Chaos and Constitution
With his country teetering on the brink of disaster, Venezuela's Hugo
Chávez clings to power -- thanks primarily to the passionate support
of the nation's poor.
By Barry C. Lynn
January/February 2003 Issue
The populist former paratrooper has mobilized Venezuela's poor to
participate in their own government
You can buy a plastic-bound copy of the Venezuelan Constitution for
60 cents, a leather-clad copy for $3, a coffee-table edition for $5.
Not that you really need a copy of your own, since someone standing
near you on the subway in Caracas will have one in his pocket. Or you
can always listen to one of the ongoing debates at a downtown park.
"Look at this article," someone will shout, and a half dozen people
will flip through the constitution's 35,000 words and 350 articles to
find the pertinent passage. "Yes," someone else will cry out. "But
this one here is more to the point."
Leila Escobar, a lab technician in her early 30s, carries a
pocket-size copy of the new constitution, bound in blue plastic. I
meet her late one morning in Nueva Grenada, a grimy, run-down
neighborhood in the Venezuelan capital, and the mid-October day is
unseasonably hot. As a passing cloud offers relief, Escobar pauses to
wipe the sweat from her face with a red handkerchief. She has walked
seven miles already, near the head of a march by hundreds of
thousands who have come out in support of President Hugo Chávez. It
has been six months since Chávez was ousted briefly in a coup, and
now his opponents -- business leaders, a handful of military
officers, almost all of the nation's media -- are once again trying
to orchestrate his removal. So Escobar and other chavistas have taken
to the streets, vowing to protect the president -- with their bodies,
if necessary.
The reason for their support has everything to do with the little
blue book Escobar carries. In one of his first acts as president,
Chávez held a nationwide referendum on the constitution that
effectively redrew the political boundaries of Venezuela from the
ground up. Over the past four years, through a series of new laws and
programs, he has mobilized the poor to participate in what had always
been a top-down, two-party political system dominated by the
country's upper and middle classes. "The president has brought us
hope, and he has brought us democracy," says Escobar. "They will not
take him from us."...
If Chávez is ousted, however, it will not be because he is a brutal
dictator....Opposition political parties, as well as the press,
operate freely in Venezuela, and the federal police -- once among the
most feared forces in South America -- have not hindered even those
advocating outright rebellion. And for the first time in Venezuelan
history, ordinary citizens are being encouraged to create and elect
local councils, to work with local officials to improve their
neighborhoods, to get directly involved in their government. Acting
together, these are the people who have become the single most
powerful group in Venezuela. These are the people who, in many ways,
have made themselves the real sovereigns of Venezuela's oil....
...[W]hen people gather in neighborhoods like Hoyo de la Puerta [one
of the shantytowns that ring Caracas], the talk seldom centers on the
price of food or the lack of health care. Instead, what excites them
is the new constitution, drafted by a popularly elected assembly in
1999 and approved by an overwhelming vote in December of that year. A
somewhat haphazard amalgam, the document protects minority rights,
permits people to claim title to their farms and homes, and expands
political participation at the grassroots level. De Peńa, for
example, is particularly excited by a new law that gives citizens the
right to take part in the kind of urban planning that drove her from
her home 30 years ago. "Before, the government could come and do
whatever they wanted to us," she says, pulling a newsprint copy of
the law from her purse and waving it about. "But this paper gives the
community a voice. This law forces the authorities to listen."
The issue of land ownership, especially, inspires poor residents to
praise Chávez. As is true of about half the people of Caracas, most
here do not hold legal title to the houses in which they live, or to
the lots underneath. Some say they bought their land years ago.
Others admit they simply took the land and built on it. Now, a new
law permits them to "regularize" their ownership by registering their
claim.
Indelgard Vargas, an unemployed engineer and father of two small
children, says land ownership is partly a matter of self-respect. "It
is better to own a little plot," he says, "than to trespass on a
great expanse." But it also has practical consequences. For the first
time, the poor will be able to sell their lots, protect them in
court, or mortgage them with a bank. Chávez, the revolutionary,
promises to make the poor into property owners -- and, in the
process, he has already given them a sense of entitlement as
citizens. "How can you demand service from the mayor when you don't
pay property taxes?" says Vargas. "And how can you pay any taxes if
you don't own any property?"...
For anyone who knew Venezuela during the years of the oil boom, as I
did as a foreign correspondent during the late 1980s, the current
level of political polarization is shocking. For three decades after
the last dictator fell in 1958, the country was often held up as
Latin America's model democracy. There were two powerful political
parties, both with a strong base of support among the upper and
middle classes, both able to rally large masses of the poor via
well-honed patronage systems. It was, everyone liked to say, just
like the United States.
This system served the country's elite well, rewarding them with
highly lucrative monopolies in everything from beer bottling to food
canning to domestic airlines. It also did well by the millions of
immigrants who came from Italy, Spain, and Portugal in the 1930s and
1950s. These people managed most of Venezuela's industries and
service companies, and filled most professional positions. And when
the big oil dollars started flowing in the early 1970s, it was a
system that organized one of the longest-running fiestas of the 20th
century. Awash in a seeming sea of money, Venezuelan elites built
themselves wide highways, a sparkling subway, a glittering array of
office towers and luxury apartments, a beautiful national theater.
They imported great chefs, danced in glamorous clubs, vacationed in
Paris, annexed large chunks of Miami. Jeep Wagoneers, bottles of
Johnny Walker Black, kilos of French cheese -- all were heavily
subsidized with public money.
In February 1989, the era of black gold came to a sudden, violent
end. Oil prices had been falling for years, and everyone knew the
party had to slow. But when the Pérez government tried to pass much
of the bill on to the country's poor through higher bus fares and
bread prices, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. At first the
mobs burned buses, then they looted and burned stores, then they
looted the apartments and houses of anyone who seemed to have more.
Scores died in battles among neighbors. And when the army came, many
hundreds more were shot down. Yet thousands of people refused to go
home, even after soldiers opened fire with automatic rifles. In some
neighborhoods, mobs armed only with sticks and rocks repeatedly
charged ranks of terrified soldiers trucked in from the countryside.
No one knows exactly how many people died, but many estimates put the
total at well over 1,000. "The Caracazo," as the riot was called, was
the single bloodiest uprising in Latin America in the last half
century.
By taking to the streets, however, Venezuela's poor became a force
that had to be reckoned with. What Chávez has done, through the new
constitution, is to start a process of formalizing and solidifying
their political power, channeling their anger through political
institutions rather than the streets. "Venezuela is a time bomb that
can explode at any moment," Chávez said when the constitution was
approved. "It is our task, through the power of the vote, to defuse
it now." Chávez threatens Venezuela's elite because he wants to turn
the mob of February 1989 into what he likes to call el soberano --
"the sovereign citizen." Which is reason enough, in a country where
the poor and working class form a solid majority of the voting
population, for the elite to want Chávez out....
Democratic Action and COPEI, the two political parties that long
dominated Venezuelan politics, have all but collapsed in recent
years, and opponents of Chávez now have no real leaders or political
platform. What they have is money, and they are voting with their
bank accounts and passports. Since Chávez took office, tens of
thousands of upper- and middle-class Venezuelans have fled the
country, many to the United States. Last year they were on pace to
remove an estimated $8 billion from the economy -- a staggering 8
percent of the annual gross domestic product.
They also control the media. All of Venezuela's private television
stations and national newspapers are owned by the opposition, and all
are employed to deliver an unadulterated flow of anti-Chávez
propaganda in the form of news, popular music, even soap operas. The
distortions can be dramatic. Today's anti-Chávez march is covered by
all four TV channels from five in the morning until midnight. The
pro-Chávez march three days later -- though twice as large -- is
ignored entirely by three of the channels, and covered only
sporadically by the fourth. (The American media also played up the
anti-Chávez march, inflating its turnout to a million.) The marchers
and the media are demanding that a popular referendum on the
president be held immediately. They also call on European courts to
indict him for crimes against humanity, as Spain did with Pinochet.
It is this charge of repression that most infuriates Chávez's
supporters. Not a single leader of the April coup, they note, is in
jail, even though some of them continue to openly advocate his
overthrow. Not so long ago, the same could not be said for many of
the poor who spoke out against Venezuela's old regime. Even at the
height of the good times, the country's democracy was a preserve of
the upper and middle classes, and it was protected at gunpoint.
Anyone who tried to oppose the government from outside the two-party
system ran a risk of being arrested, beaten, or killed by the
National Guard or the federal police known as the DISIP. The DISIP
sported black leather jackets and tall black boots, and the attire
was more than a fashion statement.
Juan Contreras was a college student in the 1980s. He was also a
member of a left-wing party considered "subversive" by the
government. The DISIP and the National Guard routinely broke into his
apartment -- 46 times in all, he says. Often they arrested him;
sometimes they beat him. These days, Contreras places his faith in
community organizing rather than party politics. A 39-year-old social
worker, he travels around Venezuela to help poor farmers claim title
to their land. He also leads a left-oriented group in the 23 de Enero
housing project, a collection of immense and decrepit apartment
blocks that rise on hills just west of the presidential palace. The
group polices the projects at night, raises money to make needed
repairs, and helps the elderly get medicine. "It has been years since
any political party did anything for us," says Contreras. "We have to
fight for our community by ourselves, every day."
Contreras doesn't expect much in the way of material help from the
government -- but he is grateful to Chávez for calling off the
police. The DISIP no longer visit his house, nor do they break up
public meetings at the housing project as they did in the past. The
president, Contreras says, has created a political environment in
which the poor can assemble without fear of reprisals. On this day, a
group of neighbors at 23 de Enero has organized a dance to raise
money to fix an elevator in the 14-story Apartment Block 28. "For the
first time," Contreras says, "we can breathe."...
At the local level, the new constitution encourages poor communities
to create district councils to decide neighborhood affairs. Venezuela
has no tradition of electing councils that are open to all parties --
or to people of no party -- so building them means starting at the
very bottom. In the neighborhood of Petare, which includes some of
the poorest and most violent barrios in Caracas, Alejandrina Reyes is
going door to door with a small team of city workers and student
volunteers. The goal is to speak with every adult in each district of
roughly 3,000 people, to explain how residents can elect a council of
12 representatives. "It takes two months or more of almost full-time
attention to get one community ready to vote," Reyes says. "And we've
only been working with the easy communities, the ones where people
have already set up associations and cooperatives." Then she smiles.
"It's slow, but the word is really getting out."
One of the first to heed the call was Gloria Baroso. Only 40, Baroso
has six children and four grandchildren, and has been on her own
since her husband left home seven years ago. She runs a cooperative
bakery in the El Carmen section of Petare, and also helps out as a
nurse when people in the community take sick. Now she holds a seat on
the new district council.
Baroso knows that before Chávez, it would have been unthinkable for a
single mother who bakes bread for a living to hold elected office in
Venezuela. In the street in front of the cooperative, she wipes her
hands on her apron and sighs. Even before she joined the council, she
had too much to do. "But it's worth it," she says. Already, she has
seen a profound change. "The Venezuelan people are not the same
people they were even a few years ago," she says. "We know our
rights. And no matter what the rich do to Chávez, this is something
they can never erase." What do you think?
Barry C. Lynn lived and worked in Venezuela in the late 1980s during
the last years of the oil boom as a staff reporter for Agence
France-Presse.
[The full article is available at
<http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2003/02/ma_208_01.html>.]
--
Yoshie
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