VENEZUELAN CRISIS
Still waving Chavez flag
Hugo Chavez’s dream of making Venezuela a socialist paradise has become Nicolas Maduro’s nightmare.
Chavez, who died of cancer two years ago this month, won over millions of the poor during his 14 years in power by giving them massive amounts of oil money. It was easy to do because the country has the world’s largest proven reserves and oil commanded high prices. But he gave little thought to diversifying the almost totally oil-dependent economy, even less to putting aside any of this bounty for leaner days.
It was Maduro’s misfortune to be sworn in as his hand-picked successor not long before oil prices plummeted. Revenue is expected to be down $15 billion US this year. The consequences have been quick and devastating: Inflation is running at anywhere between 69 per cent and 200 per cent, and a looming credit crisis could bankrupt the country by next year.
Yet the streets, walls and roadsides remain choked with Cubanstyle patriotic slogans lauding Chavez and exhorting people to never surrender “the irreversible gains of the revolution.” They also warn Venezuela’s enemies — “the gringos” from Washington — want to deny the country its destiny as a great Latin American power.
These empty words and almost complete government domination of the airwaves now compete with street graffiti mocking the revolution and condemning Venezuela’s leaders for squandering its future economic health through corruption and fiscal incompetence. For all that, there are still many besotted Chavistas.
“I am for Chavez — he had a real pair of balls,” said Antonia Toledo, 60, sitting in the home of one of her 10 children in a hillside slum.
Her opinion, which is widely held in the ramshackle favelas that encircle the capital, was Chavez “launched many projects that he was able to control but right now they are falling apart because Maduro can’t handle them.”
Community activist Saverio Vivas, a Marxist/Leninist in his youth, has in his 40s become a fierce opponent of the regime.
“The public has a lot of trouble understanding the Chavez phenomenon,” he said. “Two years after his death many consider him to be a saint because they feel he was the first one who ever cared about the poor. They remember the good, not the bad. He continues to have great influence. It is only his reputation that keeps Maduro in power.”
Denisse Bejarano, 18, a philosophy major, agreed.
“Chavez had a charm with the people that Maduro does not have,” she said. “All his support comes from Chavez.” Trapped by his predecessor’s charisma and outsized reputation, Maduro has continued to heap praise on his predecessor. The former bus driver, who is regarded as a plodder lacking the common touch, sticks to Chavez’s Fidel Castro-inspired socialist policies although Venezuela’s situation is vastly different today from what it was even two years ago.
Faced with demonstrations that have sometimes turned violent, Maduro has jailed Caracas mayor Antonia Ledezma and opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who has been charged with arson and “associating with organized crime.”
Like Chavez before him, he has lashed out repeatedly at “los Yanquis.” This month, he ordered the U.S. to cut the number of diplomats at its embassy and slapped a visa requirement on American visitors.
U.S. President Barack Obama reacted with economic sanctions and a travel ban on seven senior
Venezuelan officials, declaring Venezuela had become an “extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security.
“If the U.S. really cared about Venezuela they would be helping us,” said Carolina Inojosa, 31, as she signed a petition denouncing Obama. “Historically, the U.S. is always going to countries that are oil producers and accusing them of violating rights and that they need to be saved.”
However, she conceded “we have a huge problem in Venezuela because we depend so much on oil and on imports for everything. We got cocky and thought we would always be riding high.”
Fanny Pena, 30, a health committee member in Barrio Antimano, one of Caracas’s largest slums, said she would always support Maduro because “we must trust who Chavez left in power.” But she acknowledged many Chavistas were “confused and wavering.”
Still, at this point it is hard to see Venezuela’s socialist experiment ending any time soon because “the formal opposition is fractured and fights each other over power,” Vivas said. “The opposition is repressed and cannot get its message out because the government controls the media. The public does not trust the opposition, so it is indifferent to them. But this is an extraordinary situation and the opposition in the streets is a growing force.”
As the economy continues its downward spin, the biggest imponderables have become how the army may react. Chavez was a career army officer when he launched an unsuccessful coup in 1992. When he was elected president seven years later, he invited many generals to form the core of his government.
Economist Francisco Facura was not alone in reckoning a military coup was likely. Parliamentary elections have been announced for September, “but that is a long time away.”
“We are in chaos right now,” Toledo said. “Maybe God will be the one to solve this, because I see no solution.”