During his first five years in office, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez seemed like a harmless political ingenue–at worst, a new version of the traditional Latin American populist caudillo, or strongman.
Oh, how he loved romantically serenading his Cuban brother-in-heroic-revolutionary-arms, Fidel Castro, in the Venezuelan jungles on Castro’s birthday. Oh, how he adored exercising his intrinsic anti-Americanism by publicly embracing renowned terrorists such as the Venezuelan-born “El Jackal”!
From 1998, just before his election, until the last eight or 10 months, the charismatic (and more than a little eccentric and authoritarian) former colonel was someone the United States could live with. He never hesitated in supplying the U.S. with oil. And despite his claims to the contrary, unlike the early days with Castro, Washington did nothing to overthrow him.
On Sunday, everything changed.
In a convoluted opposition scheme to hold a referendum on whether Chavez should stay in office, to the amazement of the incapable opposition groups, Chavez got a resounding “yes” vote. Garnering 58 percent of the vote, with the ever-vigilant former President Jimmy Carter and his electoral eagle eyes on the watch, Chavez stands legitimized in the eyes of the world. He can move ahead with his inchoate, but increasingly real, “Bolivarian Revolution,” which sometimes seems as if some deep-frozen Cold War has been defrosted and reborn in the tropics of Venezuela, where posters of Che Guevara hang outside the once American-dominated national oil company.
First, how did all this happen?
What Sunday made clear was that Chavez’s hold on the until-now equivocating country was strengthened over the last eight to 10 months. He was able to provide for the 80 percent of the Venezuelan poor, free Internet cafes, medical clinics run by Cuban doctors, literacy programs, subsidized food markets and new universities. This was singularly made possible by the fact that world oil prices spiked; suddenly he had–or at least spent–$1.7 billion on social programs.
Interestingly enough, these new programs are not only for the poorest, but have gained the enthusiasm of the lower-middle-class groups, a new factor in the dynamics of the Latin American revolution. The danger, however, is that these programs are 1) supported by Castro, with 17,000 Cuban doctors today in Venezuela, and 2) are run outside the traditional controls of the legislature and government ministries.
Second, do these changes mean that Venezuela, with its 14 million voters, is about to become a “second Cuba”? Does Venezuela’s new populism presage a domino-style effect on surrounding countries, such as Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, all of which are internally playing with populism?
The answer to both of those questions is most probably no.
“It’s a continuation of something,” Michael Shifter, of the Inter-American Dialogue and one of the best analysts of Latin America, commented to me after Sunday’s election, “but it’s hard to describe the animal. I don’t see it as a continuation of the Cuban system. It’s going to use some authoritarian methods when it needs to, but let the oil flow and the money come in. Chavez has found a formula to hang on to power. He has control of the army and the oil company–and now he has legitimacy through elections.
“There are pockets of discontent in other countries who may be sympathetic to him, but in general his message does not have greater resonance. I don’t think he’s offering an alternate vision for Latin America.”
Third, how is Hugo Chavez going to continue to support his undefined Bolivarian Revolution, in which the poor seem to have found their emotional leader?
Why, that is quite simple. We now have in Venezuela the first revolution in Latin America (if we can quite call it a revolution) that is totally supported by the United States. The final irony of the revolution is that Hugo Chavez and his dreams of grandeur depend on oil sold to the American oil companies. The U.S. market absorbs two-thirds of Venezuela’s oil exports and generates about half the government’s revenue.
Nor is that about to change, since Venezuelan oil is heavy sulfurous crude and needs access to U.S. refineries. Moreover, rather than cutting back on purchases of Venezuelan oil, ChevronTexaco Corp. only a week ago announced plans to explore for offshore gas in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan story gets crazier and crazier.
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Six years ago when Chavez was running for president and I interviewed him for several hours, at one point he was sitting on his couch under a huge and vivid painting of his hero Simon Bolivar and talking into his cell phone with such passion that for a moment I had the fleeting impression that he was actually talking to Bolivar, dead these many years.
When I see what has happened now–with American oil companies, and indeed through them the American people, financing the virulently anti-American Chavez revolution–I can only think that talking to Bolivar might be one of the more believable things happening.
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