www.vcrisis.com Universidad Central de Venezuela February 2003

The Venezuelan education system is plagued with problems that put its schoolchildren in the rear seat when compared with other countries in the region. Schools are frequently understaffed, teachers are underpaid and a docent's job is generally seen as undesirable so a significant percentage of teachers are there more out of necessity than by vocation or choice. The drop-out rate is high, test scores are disastrous, and results in terms of funds invested per graduate is a financial fiasco. Even though education is free, many children can not attend classes because economic necessities oblige them to work. These problems have been recognized by the present administration and steps have been taken to enroll more students within the school system, improve existing institutions and fund new ones. Teachers were given significant pay raises and the educational importance of internet was demonstrated by the government's creation of numerous cyber-cafes, sometimes even in the most remote towns of the countryside. Unfortunately this government's intentions towards reform and providing equal access to education has encountered numerous problems, many of which are self-generated.

Undoubtedly the first major criticism was sparked by the attempt to introduce political indoctrination into school textbooks and the infamous Act 1011 which created a new type of school inspector with broad powers to penalize schools and their directors. This was received with strong resistance by many citizens and was probably the birth of organized opposition by Venezuelan civil society to the government. Amongst the criticism it was pointed out that the sweeping powers of the proposed inspectors guaranteed new opportunities for bribes and there was precedence for suspecting such "privileged work" would be awarded to loyal party members. After much political and legal wrangling the government was defeated in the courts. Private catholic schools constitute an important portion of the educational system and cater to a variety of students, ranging from the nation's elite to the poorest of poor. They have traditionally received government subsidies, but when catholic schools became prominently involved in opposing Act 1011 the government threatened to cut subsidies. Notwithstanding government hand outs, an analysis rapidly reveals the greater cost-effectiveness of private schools when compared to the public system, both in terms of the number of graduates and test score results. The threats have since materialized and at the time of writing many educational programs in city slums and distant rural areas are threatened with closure.

At the elementary school level the government proudly announced the founding of numerous elementary level Bolivarian Schools, showcases of progressive education equipped with the latest technology and providing daily meals for students. This initiative is commendable but simultaneously raises questions such as why not reform and properly support schools already in existence? Because of budgetary limitations funding was diverted from the functioning of regular schools into the new program and this has had a negative impact on the non-Bolivarian Schools. Previously many public schools, in agreement with most parents, charged a modest sum for registration that helped in defraying the cost of materials such as paper, chalk or even janitorial goods. A Presidential decree declared this practice illegal since education should be free, but no financial support was put forth to pick up the slack and the situation has worsened for non-Bolivarian Schools.

Many schools function with two groups of students, one in the morning and another in the afternoon, but unfortunately in such cases the installation of a Bolivarian school forced the elimination of one group, given physical limitations, forcing a number of students to attend schools much further away or simply abandon their studies. The daily meals program is nothing new as previous administrations also tried to implement programs such as the "school lunch," "school uniform" or "school backpack" just to name some. They all eventually were undermined by administrative ineptness and graft, and the Bolivarian Schools are unfortunately treading the same path. One thing is the number of these institutions according to the government and another thing are those actually functioning. How many were built but never started to function? How many still serve daily meals? How many are staffed by teachers and administrative personnel that obtained their jobs through professional merits instead of being party members? What is the student desertion rate? Finally, if the Bolivarian Schools are so good as the government boasts them to be, why do most government officials, including President Chavez, send their children to private catholic schools? Another questionable educational innovation of this government has been the introduction of "pre-military training" in the school agenda to replace the previous civic studies agenda. The new course includes well-intentioned notions of national identity, values and ethics, but the textbooks include paragraphs that easily generate xenophobia and class-hatred.

The start of the school year this January was problematic due to the strike and its effects. The government has countered everything is normal and emphatically insists no child may be denied the right to education. In primary school runs by a school district headed by an opposition mayor the institutions were taken over by pro Chavez groups, and they have since been giving classes to the few children in attendance. Most of these "volunteers" have no legal teaching credentials and some parents have complained of political indoctrination. During a visit by reporters to one of these schools and an interview with a provisional teacher, a school girl was asked how she was getting along. She replied that she was extremely happy and had learned more these past weeks than during all previous months with her regular teachers. As she spoke she gradually broke down and could barely complete her sentence before running off in tears. The children of striking oil company workers have been kicked out of the schools run by the oil company, an especially grave event in remote rural areas where no other schools are available. At the university level the government owes most public universities about five months of budget quotas and expects the universities to function normally.

The deterioration of public secondary education has been paralleled by an increased proportion of university enrollment by students from private institutions. Unfortunately the propositions forwarded by many pro-government activists to address these inequities imply lowering admission and academic standards to the extent of almost no accountability on part of prospective students. Undoubtedly an easy way to achieve "equality" and lower drop out rates, but questionable in terms of providing quality higher education. Such simplistic solutions are wonderfully exemplified by a public announcement over a year ago by President Chavez when he promised the founding of a new university for the poor in Caracas, in principal a good-intentioned proposition but problematic in practice, starting with the fact that he proposed it function within the Miraflores Palace, a national historical monument. Needless to say this idea has not been mentioned since.

In terms of higher education problems are paramount and reforms are sorely needed for more efficient management of the many public universities which take the lion's share of the nation's educational budget. Unfortunately government intentions seem more geared towards political control than towards improvement in standards or administration, a trend that has become currently more obvious. Two years ago in elections for new authorities in the nation's largest university, the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), the government backed candidates were defeated. Some months later a small group of students took over the campus council office by force and stayed there for a number of weeks, all the while receiving logistical support from the central government. Their vandalism was accompanied by violence, including pipe bombs, fist-fights, gunfire, tear-gas and fireworks. They demanded, amongst other things, that the newly elected authorities be declared illegitimate and a new government be installed in the UCV. Their use of violence and ensuing disruption of academic life was totally unacceptable. The bitter taste this episode left was detrimental to the renegade's cause as in the most recent student council elections, groups representing the government party suffered resounding defeats in most UCV schools. Another institution, the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas, suffered direct intervention from the government through the majority officially appointed members of its Superior Council, which then proceeded to pressure institutional decisions through financial strangulation and harassment of the lower Directive Council. In subsequent elections for posts in the Directive Council the government-backed candidates were trounced by independent candidates which are now pushing for an autonomous administrative regime that would free the institution from such Central Government intervention.

The problems overshadowing the country's school system have been long in the making and most can not be attributed to the Chavez Government. Unfortunately this administration's intentions for much needed reform in the educational system have been undermined by its preoccupation with political control, and compounded by ineptitude and graft. Such flaws are nothing new, but the intense political motivation is a novelty and of particular cause for concern given the strong centralization of government, rigid political agenda, use of violence, and Presidential authoritarianism that increasingly reeks of dictatorship. Taking this into consideration plus the support shown for pro-government groups regardless of their methods, it is clear the Venezuelan government's commitment to public education is motivated more out of political control than out of providing high quality education for all.

www.vcrisis.com by Alexandra Beech

Each day that passes, I become convinced that the greatest enemy of Venezuelan democracy is not Hugo Chavez, who was elected in 1998 by a 35% vote. The greatest enemies that Venezuela confronts today are ignorance and arrogance.

When I write "ignorance," I am referring both to the ignorance in Venezuela and in the world at large. While past failed policies created a poor majority with little access to education, this is not the ignorance I would like to address, even though Chavez has capitalized on that ignorance to promote his brand of inept government. The other type of domestic ignorance afflicts "educated" people, and this ignorance is doing the most harm. Because of the insidious nature of Venezuelan politics, it is often easier to march than to think about what is actually going on. It is easier to sign petitions and petitions, instead of understanding the intricacies and dynamics of the process of change. In our complacent and lax nature, many Venezuelans would rather fret and think about a future without Chavez, instead of the concrete steps that it will take to recover the country from chaos. Almost everyone I know can recite ten emotionally based reasons why Chavez should leave, along with at least three economic indicators. When asked what percentage of the population needs to sign a petition for a referendum, or how a constitutional assembly is formed, many of us shrink or "have to think about it."

Therefore, I am proud to share with you a document that my friend Michael Penfold recently produced with his colleague, Francisco Monaldi, titled "Constitutional Alternatives for Solving Venezuela’s Political Crisis: Lapses, Obstacles, and Long Term Consequences". Reading it last night, I felt a surge of relief and panic; relief that I was finally understanding the process, and panic that Chavez has so advantages. Please take the time to read it today.

Examples of international ignorance towards Venezuela abound. And why not? Except for providing a lot of oil to international markets, we have hardly featured in the news. When was the last time we produced a novelist of international renown, a human rights icon, a political leader of international dimensions, or even a pop star? I don't know a lot about Burundi, as much as Burundi may feel like the center of the universe to the 6,134,000 people who live there.

In fact, Venezuela didn't make it on the international news landscape until the December 2 strike. And it wasn't because the world cared about the collapse of our democracy, but because gasoline prices rose ten cents on the gallon.

Undoubtedly, those in the government who handle information know that most of the world is ignorant. That is why they bought an eight-page insert that appeared in the New York Times on December 23, 2002, describing how wonderful and idyllic Venezuela was. As Venezuela entered the third week of the strike, Americans read pieces titled "Strategic Ally has Bright Prospects", "Firms Rise to Construction Challenge", and "Spiritual Values and a Yen for Development". Only those who read the tiny script at the top of each page would have noticed, "Special Advertising Section."

Money talks, no doubt, but ignorance talks louder. Europeans have their own challenges, as attested by a piece in The Socialist Worker, which describes the strike as: "highly undemocratic--and is directed against any political or economic advances made by Venezuelan workers, the unemployed or the rural poor." Any Venezuelan who has experienced the crisis knows that under Chavez's economic policies, those most afflicted have been the workers, the unemployed, and the poor. But the Europeans love a social struggle between the natives of the third world. It is their raison d'etre.

The opposition is arrogant in assuming that it has time to squabble over who should be its candidate, who should announce the Sumate petition results, or who has the best transition program. They should function on the assumption that the country is an intensive care unit under the guidance of an incompetent surgeon, and that all measures need to be taken now. That means one candidate now, and one transition program now. If they can prove to the world that they are solid and united in their effort to elect a new president and embark on a course to democracy, then their case will be made before the world.

www.vcrisis.com

I am a university professor in Venezuela and things here are bad. I request anonymity because dissent has its price in Venezuela. By not actively supporting El Proceso one becomes guilty, things become worse if I actually speak out against it...

The situation in the nation's public universities has become very serious as all indications are the government intends to intervene the autonomous universities of Venezuela. The weapon being used right now is financial strangulation of the universities and an attempt to divide the community along the lines of Professors on one side, staff and students on the other. The Ministry of Education has handed down money only to be spent on the salaries of staff, but not docents. This is in direct violation of the university's autonomy, since by law it is the university that decides how its budget should be spent. The government wants a list of professors that did not work during January alleging they observed the opposition strike against the government. Why single out Professors if it was evident a considerable percentage of staff and students did not come either? There were also other reasons for not showing up at work such as the social strife, gasoline shortage and its impact on public transportation. Such action is government intervention in the University's affairs and has elicited a categorical condemnation from all academic sectors save a small minority allied with the government. Ironically the government owes most universities over 5 months of their budget, forcing drastic measures to keep the institutions open and running in detriment of academic standards.

While there have always been issues of violation of the university's autonomy during past governments, never have intentions been as clear and concrete as now. In the nation's non-autonomous universities authorities are designated by the government and in all of these institutions chavistas have been awarded directive posts. The autonomous universities are not so easily dominated and in recent internal elections government backed candidates have for the most part been defeated. Given their minority the chavista groups have resorted to strong arm tactics such as threats and harassment, certainly unusual for campus political activities. They receive support, direct and indirect from the government and government supporters, including people from outside the university.

Two years ago, in elections for new authorities in the nation's largest university, the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), the government backed candidates were defeated. Some months later a small group of students took over the campus council office by force and stayed there for a number of weeks, all the while receiving logistical support from the central government. Their vandalism was accompanied by violence, including pipe bombs, fist-fights, gunfire, tear-gas and fireworks. They demanded, amongst other things, that the newly elected authorities be declared illegitimate and a new government be installed in the UCV. Their use of violence and ensuing disruption of academic life was totally unacceptable. The bitter taste this episode left was detrimental to the renegade's cause as in the most recent student council elections, groups representing the government party suffered resounding defeats in most UCV schools. Far from being discouraged the plotting has continued and in the past weeks many events throughout the country point to a coordinated offense against the nation's autonomous public universities and here is a small sample: In the Lisandro Alvarado University in Barquisimeto informants are finger pointing at professors that allegedly observed the strike, and the names of those on the government's Intervention Directive are vox populi. In the Carabobo University of Valencia a group of chavista students have taken partial control of the institution's transportation services, using the buses to support government and government party activities. The authorities even resorted to deflating vehicle tires and removing key parts from the engines so as to keep unauthorized hands from using the buses. The students are actively calling for State Intervention of the university. In Maracay a group of students and staff from the Pedagogic University marched through the city in the name of academic autonomy and when they were about to enter the campus of the Central University they were attacked by a group of chavista staff, students and even professors. Rocks and other missiles were hurled at the peaceful protesters, forcing disbandment of the march and police intervention to separate the two groups. In eastern Venezuela a group of government supporters assaulted the Registrar's office of the Universidad de Oriente, burning all academic records.

The pressure is building up and certainly agrees with the recent Presidential promise of a government offensive during this year. The sustained take over of public institutions by the government and its followers has been a very evident throughout all public administration as political allegiance reigns over technical or professional expertise, with disastrous results. The collapse of research and activities in the Ministries of the Environment, Agriculture, and Health are poignant examples. The financial tourniquet around the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research (IVIC), the dismantling of the research institute of the state oil company and elimination of support for oil related research in the universities only corroborate Venezuelan State disregard for academic and intellectual activities.

The disastrous results ensuing from intervention by this government in institutions where research and academia are involved are too obvious and represent a grim warning of what could happen to the autonomous universities if the Chavez government has its way.

In 1992 Hugo Chavez led a failed military coup in an attempt to overthrow a corrupt and unpopular government. He was imprisoned for a few years, received a presidential pardon and in 1998 Chavez ran for president on an anticorruption and social reform platform. The people so wanted a change from the 40-year unresponsive and corrupt governments that they elected him with an overwhelming majority.

But once he was elected he immediately began to cash in on his popularity with the masses by limiting any potential opposition to his rule. Chavez used this momentum to convene a constitutional convention to replace the Constitution. In a referendum he managed to get 95% of the delegates to the convention. With that majority he then:

*) Replaced the Constitution *) Combined the executive, legislative and judicial powers into one *) Abolished Congress *) Extended the President’s term to six years with the possibility of re-election *) Established a transitory regime under which all the Supreme Court justices, the Attorney General and the national electoral authorities were elected either by the convention packed with Chavez’s supporters with complete disregard for established procedures. The convention then decided to “clean up” the court system and replace the existing judges with Chavez’s appointees again disregarding constitutional procedures.

Chavez was not the first and will certainly not be the last political leader who used democratic procedures to seize power for non-democratic purposes. Some prominent examples might be remembered: In 1946 Perón in Argentina became president because he won the masses’ votes. In 1922 King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini prime minister of Italy because a majority of the voters had given his party the strongest fraction in the parliament. And in 1933 Hitler became chancellor of the Weimar Republic because different parties made possible a coalition and forced the president of the German Reich to nominate him.

After 3 years of worsening economic and social conditions, massive government corruption and complete alienation of most levels of society, the Venezuelan people finally reacted. Beginning in December 2001 huge demonstrations were staged against the President. Chavez sent in his new militia to repress and physically attack the noisy but peaceful demonstrators. Over 20 people were killed. Polls showed that more than 70% of the population wanted Chavez to resign. Business and labor leaders, the traditional political parties, the media, human rights organizations, environmentalists, and most non-government employees called for the President’s resignation and/or new elections.

In a desperate attempt to get Chavez to step down, a nationwide strike erupted in December 2002 that virtually paralyzed the economy. Chavez refused the strikers’ demands. According to him, all options presented by the opposition were subversive and unconstitutional including a previous referendum asking for his resignation. He stepped up repression by persecuting the strike leaders. By now he has fired over 12,000 oil workers, almost a third of the work force of the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA as it is known internationally, whose 10-week strike plunged the world's No. 5 oil exporter into an economic crisis.

Now, please bear this is mind: Until 2 months ago PDVSA was the largest and most efficiently run corporation in Latin America with a highly qualified work force of over 40,000. With international sales exceeding 46 billion dollars in 2001 it ranked 66th in the 2002 Fortune list of largest corporations in the world. Between 1999 and 2002 it had contributed 49 billion dollars to the Venezuelan treasury accounting for 50% of government income and for 80% of the country’s foreign exchange. Chavez, as a leader, as the president of Venezuela, should have negotiated, reached an agreement when faced with such economic and social crisis. But, no. Showing irrational behavior unbecoming of an elected leader, he yells, he curses, he threatens, he fires highly qualified employees and replaces them with either friends or borrows personnel from Libya, Algiers, Indonesia who barely speak English and no Spanish at all. This has resulted in oil production at only 1/3 of pre-strike capacity, gasoline and other refined products not meeting minimum quality standards, fires, explosions, oil spills and all kind of incidents and accidents capable of keeping OSHA investigators busy for years if they would have happened in the US.

caracaschronicles.blogspot.com

Back in 1989, all you needed to do to realize how badly Venezuela needed reform was pick up a phone. On a bad day it could take 5 minutes or more to get a dial-tone. You’d unhook the phone, go make a sandwich, check for a dial town, eat the sandwich, check for a dial town again, wash your dishes and put away the mayonnaise, come back and check for a dial tone again…it was pretty ridiculous.

But once you’d managed to place the call, your troubles had only started: more often than not you’d have to go through the delightful ritual of the “linked call.” It was a queer little phenomenon where two totally separate conversations would become entwined somehow, and you’d end up sharing your conversation with two complete strangers. Sometimes, these absurd little four-way interchanges would develop, as each set of callers tried to convince the other set to hang up and try their call again: of course, you didn’t want to be the one to have to hang up, because then you’d have to wait who-knows-how-long for a new dial tone.

I remember one time when my sister was talking to a school friend and their call got linked to a call between two of their other school friends – a serendipitous event so pleasant and novel (in those halcyon days before the conference call) that they stayed on the line to chat for hours on end, knowing they’d never get that lucky again.

Ah, the days of the nationalized phone company. Working with 40 year old equipment, CANTV (as the company’s called) was far, far behind the technological and service curves. Waiting times to get a new phone line hooked up could extend into months or years. Predictably, the delays spawned their own little hotbed of corruption: if you needed a new phone line, you had to pay off somebody inside CANTV to bump you to the front of the line. Phone lines became such a scarce luxury that they started to carry a premium in the real-estate market: in the classified ads, people selling apartments would advertise not just location and size, but also, proudly, “con teléfono” – an item that would add a good 5% to the cost of the place. Having a second phone line became the ultimate status-symbol, the height of conspicuous consumption.

It’s just one example, a particularly notorious one, but typical of the times. State-owned CANTV was prey to all the vices of clientelism run amok. Shielded from any competition, the company could get away with any and every outrage. As a consumer, you were powerless. That attitude of total contempt for the user/citizen pervaded the state. Trying to get anything out of the bureaucracy was a nightmare. Registering your car or trying to get a passport or a cédula (a national ID card) became an exercise in frustration-control. Even paying your taxes was a problem: tax officials knew that you needed that little shard of official paper they controlled (the certificate that you’d paid your taxes) for a number of reasons – you couldn’t sell real estate without it, for instance - so people ended up in the ridiculous position of having to bribe an official for the privilege of paying their taxes. That’s how entrenched the culture of corruption was.

But the rot wasn’t confined to the micro-level: macroeconomically, the country was also in serious trouble. The Central Bank was more or less out of foreign reserves. Protected by years of tariff barriers and subsidies, Venezuelan businesses were inefficient, rent-seeking leaches cranking out substandard goods at inflated prices.

The government was a huge albatross around the nation’s neck – the public sector payroll was ridiculous bloated. To a worrying extent, the petrostate model had degenerated into a full-employment scheme for governing party members. Venezuela had more public employees than Japan back then, but, as the old joke went, “of course, in Japan they don’t get quality public services like we do.” Lots of people on the state payroll showed up just twice a month to collect their paychecks, but they didn’t actually do any work – phantom workers, they were called. Many others treated their official salaries as a sort of retainer, but knew full well that the real money was elsewhere – in the kickbacks, commissions and bribes that state jobs gave them access to.

People were sick of it, and understandably so. But – and this is a crucial “but” – they didn’t see the need for root and branch reform. What they wanted was to see the petrostate fixed, not replaced. People longed for the bonanza days of the mid 70s, when windfall oil revenues financed a huge and rapid expansion in petrostate spending. If they were angry at politicians, it’s because they thought they had failed to deliver on their basic mission to meet everyone’s needs and desires by distributing the oil money fairly and generously. Do that, they figured, and the country could relive the good old days of the mid 70s.

This all has to do with the mental model that underpins the Venezuelan petrostate, with the founding myth that Venezuela is a fantastically rich country and that all the state has to do is distribute those rents for everyone to be well off. If you genuinely believe that, as 90% of Venezuelans still do, but you personally live in poverty, then the obvious inference is that the reason you’re poor is that somebody else stole your fair share. Those adeco bastards!

Let me be clear about this: corruption really was a huge problem back then (still is.) But Venezuelans had wildly overblown expectations of how much their lives would improve if corruption was stamped out. Few people back then understood that even if corruption could be stopped cold, most of their problems would remain. The complicated structural and demographic reasons that made the petrostate model fundamentally non-viable were not a part of the national debate. They were understood only partially even in academic and technocratic circles. The perception that corruption was the whole of the problem actually impeded a deeper examination of the real reasons the state had stopped working – like the basic notion of the distributive state, and a social system that had been built on vertical, submission/dominance relationships.

Lo and behold, the 1988 presidential election featured a candidate uniquely positioned to play into people’s anger at the state of the state: Carlos Andrés Pérez, who had actually presided over the flood of petrodollars from 1974 to 1979. CAP, as everyone called him, ran as an old style populist, promising, disingenuously, to turn back the clock, to govern just as he had the first time around. People wanted a revamped petrostate, and he offered a revamped petrostate. Not surprisingly, he won by a landslide.

[70s CAP vs. 90s CAP]

Now, what on earth CAP was thinking when he ran his campaign that way is still a subject of hot debate in Venezuela today. Looking back, it’s clear that the state was in no financial position to bankroll the whole society anymore, and CAP must have known that. Some people think it was all a carefully calculated ploy from the start, that he knew he needed to talk the talk to get elected, but was aware all along that he wouldn’t walk the walk.

Others think it was more a matter of circumstance. As one interesting anecdote would have it, CAP was certain that he could revamp the petrostate because he had already worked out a preliminary deal with the incoming US administration – the soon-to-be secretary of the treasury was fully on board for a financial rescue package that would allow the Venezuelan government to keep doing business more or less as usual…and that incoming administration would be run by President Michael Dukakis. Oops.

Well, CAP won with a record number of votes, but of course Dukakis went down in flames. Literally weeks after being elected, he had no choice but to renege on pretty much everything he’d promised during the campaign.

Days after his election, he announced a program of massive, IMF-sponsored structural reforms – lifting tariff barriers, dropping subsidies, privatizing state assets…a straightforward neoliberal, Washington Consensus type program. Given the size of the mess that state finances were in, it was a sensible proposal. But it was also an incredible, bald-faced betrayal of everything he’d stood for just weeks before. People thought they’d elected him to fix the petrostate, instead, he was moving to dismantle it. It barely made a difference that the petrostate was badly in need of dismantling: anyone needing a phone-line in those days should have been able to see that. The point is that there was nothing like a political consensus for reform at that point. CAP didn’t think he needed to make the case for dismantling the petrostate, he thought he could just do it, steamroll over all opposition and present the country with a fait accompli. His thinking, apparently, was that the economic benefits of reform would be so evident within a couple of years that the critics of reform would be marginalized.

Alas, he miscalculated badly. First off, CAP was elected on an Acción Democrática ticket, as the candidate of the party that pioneered the petrostate. In fact, the main source of resistance to CAP’s reform push was his own party. CAP might have had a road-to-Damascus moment sometime after Michael Dukakis imploded, but the rest of his party was still very much wedded to the dominance/submission model of social relations I described in the last essay. And CAP’s reforms were plainly incompatible with that vision of the state.

Take CANTV. It was a nightmare for consumers, yes, but for the AD cronies who got to run it, the phone company was a cherished power-base. Not only could they turn their access to a scarce commodity – phone lines – into an inexhaustible source of kickbacks, enriching themselves and feeding their personal patronage networks, they could also use the company to listen in on their opponent’s phone conversations, to distribute CANTV jobs to party workers, and, of course, to install multiple phone lines in their own homes. If you privatized the company, that entire structure would come crashing down.

Similar arguments could be made about any of four dozen other state institutions CAP wanted to sell off, streamline, or reform. Obviously, AD was horrified – the proposals would drive a stake through the heart of the party’s whole racket - so they mobilized furiously against the president they’d just helped to elect.

Soon, CAP found himself engulfed in a rising tide of unmanageable protest and dissent. Every scrap of reform cost him a pound of flesh in Congress; the bickering, obstructionism, and protests were constant. Venezuelans were outraged at what they saw as an unacceptable onslaught on their populist goodies. Too many people were too dependent on the cash that flowed through the patron-client network – and those people, by definition, were easy to mobilize politically, because they were part of the network.

The straw that broke the camel’s back came when the government put up gasoline prices in February 1989. Public transport operators responded by doubling fares, and the shit hit the fan. On February 27th, 1989, a group of left-wing agitators in Guarenas, a Caracas suburb, started a small riot over the fare hikes. The riots spread incredibly quickly, first to Caracas itself and then throughout the country. For three days Venezuela was an orgy of rioting, arson, and very widespread looting. The police was helpless in the face of this sudden outburst of anarchy. Eventually, the government called out army troops with orders to shoot rioters on sight. At least several hundred people were shot dead in the next two days, perhaps over a thousand.

It was the end of Venezuela’s age of innocence.

The February 27th riots were a kind of September 11th moment for Venezuela: they transformed the country deeply. Until then, Venezuelans had seen themselves as different, more civilized, more democratic, better than their Latin American neighbors. 31 years of unbroken, stable, petrostate-funded democracy had made us terribly cocky. In a sense, the riots marked Venezuela’s entry into Latin America. The country was no longer different: just another hard-up Latin American republic struggling to put its democracy on a stable footing.

CAP’s reform program was seriously hobbled by the riots, but it continued, at half-steam, for another 4 years. Economically, it was a success – after a serious recession in 1989 that saw the economy contract by 10.9%, Venezuela experienced real economic growth for the first time since the 70s. Real per capita income was expanding steadily: 3.9% in 1990, 7.1% in ‘91, 3.6% in ‘92. From a narrowly economic point of view CAP’s program had put the country on a path towards sustained growth, something the petrostate model was fundamentally unable to do.

But none of that mattered to the old-style bosses, the 10,000 caciques heading up patronage networks large and small throughout the country. What they cared about was power, wealth, interpersonal dominance. CAP’s program constituted a real threat to all of that. From their perches in AD’s National Executive Committee, in congress, in the courts, the nationalized companies and the labor movement, they were extraordinarily well placed to wreck the reform drive.

On the third year of this little CAP vs. AD psychodrama that a certain army lieutenant colonel first entered the public scene…and with a bang. On February 4th, 1992, a group of junior officers launched a bloody coup attempt against the elected government. The crazed adventure – the first time someone had tried to overthrow a Venezuelan government by force of arms since the 60s – left about a hundred dead. But it also turned its leader into a kind of folk hero – the valiant paratrooper willing to put his life on the line to stop CAP’s outrageous drive to dismantle the cherished petrostate.

The coup-plotting lieutenant colonel went to jail, where he whiled away two years reading (not understanding) Rousseau, Bolívar and Walt Whitman. In those two years, the government faced a second, even bloodier coup attempt by officers loosely associated with the first. Eventually, CAP was impeached by his fellow AD party members on trumped up charges, and after a brief interim government, the presidency passed to yet another petrostate dinosaur – Rafael Caldera, who had also been president already, but even further back than CAP, in 1969-1974.

Like CAP, Caldera ran as an old style populist. Unlike CAP, Caldera governed like one.

[70s Caldera vs. 90s Caldera.]

By the time he reached power for the second time, Rafael Caldera was over 80 years old. He’d spent 58 of those years in front-line politics. Frail, some would say decrepit, his voice tremulous and barely audible, he wasn’t exactly the kind of politician you’d turn to for bold new ideas. Caldera tried to patch up the old state system – the only one he understood – as best he could. Predictably, he failed. Corruption continued to proliferate, cronyism as well, while the banking sector collapsed, the economy languished, and the nation’s collective impoverishment continued afoot. Eventually, he was persuaded of the need for some reform, including an important overhaul of the criminal system and of social security. But he didn’t understand, much less share, the notion that the basic model of the state he had spent a lifetime championing needed a total overhaul.

If the petrostate was well past its sell-by date in 1989, by 1998 it was putrid. Nobody doubted that the country needed a serious shake-up, a massive jolt to move beyond the stagnation and decay of the last 20 years. Indeed, all three of the politicians who ever looked to have a serious shot at power that year were anti-establishment figures, people who’d built political careers outside the traditional party system. The country faced a choice between a one-time Miss Universe turned centrist mayor of a wealthy district of Caracas, a reformist conservative governor from Carabobo State, and a certain leftist Lieutenant Colonel who’d been pardoned and released from prison after heading a coup attempt. Disenchantment with the old party structures ran so deep that Copei didn’t even bother to try to run a party insider as candidate. Instead, they tried to co-opt the beauty queen, who collapsed in the polls the second she accepted their nomination. As always, AD was the last to get the message: they nominated a semi-literate 80 year-old cacique sitting at the pinnacle of the party’s patronage structure, and the guy never got beyond 7% in the polls. The much vaunted adeco electoral machine had sputtered to a halt. Soon enough, it was all down to the governor and the coupster, and it was clear that the election would go to the one who best voiced the people’s virulent rage at the failure of the petrostate.

And if that’s the game you’re playing, nobody but nobody beats Hugo Chávez. posted by Francisco Toro| 10:25 AM