By FRANCISCO PRANDI*
Contempt for popular sovereignty permeates the entire history of Latin America
"To give me a place in your paradise\ Me came to invite me to repent\ Me came to invite me that I won't lose\ Me came to invite me to indefinitely\ Me came to invite so much shit\ I don't know what is the destiny\ Walking, I was what I was\ Allá Diós, What will be divine?\ I die as I lived.” (Silvio Rodríguez).
Contempt for popular sovereignty permeates the entire history of Latin America. In 2019, an intense media bombardment following Evo Morales' victory was enough for a subservient OAS to loudly declare: “fraud”. This fraud was not only never proven but also revealed itself to be false over time.
Everything was a pretext to start what really mattered: removing from the government a representative of the popular movement that had placed indigenous people and peasants in key positions in the State and that had nationalized the country's hydrocarbons, something that would have done with other wealth even more valuable. : lithium. There was no shortage of intellectuals with a progressive facade who endorsed a bloody coup, who sought refined sociological concepts while indigenous people were massacred, the whipala was set on fire, as well as the homes of militants and leaders of popular movements.
Now, again, it is Venezuela's turn. After all, how is it possible that a bloody dictator, with the mustache of an American movie villain, with “the entire international community against”, read, with 930 economic sanctions imposed ten years ago, how this apparently unqualified guy wins the most once? It can only be fraud.[1] What escapes the eyes of experts at the last minute is an unavoidable fact: Venezuela has changed. The Venezuela of very long queues, scarcity, and lack of food sovereignty no longer exists. There is poverty, precarious work and everything else that capitalism brings with it, as there is also in our country, it is good to say. But the critical phase has passed.
With 80% of the votes counted, Maduro was elected with 51,2% of the votes against 44,2% for opponent Edmundo González and the remaining valid votes were distributed among the other opponents. The signal, however, is still yellow. 44% of the electorate showed a preference for the most extremist sector of the opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado.
Furthermore, the little more than five million votes obtained by Nicolás Maduro demonstrate that Chavismo has not yet regained the strength it had before, given that the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the main of the 13 parties that supported Maduro, registered 7,7. 2020 million members in XNUMX.[2] [3] This drop also affected the opposition, which fell from 7,3 million votes in Capriles (2013) to just over 4 million this year.
What new elements, after all, help to understand Nicolás Maduro’s electoral victory?
Economic recovery
Since the blockade was imposed on Venezuela by the United States in December 2014, the estimate is that the country will lose 29 billion dollars per year by 2023.[4] Add to this other episodes such as the dizzying fall in oil prices, the raw material around which the Venezuelan economy has revolved since the beginning of the 20th century, the theft of Venezuelan gold by the Bank of England, causing the loss of two more billions of dollars for the country.[5] It is true, however, that the blockade also brings with it a certain confusion, in which it is very difficult to distinguish and measure what are government errors, what are the structural limitations of this country and what are the consequences of this blockade.
Still, a debate about the Venezuelan economy that does not give due emphasis to a blockade that, for example, during the COVID-19 pandemic did not allow the country to pay for vaccines, delaying the immunization process with all the consequences that we, who had a denialist government, know very well.[6] The recent history of violence, such as the guarimbas in 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, the attempted foreign invasion in 2019, does not make the environment safe for investments either.
The first response to the economic chaos certainly frustrated the left, such as reversals of expropriations that had been carried out by Hugo Chávez, privatizations and increased participation of international capital (especially Russian and Chinese) in strategic economic sectors. The orthodox measures adopted by the government, which were intended to be able to breathe in the midst of sanctions, exacted the price of the loss of popular support, already compromised by the precipitous drop in living conditions, the ballast on which the Bolivarian revolution was based in its heyday, with economic gains and undeniable social indices.
These measures further eroded the already low purchasing power of the popular sectors that are the fundamental social base of Chavismo. Over time, the government tried to compensate not with salary increases, but with bonuses, social programs such as CLAP's (Local Supply and Production Committees), for example, who distribute basic food baskets in an attempt to combat food insecurity, as well as speculation and the parallel market. It is also important to recognize advances in food sovereignty.
Since February this year, Venezuela has produced 97% of its food for domestic consumption, an unprecedented feat in the history of a country accustomed to using oil currency to import food.[7] Furthermore, the war between Russia and Ukraine not only increased the price of oil enormously but also caused the United States to ease some sanctions and allow companies like Chevron to buy oil from the country, which spent 14 months without selling oil to anyone.
In fits and starts, the fact is that the unsuspecting IMF projected economic growth of 2024% for Venezuela for the year 4, the highest in the region, a trend that according to the institution would continue for next year. Last month, the Venezuelan president delivered 5 million affordable homes in Gran Misión Vivienda Venezuela, the equivalent of our Minha Casa, minha vida.
The country is experiencing its lowest inflation since 2015, 68% per year, which is high, but much lower than the 862% in 2017, the peak of hyperinflation in the country and lower than that estimated in Argentina (271%/year) which according to the monopoly press is doing very well. In Javier Milei's country, while the basic food basket for four people reaches US$851,35, in Venezuela it reaches US$554,26, in addition to this, while consumption capacity has shrunk by 35% in Argentina , it rose 86% in Venezuela.[8]
The comparison with the country neighboring ours is important for a reason that was ignored in much of the electoral campaign and the comments of many who debate the topic in Brazil. The political program of the opposition.
The opposition program
The MUD (Table of the Democratic Unity) is not the only opposition in the country, but it was the one that achieved 44% of the electorate's preference, leaving the other eight opposition candidates behind. She is also his most radical arm. While the other eight opposition candidates, as well as Maduro himself, attended an event at the National Electoral Council in which they committed to accepting the results, the MUD candidacy was the only one that not only did not attend, but also did not send a representative. Nothing incoherent for a political camp that screamed “fraud” in all Chavista victories, while not contesting the same system that gave them two national victories (2007 and 2015) and gives them many more regional ones.
It was also the MUD and its governing body that characterized the most extremist moments of the opposition. The call came from Capriles Radonski, the defeated candidate in 2013, to unload the arrechera (anger) in the streets, starting the riots that would appear again in 2014, when Leopoldo Lopez, Maria Corina and Antonio Ledezma called for an insurrection, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019... This is precisely the most violent sector of the opposition, which not only publish hashtags on the internet, as well as persecuting and lynching those who look like “chavistas” (blacks, poor people, people in red clothes), burning down public hospitals, burning the food stocks of CLAP's, popular pharmacies, and spending the last few years asking for more sanctions against their own country. These sanctions have only one major victim: the poorest.
Unfortunately, it is not new that the programmatic debate seems to be secondary in the Venezuelan elections. This year, the opposition said very little about what it would do in government, hiding the socioeconomic content of its program in words against the “regime”, “for democracy and freedom” and with a very non-conciliatory speech that they would “demand” the years of Chavismo. It was only recently, in the final stretch of the campaign, that writer Luis Britto García published an article called Do you speak English? ,[9] in which he denounced the true program of the Venezuelan opposition. As a caricature, little is nonsense, the program, available on the website of his party Vente Venezuela, is in English and is called Venezuela land of grace. Land of grace, in fact, was the term that the conqueror Christopher Columbus referred to America in dialogue with the Spanish crown.
The program is nothing different from the usual recipe of the global extreme right, which promotes the marriage of neofascism with neoliberalism, such as Jair Bolsonaro, in Brazil, Javier Milei, in Argentina, and many others packaged by the Madrid Forum, an extreme right organization. event promoted by Vox from Spain. Maria Corina Machado, who has already appeared alongside Javier Milei shouting “Long live freedom, man”, defends in this program the privatization of the entire oil and gas industry, the massive privatization of companies and public assets, privatization of public education and health with the voucher system, labor deregulation, privatization of the Chilean-style pension system.
There is also an excerpt that directly says that the money raised from privatizations has a single and exclusive purpose: payment of external and internal debt.[10] The “popular capitalism” of which Maria Corina Machado says she is a supporter, with Margaret Thatcher as a model, has a lot of capitalism and nothing popular, as we can see. As Marx and Engels said in The Manifest, the bourgeoisie where it rose to power “resolved personal dignity in exchange value, and in the place of countless legitimate and established freedoms it placed the unique freedom, without compunctions of commerce”, which is what capitalist freedom comes down to.
The threat of losing what was most advanced in the Bolivarian Revolution in its best times, with the real possibility of electoral victory for the opposition, led many dissatisfied with Nicolás Maduro not only to vote but also to mobilize in a more forceful way. In fact, several times throughout this campaign, Maduro adopted a defensive tone, as a candidate for a front against the extreme right and neo-fascism.
Reactivation of popular mobilization: the invisibilization of the “pata en el suelo”
Here we come to the most important and fundamental point of our intervention. “Paw in the dirt” means in plain Portuguese: barefoot. It is with these pejorative terms that a large part of the opposition has always referred to the Chavistas, these working and poor people organized in parties and movements, willing to fight for the sovereignty of their country and build a new society, with its mistakes and successes, as is common practice. any and all processes.
For those interested in maintaining the current order, one of Hugo Chávez's greatest sins was not only betting on permanent popular mobilization, but also on its organization and politicization. This was evident in the “red tides” that filled streets, avenues and more avenues in the country's cities every time he gave a speech, took on a new battle, made new proposals, celebrated victories, etc. It was also evident in the times when it was necessary to respond quickly to violence and coup attempts, such as in 2019, when even the GloboNews had to recognize that Nicolás Maduro had a gigantic social base and a mobilization power that could repel an attempted foreign invasion, as on February 23, 2019.
Since the days of the Bolivarian Circles, grassroots entities that were fundamental in combating the April 2002 coup against Hugo Chávez, the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution has always given a lot of weight to the popular organization. The PSUV, unlike traditional parties, is a party deeply rooted in the neighborhoods, through the so-called Hugo Chávez Battle Units, whose leaders are elected by the grassroots. It is the largest left-wing party in Latin America. There are also so-called collectives and communal councils, designed to discuss and resolve community problems, that is, embryonic forms of popular power.[11]
However, the conflicts, the serious crises that the country is going through and has gone through, the years in power, the freezing of the moment of social achievements and of “advancing towards socialism” in favor of survival, are elements that also affect the Chavista's own social base. A social base that saw the loss of many of the gains it had with the revolution, but was not willing to lose even more to privatization, deregulation and subservience to imperialism. This base was set in motion.
Although Chavismo never had any problems carrying out mass acts, it is very interesting to compare the number of people present at the registration of Nicolás Maduro's candidacy at the CNE, on March 25, 2024, with the number of people who filled Avenida Bolívar and its surroundings at the campaign's closing rally on June 26. Many, many years ago, Chavismo did not promote such a large concentration, which even resembled Hugo Chávez's epic rallies. When comparing the images of these concentrations with concentrations, also significant, carried out by the opposition at the end of its campaign, it is possible to highlight the difference in the social composition between the two.
There is no doubt that this organized mobilization, the most essential characteristic of this political movement, was the major determinant in achieving just over five million votes for Nicolás Maduro against just over four million for the main opposition, Edmundo González, nominated candidate by the disqualified Maria Corina Machado. As we said previously, this is a far cry from the seven million members that the PSUV had in 2020.
The 60% participation in the elections, remembering that voting is optional in the country, was also not one of the highest in the history of Chavismo. In terms of votes, Nicolás Maduro had received 6,2 million votes in 2018 and 7,5 million in 2013. However, the opposition also fell from 7,3 million votes in 2013, when Capriles almost defeated the Chavista hegemony to little by little. more than four million this year. In this way, it is not just Chavismo that has severe self-criticism to make. The fluctuations of the MUD, which has already entered and left the institutional game countless times, as well as the violence it promoted, have also worn it down with a population that is already tired of war.
However, one thing that goes unnoticed by many commentators, including those on the left, is that the first thing that cries of “fraud” do is precisely make this social base invisible. Workers from the marginal masses, workers, peasants organized in communes and cooperatives, men and women who there and here are accused of having “sold” their conscience in exchange for a social program. Leaders who, at this moment, while the world is playing with the national and popular sovereignty of this country, are at risk of having the same fate as many other comrades in moments when political violence took over the country.
Compared to the attacks from the Venezuelan far right, the Bolsonaro show that culminated in a riot on January 8, 2023 in Brasília seems like child's play. The effort of an entire people to counter this reactionary offensive simply did not exist. Someone with a button manipulated everyone. The fact is: there are material reasons that explain Nicolás Maduro's victory in the last elections.
There is always a noble reason to make workers who organize themselves invisible and suppress their political will when imperialism considers them to be “wrong”. The problem is that, again, this will cost more lives and more blood, as it also did in Bolivia in 2019, as it has cost so many times throughout the history of humanity.
*Francisco Prandi has a master's degree in sociology from USP.
Notes
[1] Regarding the Venezuelan electoral system and the democratic character of the current regime in the country, we recommend: Everything about the elections in Venezuela – Analysis by Breno Altman; Joana Salem: elections in Venezuela and Brazil.
[2] It is worth highlighting the difficulty of finding reliable figures on the migration crisis experienced in Venezuela. However, we can observe with CNE data the evolution of the number of voters eligible to vote: 15 million (2013); 9 million (2018); 13,6 million (2024).
[3] In this link.
[4] In this link.
[5] In this link.
[6] In this link.
[7] In this link.
[8] In this link.
[9] in this link.
[10] Venezuela: land of grace.
[11] Two good works on communes and popular power in Venezuela can be found in building the commune, by George Ciccariello-Maher (Ed. Literary autonomy, 2020) and The construction of popular power in Venezuela, by Jair Pinheiro (Ed. Lutas Anticapital, 2022).
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