Hugo Chávez and Petro Populism 3/3 The organized opposition to Chávez is rather thin on the ground these days, having been largely discredited by the right-wing extremism of their coup and the economic devastation caused by their oil strike. So I visit the offices of the right-wing tabloid Así Es la Noticia, owned by one of Venezuela's top-circulation dailies, El Nacional. "Look, Chávez won the referendum. People have to accept that," says the editor, Albor Rodriguez. She is in her early 30s, an escuálido all the way, but she respects the facts. Standing erect at her desk, one black-clad shoulder tipped forward, she takes long drags on her cigarette between comments. "There is no 'Castro communist' here. That's ridiculous. They say there are Cubans in the government and the security. But there is no proof. However, does Chávez have autocratic tendencies? Yes! He comes from the military. Does his government, or he himself, know what they are doing? No! His head is a mix--a marmalade of notions and slogans. He speaks without thinking. He makes innuendoes about Condoleezza Rice being in love with him. That's insane. He's totally erratic." Albor, to my surprise, is almost as harsh on the opposition: "They lost because Chávez has a deep emotional connection with the people, and they have no connection with the people. Also, he has spent a lot of money on the barrios. He pours money into the barrios." She explains that when her paper reported on the real work of the missions, some readers accused her of lying and "having gone to the moon to find these things." She explains: "The opposition lied to itself. They were deluded and now they are smashed." With that rather definitive summation, she puts out her cigarette and invites me to lunch. There are some in the opposition whose critique focuses less on Chávez's supposed abuses of power and more on the government's alleged mismanagement and left-wing economic tomfoolery. Oscar Garcia Mendoza is president of Banco Venezolano de Credito, a very old and conservative bank. He's what Chávez would call an "oligarch," the official enemy: a capitalist financier. But when I meet him in his beautiful corner office on the ninth floor of a Modernist highrise, he is beaming. He wears a dark blue suit, his gray hair is cropped stylishly short and he has that healthy look that seems to come from being rich and relaxed. Classical music filters out from speakers in the ceiling; on the table are fine Cuban cigars. We sit in bent plywood and leather Herman Miller chairs, and gaze out across the city through a glass wall lined with thick green plants. "Business has never been better," says Garcia. "This government is totally incompetent. They have no idea what they are doing. The head of their land reform, Eliezer Otaiza, is a former male stripper. And did you see they just appointed Carlos Lanz, a former terrorist kidnapper, a communist, as head of Alcasa, our largest aluminum company?" Through it all, Garcia wears a slightly suppressed grin as if he thinks the whole thing is hilarious. "I mean, can you imagine that?" In a way, Lanz's appointment is not so outrageous: Another former guerrilla, Ali Rodriguez Araque, once minister of mining and energy, then head of OPEC, is now foreign minister and widely respected as a level-headed negotiator. Garcia also has some very concrete criticisms. He says that the current economic boom is a chimera based on oil prices. In 2004 government spending jumped 47 percent, much of which went to pay for healthcare and education--the missions. But despite the oil windfall, the government has had to borrow heavily. Instead of turning to international financiers, it has increased its internal debt to Venezuelan banks. Garcia says that in the past four years this internal debt has gone from $2 billion to more than $27 billion. The Finance Ministry confirms these figures and says that 60 percent of this debt is held in government bonds. "But what makes this really crazy," says Garcia, "is that the government is depositing all its oil revenue in the same banks at about 5 percent, then borrowing it back at 14 percent. It's a very easy way for bankers to make money. That's why I say this is a government for the rich." Last year Venezuelan banks made $1.38 billion in profits, just a bit more than they did the year before. And most of that money came from lending to the Chávez government and trading in special government-approved, dollar-denominated bonds, a legal loophole in the new currency-control law. Garcia's bank actually does no business with the government, but the huge increase in oil revenues has doubled his loan portfolio. The economy is awash in money: Growth was 17.3 percent in 2004. So if the economy is booming, why does Garcia dislike Chávez? "These people are crooks," he says. "Look, Venezuela has always been corrupt, but these guys are the worst." When I point out that the government just fired 120 managers in Zulia state for corruption, Garcia waves it away as insufficient. "What are they doing with all the money? They are not investing. They spend it all on food and medicine. As soon as oil goes down, their party is over." So what should the government do to avoid this? "They should privatize everything." Getting a Chávez government response to charges of mismanagement, corruption and overdependence on freakishly high oil prices is difficult. My inquiries are fed into the labyrinthine bureaucracy of the Information Ministry, where every few days a new official loses my paperwork and needs a full CV and another letter from my editors and another complete written explanation of my project. After three weeks no one in the Chávez government has come forth with an on-the-record statement except for one laid-back spokesperson at the Higher Education Ministry. Finally an old friend gets me an interview with his boss, Jorge Giordani, a former academic who befriended Chávez during the rebellious paratrooper's stint in jail and is now the planning and development minister. On matters of economic development, Giordani is the revolution's brain. We meet in his office near the top of South America's tallest building, one of a pair of towers, the other of which stands half-burned, its gold-tinted, mirrored windows blown out and black, the result of a recent accident caused by bad maintenance. Giordani is tall, gray and hunched. He wears big glasses, a tie, a brown cardigan sweater and has a short white Abe Lincoln beard. He evades most specific questions. As for corruption, he says simply: "We are not doing enough. It is a very serious problem." Mostly he offers a long but interesting explanation of Venezuela's historical development and its lack of internal economic integration. We move from map to map as he explicates the economic geography of various regions. Many Chavistas hope that investing in physical infrastructure, health and education will open new, nonpetroleum industries in high technology, business services, healthcare and agriculture. When I ask Giordani how the country plans to wean itself from oil, about land reform and about the many so-called "endogenous" development projects being promoted, he sighs and shakes his head as if I am naïve. "We've been fighting political battles for most of our time in office. Many people have learned to read in the last few years, but how long will it take for them to work in high technology, or medicine, or services? Ten years? A generation? We are fighting a very individualistic, rentier culture. Everything has been 'Mama state, Papa state, give me oil money.' To organize people is extremely hard." After a long, roundabout discussion in which I press him on the question of import substitution and new industrialization, he settles on one key point: Venezuela's only real hope lies in regional economic integration. Only then will internal markets be big enough to nurture alternative technologies and new industries that might otherwise threaten current multinational monopolies. Giordani seems weary and cynical. "No, I am just practical," he says with a chuckle. "Development in Venezuela will take at least fifty years." And how long will the oil last? "Maybe twenty years, maybe thirty." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? 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