Home from the Dark Side of Utopia

by Clifton Ross

  4 Clifton Ross, “Sandinista Venezuela,” http://caracaschronicles.com/2015/10/20/sandinista-venezuela/.

  5 Roger Miranda and William Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, 231.

  6 Ibid.

  7 Timothy C. Brown, The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001), 7.

  8 Miranda and Ratliff, The Civil War in Nicaragua, 232

  9 Ibid., 233

  10 Stephen F. Diamond, Rights and Revolution: The Rise and Fall of Nicaragua’s Sandinista Movement (Lake Mary, FL: Vandeplas Publishing LLC, 2013), 51.

  11 Ibid. p. 84. Diamond cites this number as representing the size of the FSLN one year before the final victory.

  12 Ibid., 68.

  13 Ibid., 72.

  14 Ibid., 122.

  15 Ibid., 84.

  16 Ibid., 95.

  17 Ibid., 97.

  18 For more of the history of Daniel Ortega’s political transformation see my introduction to the Nicaragua section in Ross and Rein, Until the Rulers Obey.

  19 An excellent critique from a Left perspective of this Pact and Ortega’s consolidation of rule as an autocrat was written by Mónica Baltodano, former Sandinista commander and co-founder of Movement for the Rescue of Sandismo can be found at http://isreview.org/issues/50/nicaragua.shtml.

  20 See http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/07/17/the-politics-of-abortion-in-latin-america/.

  21 See http://nicaraguadispatch.com/2013/12/nicaraguas-new-pacto/.

  22 See http://elpais.com/diario/2008/09/22/opinion/

  1222034405_850215.html.

  23 Ross and Rein, Until the Rulers Obey, 133.

  24 I focused on Daniel’s story in this piece: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/nicaragua-archives-62/2330-a-nicaraguan-farce.

  Chapter Twelve

  1 See, for instance, the critique of the anarchists at El Libertario: https://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario/english/Memories%20of%20popular%20power.rtf. The failure of the cooperativist strategy for building “socialism” is implicitly acknowledged even by Bolivarian advocates like Burbach, Fox, and Fuentes in their book, Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions: The Future of Twenty-First-Century Socialism (New York: Zed Books, 2013), 62—although they put the figure of actual surviving cooperatives at 15%.

  2 Marcy Rein and Clifton Ross, “Workers Take over Mérida Newspapers, Appeal to Chávez for Support,” http://venezuela

  nalysis.com/analysis/5954.

  3 See our interview with her in Ross and Rein, Until the Rulers Obey.

  4 Of course Marcano and Tyszka would have another explanation for the corruption in the Chávez administration: according to them, the caudillo knew all about it and used it as a means of controlling his underlings. He also refused to tolerate “insubordinate” underlings, and even close friends, who suggested he clean it up. See especially pages 135–137 of Hugo Chávez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela’s Controversial President (New York: Random House, 2007).

  5 Leszek Kolakowski, Is God Happy? Selected Essays (NY: Basic Books, 2013), 9–10.

  6 A “COPEista” is a member of the COPEI, see note 11, Chapter 10.

  7 See Rafael Uzcátegui’s article, “An Autonomist at the Service of State Hegemony,” in which Uzcátegui accuses Zibechi of “fearing his own theoretical constructions” and avoiding discussion of Venezuela’s dependence on resource extraction and the lack of independence from the state of Bolivarian “social movements.” Uzcátegui concludes by asking why Zibechi’s critique of the other “Pink Tide” governments doesn’t seem to apply to Venezuela. The article is archived at http://periodicoellibertario.blogspot.com/2014/04/un-autonomista-al-servicio-de-la.html.

  8 “The New Socialism,” review of Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions in NACLA Report on the Americas, Summer, 2013, archived at https://nacla.org/article/new-socialism.

  9 Import-substitution industrialization was a twentieth century development model in which a nation would industrialize to make its own products and replace imports. The model collapsed with the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s and the difficulties competing with transnationals in an era of globalization.

  10 I find much to be said for the argument put forth by the Trotskyist Johnson-Forest Tendency that Stalinism and what came to be known as “Communism” was actually state capitalism. See CLR James, with Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee Boggs, State Capitalism and World Revolution, (Oakland: PM Press, 2013). I distinguish here between monopoly or transnational capitalism and state capitalism.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1 Maria L. Pallais, “Venezuela’s Vanishing Billions,” https://100r.org/2011/10/venezuelas-vanishing-billions/.

  2 Bryan Ellsworth and Eyanir Chinea, “Chavez’s oil-fed fund obscures Venezuela money trail,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/26/us-venezuela-chavez-fund-idUSBRE88P0N020120926#S6W81BZ

  ekUKWb6li.97.

  3 Francisco Toro, “How exactly do you misplace $29,342,391,393.66?,” http://caracaschronicles.com/2011/08/27/how-exactly-do-you-misplace-29342391393-66/.

  4 Ellsworth and Chinea, “Chavez’s oil-fed fund obscures Venezuela money trail,” this report dates back to 2012 but in late 2015 when I checked on the status of the company, the official government page continues to describe the plant in the future tense: http://www.cenditel.gob.ve/node/671.

  5 Brian Ellsworth, “Billions unaccounted for in Venezuela’s communal giveaway program,” http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/

  05/06/us-venezuela-communes-special-report-idUSBREA450

  CA20140506.

  6 Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez.

  7 Matt Kennard, “BB interviews…Noam Chomsky,” http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/02/15/bb-interviews-noam-chomsky/.

  8 See this other post by Francisco Toro, for example: http://caracaschronicles.com/2011/11/07/fondens-accounting-is-all-greek-to-me/.

  9 “Hugo Chávez a Capriles: ‘Eres un cochino, no te disfraces,’” http://elcomercio.pe/mundo/actualidad/hugo-chavez-capriles-eres-cochino-no-te-disfraces-noticia-1375430.

  10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjvS6qLf2mI.

  11 On Sai Baba, Hannah Strange and Alasdair Baverstock, “Nicolas Maduro: ‘All we see are poor Chavez imitations and stupid distractions,’” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/­venezuela/10502766/Nicolas-Maduro-All-we-see-are-poor-Chavez-imitations-and-stupid-distractions.html. On Maduro and Marxist-Leninism, Cristina Gonzalez, “El mentor entre sombras de Nicolás Maduro,” http://patriaurgente.com/?p=15583.

  12 Agence France-Presse, “Venezuela closes borders ahead of election” http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/130409/venezuela-closes-borders-ahead-election.

  13 Jonathan Watts, “Nicolás Maduro: post Chávez bluster disguises pragmatism of a deal-maker,” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/nicolas-maduro-post-chavez-bluster.

  Chapter Fourteen

  1 A guarimba is an opposition demonstration, usually involving road blocks.

  2 “Cacerolazo,” from cacerola (Spanish, “stew pot”) is a form of protest in which demonstrators bang pots and pans.

  Chapter Fifteen

  1 These numbers were all gleaned from my reading of the daily press which I annotated at the time and I have no doubt they could be confirmed in the list of discrepancies filed by Henrique Capriles before the CNE.

  2 “Carter Center Releases Final Report on Venezuela’s April 2013 Presidential Elections,” http://www.cartercenter.org/news/pr/venezuela-052214.html.

  3 Misión de Estudio del Centro Carter Elecciones Presidenciales en Venezuela http://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/news/peace_publications/election_reports/venezuela-final-rpt-2013-

  elections-spanish.pdf.

  4 Ibid. My translation.

  5 For the complete story (in Spanish) see Chapter 3, “It’s True, we added False Votes” in Emili J. Blasco, Bumerán Chávez: Los Fraudes que Llevaron al Colapso de Venezuela (Washington, D.C.: Center for Investigative Journalism
in the Americas and Inter-American Trends, Second Edition 2015), 96.

  6 Juan Cristobal Nagel, “It which cannot be named,” http://caracaschronicles.com/2015/04/22/.it-which-cannot-be-named/.

  7 Juan Cristobal Nagel, “Leamsy vs. Puzkas …,” http://caracas

  chronicles.com/2015/05/04/leamsy-vs-puzkas/.

  Chapter Sixteen

  1 Robert J. Alexander, The Venezuelan Democratic Revolution: A Profile of the Regime of Rómulo Betancourt (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1964), 210.

  2 Nick Miroff, “A once-proud industrial city, now a monument to Venezuela’s economic woes,” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/a-once-proud-industrial-city-now-a-

  monument-to-venezuelas-economic-woes/2014/09/03/4b577663-8f18-4841-b958-eee3b8830ad9_story.html.

  3 Clifton Ross, “Venezuela: Adiós Presidente,” http://

  upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-

  68/4172-venezuela-adios-presidente.

  4 Humberto Márquez, “China Maps Out Venezuela’s Valuable Mining Resources,” http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/02/china-maps-out-venezuelas-valuable-mining-resources/.

  5 H. Micheal Tarver and Julia C. Frederick, The History of Venezuela (NY: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006), 102.

  6 This is a constant source of confusion. For instance, see George Ciccariello-Maher, We Created Chávez (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013), 10, certainly the most minor point of many much more serious problems in the book, Ciccariello-Maher writes of the “power-sharing pact signed at Punto Fijo (and therefore colloquially known as puntofijismo)…”

  7 Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, “Voter turnout data for Venezuela,” http://www.idea.int/vt/countryview.cfm?CountryCode=VE.

  8 H. Micheal Tarver and Julia C. Frederick, The History of Venezuela, 99.

  9 Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel (New York: Random House, 1984), 162.

  10 The elections in the Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) November 18, 1959, according to Franqui, delegates were chosen “By direct, secret, and free ballot—in the first and last free elections held under Fidel Castro,” 160. That is, not quite a year after Castro took power.

  11 Edgardo González Medina, Venezuela, Capitalismo de Estado, Reforma y Revolución, 80, archived online at http://www.eumed.net/libros-gratis/2007a/244/1a.htm.

  12 Tarver and Frederick, The History of Venezuela, 102.

  13 Héctor Pérez Marcano and Antonio Sánchez Garcia, La invasion de Cuba a Venezuela: De Machurucuto a la Revolución Bolivariana (Caracas, VZ: Libros de El Nacional, 2007), XIX.

  14 Rory Carroll, Comandante: Hugo Chávez’s Revolution (New York: Penguin, 2014), 100.

  15 Ibid., 99.

  16 María Eugenia Díaz and William Neuman, U.S. Filmmaker Held in Venezuela Sought to Show Political Divide, Friends Say,” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/world/americas/tim-tracy-sought-to-show-venezuelas-divide-friends-say.html?_r=0.

  Chapter Seventeen

  1 Rafael Uzcátegui, Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle (Tucson: See Sharp Press, 2010).

  2 Rubén González was finally declared innocent nearly five years later in April 2014.

  3 A very good article on the situation of workers in Guayana and around the country can be found at http://www.wsj.com/articles/unions-confront-venezuelan-leader-1411600050.

  4 Ultimas Noticias, “Ministro Ricardo Molina amenaza con despedir a empleados opositores,” http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/actualidad/politica/video--ministro-ricardo-molina

  -amenaza-con-despedi.aspx.

  Chapter Eighteen

  1 Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chávez.

  2 Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 11.

  3 Trienio Adeco was the Three Year rule of Democratic Action, 1945–1948, between military dictatorships.

  4 Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, “Voter turnout data for Venezuela.”

  5 See Carlos Tablante and Marcos Tarre, Estado Delincuente: Como actúa la delinquencia organizada en Venezuela, foreword by Baltasar Garzón (Caracas: Cyngular Asesoría, 2013), 210–211.

  6 Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, 270.

  7 Clifton Ross, “Love the Pigs?” http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/07/love-the-pigs/.

  8 Hannah Strange and Alasdair Baverstock, “Nicolas Maduro: ‘All we see are poor Chavez imitations and stupid distractions.’”

  9 Gustavo Heredia, “Nicolás Maduro Assures Hugo Chávez Appeared To Him As A ‘Little Bird’ To Bless Him,” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/03/nicolas-maduro-

  hugo-chavez-little-bird_n_3007965.html.

  Chapter Nineteen

  1 Clifton Ross, Translations from Silence: Selected Poems (San Francisco: Freedom Voices, 2009).

  2 Gustavo Hernández A., “Newsprint wars, memetic wars,” http://caracaschronicles.com/2015/05/11/newsprint-wars-memetic-wars/.

  3 Rafael Uzcátegui, op. cit. in Spanish, my translation.

  4 Archived online at http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/19/building-a-critical-left-solidarity-movement/.

  5 Their article: http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/01/­chavismo-and-its-discontents/ and my response: http://dissidentvoice.org/2016/01/the-two-lefts-and-venezuela/.

  6 Archived at http://www.mitfamericas.org/Venezuela.htm.

  7 Ross and Rein, editors, Until the Rulers Obey.

  8 Tarek el Aissami was at the time of the interview Minister of Internal Relations, and, at the time of this writing, Governor of Aragua. El Aissami also has close relations with Iran and Hezbollah and was later accused, along with Number Two in the government at the time of the interview, Diosdado Cabello, of involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering. See http://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelan-officials-suspected-of-turning-country-into-global-cocaine-hub-1431977784.

  Chapter Twenty

  1 Eva Gollinger attempted to portray the US as the “éminence grise” behind the coup of April 2002 in her book, The Chávez Code, but the research and substantiation for that claim is shaky, at best. See http://vcrisis.com/?content=letters/200506021909.

  2 William I. Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 82.

  3 Cyril Mychalejko, “Manufacturing Contempt for Venezuela,” http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-­archives-35/4728-manufacturing-contempt-for-venezuela.

  4 See the US State Department Budget, available online at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/238222.pdf.

  5 Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Venezuela and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez, Second Edition (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institute Press, 2015), 112.

  6 Casto Ocando, Chavistas en el Imperio: Secretos, tácticas y escándalos de la Revolución Bolivariana en Estados Unidos (Miami, FL: Factual Editores, 2014) excerpts available online at: http://kindleweb.s3.amazonaws.com/content/B00IZRZN98/gz_sample.html.

  7 Ibid., Ocando, 64.

  8 Ibid., Ocando, 54.

  9 emiduarte, “Evil in the Bayou,” http://caracaschronicles.com/2014/08/05/aholes-and-oil-1-human-rights-0/.

  10 Ocando, Chavistas en el Imperio, 10.

  11 From a fundraising appeal from Z Magazine, signed by Michael Albert and dated February 20, 2016.

  12 http://archive.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2005/07/27/channeling_his_energies/?page=1. As for current funding, one Al Jazeera piece posted in 2012 says that “here the story gets murky—which only goes to reinforce the notion that Telesur is TeleChavez in disguise.” See http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/listeningpost/2012/09/20129229131584380.html.

  13 Lucas Koerner, “Venezuelan Social Movements Rally Against Open-Pit Mining in the Orinoco Arc,” https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/venezuelan-social-movements-rally-against-open-

  pit-mining-in-the-orinoco-arc/

  14 Ibid, Corrales an
d Penfold, 113. They make the argument that “Chávez was ideologically predisposed to lock horns with the United States and he did so from the start of his administration” (p. 111) and that “one could even argue that Venezuela’s initial anti-Americanism and uncooperative behavior explains U.S. criticisms 2002–2003, rather than the other way around,” 112.

  15 Carl Meacham, “The Kerry-Jaua Meeting: Resetting U.S.-Venezuela Relations?” https://csis.org/publication/kerry-jaua-meeting-resetting-us-venezuela-relations.

  16 In this regard the report issued by the Strategic Studies Institute of the US Army War College written by Dr. R. Evan Ellis is quite interesting and illuminating. Among the conclusions Dr. Ellis draws are that the US should not interfere with Venezuela, but that it should also prepare to send humanitarian aid to its neighbors when the inevitable crisis hits. The report is worth reading in its entirety: http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/index.cfm/articles/the-approaching-implosion-of-venezuela/2015/07/10.

  17 Patrick Gillespie, “Oil-rich Venezuela is now importing U.S. oil,” http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/03/news/economy/venezuela-imports-american-oil/.

  18 Reuters, “Oil-rich Venezuela became net gasoline importer in 2012,” http://www.reuters.com/article/venezuela-gasoline-idUSL2N0DU2NT20130514.

  19 James Petras, US and Venezuela: Decades of Defeats and Destabilization,” http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-and-venezuela-decades-of-defeats-and-destabilization/5434884.

  20 Spanish-readers would benefit from reading the many good opposition economists like Anabella Abadi, Jose Guerra, Enzo del Bufalo, Angel Alayon, Luis Vicente León, Asdrúbal Oliveros; others, like Ricardo Hausmann, Juan Nagel, and Francisco Toro regularly publish in English.

  21 I go into much of this at length in my book The Map or the Territory (Berkeley: New Earth Publications, 2014), some passages of which are reproduced in part here.

  22 Carlos Alberto Gómez Grajales, Why is Venezuela hiding its official statistics?,” http://www.statisticsviews.com/details/news/8277681/Why-is-Venezuela-hiding-its-official-statistics.html. The government finally published a partial account of the economy in January 2016 for Nicolas Maduro’s Memoria y Cuenta speech (equivalent of State of the Union speech) but they have been called “fantasy figures.” See http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/01/graphics-political-and-economic-guide-venezuela.