Loathed by the rich
Why Hugo Chavez is heading for a stunning victory
Richard Gott in Caracas
Saturday August 07 2004
The Guardian
To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of
international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chavez is
about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum
designed to lead to his overthrow.
First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more
than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme,
Chavez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America
to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to
Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of
George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of
the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the
economic and political recipes devised in Washington.
While Chavez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as
president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as
Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to
nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling
in the polls. The news that Chavez will win this month's referendum will
be bleakly received in Washington.
Chavez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela
had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien
regime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady
fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from
the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chavez, with his black
and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins,
goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich
white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority
against them.
The expected Chavez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as
many years. The first two were dramatically counter-productive for his
opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted
coup d'etat in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the
Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and
civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand
the return of their president.
The unexpected restoration of Chavez not only alerted the world to an
unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in
Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand
that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chavez was
able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the
armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a
further coup.
The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in
December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company,
Petroleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the
hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the
CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's
government in the early 1970s) failed, Chavez was able to sack the most
pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus
oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes.
Innumerable projects, or missions, were established throughout the
country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban
revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school
dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free
medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside,
with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings
have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university
for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an
innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the
traditional US mould of the Latin American media.
The opposition dismiss the new projects as populist, a term
customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin
America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a
country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is
difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not
embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged.
Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote Yes
to eject Chavez from the presidency. Vote No to keep him there until
the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided
politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chavez to front
their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain.
They discuss plans for a post-Chavez government, and watch closely the
ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their
evaporating hopes on the don't knows. They still imagine fondly that
they can achieve a victory
