38.5.2: Venezuela and Chavismo

Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela

The Bolivarian Revolution is a leftist social movement and political process in Venezuela that was led by late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, the founder of the Fifth Republic Movement and later the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The “Bolivarian Revolution” is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the “Bolivarian Revolution” seeks to build a mass movement to implement Bolivarianism, popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar’s ideas from a socialist perspective.

Hugo Chávez

Hugo Chávez, a former paratroop lieutenant-colonel who led an unsuccessful coup d’état in 1992, was elected President in December 1998 on a platform that called for the creation of a “Fifth Republic,” a new constitution, a new name (“the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”), and a new set of relations between socioeconomic classes. In 1999, voters approved a referendum on a new constitution and in 2000, re-elected Chávez, also placing many members of his Fifth Republic Movement party in the National Assembly. Supporters of Chávez called the process symbolized by him the Bolivarian Revolution and were organized into different government-funded groups, including the Bolivarian Circles. Chávez’s first few months in office were dedicated primarily to constitutional reform, while his secondary focus was on immediately allocating more government funds to new social programs.

However, as a recession triggered by historically low oil prices and soaring international interest rates rocked Venezuela, the shrunken federal treasury provided very little of the resources Chávez required for his promised massive populist programs. The economy, which was still staggering, shrunk by 10% and the unemployment rate increased to 20%, the highest level in since the 1980s.

Chávez sharply diverged from previous administrations’ economic policies, terminating their practice of extensively privatizing Venezuela’s state-owned holdings, such as the national social security system, holdings in the aluminum industry, and the oil sector. Chávez worked to reduce Venezuelan oil extraction in the hopes of garnering elevated oil prices and, at least theoretically, elevated total oil revenues, thereby boosting Venezuela’s severely deflated foreign exchange reserves. He extensively lobbied other OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) countries to cut their production rates as well. As a result of these actions, Chávez became known as a “price hawk” in his dealings with the oil industry and OPEC. Chávez also attempted a comprehensive renegotiation of 60- year-old royalty payment agreements with oil giants Philips Petroleum and ExxonMobil. These agreements had allowed the corporations to pay in taxes as little as 1% of the tens of billions of dollars in revenues they were earning from their extraction of Venezuelan oil. Afterwards, Chávez stated his intention to complete the nationalization of Venezuela’s oil resources.

In April 2002, Chávez was briefly ousted from power in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d’état attempt following popular demonstrations by his opponents, but he was returned to power after two days as a result of demonstrations by poor Chávez supporters in Caracas, as well as actions by the military.

Chávez also remained in power after an all-out national strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003, including a strike/lockout in the state oil company PDVSA. The strike produced severe economic dislocation, with the country’s GDP falling 27% during the first four months of 2003, and costing the oil industry $13.3 billion. In the subsequent decade, the government was forced into several currency devaluations. These devaluations have done little to improve the situation of the Venezuelan people who rely on imported products or locally produced products that depend on imported inputs, while dollar-denominated oil sales account for the vast majority of Venezuela’s exports. The profits of the oil industry have been lost to “social engineering” and corruption, instead of investments needed to maintain oil production.

Chávez survived several further political tests, including an August 2004 recall referendum. He was elected for another term in December 2006 and re-elected for a third term in October 2012. However, he was never sworn in for his third term due to medical complications. Chávez died on March 5, 2013 after a nearly two-year fight with cancer. The presidential election that took place on April 14, 2013, was the first since Chávez took office in 1999 in which his name did not appear on the ballot.

Chavez’s ideas, programs, and style form the basis of “Chavismo,” a political ideology closely associated with Bolivarianism and socialism of the 21st century, which continued but declined after his death. Internationally, Chávez aligned himself with the Marxist–Leninist governments of Fidel and then Raúl Castro in Cuba, and the socialist governments of Evo Morales (Bolivia), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), and Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua). His presidency was seen as a part of the socialist “pink tide” sweeping Latin America. Chávez described his policies as anti-imperialist, being a prominent adversary of the United States’s foreign policy as well as a vocal critic of U.S.-supported neoliberalism and laissez-faire capitalism. He described himself as a Marxist. He supported Latin American and Caribbean cooperation and was instrumental in setting up the pan-regional Union of South American Nations, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Bank of the South, and the regional television network TeleSUR.

Hugo Chávez. Chávez holds up a miniature copy of the 1999 Venezuelan Constitution at the 2005 World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

Nicolás Maduro

Nicolás Maduro has been the President of Venezuela since April 14, 2013, after winning the second presidential election after Chávez’s death with 50.61% of the votes against the opposition’s candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, who had 49.12% of the votes. The Democratic Unity Roundtable contested his election as fraudulent, and as a violation of the constitution. However, the Supreme Court of Venezuela ruled that under Venezuela’s Constitution, Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president and was invested as such by the Venezuelan National Assembly.

Beginning in February 2014, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have protested over high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods due to policies of the federal government. Demonstrations and riots have left over 40 fatalities in the unrest between both Chavistas and opposition protesters, and has led to the arrest of opposition leaders such as Leopoldo López and Antonio Ledezma. Human rights groups have strongly condemned the arrest of Leopoldo López.

In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, the opposition gained a majority.

The following year, in a July 2016 decree, President Maduro used his executive power to declare a state of economic emergency. The decree could force citizens to work in agricultural fields and farms for 60-day (or longer) periods to supply food to the country. Colombian border crossings have been temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household and health items in Colombia in mid-2016. In September 2016, a study published in the Spanish-language Diario Las Américas indicated that 15% of Venezuelans are eating “food waste discarded by commercial establishments.”

Attributions

• Venezuela and Chavismo
  • “Hugo Chávez.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Chavez. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Venezuela.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuela. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “History of Venezuela.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Venezuela. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “History of Venezuela (1999-present).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Venezuela_(1999-present). Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “HugoChavez1823.jpeg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HugoChavez1823.jpeg. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 3.0.