argue that peace-loving individuals with a strong sense of social justice will always choose an egalitarian economic order. “Poor people around the world lost a champion,” actor Sean Penn proclaimed. “Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chavez will live forever in history,” Filmmaker Oliver Stone paid tribute to the late Venezuelan leader. Pejoratively dismissed as “Socialist socialites” these Hollywood heavyweights turned up in Caracas to pay tribute to Chavez. They have no qualms about their love of Chavez and the ideals that he stood for. Moreover, they understand why Venezuela's poor voted for Chavez and why he in turn championed the poorest of the poor in Venezuela. The most consistent strand of opposition to the political approach of Chavez came from diehard capitalists and the compradore classes of Venezuela. The Hollywood socialist socialites believe that the personal identities and personas of politicians are predominantly a product of the communities they come from. They cherish human rights, multi-culturalism, and social justice. “When Hugo Chavez first attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, he was attacking a democracy in name only. Decades of two-party rule had created a system that was utterly unresponsive to the needs of the vast majority, and as economic crisis set in during the ‘lost decade' of the 1980s, the poor turned to rebellion and the government to brute repression,” explained professor George Ciccariello-Maher of Drexel University, Philadelphia, and author of We Created Chavez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution. The 30 or so heads of state and government who converged on Caracas for the funeral of Chavez also have leftist inclinations. Whatever the outcome of Venezuela's forthcoming presidential poll, it is now clear that the future of Latin America at large, if not the entire Western Hemisphere, is at stake.
UNCLE SAM: The United States has long enjoyed a fractious relationship with Latin America. The continent south of the Rio Grande is no longer America's backyard. The US remains a crucial trading partner for Latin America, but other rivals have appeared on the commercial scene such as China and other Asia-Pacific powers. Since Chavez assumed power in Venezuela, matters have become even more tricky for the US. At times, even Washington's role as convenient troublemaker has served as a counter-balance to Argentinean-Brazilian and Mexican dominance in Latin America and the federalist overreach of the Bolivarianism of Chavez. US President Barack Obama, himself an African American, has a tricky hand to play. He must work in partnership with an increasingly leftist Latin America with leaders who are at heart more socialist than his own political convictions. Generally speaking Latin America's political elites are no longer reluctant to talk openly about poverty. Discussing the problem of poverty is no longer taboo, due in large measure to leaders like Chavez, Bolivia's Evo Morales and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. By any measure, people in Latin America are still worse off than those in North America, whether it is taking into account per capita income, or quality of life issues such as health, education, life expectancy or infant mortality. The poor in Latin America provide the political heft for the leaders of the continent. “Hugo Chavez was a poor kid from the country, which tells you much of what you need to know about him. Bare feet, mud hut, perpetual sunburn, gleaning hard lessons and a strong dose of audacity from everyday experiences in that wild part of the Venezuelan flatlands, or llanos, that crash abruptly into the towering Andes mountains,” Ciccariello-Maher extrapolates. Remorseless logic confronts politicians in Washington with tough choices for dealing with Latin America and the Caribbean. Long gone are the days of Ronald Reagan's “Contras”.
BOLIVARIANISM BLOSSOMS: Simon Bolivar, the liberator of Latin America from colonial Spanish rule, struggled to see his newly independent continent as a united polity and an integrated economy. This is precisely the ideology of continental unification that was adopted by Hugo Chavez. The instinctive response of many of the political counterparts of Chavez was that the nations of Latin America must club together and establish an economic union, perhaps with political overtones. “While politics was in the soil under his feet and in his every social interaction, Chavez's first formal contact with revolutionary politics came through his elder brother, Adán, a member of the still-clandestine former guerrilla organisation, the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution (PRV). It was the PRV that refused intransigently to come down from the mountains in the late 1960s when the Venezuelan Communist Party decided to withdraw from the armed struggle, and it was the PRV more than any other organisation that resisted Marxist orthodoxy by excavating Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary traditions under the umbrella of ‘Bolivarianism',” Ciccariello-Maher notes. Chavez founded and nurtured the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement, and it was not a purely military affair, evolving in close contact with revolutionary communist guerrillas from the PRV and elsewhere, Ciccariello-Maher observes. “Chavez's rural persona always managed to break through the polite veneer of political leadership: as when he would often spontaneously break into llanero song, speak in country parables and refrains, or attack opponents and allies alike on live television. Also arguably a legacy of the countryside was his paradoxical democratic authoritarianism: deeply respectful of the people and fervently egalitarian, he would not take no for an answer when it came to revolutionising the country. While Chavez had long dreamed of becoming a major league pitcher, his childhood nickname, Latigo, the whip, described his approach to politics at least as well as it described his fastball,” Ciccariello-Maher so eloquently expounds. Bolivarianism does not necessarily focus on a statutory definition of poverty, rather it is about target setting or poverty eradication programmes. The emphasis of Chavez on expenditures on schemes to improve the conditions of the poor in Venezuela endeared him with the socially and economically disadvantaged worldwide. The political obstacles on the path to Bolivarianism are significant. Even so, the way of continental unification is strewn with difficulties, but a watered-down version of Bolivarianism will not do. There are plenty of Venezuelan lessons for the less privileged of the world's peoples. Franz Fanon long ago lamented the vulnerabilities of the colonial subjects, psychological and in terms of grim daily realities. And, the same applies today as far as the contemporary neo-colonial peoples are concerned. “An army can at any time reconquer the ground lost, but how can the inferiority complex, the fear and the despair of the past be re-implanted in the consciousness of the people?” So spoke Fanon. Today, the neo-colonial peoples of the underdeveloped world mourn Chavez's passing deeply and sincerely. The Venezuela of Chavez was one of the few nations to grant Palestinians entry visas at a time when they were denied even by some Arab states. Venezuela's tricolour-draped coffin was lying in state as millions of mourners expressed their love and affection for their dead leader. “Those who die for life... cannot be called dead,” sang singer-songwriter Ali Primera. For the supporters of Chavez in Venezuela and abroad, his ideals live on.
