Venezuela's conflict , The Bolivarian revolution marches on
www.economist.com Feb 6th 2003 | CARACAS From The Economist print edition EPA
Having survived a devastating opposition strike, Hugo Chávez is preparing to take the offensive. That looks like bad news for the beleaguered private sector
NO SELF-RESPECTING revolutionary lets slip the chance to bestow an important-sounding name on a year. For President Hugo Chávez, 2002 was “the year of the consolidation of the Bolivarian revolution”. This year, he promises, is that of the “strategic offensive”. Having ridden out a two-month strike against his government, which brought the economy close to ruin, Mr Chávez sees less reason than ever to negotiate with an opposition which he dismisses as run by “coup-mongers”.
With many of its supporters facing bankruptcy, the opposition bowed to the inevitable on February 2nd, and lifted the strike in the private sector. The strike continues in the state oil company, but it is fraying. To save face, the opposition organised a ballot, in which it claims that 4m citizens voted on several different ideas for ending the political conflict that has wracked Venezuela for 14 months. Two of these were suggested by Jimmy Carter, a former American president, who has been trying to mediate in Venezuela. They are a recall referendum on Mr Chávez's rule in August, or a constitutional amendment to cut short his term.
Mr Chávez, with the army and now the oil company under his thumb, has other plans. Some of his opponents remain convinced that he is merely an incompetent autocrat whose “Bolivarian revolution” is largely in his own head. Others, pointing to his veneration for Fidel Castro, accuse him of seeking to create another Cuba. Neither view is wholly right, says Alberto Garrido, a political consultant and the author of several books on Mr Chávez. He says that the president is indeed pursuing a revolution; he has been doing so since well before 1992, when as an army officer he led an attempted coup against a democratic government. But Mr Chávez has not yet “decided to bring down the guillotine” on democracy, says Mr Garrido.
What would Venezuela look like if and when he does? Neither socialist nor communist. Unlike Mr Castro, Hugo Chávez does not propose to abolish private property. But the private sector he has in mind would consist of enclaves of foreign investment, plus small firms dependent on the state. Neither would threaten his grip on power.
Many larger Venezuelan companies, most of which back the opposition, will struggle to survive. On top of the economic effects of the strike, they now face exchange controls, announced last month as oil exports dried up. The controls will enable the government to starve businesses of imports. They will be administered by a former army captain who took part in Mr Chávez's 1992 coup against a democratic government. The bolívar has been fixed 17% higher than its last trading rate, making corruption and a black market likely.
The outlook for the economy is bleak. Oil output is unlikely to return to its previous levels quickly, if at all (see article). The government says GDP will contract by not more than 5% this year; Venezuelan analysts at LatinSource, a New York-based consultancy, put this figure at 17-20%. But Mr Chávez will attempt to shield his own supporters. He is likely to divert scarce foreign currency and cheap credits to loyal small businesses or co-operatives; he also has plans to distribute urban plots and rural smallholdings to the poor.
The “revolutionary offensive” has other targets. The government has filed complaints against the main private television stations, which could lead to their being fined or temporarily closed. It has also sent a bill to the National Assembly that would allow the infrastructure minister to revoke the channels' licences. The government is also seeking to wrest control of police forces run by opposition mayors; it has already partly disarmed the Caracas police. And there is another bill in the assembly, this one to add ten judges to the supreme court (which has recently shown some signs of independence).
Mr Chávez calls all this the “revolution of the excluded”. While communists relied on a disciplined vanguard party and organised labour, the Bolivarian “revolution” seeks to draw its support from those that Karl Marx dismissed as the “lumpen proletariat”. For Mr Chávez, the army takes on the role of the missing revolutionary party. So if his plan is to succeed, he must turn Venezuela's armed forces, by recent tradition pro-American and apolitical, into a revolutionary militia. He must also ensure that his supporters among the poor, already less numerous than in the past, do not continue to desert him as the economy slides deeper into penury.
Mr Chávez dreams of a revolution that goes far wider than Venezuela. “The happy society we want to create is in order to change...the system of production and trade and the international political system,” says Eliécer Otaiza, a former head of the secret police who still advises the president. The dream begins with that of Simón Bolívar, South America's Venezuelan-born independence hero, for a single Andean nation with, Mr Chávez adds, its own NATO-style defence organisation.
The United States has rather different plans for the region: the Free-Trade Area of the Americas, rejected by Mr Chávez. But this is supported by most South American governments. And even Brazil, whose new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has some sympathy for Mr Chávez, is wary of his pretensions to regional leadership. So far, the United States has not taken Venezuela's president very seriously, though it has given money and discreet encouragement to the opposition. But now that the opposition has twice failed to oust him, many governments in the Americas may have to think again.