Fernando Alcoforado*
The self-proclaimed president of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, on Tuesday morning (04/30/2019) called the population to the streets and declared that he had the support of the military to put an end to what he calls the “usurpation” of power in Venezuela by the President Nicolás Maduro. Guaido’s support site, where the leaders who tried to overthrow the regime of Nicolás Maduro, are known as “La Carlota”. The region was taken by crowds late in the morning and there were clashes between the Bolivarian National Guard and Bolivarian militias against demonstrators. According to the state television network Telesur, police tried to disperse with tear gas those considered coup plotters. The United States has declared support for Guaido’s attempt and military to overthrow Maduro.
The political action led by Guaidó against the Maduro government was also marked by the release of a government opponent, leader Leopoldo Lopez, who was under house arrest. According to Guaidó, the self-proclaimed government freed Lopez, who went to the streets. Government officials speak out in an attempted coup and called on supporters to speak in favor of Nicolas Maduro who said he had support from commanders of the Armed Forces. Guaidó said in a social networking post that he met with the main military units of the Armed Forces and that he began the final phase of the so-called “Operation Freedom”. The facts showed that this military support to Guaidó was a bluff. Leopoldo Lopez would have taken refuge in the embassy of Chile and Juan Guaidó will be arrested, killed or exiled in some embassy as Leopoldo Lopez would have done.
The attempted coup d´état in Venezuela continued the effort to destabilize the government of Nicolás Maduro when the United States and its allies previously organized, in articulation with Guaidó, what was called “humanitarian aid” with the delivery of food and medicines for the Venezuelan population that was rejected by the government of Venezuela for considering it as a pretext for military intervention that would be under way. The military intervention of the United States with the support of some Latin American countries, among them Brazil, in flagrant disregard for the Charter of the United Nations would have the ideological objective of overthrowing the Bolivarian government installed in Venezuela and also the goal of seizing of the world’s largest oil reserves in Venezuela.
To understand what is happening in Venezuela, it is necessary to go back in time, from the election in 1998 of Hugo Chávez to the Presidency of Venezuela when it gained notoriety in Latin American political space. Some saw him as a vanguard ruler, representing what is most advanced in Latin American left thought, others understood it as another authoritarian movement carried on by a caudillo. Since 1998, Chávez has won several electoral lawsuits, underwent an attempted military coup in 2002, demarcated and prioritized his electoral base with various social programs, known as “missions”, politically controlled the country, including changes in the country’s Constitution (due in part to its political capacity but also to the opposition’s inability to organize after the defeats at the polls) and with the prerogative to be pursuing the goals of social inclusion and participatory democracy, and has managed to sustain very high levels of popularity, especially between the years 2004 and 2007.
Hugo Chávez has won four successive presidential terms by electoral route since 1998. In the early years of Chávez’s presidency, he introduced social welfare reforms that resulted in improved social conditions for low-income populations. It also implemented free health and education systems, up to university level, funded by the government. About 1 million more children have been enrolled in primary school since the Bolivarian leader came to power. In 2003 and 2004, Chavez launched social and economic campaigns that were converted into free reading, writing and arithmetic classes for the more than 1.5 million illiterate Venezuelan adults. According to surveys, this set of measures resulted in a growth of 150% in the family income of the poorest between 2003 and 2006 and a reduction of 18% in infant mortality between 1998 and 2006.
Chávez’s successive victories in the Venezuelan elections have confirmed his mandate with strong popular support, indicating that the path chosen by him in that country has succeeded not only in mobilizing and organizing the poorest population, but also in building an affirmative agenda in Venezuela in defense of national sovereignty and confrontation with imperialism, especially the North American. The two major brands of the Chávez government concern the purpose of carrying out the Bolivarian Revolution and implanting Socialism of the 21st Century. This socialism proposed by Chávez in 2005 at the World Forum in Porto Alegre would be nourished by the most authentic currents of Christianity, by Marxism and Bolivar’s ideas. However, the discourse proposed by 21st century socialism and its practical application have come up against a series of structural problems that the government of Hugo Chavez has not been able to solve, such as avoiding the country’s excessive dependence on production and exports of oil, to promote the expansion of the productive sectors of Venezuela and to avoid the country’s excessive dependence on imports of numerous products, including food.
After Hugo Chávez’s death and Nicolás Maduro’s rise to power, Venezuela has been the scene of economic turmoil and violent clashes between supporters of Chávez and anti-Chávez whose main causes are hyperinflation, the scarcity of hard currency (which generates speculation with the dollar ) and the shortage of some basic products that strongly affects the whole population. Without credit and without foreign exchange, Venezuela has become increasingly dependent on oil sales, as the only source of capital inflows, whose prices have declined in recent years and are undermining the country’s economy. An indisputable fact is that Venezuela is a country divided and polarized to the extreme between supporters of Chávez and anti-Chávez whose radicalization reached the culminations with the defeat in the last parliamentary elections of supporters of Chávez to the opposition forces that today are majority in the National Assembly presided by the deputy Juan Guaidó who, in turn, is leading the coup d´état attempt aimed at overthrowing Maduro.
In order to avoid his overthrow of power, Nicolás Maduro arrested opponents of supporters of Chávez, violently suppressed the demonstrations of the opposition forces, used the Bolivarian National Guard and Bolivarian militias to attack their opponents and use a regime of exception similar to the state of siege to maintain order. In order to invalidate the National Assembly presided over by Juan Guaidó from opposition to the government, Nicolás Maduro called for a new Constituent Assembly.
It was shown that the attempted coup in Venezuela was a resounding failure. The government of Nicolás Maduro cannot be overthrown with the division of the Armed Forces as claimed by Guaidó because the current government is strongly supported by a large part of the population, especially the low-income population and has the support of the Armed Forces, as well as the National Guard Bolivarian and militias or paramilitary groups loyal to Bolivarianism. The support of the Armed Forces to the Maduro government was demonstrated with the pronouncement of the Minister of Defense. Even if it succeeded in splitting the Armed Forces, opposition forces would have to face a large part of the population, the Bolivarian National Guard and the Bolivarian militias that could lead the country to a civil war whose outcome would be unpredictable.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of 14 books addressing issues such as Globalization and Development, Brazilian Economy, Global Warming and Climate Change, The Factors that Condition Economic and Social Development, Energy in the world and The Great Scientific, Economic, and Social Revolutions that Changed the World.
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