Comandante: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela

by Rory Carroll

  The one with the most tales to tell was Walid Makled. The chubby, ambitious son of a Syrian immigrant, Makled started out in the mid-1990s as a small-time hustler who did not want to spend his life working in his father’s appliance store in Valencia, a small city west of Caracas. He bought and sold stolen goods, including contraband confiscated by the national guard. Makled, known as the Turk, prospered as his military contacts rose up the ranks. His big break came during the 2002–3 opposition strike, when he supplied trucks to General Luis Acosta Carles—emitter of the belch that supposedly saved the revolution—and helped to break the strike. Makled was rewarded with concessions to run warehouses in Puerto Cabello, the country’s biggest port, permission to buy an airline, Aeropostal, and a monopoly to distribute fertilizer. What more could a budding drug lord need?

  Colombian cocaine had long trickled through Venezuela en route to Europe and the United States. Under the comandante it became a stream, then a river. It was not his intention, but it flowed from his decisions. In 2005 he expelled the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which had an office in Caracas, citing espionage fears. And in exchange for loyalty he allowed his generals to grow rich, a tradition dating back to Venezuela’s first presidents. This did not mean turning a blind eye. On the contrary, Chávez observed and noted. Eduardo Semtei, a former ally and member of the National Electoral Council, watched him use the leverage. “Chávez knows everything. He gets intelligence reports detailing who is stealing what. That way if someone steps out of line, bang, he has them.” Thus General García Carneiro, who according to Baduel was accused of trying to skim $20 million from a Russian arms deal, was punished for his excessive avarice not by banishment but by being reshuffled to another ministry, then a governorship. Officers in Bolívar state, the savanna wilderness that inspired Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World, taxed artisans’ illegal mining of gold and diamonds. Officers in Apure, Táchira, and Zulia on the Colombian border smuggled gasoline. (Venezuela’s huge subsidy meant there was a 2,000 percent profit in reselling it across the border.) The most lucrative trade was with Colombia’s cocaine-trafficking guerrillas. Within three years of the DEA’s expulsion, estimated cocaine imports soared from 66 to almost 290 tons. Some was packed into small planes bound for Central America, some into big planes bound for western Africa, some into boats bound for the Caribbean. The generals who controlled it were given a nickname, El Cartel de los Soles, the Cartel of the Suns, because of the sun symbols on their epaulets.

  Makled, with his military contacts, transport infrastructure, and cocaine-processing chemicals, thrived. He reputedly trafficked ten tonnes per month. In public he styled himself a legitimate entrepreneur and bribed journalists to write about his philanthropy. He also donated fat envelopes and container-loads of mattresses and electrical equipment to military officers. Wealth and flattery turned his head. The Turk became a celebrity, imagined himself untouchable. His high profile sounded alarm bells in the palace situation room. When one of his brothers ran for mayor of Valencia in the 2008 local elections—the same in which Antonio Ledezma snatched Caracas for the opposition—without the comandante’s approval, the palace acted. Police stormed the family ranch, and Makled went into hiding. His mother wailed to the comandante. “We have always been Chavistas. Help us!” Two years later, in August 2010, the Turk was arrested in Colombia and soon after, in a series of media interviews from his Bogotá cell, began to sing. “If I’m a drug trafficker, everyone in the Chávez government is a drug trafficker.” He said he had spent $1 million a month paying about forty generals, vice admirals, colonels, majors, and other officials to facilitate shipments. Persuasion was not a problem. “It was more like they recruited me.” The Americans licked their lips at the prospect of the Turk testifying in a U.S. courtroom.

  Miraflores moved swiftly to contain the crisis. The Supreme Court processed a government extradition request at warp speed, setting up a tug-of-war with the United States for the Turk. Just months earlier Chávez had called Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, a Yankee poodle, but now he requested a summit, hugged him, and called him brother. He ended a trade freeze, which had been hurting Colombia’s economy, and promised to flush Colombian guerrillas from Venezuelan soil. Like Captain Renault in Casablanca, he was shocked, shocked that some elements of his government had supported the guerrillas! “They were making plans to set up some bases for Colombian rebels in Venezuela behind all of our backs.” In April 2011, Chávez gave Santos a further gift by deporting a senior FARC suspect. It clinched the prize. Santos delivered Makled to Caracas, not the United States. The chubby drug lord was escorted off the plane in handcuffs and swallowed by dozens of DISIP agents. He vanished, mute, into the bowels of El Helicoide.

  —

  Amid the collective hush, the feigned dumbness of those who saw the corruption but held their tongue, a lone voice shouted. “All we have done is substitute elites,” it raged. “We didn’t transform the state, because it was a gold mine. And he who finds the mine doesn’t share.” Luis Tascón, the National Assembly member who had given his name to the notorious blacklist, now emerged as the revolution’s conscience. “We have been transformed by the state. It is a devouring monster . . . Our top people were born in the barrio, got out, and didn’t go back. And the barrio continues being the same.” In a series of interviews to a journalist, Ramón Hernández, made into a book, he made a plaintive plea to the comandante. “I know that inside Chávez rejects corruption. But in power he has made no frontal assault on it. I don’t know if he is trying to use corruption as the invisible grease to work the state machinery, thinking he can avoid getting dirty, but it soils everyone.”

  Tascón was a gocho, an Andean, who grew up in a small town that still enjoyed siestas and felt like another world from Caracas. An early passion for hang gliding was overtaken by politics. He became a left-wing radical while studying electrical engineering in Mérida in the 1990s. Luis and his anarchist friends, he later confessed with a smile, protested over everything, even the death of Freddie Mercury. Tascón’s big idea was to abolish corruption and bureaucracy with information technology: clean, paperless, electronic government. Tall and headstrong like many Andeans, he bristled at hierarchy but embraced Chávez as the leader to purge Venezuela’s decadent political culture.

  Tascón was elected to the National Assembly in 2000 and moved to Caracas, a freshman legislator with an easy smile and modest means. He filled his tiny office knee-high with files investigating corruption at state utilities. Some murmured that he was not as clean as he looked, that he dropped an inquiry into the electrical company after it hired his sister. True or not, Tascón never had much power or patronage. When in 2004 he published on his Web site the names of those who had signed a petition against Chávez, his stated motive was to prevent fraud. He basked in the comandante’s praise for la lista Tascón. However, he did not seem to anticipate how the government would use it to persecute foes and how it would make his name mud. The opposition branded Tascón the revolution’s witchfinder general. Cursed and spat on, he affected not to care, but friends noticed he became anxious and started to chain-smoke.

  By 2007, Tascón was respected but carried little weight within the revolution. He began to make ripples by echoing grassroots grumbles about corruption and mismanagement in ministries and state governorships. Nothing too specific, nothing that threatened anyone directly. After Chávez lost the constitutional referendum that December, Tascón grew bolder and said the revolution had been infiltrated by “right-wing elements” who were looting the state disguised as socialists. “We must change course before it’s too late.” Chávez seemed to agree. In February 2008 he called for “rectification” and “criticism” of the revolution. Tascón took this as a cue to strike. The next day he publicly accused José David Cabello, the republic’s chief tax inspector, of corruption.

  It was an audacious lunge. José David was the brother of Diosdado Cabello, he of the God-given hair, Chávez’s cabinet fixer. An
attack on the brother was an attack on Diosdado. The revolution held its breath. For all of his cronies in powerful posts, Diosdado was despised by grassroots activists. They considered him the dark lord, an embodiment of the venality hollowing the system, and yearned for his fall. Now Tascón, little Tascón who had no money, no party faction, no powerful patron, had clambered to the ledge and given the giant a push. On his own he could never topple Diosdado. The question was how Chávez would respond. All eyes turned to the palace. This was the moment. A slight nod, a barely perceptible inclination of the head, would tip Diosdado over the edge. Police would raid José David’s office, a prosecutor would say evidence implicated Diosdado, the National Assembly would denounce the brothers as capitalist infiltrators, and state media would cheer their comeuppance. Other boligarchs would tremble, and Tascón would be a hero.

  Instead, days later at the inaugural congress of the comandante’s new socialist party, Chávez unleashed dogs on Tascón. He was denounced as a traitor, a double agent, and a peon of empire. He was expelled from the party. Diosdado claimed Tascón, the computer nerd, had on a recent visit to Microsoft been injected with a CIA chip by Bill Gates. Nobody laughed because Chávez was clearly siding with Diosdado. His loyalty and usefulness to the comandante had trumped everything. The comandante rammed home his decision by phoning The Razorblade, his favorite talk show, to denounce Tascón as a counterrevolutionary. “For a long time now Tascón has been behaving strangely,” said Chávez. “Once I called Tascón and said, look, where is the evidence for this and this and this. Bring it to me. Well, I’m still waiting.”

  Ministers joined the attack, calling him a traitor and a spy. Colleagues at the National Assembly who used to play soccer with him avoided him. Isolated, barred from the palace, Tascón went on television to appeal to the comandante. “President, you are being deceived. Look around. The corrupt are surrounding you; they are poisoning the revolutionary process. I need to speak to you directly. Please, give me thirty minutes face-to-face to explain, to show you the files detailing the greed of your entourage. That is all I ask, thirty minutes.” Tascón never got his thirty minutes. Ousted from the party, still despised by the opposition, he was the loneliest man in Venezuela. Hope drained from his smile, and the ashtrays in his little apartment on Libertador Avenue overflowed. He confessed he had a recurring nightmare about free fall: slipping out of his hang glider and grabbing empty air. Tascón was diagnosed with colon cancer and died in August 2010, two weeks shy of his forty-second birthday.

  Only in death was he rehabilitated. “Honor and glory to the departed revolutionary, Luis Tascón’s struggle will be forever,” said Diosdado. Chávez too lamented his passing. “The painful death of a genuine revolutionary man named Luis Tascón touched me deep inside. Beyond our differences, I will always remember this great comrade with the deepest affection and acknowledge his integrity and strength.”

  8

  THE STORYTELLER

  In the winter of 2009 and the spring of 2010, Venezuela suffered a severe drought. The tropical downpours that nourished the Amazon and sent flash floods pouring through the streets of Caracas abruptly stopped. For months not a drop fell. The time of rain and the time of sun, as the Indians termed the seasons, were out of sync. Rivers dried up, the llanos grasslands turned to dust, and fires broke out on the Ávila, the flames licking up tinderbox slopes and casting an orange glow over the city. A unique meteorological phenomenon that had produced spectacular lightning storms over Lake Maracaibo for centuries ceased. Meteorologists said the drought was caused by El Niño, the tropical climate pattern that changes surface temperatures and creates unusual weather patterns. The water level of the Guri Reservoir, one of the world’s biggest dams and source of most of Venezuela’s electricity, dropped to critical levels. Blackouts rolled across the country, halting elevators and metros, stilling fans and air-conditioning, draping towns and cities in darkness. The government tried to ration electricity to certain hours in the day but bungled the implementation. Power came and went without warning, maddening everyone. To top it all, many engineers said the electricity crisis’s underlying cause was lack of maintenance of Guri and the national grid: of three dozen projects launched since 2002, only two had been completed. The rest were either abandoned or advancing at a snail’s pace. Protests erupted. Demonstrators dumped surge-damaged blenders, stereos, and televisions outside state utility offices. Others burned electricity bills in the streets.

  “Hello!” boomed a familiar voice. “When you hear the pluck of a harp on the radio, maybe Chávez is coming. It’s sudden. At any time, maybe midnight, maybe early morning.” It was late Monday evening, February 8, 2010. The previous day Chávez had hosted his weekly television show from Plaza Bolívar, a typical marathon broadcast distinguished by the expropriation of jewelry stores lining the historic square. Now the comandante was back, without warning, on the airwaves. “You know,” he continued, the tone chatty, “sometimes I’m awake at three in the morning, working, revising papers, and there are people at that hour listening to the radio, listening to music, driving on the highway. Well, it suddenly occurred to us we could do radio broadcasts at whatever hour . . . and so this is the new program: Suddenly with Chávez. Guerrilla radio!” He chuckled. “We have many things to report.”

  He started by reading extracts from pro-government newspapers that called campus and street protests by university students an attempt to subvert and overthrow the state. Chávez praised the patriotism and passion of counterdemonstrations by pro-government students. “Wherever the bourgeoisie attacks, we must respond with a force multiplied by a thousand.” He moved on to happy news: a recently expropriated French-owned supermarket chain was about to reopen under state control with a new name, Bicentenario, marking two hundred years of independence. “We are going to launch tremendous bargains. A 14 percent discount on goods that are already price regulated, and 18 percent off those that are not regulated.” Socialism, said the comandante, was rolling back capitalism’s avarice. Which brought him to the broadcast’s main theme. Turning solemn, Chávez declared a state of emergency to deal with the electricity crisis. “I call on the whole country: ‘Switch off the lights.’ We are facing the worst drought Venezuela has had in almost a hundred years . . . The Guri is falling thirteen centimeters daily.” Miraflores would set an example by cutting its own power usage. The drought, he said, pausing for emphasis, could not be blamed on nature. Nor fickle fate. On the contrary. “All of this is the result of the destructive system of capitalism, which is unleashing horrific phenomena that are lashing the world.” Capitalism did not stop there, he continued, affronted. Having wrecked the climate and hydropower, it then guzzled what was left of electricity. The biggest energy consumers in Caracas were private companies, he thundered. “This shows the harm of the capitalist model.” There was also, he said darkly, evidence of sabotage of the national grid. But the population could rest easy. He had prepared an emergency decree that would be ready within days. “Good night to all of you.” The voice faded, the harp music returned, and so ended the inaugural episode of Suddenly with Chávez.

  This was the comandante’s strategy in a nutshell: Whatever the problem, tell a story. Turn a problem into a narrative, make the country an audience, and hold its attention. Cuba, he said, had lent cloud-seeding equipment that would make it rain. “We’re bombarding clouds. We have some planes there, and some equipment that Fidel and Raúl sent us.” He suggested he would personally fly the planes. “Any cloud that comes in my way, I’ll hurl a lightning bolt at it. Tonight I’m going out to bombard.”

  He turned the electricity crisis into a near-daily performance. The drought continued, but instead of focusing on energy policy blunders, everyone pictured Chávez in airman’s goggles blasting pellets at the sky. He made fresh headlines during a televised cabinet meeting by urging the nation to shower in three minutes. “Some people sing in the shower, in the shower half an hour. No, kids, three minutes is more than enough. I’ve counted, t
hree minutes, and I don’t stink.” He wagged his finger. “If you are going to lie back in the bath, with the soap, and you turn on the, what’s it called, the Jacuzzi . . . Imagine that, what kind of communism is that? We’re not in times of Jacuzzi.” Now everyone was talking about how long they spent in the shower and whether Chávez really did scrub in under three minutes.

  He took his spiel about capitalism’s destructiveness, a favorite leitmotif, to a climate summit in Copenhagen. “What we are experiencing on this planet is an imperial dictatorship, and from here we continue denouncing it. Down with imperial dictatorship!” The dignitaries applauded and cheered. “The rich are destroying the planet. Do they think they can go to another when they destroy this one? Do they have plans to go to another planet? So far there is none on the horizon of the galaxy.” No matter that Venezuela lived on selling oil to the Yankees, or that Chávez’s subsidies made its gasoline the world’s cheapest, he got a standing ovation.

  Problems mounted at home. In addition to the blackouts, the economy was shrinking—the giddy boom that had begun in 2003 screeched to a halt in 2009, then reversed—and enduring one of the world’s highest inflation rates. Opinion polls said two-thirds of the population thought the country’s situation was negative and that just over half had little or no confidence in the president. Protesters had resumed banging pots and pans during his rallies. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, a branch of the Organization of American States, published a 319-page report accusing Venezuela’s government of repression and intolerance. From his terrace the comandante watched the Ávila burn and burn.

  More problems meant more shows. They took multiple forms. In addition to Suddenly with Chávez (which did not last long) and Hello, President, there were ever-increasing “chains” that obliged all channels to transmit a particular presidential event—touring a tractor factory, greeting a Russian delegation, handing out medals—live and without warning. The nation would be watching a film, a baseball game, or a soap opera when the screen would abruptly change, showing Chávez’s beaming face. “Aha! The chain is activated. Excellent. Good evening, compadres. So, here we all are. How nice it is to be together. Because I have something important to say.” The broadcast would continue until Chávez said enough. By 2010 he had notched up, over a decade, more than 1,923 chains. Each lasted an average of forty minutes, adding up to almost thirteen hundred hours. The equivalent of fifty-three days. He expanded into new formats: a newspaper column called Chávez’s Lines, a Web site—“I’m going to put a lot of information there. It’s going to be a bombardment”—then Twitter.