Diagonal's interview with President Hugo Chávez Frias, ten years after having been elected President of Venezuela
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“The people must have a real possibility to govern” |
(Translated into English for Axis of Logic by Iris Buehler in Merida, Venezuela and revised by Les Blough in La Victoria)
On December 6, 1998, a person unknown beyond Venezuelan borders won the presidential elections and thus ousted the traditional parties that had monopolized power since 1958. Ten years later, DIAGONAL publishes an interview with President Hugo Chávez conducted by Norwegian journalist Eirik Vold on a flight somewhere between Ecuador and Venezuela.
IN THE AIR. The interview was carried out in the presidential plane on a trip from Ecuador to Venezuela.
“You guys are witnesses of the birth of a new epoch”. Hugo Chávez fastens his seat belt. The presidential plane, equipped with a small office, a room and gilt ashtrays, is the scenery of the interview. “Let's talk a little bit, and afterwards we'll try to have a brief rest.”
The conversation goes back in time. It goes back to the piece of land, over there in Sabaneta, a humble village in the Venezuelan Llanos (plains), where Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was born in 1954. Hence, the break shall be left for later on. The flight lasts only three hours.
While the plane takes off, Chávez starts to relate that long story he had narrated so many times: “Because that is where I come from. I come from the catacombs of poverty. I have experienced poverty. I saw and felt poverty”. Nevertheless, both his parents worked as teachers in a school. This is not the worst fate for a child in an area where the large majority does not even have the opportunity to finish their basic education.
| “There was was a sensation of anxiety and uneasiness in the face of all that poverty.” |
“I was a child on the run”, says Chávez as he refers to the time he spent selling fruits and homemade sweets in order to help enhance the constricted budget of the family. Selling in schools, on public places, during sports events and aboard of all kind of means of transportation - including on donkeys. It is from that time, during long walks at this poor countryside, where his first political thoughts originated. The president told us,
“There was was a sensation of anxiety and uneasiness in the face of all that poverty. And I think that is what politics is exactly all about. To let oneself be moved by an ethical and spiritual impulse that connects one's own existence with the existence of others and with the wellbeing or state of unrest in society”.
The President slightly lowers his voice as he glances toward the window before concluding with a concept that is more or less borrowed from Aristotle: “I think I was born as a political animal”.
Chávez might have been born as a “political animal”, but like so many other Venezuelan children his big dream was to convert himself into a baseball player, and even to reach the Great Leagues, the top division of North American baseball. Back then, like now, the North American baseball teams were looking for young Venezuelan talents at a sell-off price. Chávez' hope was to be discovered by his favorite team, the San Francisco Giants.
The passion for baseball would lead him to take one of the most important personal decisions of his life. For a poor child from the countryside there was only one path toward the baseball environment around Caracas and the center of the country: the military. According to Chávez, it was this that caused him to join the military at the age of 16 and not his interest in a military career.
The soldier
| “During that time they sent us to fight the guerrillas. But that war did not convince me” |
The Venezuelan President relates that he “heard about socialism and revolution” at an early age during his childhood when he visited friends whose parents belonged to the Left. “I clearly recall when they assassinated Che Guevara. As the child that I was, I had the very movie-like illusion that they would not kill Che. Because in the newspapers and on radio they said that he was surrounded and that they had killed so many comrades. And I thought that Fidel Castro would send some helicopters to rescue him and to take him to Cuba”.
| “the young officer, Hugo Chávez, would weigh his involvement with the same guerrillas that he had been told to eliminate.” |
Maybe it was this belief of his infancy that would contribute to the fact that the encounter with the Venezuelan guerrillas and their failure in carrying out a Cuba-style revolution would awaken in Chávez curiosity rather than fear and rejection. In 1977, ten years after the death of the illusion of Che’s immortality, the young officer, Hugo Chávez, would weigh his involvement with the same guerrillas that he had been told to eliminate.
“Today”, says the President above the heavy noise of the motor of the plane, “I am happy that I did not do that”. While the traditional parties AD and COPEI institutionalized their monopoly of power in a pact of alternation of power known as Punto Fijo Pact (Pacto de Punto Fijo), the Left was excluded through political assassination, press censorship and the prohibition of the Communist Party.
The commander
| “in Chávez' view, the system that had been in force in Venezuela was not a democracy." |
On February 5, 1992, an unknown paratrooper colonel appeared on the TV screens in Venezuela. The armed rebellion against President Carlos Andrés Pérez, a result of 15 years of conspiracy within the Armed Forces, took over strategic locations in the cities Maracay, Valencia and Maracaibo during the night. According to the Minister of Defense at that time, 14 people lost their lives during the combat. The democratic stability that had ruled in Venezuela since 1958 was considered to be a light in the darkness of a continent characterized by coups and dictatorships. Thus, how could the President, who claims to have rescued Venezuelan democracy, justify this intent to topple a democratically elected government? It turns out that in Chávez' view, the system that had been in force in Venezuela was not a democracy.
“We lived under the dictatorship of the oligarchy”, says Chávez, as he continues to speak about corruption, political repression and a state apparatus that was in decay. Apart of the gigantic oil revenues, the major portion of the population lived in dire poverty. In the ‘90s, inequality between poor and rich surpassed the inequality that reigned in South Africa during the Apartheid regime.
The Caracazo, a strong wave of protests that were suppressed by a real massacre in February 1989, marks the epoch. Then President Carlos Andrés Pérez, after having been elected with a radical government program that promised to put and end to privatizations, increase public services and break with the IMF, made a U-turn and decided to implement a turbo version of the structural adjustments programs.
“That betrayal was the proof of the failure of that false democracy. And misery and poverty had spread throughout Venezuela. And to make things even worse, Carlos Andrés Pérez assumed the shock policies of the IMF. Already, many people didn't know anymore how to survive”, Chávez emphasizes. The most traumatic part, however, was the government's response to that situation. Human rights organizations calculate that the number of fatal victims caused by the military repression is somewhere around 3000 persons.
“That was freedom of expression in those days. Although I did not participate in the massacre, I had feelings of guilt and enormous embarrassment because the Armed Forces of which I was a part had assassinated innocent people, women, children, and old people. The indignation that many of us felt stimulated the planning of the armed rebellion against that murderous government, carried out three years later”, the Venezuelan President explains.
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“Por Ahora" |
But the coup d’etat against the government of Carlos Andrés Pérez failed. Chávez was surrounded, and he surrendered under the condition that he would be allowed to speak to his comrades in arms through the communication media. He was conceded 30 seconds. “For now, our objectives have not been achieved”, he said, and assumed responsibility of what he called the “civil and military Bolivarian movement”.
The few words Chávez could deliver before he was taken to jail remained recorded in the collective consciousness of the Venezuelans. Chávez' “Por Ahora” (“For Now”) converted into a slogan that resumed the hope of those who wished the death of the two-party system. The rest of the path to power is a well-known story that Chávez relates after taking some bites from a solid portion of airline food that he had received.
“Honeymoon with the bourgeoisie”
The 1998 electoral campaign was already in full swing when Venezuela's economic elites decided to abandon their traditional political operators and to support an ex Miss Universe and a charismatic multimillionaire in order to halt the progress of the recently freed lieutenant colonel whose rise in the polls could not be halted. But they did not succeed, and while fireworks were set off and “the hoodlums” (as the poor are being called among Caracas' wealthy) chanted their slogans in euphoric scenes, the anxiety spread to other groups. The reform program was baptized “the Bolivarian Revolution”. Its main promises included the struggle against poverty and corruption and a radical break with neoliberal policies.
“At the beginning, when we constituted the government, it was like a honeymoon with the bourgeoisie and imperialism”, Chávez recalls,
“The Venezuelan elites were not able to defeat me in elections and opted for taming el bicho (the bug). Through family members and key persons in important governmental positions they wanted to exert influence on my leadership to protect their privileges”, says Chávez.
“Thus, I started to look for solitude, to isolate myself to reflect. I distanced myself from friends, from so called friends. Because I realized that this way, through disingenuousness toward which they wanted to push me, I would end up as a traitor. As one of the many who promise change but allow things to continue as before”.
The bug wakes up
In 1999 the Venezuelans elected a Constitutional Assembly that drew up a new Constitution, approved by a 70% in a popular referendum in December of the same year. The powerful president of Venezuela's oil company PDVSA, Luis Giusti, architect of the liberalization of the petrol industry, was fired together with the rest of PDVSA's top managers. Capital flight speeded up, and investment banks, landowners and foreign oil companies looked with terror at the reform package encompassing 49 laws which implied a strong expansion of the role of the state in the economy. “Power has gone to his head. He wants to turn Venezuela into another Cuba”, was the unified judgment of the media and the opposition, who from now on would only call Chávez "the lieutenant colonel", "the dictator", "the loco (madman)" or "the monkey". The word “President” disappeared even from the vocabulary of the TV news.
“When they realized that they had failed in their attempt to tame the bug, the elites decided to resort to violence. It was the revolutionary laws that provoked the coup d’etat”, says the President. During the coup of April 11, 2002, Hugo Chávez was held prisoner during almost 48 hours, while the then president of the Chamber of Commerce, Fedecameras, and recently appointed dictator, Pedro Carmona, dissolved the National Assembly and the Supreme Court, at the same time when he granted himself the right to appoint and dismiss mayors and governors at whim.
Two days later, loyal sectors of the Armed Forces and popular support saw to it that the Carmona dictatorship would go down as one of the shortest in history. In December of the same year, the managers and administrative workers of PDVSA brought oil-production to a complete halt –and thus almost the totality of the Venezuelan economy– demanding Chávez' dismissal and the compromise that he would never again run for presidency. After two months, various calls for another coup d’etat, and 3000 companies gone bankrupt, Hugo Chávez declared that “not even petrol sabotage can stop the Bolivarian Revolution”, although at least US$14 million was lost.
President Chávez arose, strengthened from the two episodes, while the opposition lost their most important power bastions within the state apparatus, where heads began to fall. After this, the IMF and the Bush administration, who gave their unconditional support to the coupsters, saw themselves obligated to give their financial support to the Venezuelan opposition through more discrete channels.
“As Trotsky said, every revolution needs the whip of the counter-revolution. I think that the matter is about a maturing process, a decantation, to move along quickly through the stages. I already had crossed my Rubicon”, says Chávez.
Homemade Socialism
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“one of the most significant errors of the attempts to construct Socialism in the 20th century was to limit democracy." |
Chávez doesn’t hesitate to affirm that that the measures that caused the profound latent division in the Venezuelan society to surface, were worth the pain. “For instance, the nationalization of oil. Had we not assumed control over PDVSA and prosecuted the transnational, how would we satisfy the needs of the people? We would have gone bankrupt already”. In the face of the social measures taken and the 21 Missions (programs concerning education, Medicare, assistance, etc.), some accuse him of populism and buying votes. “I call it Socialism. Socialism of the 21st century”, replies Hugo Chávez. After emerging victorious in 11 electoral processes, and despite of having received a blow in December 2007 when his proposal for constitutional reform lost by a small margin, he still enjoys the support of more than 60% of the population.
The critics maintain that Chávez has concentrated a near totalitarian power in his hands, attacking freedom of the press, and that he threatens the country’s democratic institutions. However, the President does not accept that his “homemade Socialism” would close down TV channels or restrict democratic rights.
“To the contrary”, says Chávez,
“one of the most significant errors of the attempts to construct Socialism in the 20th century was to limit democracy. I think it has to be the other way round. Here, the media has complete liberty to conduct media warfare with calls for military coups and the assassination of the President. But our Socialist version of democracy goes beyond elections and the right to express oneself. The people must have a real possibility to govern. Eradication of analphabetism (illiteracy), granting access to education to the formerly excluded... these are important steps towards real democracy”.
Hugo Chávez is getting enthusiastic as he talks about how the governments of Brazil and Argentina turned a deaf ear to the repeated calls made by the part of the Bush administration to isolate Venezuela, and how ever more countries overtly declare themselves followers of Socialism and of the Bolivarian notion of integration.
“The new environment that prevails in Latin America, in the governments and peoples who are determined to create a strong and independent region, inspires me with much optimism”, concludes the President.
© Translation Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
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Original Source in Spanish: Diagonal - Entrevista a Hugo Chávez: “El pueblo debe tener una posibilidad real de gobernar”
This article has been translated from Spanish into English by Iris Beuhler and revised by Les Blough who are members of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity.