Arvind Sivaramakrishnan
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias, President of Venezuela, who died on March 5,
2013 at the age of 58, was a defining figure in Latin American politics
for 14 years, becoming almost synonymous with the popular tide that has
elected and re-elected left and centre-left governments across the
continent in that time.
A gifted orator who could hold an audience for hours, Mr. Chávez
combined political courage with immense conviction and an extraordinary
sense of destiny. Born to schoolteacher parents in Sabaneta in 1954, he
qualified in military arts and sciences at the National Military
Academy, became an officer in a paratrooper unit, and started his
political career in the early 1980s by founding a secret organisation,
the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement, which took its name from the
Latin American independence leader Simón Bolivar. His first big move was
an attempted military coup against the government of Carlos Andres
Perez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned for two years before being
pardoned.
Mr. Chávez, however, renamed his group the Movement of the Fifth
Republic (which a decade later merged with other groups to form the
United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV) and won the 1998
presidential election on a socialist manifesto, promising millions
relief from a system which had put oil wealth into luxurious lives for
the rich and profits for the oil corporations.
Social parameters
Mr. Chávez removed corrupt military officers and started a national
reform programme. Venezuela, according to the United States Department
of Energy, has the world’s largest oil reserves at 1.36 trillion
barrels, and the new President promptly nationalised the main oil
company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), putting the profits into very
effective social programmes. Carles Mutaner, Joan Benach, and Maria Paez
Victor note that between 2000 and 2010, social spending increased by 61
per cent or $772 billion; the country has the region’s lowest level of
inequality, with a reduction in its Gini coefficient of 54 per cent.
Poverty is down from 71 per cent in 1996 to 21 now, and extreme poverty
is down from 40 per cent to 7.3. The social programmes, or Misiones, he
started have reached 20 million people, and 2.1 million have received
senior citizens’ pensions, a sevenfold increase under Mr. Chávez.
The country has also cut food imports from 90 per cent to 30 per cent of
its consumption, and has reduced child malnutrition from 7.7 per cent
in 1990 to 5 today; infant mortality has declined from 25/1000 to 13 in
the same period, and the country now has 58 doctors per 10,000 people
(as against 18 in 1996). As many as 96 per cent of the population now
have access to clean water, and with school attendance at 85 per cent,
one in three Venezuelans is enrolled in free education up to and
including university.
Oil royalties help. A 2001 law cut the sale price share of foreign
companies from 84 to 70 per cent, and they now pay royalties of 16.6 per
cent on Orinoco basin heavy crude; they used to pay 1 per cent earlier.
Exxon and Conoco Philips rejected these terms, as Deepak Bhojwani notes
in the Economic and Political Weekly (December 22, 2012), and were expelled, but Chevron stayed.
Mr. Chávez of course infuriated the mainly white elites, some of whom
talked of him in racist terms, as well as the United States government
and press, both of which have consistently vilified him in language
bordering on the delusional. The State Department greeted the 2002 coup
against Mr. Chávez by expressing solidarity with the Venezuelan people
and looking forward to “working with all democratic forces in
Venezuela.” The statement also said Mr. Chávez had dismissed the
Vice-President and Cabinet. In fact it was the coup figurehead, Pedro
Carmona Estanga, who, according to the Notable Names Database, dissolved
the national assembly, disbanded the Supreme Court, closed the
attorney-general’s and comptroller’s offices, and repealed 48
redistributive laws meant to help the poor.
U.S. relations
Yet huge public support for Mr. Chávez meant the putschist regime
collapsed within days. The President was reinstated, but the then U.S.
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice hectored him to “respect the
constitution.” Greg Palast points out in The Progressive that the
George W. Bush administration’s National Security Strategy of 2006
called him a demagogue out to undermine democracy and destabilise
Venezuela.
The U.S. press dutifully played its part. In September 2012, the WorldNet
columnist Drew Zahn called Mr. Chávez a “socialist dictator,” when the
President was about to win a fourth successive election. All those
elections were of far greater probity than the respective U.S.
presidential elections of 2000 and 2004; this time Mr. Chávez won by 11
percentage points on a turnout of 80 per cent. Other U.S. media bodies
have spread partial truths about the Caracas government, saying it
bloats the public sector and lets the budget deficit spiral.
In fact, as Mark Weisbrot notes in the Guardian, 18.4 per cent of
Venezuela’s work force is in the public sector, in contrast to Norway’s
29 per cent, and its projected 2012 debt to GDP ratio of 51.3, is lower
than the European Union average of 82.5 per cent; inflation has declined
too, from 27 per cent in 2010 to 19 per cent now, and the fiscal
deficit, according to the International Monetary Fund in September 2012,
was 7.4% of GDP. Weisbrot also points out that the New York Times -
which welcomed the coup - has taken 14 years, longer even than other
American media outfits, to publish any arguments for Chávez. Carles
Mutaner and colleagues comment that U.S. analysts ask what Venezuela
will do when the oil runs out, but do not ask that about other oil
exporters like Saudi Arabia and Canada; neither do critics note that the
country’s interest payments are only about 3 per cent of export
earnings.
One of Washington’s problems is that, as Greg Palast recognises, Mr.
Chávez kept oil revenues within Latin America; unlike Saudi Arabia,
which buys U.S. treasury bills and other assets, Venezuela at one point
withdrew $20 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve, and since 2007 has
aided other Latin American countries with $36 billion, most of which has
been repaid. In effect, this supplants the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and possibly also its neoliberal fellow-crusader the World Bank.
Even more unpalatably for Washington, Chávismo represents a clear
political programme for pan-Latin American transformation, which Palast
calls a close replica of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, with progressive
income tax, public works, social security, and cheap electricity. For
Bolivarians, such things are rights; they are even reminiscent of T.H.
Marshall’s view that they are integral to substantive citizenship. Worst
of all for U.S. regional hegemony, Mr. Chávez himself said Venezuela is
no longer an oil colony, that it has regained its oil sovereignty, and
that he wanted to replace the IMF with an International Humanitarian
Bank based on cooperation; Uruguay already pays for Venezuelan oil with
cows. Mr. Chávez wished the IMF and the World Bank would “disappear,”
and his passionate concern for Latin American countries’ sovereignty
made him a decisive figure in the 2011 creation of the Community of
Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac).
Mr. Chávez could also be ruthless; in 2010 a military court sentenced
his former key ally Raúl Isaias Baduel to just under eight years for
embezzlement after a long-delayed trial, and Baduel is now banned from
future political office, almost certainly because he criticised
constitutional reforms which would allow a president more than two
terms. Mr. Chávez was, however, no doctrinaire leader. Although a
Christian, he criticised clerical collusion with the ancien régime
, and did not accept the Church’s authority in politics. And though a
socialist, his model even includes a respect for private property. He
also thought seriously about political economy. Bhojwani notes that he
favoured a form of 21st century socialism partly derived from the work
of Heinz Dieterich Steffan. For Mr. Chávez, ethics, morality,
cooperativism, and associationism make for strong public economic
activity and in turn protect the equality which is essential to liberty.
The Venezuelan electorate has repeatedly endorsed this; in the December
2012 gubernatorial elections — the first ones in 14 years in which Mr.
Chávez himself did not campaign — his allies won 20 out of 23 states.
After the President’s win in October, Argentina’s President Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner had sent him a message saying, “Your victory is
also ours.” Billions, and not only poor people, around the world would
agree: Tu victoria también es la nuestra.
arvind.sivaramakrishnan@thehindu.co.in
(The Hindu, Opinion, 07 March, 2013) ________________________________
