The Failure of El Chavismo

 

The most recent events in my native country, Venezuela, have compelled me to write this piece and break my Lent blogging silence. It goes without saying that I write from the vantage point of one who has lived her adult life in the US, but I grew up and lived in Venezuela during my formative childhood and adolescent years. I love Venezuela and I continue to be profoundly invested in the progress and prosperity of my native country, its beautiful culture, and the wellbeing of my entire family and dear friends who reside there. Some of my siblings and friends are Chavistas, while others belong to the opposition. I travel to Latin America every year and I listen hard to each side, wondering what it would be like to find a way to bridge the polarizing critical climate engulfing this maleficent political division. 

The Chavistas’ tactic of vilifying and demonizing people has fueled so much hatred, and these manipulative tactics are in my opinion a critical failure of Chávez’s revolution. It is here where I mount my biggest criticism against the Chavistas because they failed the people from the beginning by polarizing them and provoking violent confrontations among them. From the beginning I opposed Chávez’s antagonistic tone of Socialismo, Patria o Muerte. However, I also offered high praises to many of his valuable social initiatives and reforms that to some extent favored the poor and millions of marginalized Venezuelans.

But the Chavistas stripped their own people of the rights to a democracy where opposing views were given a safe space and time to be heard, notwithstanding the outcome. From the beginning the Chavistas seized absolute control of all political powers and economic resources, expropriating large privately owned businesses and entire corporations and taking control over most of the national industries. Yet, they acted foolishly and on impulse, not being fully prepared to manage the functionality of these resources and the shifting changes in the country’s economy. Consequently, today Venezuela’s infrastructure is about to collapse with all public services and many staples like milk, sugar and coffee rationed to an obscene extreme.

Without question, I am all for sweeping changes that aim at reforming long rooted socio-political and economic models enforced by the elite and empires of our world, for these models are oppressive and have been used to secure places of power for the few who continue to hoard the resources that belong to the people. But these reforms cannot be made at the expense of preying on the ignorance of the people and using manipulative tactics that fuel anger and put brother against brother and comadre against comadre as it has been the case in Venezuela. This anger should be directed at the politicians, Chavistas and opposition alike who sit in their places of power while the poor long for real change. 

The increase of a welfare system under Chávez has only made people obese and unhealthy and the proliferation of many centers for higher education is useless when no new jobs and industries are developed. Sure, food stamps allow the poor to put food on their tables, but for the most part, I have seen an increase in obesity in Venezuela that I never saw growing up. The daily diet of the poor is so unhealthy that while Chavistas boast on the construction of many new health care centers, the staggering growth of obesity health related illnesses are not being addressed. 

A crisis of personal significance to me is the growing murder rate in the country. The number of murders is so alarming that Venezuela has become the most violent country in South America and my own family fell victim to that violence when in 2008 my brother, a father of four young children, was assaulted at gunpoint coming out of the bank and killed for a meager amount of cash. The rich people who live in heavily guarded housing developments are more protected, but the poor people from the barrios are more often victimized. No, I did not cry for Chávez’s death but for my brother’s murder and the murder of thousands of other innocent people who have been victimized by the dismal failure of this so-called revolution.

Sweeping and transformative changes have to be made at the systemic level, beginning in Venezuela with the eradication of the corruption that has crippled this oil-rich country, and El Chavismo has proven to be no different and no less corrupt than prior forms of governance. Moreover, I think that El Chavismo has committed the unforgivable act of preying on the innocence of the poor, manipulating their emotions and teasing them with false temporal hope instead of making sure that their future is being carefully constructed on a foundation of a promising and effective educational system, a reliable health care system, and a strong economic plan to ensure responsible management of Venezuela’s rich oil reserves, and the right appropriation of goods among the poor. 

In the weeks ahead, the poor should take to the streets not rushing to support and elect corrupt and manipulative leaders, but to demand justice from all political parties and to demand what is rightfully theirs, full dignity of life. A dignity of life where all the needs of the people are fully met and in a country like Venezuela, so incredibly rich in natural resources, that should be the definition of real leadership. Not that the ones who govern become rich while pretending to champion the causes of the poor but that these elected leaders advance and support moral and just laws and measurements to ensure the proper investment, management, and distribution of the country’s resources among all people. It is this dignity of the human being and life that should be defended at all cost from greedy empires and become the real focus for change in Venezuela.