http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050411&s=parenti
Posted March 24, 2005 Hugo Chávez and Petro Populism by Christian Parenti Research support was provided by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute. The views from the slopes of Barrio San Agustín del Sur are spectacular. Tight passageways frame Caracas and the lush, cloud-draped Avila Mountain beyond. Along the neighborhood's rough cement steps, teenagers lounge around, flirting, arguing or lost in the cheap text-messaging functions of their cell phones. Ascending a nearby cliff is a small garbage dump. From afar its refuse looks like the sand in some ominous urban hourglass. Illiteracy, violence, disease and the listlessness of endemic unemployment have shaped the life of this barrio since landless squatters from the countryside first settled it about forty years ago. But much of that could be changing. ADVERTISEMENT "Even though we have had problems, we are moving forward," says Carmen Guerrero, a woman in her late 40s who is one of San Agustín's most dedicated activists. "Here, we are all with President Chávez. Everybody except for maybe six families." On the yellow walls of her living room are masks in the form of fashionable ladies' faces, a clock, a mirror and a small picture of Venezuela's populist president, Hugo Chávez Frías. Guerrero explains that she and her neighbors are studying in several government-created programs called missions and organizing themselves into committees to deal with everything from local and national election campaigns to sanitation and legalization of land titles. Like most slums in Caracas, this community also has a state-owned, subsidized market, a soup kitchen, a number of small-scale cooperative businesses and a little two-story, octagonal, red-brick medical center. Upstairs two Cuban doctors live in cramped quarters; downstairs is a small waiting room and clinic. Guerrero's neighbor, a young man named Carlos Martinez, is showing me around; he works with the local construction cooperative. They have a contract from the mayor's office to lay new drainage pipe in the barrio. Given the recent flooding, it is an important task. Later he shows me where a patch of ranchos--dirt-floored shacks made of corrugated tin and wood--are being replaced at government expense by solid, two-story brick homes. For this little barrio and a thousand others like it, such changes mean a lot. Like two generations of Venezuelan politicians before him, Chávez has pledged sembrar el petróleo--to sow the oil. That is, to invest its profits in a way that transforms the very structure of Venezuela's economy. But what would that entail? Are social programs enough? Lately Chávez has been talking about a "revolution within the revolution," about "transcending capitalism" and about "building a socialism for the twenty-first century." It is a discourse that frightens his enemies, electrifies his base and inspires the left throughout Latin America. After two decades of the US-promoted Washington Consensus--a cocktail of radical privatization, open markets and severe fiscal austerity--Latin America is an economic disaster marked by increasing poverty and inequality. Taken as a whole and controlling for inflation, Latin America has grown little since the mid-1980s and hardly at all in the past seven years. With the entire region primed for social change, a new breed of populists and social democrats is coming to power. Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, in addition to Venezuela, have leftist governments of some sort, while Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru will hold presidential elections in 2006. But a closer look at Venezuela reveals just how vexing and complicated a political and economic turn to the left can be, even in a country that is rich with oil and not deeply indebted. Thus far, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution, named for South America's nineteenth-century liberator, Simón Bolívar, has deepened and politicized a pre-existing tradition of Venezuelan populism. Despite Chávez's often radical discourse, the government has not engaged in mass expropriations of private fortunes, even agricultural ones, nor plowed huge sums into new collectively owned forms of production. In fact, private property is protected in the new Constitution promulgated after Chávez came to power. What the government has done is spend billions on new social programs, $3.7 billion in the past year alone. As a result, 1.3 million people have learned to read, millions have received medical care and an estimated 35-40 percent of the population now shops at subsidized, government-owned supermarkets. Elementary school enrollment has increased by more than a million, as schools have started offering free food to students. The government has created several banks aimed at small businesses and cooperatives, redeployed part of the military to do public works and is building several new subway systems around the country. To boost agricultural production in a country that imports 80 percent of what it consumes, Chávez has created a land-reform program that rewards private farmers who increase productivity and punishes those who do not with the threat of confiscation. The government has also structured many of its social programs in ways that force communities to organize. To gain title to barrio homes built on squatted land, people must band together as neighbors and form land committees. Likewise, many public works jobs require that people form cooperatives and then apply for a group contract. Cynics see these expanding networks of community organizations as nothing more than a clientelist electoral machine. Rank-and-file Chavistas call their movement "participatory democracy," and the revolution's intellectuals describe it as a long-term struggle against the cultural pathologies bred by all resource-rich economies--the famous "Dutch disease," in which the oil-rich state is expected to dole out services to a disorganized and unproductive population. But for the moment, the Venezuelan battle against poverty is possible only because oil prices have been at record highs for several years, and the state owns most of the petroleum industry. All of Venezuela's oil and mining and most of its basic industry were nationalized in the mid-1970s. On average, oil sales make up 30 percent of Venezuelan GDP, provide half of state income and make up 80 percent of all Venezuelan exports. Internal and often sympathetic critics of the reform process in Venezuela say it is one thing to "spend the oil" on social welfare; it is another altogether to "sow the oil" and create new collectively owned, productive, nonsubsidized industries that will generate wealth in an egalitarian and sustainable fashion. "When the coup happened we realized we had to get involved or we would lose everything," explains Carmen Guerrero. She says she was always a Chávez supporter but was not very active until the April 2002 coup d'état against Chávez launched by Venezuela's main business council, its notoriously corrupt labor federation, dissident military officers and masses of middle- and upper-class Caraqueños. Declassified documents have since revealed that the CIA knew at least a week beforehand that a coup was planned, while other US government agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy, were channeling aid to the opposition. "There is no going back now," says Guerrero. Then, very seriously, she adds: "I hugged Chávez at a rally. I don't know how I got through security. I guess because I am short. I can't explain the feeling, the emotion was so strong." She clutches her fists to her breast and looks away. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> In low income neighborhoods, 84% do not own computers. At Network for Good, help bridge the Digital Divide! http://us.click.yahoo.com/EpW3eD/3MnJAA/cosFAA/GEEolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Bantu Aceh! Klik: http://www.pusatkrisisaceh.or.id Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ekonomi-nasional/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
