The Venezuelan dictatorship has already caused so much fatigue that the so-called Bolivarian socialism has exhausted itself as a history of bad taste. It is not possible, however, to just ignore it. Behind the regime implemented by Hugo Chávez in 1999 and pursued since 2013 by Nicolás Maduro, there is the greatest humanitarian tragedy underway in Latin America.
The purchasing power of the population is eroded by stratospheric inflation. Oil production, the country’s greatest wealth, has declined to the level of 1943. Almost a fifth of the population has gone into exile for economic reasons and those who remain are subject to the tragedy of famine.
This picture inspires a radical vision of democracy as the only therapy capable of lifting the country out of the hole in which it has been plunged. But this is clearly not what Paulo Velasco and Pedro Rafael Pérez, organizers of “Venezuela and Chavismo in Perspective: Analysis and Testimony” propose.
It took a little more political courage for the book to make us see, without euphemisms, the end of the dark Venezuelan tunnel. Let’s see a detail. It is useless for authors to describe the regime as a dictatorship if they do not enter into the mechanisms that prevent the Bolivarian regime from accepting alternatives contrary to its electoral conveniences.
A survey of all external initiatives to find a compromise is of little importance if the Miraflores Palace does not have the green light for the alternative of power. They tried to arbitrate Unasur, the Vatican, the Montevideo Group, Norway and other goodwill diplomatic partners. If they all failed, it is because the Bolivarian establishment would only argue if it remained in power, even if in a minority.
One of the factors for this intransigence was the military. At this point, which the organizers honestly mention, there are 2,000 generals in Venezuela, and the military is responsible for the companies that distribute food and medicine. The uniformed hierarchy would take a tumble in the event of democratization, which is understandably why it confuses the ideal government with the bureaucracy that has corrupted it.
It is also impossible to combine these issues with the incompetence of the state oil company, about which the book says little. It is crumbling into low productivity; became a hanger to hang corrupt.
It remains to be mentioned the icing on a cake on which the book is silent: the kinship of Bolivarian sectors with drug trafficking, as indicated – and the US gave the episode a lot of publicity – the arrest of two nephews of Maduro’s wife who were dealing cocaine. Let’s say it’s a lie. It would be necessary to juxtapose indisputable truths that the regime does not produce, which is why it sinks into disbelief.
Let’s look at one of them, about which the book’s organizers are quite omitted. Judiciary reform was not done by Chávez to create elected judges instead of appointed ones. In fact, she tripled the number of Supreme Court justices to prevent governmentism from being in the minority.
In the bottleneck that chokes the healthier perception of Venezuela is the mistake of believing that the regime is left-wing and that, therefore, it needs to be unconditionally defended. Not. Venezuela is not good for being on Cuba’s side and does not have ethical attributes because it practices falsely liberating rhetoric.
The organizers are not the only ones who fall into this trap, considering, for example, that Mercosur and the European Union are “neoliberal” entities. This is not being on the left.
One last set of observations. Part of the chapters is written in Castilian. It can be argued that the original language reinforces the content of the criticisms that come from Venezuelans or residents of other nationalities. But it is also mixing two languages (Spanish and Portuguese) in a single designation of economic and institutional facts, which now have two ways of being designated. This slips into an editing error.
It’s a shame, because little gems are in Castilian, like that of the Ecuadorian student who took to the streets, as a young leftist, in the early days of Chavismo to protest against Chávez’s authoritarian decision to take RCTV off the air, the private network responsible for highest quality standard in the country.
What hurt the student was not the mistaken decision to silence a voice that opposed the government. It was, much more than that, the demonstration that the narratives would only be accepted by the regime if they were laudatory or favorable; if they fell into the opposite bias, their mouths would be closed through censorship.
Hugo Chávez did not have such numerous and strong opposition at the time to make use of the appeal. And if he did, it is because he was germinating in the mentality of his political group the seed of the dictatorship into which, after all, Venezuela really became.
