THE RISE AND THREAT OF FALL OF CHAVISM IN VENEZUELA

Fernando Alcoforado*

This article aims to present the process that contributed to the rise and threat of fall of Chavism in Venezuela. In several Latin American countries, the demand for a change of direction has been increasingly loud throughout history. The impoverishment of the continent has reached unacceptable levels. The concentration of wealth and social exclusion have placed inequalities at levels never seen before. The dilemma of Latin American governments has been to fulfill their commitments to the people or to place themselves in the opposing camp, that is, on the side of those who oppress, exploit and want to keep everything as it is. Unlike most Latin American countries that have bowed to the dictates of international capital, Venezuela has assumed a diametrically opposite role with the rise to power of Hugo Chávez.

In Latin America, wars and revolutions of independence are at the origin of Latin American nations, establishing some of its main features. What is epic in the struggles symbolized by Simón Bolívar, José Artigas, José Morelos, Miguel Hidalgo, Bartolomé Mitre, Bernardo O’Higgins, Antonio Sucre, José Bonifácio, Frei Caneca, Ramón Betances, José Martí, Tiradentes and many others is rooted in the feat aimed at emancipating the colony from the domination of Spain and Portugal, creating the national State, organizing the Nation and freeing it from colonialism, absolutism, mercantilism and original capital accumulation. The defense of the interests of Venezuela and Latin America has always been at the center of Hugo Chávez’s concerns.

The national question is, therefore, at the root of some fundamental struggles in Latin American countries. At different times, especially in more profound critical situations such as the current one, the national problem is reopened. This is the scenario that led to the emergence of Hugo Chávez as the mentor of the Bolivarian Revolution, a term he coined to describe the political, economic and social changes that began after he came to power in Venezuela. According to Chávez, the Bolivarian Revolution was based on the ideas of the liberator Simon Bolívar and its main objective was the emancipation of Latin America. His strategy in Venezuela consisted of expanding his influence among the popular classes of the population and counting on the decisive support of the Armed Forces to sustain him.

Chávez’s successive victories in the elections in Venezuela confirmed his mandate with strong popular support, indicating that the path he chose in that country not only managed to mobilize and organize the poorest population, but also to build an affirmative agenda in defense of national sovereignty and confrontation with imperialism, especially the United States. Since his election in 1998, Hugo Chávez has gained notoriety in Latin American politics. Some mistakenly saw him as a vanguard ruler, representing the most advanced left-wing thinking in Latin America, and others understood him as another authoritarian movement led by a caudillo, which manifests itself in the contemporary era with the authoritarian regime of Nicolás Maduro. Since 1998, Chávez has won several elections, endured an attempted military coup in 2002, defined and prioritized his electoral base with several social programs, known as “missions”, and politically controlled the country, including changes to the country’s Constitution (a fact that is partly due to his political ability, but also to the opposition’s inability to organize itself after its defeats at the polls). With the prerogative of pursuing the goals of social inclusion and participatory democracy, he managed to maintain very high levels of popularity, especially between 2004 and 2007.

The two major hallmarks of the Chávez government are the purpose of carrying out the Bolivarian Revolution and implementing 21st Century Socialism. This socialism proposed by Chávez in 2005 at the World Forum in Porto Alegre would be nourished by the most authentic currents of Christianity, Marxism, and Bolívar’s ideas. However, the discourse proposed by 21st century socialism and its practical application began to face a series of structural problems that the government of Hugo Chávez was unable to resolve, such as, for example, promoting the expansion of Venezuela’s productive sectors and the country’s excessive dependence on imports of numerous products, including food.

Hugo Chávez, first elected in 1998, won four successive presidential terms through the electoral process. In the early years of Chávez’s presidency, he introduced welfare reforms that improved the social conditions of the lower classes. He implemented free health care and government-funded education up to university level. About 1 million more children have been enrolled in primary school since the Bolivarian leader came to power. In 2003 and 2004, Chávez launched social and economic campaigns that resulted in free reading, writing, and arithmetic classes for the more than 1.5 million illiterate adults in Venezuela. This set of measures brought, according to surveys carried out, extremely positive results such as a 150% increase in the family income of the poorest, between 2003 and 2006, and a reduction in the infant mortality rate, by 18%, between 1998 and 2006.

After the death of Hugo Chávez and the rise to power of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela has been the scene of economic turmoil and violent clashes between Chavists and anti-Chavists, the main causes of which are the fact that, in 10 years, the Venezuelan economy has shrunk by 62%, according to a study by the World Economic Outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank. In 2013, one in three Venezuelans was in poverty (33.1%), while in 2021 nine out of ten people in Venezuela were in this situation (90.8%). In the same period, extreme poverty rose from 11.4% to 68%. Hyperinflation, the shortage of hard currency (which generates speculation with the dollar) and the shortage of some basic products have hit the entire population hard. Without credit and without foreign exchange, Venezuela has become increasingly dependent on oil sales as its only source of capital inflow. All of this has contributed to the erosion of Chavism in Venezuela.

An indisputable fact is that Venezuela is a country divided and polarized to the extreme between Chavists and anti-Chavists, whose radicalization reached its peak in the recent presidential elections, whose official result in favor of Maduro’s reelection is considered by the opposition forces to be the result of fraud. The opposition forces claim to have 84% of the records that show the victory of the opposition candidate Gonzalez Urrutia. To avoid his removal from power, Nicolás Maduro arrests opponents of Chavism, violently represses demonstrations by the opposition forces and uses the Bolivarian militias to use violence to attack his opponents. Venezuela’s 21st century socialist project has failed and has become a dictatorial regime under the leadership of Nicolás Maduro.

The dictatorial regime that prevails in Venezuela is an authoritarian, antidemocratic political regime that, under the pretext of defending national interests and those of the less favored classes, uses power dictatorially by a party or through a clique that overrides law and morality. The Venezuelan dictatorial regime under the leadership of Nicolás Maduro exercises coercion by force through very powerful social actors who, escaping all democratic control, impose their will on society. Everything suggests that Venezuela is rapidly heading towards the outbreak of a civil war and the establishment of a dictatorship by the faction that wins this conflict to maintain order in the country. Representative democracy will be very unlikely to result from the political conflicts that are occurring in Venezuela due to the difficulty of establishing a social pact that would require consensus in civil society, which is difficult to build.

* Fernando Alcoforado, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the SBPC- Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science, IPB- Polytechnic Institute of Bahia and of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer from the UFBA Polytechnic School and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, college professor (Engineering, Economy and Administration) and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning, urban planning and energy systems, was Advisor to the Vice President of Engineering and Technology at LIGHT S.A. Electric power distribution company from Rio de Janeiro, Strategic Planning Coordinator of CEPED- Bahia Research and Development Center, Undersecretary of Energy of the State of Bahia, Secretary of Planning of Salvador, is the author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017),  Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018), Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019), A humanidade ameaçada e as estratégias para sua sobrevivência (Editora Dialética, São Paulo, 2021), A escalada da ciência e da tecnologia e sua contribuição ao progresso e à sobrevivência da humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2022), a chapter in the book Flood Handbook (CRC Press,  Boca Raton, Florida United States, 2022), How to protect human beings from threats to their existence and avoid the extinction of humanity (Generis Publishing, Europe, Republic of Moldova, Chișinău, 2023), A revolução da educação necessária ao Brasil na era contemporânea (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2023), Como construir um mundo de paz, progresso e felicidade para toda a humanidade (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2024) and How to build a world of peace, progress and happiness for all humanity (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2024).