IIPM Reviews
Despite some hiccups, the Bolivarian Revolution looks all set to hand President Chavez another term in office, reports Saurabh Kumar Shahi from the heart of Venezuela
A casual look at the headlines in the international press suggests doomsday in Venezuela. Read Wall Street Journal and NYT and it appears that the country is going, if it has not already gone, to the wolves. According to their version of events, Venezuela is probably also the most unsafe place on earth to stroll in with the possible exception of the Taliban-held territories in Afghanistan.
But a week in Venezuela would be enough to tell you why the western press has lost its credibility even faster than its governments. Venezuela is far from what it is portrayed to be by the American media. In fact, it is dramatically opposite.
So why this rancour? Why this viciousness? Well, the answer lies 12 years back in 1999, when an ex-military man and a charismatic socialist Hugo Chavez took power in an election where he had been discounted by everybody else. Without logistics, media support or finances behind him, Chavez defeated the pro-American elites fair and square. As he introduced his “Bolivarian Revolution”, named aptly after the great Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar, panic gripped the West. The western media upped its ante.
Far from these doomsday predictions, as I enter the premises of 'Ciudad Caribia', a rehabilitation city launched as part of the 'Gran Mision' project of the Bolivarian revolution, it becomes pretty evident why in spite of a ruthless international campaign, Chavez comfortably holds the masses with him. 'Ciudad Caribia' is a kind of social dream that the current, post-1980s generation might fail to comprehend. It is simply because projects of such social impact and on such magnitude are not launched these days, leave alone completed. And that is why 'Ciudad Caribia' parallels what was once termed as a “Socialist Dream”.
Spread on thousands of acres at a serene location outside Caracas, the rehabilitation city is one of 150 such projects currently going on in Venezuela. Meant to house 30,000 people either displaced from landslides or who have been shifted from slums, these cities are nothing short of a dream. Spacious three-room flats, landscaped roads and parks, medical clinics, schools, colleges, a sport complex, a community centre and neighbourhood markets; these are things its inhabitants had never dreamt of before Chavez came to power through democratic means. Today, as Venezuela is on the path to achieve the 'Millennium Goals' of United Nations, the impact of such social initiatives on the economic indicators is not lost.
Bolivarian Revolution's economic policies have managed to halve the poverty rate from 49 per cent of the households in 1998 to close to 23 per cent last year. Meanwhile, the extreme poverty rate plummeted from 21 per cent of households in 1998 to close 6 per cent last year, in line with the Millennium Goals.
"These indicators have been achieved because of a mix of social initiatives as well as economic programmes that led to the dramatic decrease in unemployment which fell by nearly half, from 14.5 per cent in early 1999 to around 6 per cent this year," Temir Porras, vice minister of foreign affairs, tells TSI. “This dramatic decrease in unemployment generally leads to increase in 'Gini coefficient' but we managed to reduce this from 0.49 in 1998 to 0.39 last year. This figure, let me add, is one of the most impressive ones in a region (Latin America) that has historically remained unequal,” he adds.
The role of a wide variety of new social programmes, known as “misions”, of which 'Ciudad Caribia' is a part, becomes extremely important. It has led to tripling of the rate of university attendance and increased the enrolment rate in primary education by almost 50 per cent.
“These have been achieved through the sharp increase in government spending on education. Similarly, health indicators are also in line with and sometimes better than the Millennium Goals. Also, one of the greatest achievements has been to integrate the previously excluded indigenous population that has been provided with new rights, such as the right to their own languages, cultures, and territories, as well as three guaranteed representatives in the National Assembly,” explains Porras.
The Bolivarian Revolution's driving philosophy remains the Marxist motifs that President Chavez has borrowed from neighbouring Cuba. However, having said that, it should also be mentioned that unlike in cash-strapped Cuba, in Venezuela the revolution has proliferated its agenda on to the regional and global stage with the use of its great wealth in the form of petroleum. Naturally, it has catapulted Chavez to the top of the list of Latin American brand of leftists.
But it was not easy. When Chavez started his social and economic programmes, he needed huge amounts of money. Naturally, he wanted the oil sector to fund it. The elites rooted in this sector, who had tacit and sometimes open support of the United States, responded vehemently.
Chavez managed to regain state control over the previously quasi-independent oil industry but not without facing a coup in 2002, engineered by elites and officers of PDVSA, the Venezuelan oil corporation. Chavez lost his power briefly, but masses loyal to him occupied the major TV station and cordoned off the presidential palace. Witnessing the mood, the section of the military that was rooted in Bolivarian Revolution and came from economically deprived backgrounds, began to mobilise. By the next day, Chavez was back in action.
“We nationalised private sub-contractors in the oil industry and included them in the state-owned company giving the labourers a much better package. To avoid transnational monopoly, we made the law where they could not control more than 40 per cent of any given production site. However, most importantly, we increased royalties from as low as 1 per cent to a minimum of 33 per cent,” explains Ivan Orellana Alcala, vice minister of Energy and Petroleum while talking to TSI.
Oil, among other things, has also helped Venezuela to catalyse its foreign policy. Along with Cuba, Venezuela has initiated a regional integration
programme called the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA). Petrocaribe S. A., an arrangement where nations with an oil alliance with Venezuela are allowed to purchase oil on conditions of preferential payment, has generated massive goodwill for the country. In fact, economists consider such an alliance based on fair exchange as a potent weapon against the concept of free trade that is always tilted against the impoverished partner. Prior to Chavez, all the oil money used to go to Miami and the likes. No prize for guessing why the West is furious.
So how is it all going to shape the up-coming elections? To start with, one wonders why the West did not discredit the previous elections that bought Chavez to power time and again. They tried to do it in Iran, for example. Well, they simply could not do it because Venezuela put in place one of the most rigging-proof voting technologies in the world, with dual electronic and paper ballots – something that got rave reviews from election observers from around the world – that even American electorates dream off. So, any election would be above board. And all stories about the clamp on opposition media is just that, a story. On the contrary, for example, it took me three days to locate a pro-Chavez newspaper or a TV channel. The market is flooded with elite-controlled anti-Chavez and pro-American media vehicles.
There are areas of concern as Chavez enjoys reduced popularity from what he achieved in 2007. People mostly attribute it to rising inflation and inability to drastically bring down the crime rate. But which predominant factors will drive masses from the cerros and the barrios to the polling stations? In a slum located on a hilltop in Caracas, I met people who had not gone downhill for decades as there was no other way but to step down and then climb 1500 flights of stairs before Chavez's government constructed cable-cars for them. Before that happened they had lived and died on that hilltop without as much as walking through the city they lived in. Who do you think they will vote for as they come out en masse in October next year? Again, no prizes for guessing.
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