From Paratrooper to Populist President

Stanford University

ENGR 297B

Prof. Bruce Lusignan

Venezuela: A Tenuous Democracy

“From Paratrooper to Populist President”

Camelia Coupal - SUID: 5043694

Ashlee Rosenthal - SUID: 5039743

March 12th, 2004

FROM PARATROOPER TO POPULIST PRESIDENT

Venezuela has been a democratic country for the past 44 years. Now the question is will this democracy survive today in Venezuela? Hugo Chávez, the current president of Venezuela, came to power under the premise that he would redistribute income and help the country’s poor majority. However, since 1998, Venezuela’s history of relative political peace and stable democracy has been rattled. The instability that Venezuela is going through has become an international concern of how much longer Chavez will remain in power.

This paper analyzes the current situation in Venezuela, specifically the political conflict that exists between President Chávez and the opposition. It begins with a description of the country’s political, economic and social history, and how it came to elect Chávez. It continues by describing Chávez himself, his military background and his political transformation, a former paratrooper and then a populist president. Then the paper focuses on the most important events of his presidency, including the April 2002 coup, the two-month strike in December, and the current situation. Besides the political situation, it will analyze as well the impact that the situation has on oil supply and the rest of Latin America, as well as the significance of democracy.

In the last decades Venezuela’s leaders have been democratically elected achieving a sense of political stability; however, there have always been rumors of political corruption. During the 1980s, Venezuela was going through a crisis, mainly economical, but political and social as well. The country was governed by inefficient and corrupt politicians, which created political instability.

In 1992, Hugo Chávez attempted an unsuccessful military coup against the presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez trying to take advantage of the climate of instability due to the economic reforms that Pérez was trying to implement. These reforms, although economically necessary for long term stabilization in the country, were unpopular. The people wanted a change, and Chávez was growing very popular. He made promises to eliminate the corruption and inefficiency of the past political parties and appealed to 80% of the population who were poor and mainly uneducated. He promised the poor new opportunities greater equality and prosperity. The people, desperate for change, believed him and he went on to win the presidential election in 1998. Now in 2004 Chávez is going through a crisis of his own, declining in popularity to the lowest levels since his election.

It was precisely this popularity which had made him a hero who would save the Venezuelans from the situation they were facing at the time. Currently, it seems that this paratrooper turned populist president has his remaining days counted due to incompetence and demagoguery. His lost opportunities to really do something good for the population and his own style of corruption have become a leading issue at the moment.

Background

In 1958, Venezuela became a democratic country consolidated mainly around two political parties, AD (Acción Democrática) and COPEI. These two parties are very similar: “Each is a multiclass party, drawing a varied social base together around a central party leadership. Both parties also have permanent professional leaders, both are organized across the entire nation and at all levels, and both incorporate functional groups (like unions, students, and professional associations) as wings in the party organization” (Mainwaring and Scully p.47). Upon comparison, COPEI is viewed as a more conservative party, and known as the Christian Democratic Party. Additionally, Michael Coppedge explains the parties as AD being center–left and COPEI as being center–right or right. Even though both parties have the same base of a political system, they are viewed as different and controversial among themselves.

Carlos Andrés Pérez

In 1988 Carlos Andrés Pérez won the presidential elections for the second time in Venezuelan history. At this time Venezuela was going through an economic crisis which had begun in 1983 with Black Friday, the first serious currency devaluation in the country. While Pérez was not elected for his position on economic issues, the voters remembered his first term in office, which had been characterized by blossoming prosperity. “Sophisticated voters, such as the editors of VenEconomy, could not decide six months before the election whether Pérez would be a ‘populist’ or a ‘develop mentalist’ if elected. Unsophisticated voters probably expected that he would somehow return Venezuela to the boom of the 1970s” (Coppedge p.19). Pérez with his advisers created an economic shock plan.

The government was forced to seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund, which also meant immediate and harsh economic austerity. Pérez planned to restructure the economy on neo-liberal lines; he announced a new economic plan in mid-February 1989, which included a major devaluation of the currency, extensive increases in the price of gasoline and transportation, and the elimination of subsidies for most food items (Martz 1995). This plan created more conflict and the short notice of economic austerity brought instability to the private sector. The impact of the economic plan quickly resulted in riots and disturbances, because as Coppedge states that: few Venezuelans thought such drastic reforms were necessary.

In consequence, the people were decidedly against economic liberalization, which was what the shock program was trying to create. In 1989, GDP contracted by 8%. During this time the economic decline was at its peak and the public felt that it had nothing to do with falling oil prices, declining terms of trade, rising interest rates, and low productivity, but rather because of corruption. By February 1992, the remuneration of this new economic policy had not yet filtered down to the standard Venezuelan. Consumers saw their purchasing power decline further, the gap between rich and poor was even larger, and the elites (businesspeople, politicians, journalists, and public officials) continue to uphold their lavish lifestyles. Venezuelans began questioning where the billions of petrodollars had gone. The perception of corruption in government became a dominant theme in popular press.

The public had become completely disillusioned with the two traditional parties. “I have argued elsewhere that by the 1970s Venezuelan parties had become too strong: their internal discipline was so rigid that they lost responsiveness to the rank and file, and their obsession with penetrating and controlling other organizations in civil society blocked informal channels of popular representation between elections” (Coppedge). This political struggle and competition between both parties resulted in conflict and this is the most probable reason why Chávez was the only solution the people believed could change their situation.

1992: Coup Attempts

On February 4th, 1992, Chávez led a group of mid-ranking military officers in an attempt to overthrow Pérez. He assured to reinstate patriotism and protect the interests of average Venezuelans. To substantiate the coup, he cited Article 250 of the constitution, which he claimed “provides for the correction of violations of the Constitution specifically where…corruption is concerned” (Burgraaff and Millett 1995, p. 66). The group called itself the Simón Bolívar Revolutionary Movement. They appealed to military symbols and three historical figures in particular: Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodriguez (Bolívar’s mentor and teacher), and Ezequiel Zamora (a nineteenth-century general who had favored distribution of land to soldiers). Even though the coup was unsuccessful, Chávez was seen as a national hero who promised to put an end to corrupt politicians, develop the conditions of the poor and change the country to a new and better one. In November of 1992 the movement attempted another coup which failed as well.

Caldera

In the presidential elections of 1993, after Perez was removed from office because of corruption charges, Rafael Caldera won the Presidency. Previously he had been president of Venezuela as a leader of COPEI; however, this time he was an independent candidate. During his presidency the oil prices continued to fall and the foreign debt increased which made it harder for the state to reduce inflation. Before leaving office with the country in economic shambles, Caldera pardoned and let out of jail Chávez and all the military and the civilians who had taken part in the two failed coups.

Chávez

Following this period were the elections of 1998, where Hugo Chávez became a presidential candidate. “Chávez employed populist and extreme nationalistic rhetoric, frequently lamenting the poverty and hunger that so many Venezuelans were suffering” (Coppedge p.27). He promised the people that he would be different and eliminate the elite’s power in politics and create equality for all social classes. Chávez was elected by a majority of votes, with 56.2% of 3,673,685 votes (Dominguez 1999).

Many suggest that he simply won because people voted for a change and could not continue under the same prototype. “The unhappiness is basically because of the economy; year after year the situation was deteriorating and becoming worse” (Garcia Mendoza, p.414). In addition, it seemed as though he was against the upper class and wanted to create equality with the other social classes by lowering the overall standards. The result was a lot of resentment and deterioration of the relations between the haves and have-nots. He went from being a paratrooper and coup leader to the President of the country. Chávez named his new organization the Movimiento Quinta República (MVR), the Fifth Republic Movement. He stated Venezuela needed to create a new republic, and the new movement’s name was designed to indicate a complete break with the past (Gott 2000).

As most populist leaders, Chávez’s speech was radical. His most frequent subject is the division between friends and foes of “the Revolution.” You were either with the Revolution or against it; there was no middle ground. Chávez’s words and actions divided society into two sections: the small elite and the masses. According to Chávez, the lower area (the pueblo), represents goodness, while those on top, the elites and private enterprise, represent distortion. This separation between the rich and the poor and the bad and the good permitted him not only to create a large base of support, but as well allowed him to justify actions that punished one group and contributed to the centralization of power.

Chávez associated the elite as an oligarchy; they became the enemy to blame for the country’s problems. The pueblo (the people) were those who followed Chávez. Those who opposed him were considered part of the “corrupt oligarchy, the privileged, those linked to interests banished by the revolution” (Blanco 2002, p. 362). The ideology of Chavismo (Chávez’s movement) is focused a lot on Simón Bolívar, the liberator of Venezuela; he even changed the name of the country from Venezuela to República Bolivariana de Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela).

During the beginning of his term, there was excellent economic income due to the high price of oil at the time and this lasted for over two years. There was a low external debt, but a high internal debt. In his third year, oil prices fell and there was more dependence on income from the taxes on oil. Also the bolívar (local currency) continued to deteriorate in value and was constantly devalued. Chávez, having enormous income for his budget during the beginning of his term, did nothing of what he promised; instead he traveled the world in his first year as President more than any other President has done in the history of Venezuela. In fact, he spent enormous amounts of money on events that did nothing to help the poor who had elected him nor did he invest into any projects which could help to bring the country out of its economic crisis.

Moisés Naim, the minister of Industry and Commerce in Venezuela between 1989 and 1990 during the Presidency of Carlos Andrés Pérez and a world renowned economist, states that the wealth that the oil creates of which the State is the owner, makes the inhabitants grow up believing that they are rich, when in reality they are actually growing poorer. As well, he states that this contradiction creates frustration and resentment. The people rationalize that if the oil is everyone’s and they do not receive anything from it then somebody is depriving them, and this is because of corruption.

This is the context of Hugo Chávez, who will go into history as one who misused an enormous political fortune. This common misconception that Venezuela is rich because of its oil is especially held by the lower class population. Hugo Chávez emerged in the midst of a population that was ready to break with the past. It was ready for Chávez, someone who promised a deep structural change that would allow the wealth from petroleum to benefit the majority. Venezuela is a rich country in resources, however, the government has never managed it well enough to control the economy nor develop other sources of income.

Chávez centralized power through a sequence of elections/referendums after the 1998 presidential election. Once he was elected he declared a referendum for a constituent assembly to be held in April 1999. The referendum would “replace Venezuela’s constitution, eviscerate the powers of the legislature and the judiciary, and place governing authority under a ‘Constituent Assembly” (Zakaria 2003, p. 96). The proposed new constitution “increased the president’s term by one year, allowed him to succeed himself, eliminated one chamber of the legislature, reduced civilian control of the military, expanded the government’s role in the economy, and allowed the assembly to fire judges” (Zakaria 2003, p. 96). Devastatingly, 88% of the voters approved the convocation of the assembly, and 82% accepted that the body defines the limits of its own powers, as Chávez proposed. In the July election, Chávez’s Polo Patriótico alliance won almost all of the 131 seats of the National Assembly (Ellner 2001).

Chávez’s popularity has gone down since elections. He has not done anything that he promised the people, but rather has put the country in much worse condition than before. He has abused his socialist rhetoric to the point of offending the United States and befriended known despots around the world. His unusual brotherly bonding with Fidel Castro has also been a major eye sore for the United States. His international credibility is low as a leader and his ties to terrorist organizations are questionable.