Comandante: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela

by Rory Carroll

  11

  PROTEST

  Luis Blanco spent his life guarding money and power without ever having any of his own. He was a security guard at an apartment block in Altamira, one of Caracas’s nicer areas, and inhabited a cramped cubicle by an electronic gate that he opened and shut with a white button on his desk. His job was to monitor visitors, take packages, and jot down in a folder the comings and goings of vehicles, one shinier and bigger than the other. Luis took pride in his work, keeping impeccable notes, and always wore crisp white shirts. Tall, slender, with silver hair parted at the side, he had a distinguished countenance that could have belonged to a patrician banker. When he was outside the cubicle, visitors at times mistook him for a resident and addressed him with the formal “usted.” At this Luis would smile, and the illusion would dissolve because wide gaps separated his teeth. The visitors, embarrassed, would belatedly notice the worn shoes and the building’s name on his shirt and automatically, with a seamless mental click, address him with the familiar “tú.” Luis, still smiling, would reply, addressing them as “usted.”

  The cubicle was his realm, and he made the best of it, scrubbing the seat-less toilet in a microscopic bathroom whose door never closed properly, storing Tupperware meals of rice and beans out of sight, stacking packages in neat piles, letters in alphabetical order. Some nights he would lay a thin mattress on the floor and curl in a fetal position, barely fitting in the space, to steal a few hours’ sleep. His one vice was alcohol. A few times a year he would drink too much and weave out to halt a resident, exclaim on the beauty of the day, and heartily wish him or her all the health in the world. But mostly he stayed in his hut, a spectral presence opening and closing the gate to cars with tinted windows.

  Many residents, however, did not trust him. It was not personal; they barely spoke to or knew him. It was, from their viewpoint, simply common sense. As a vigilante, the local name for a security guard, Luis was by definition poor, underpaid, and in a position to sell information to thieves and kidnappers. Such cases were widespread. Keep your distance, neighbors advised. Don’t tell him anything.

  Luis was born in 1956, two years before Pérez Jiménez fled the palace and Venezuela won democracy, to a lower-middle-class family in El Valle, a poor hillside neighborhood. After his father absconded, the family struggled, but Luis, starting as a messenger, worked his way up to being a junior clerk in a bank. After the bank tripped along with Venezuela’s economy in the 1980s, Luis’s fortunes declined, and he worked in restaurant kitchens. In 1998, the year Chávez was elected, he got the security guard job in the apartment block and stayed. As it happened, Chávez’s election opponent Irene Sáez, a politician and former Miss Universe, lived in the building. Though younger than Luis, she jokingly referred to him as her son. Luis was not offended, smiled his crooked smile, but voted for Chávez. Because finally here was hope. A leader who understood the struggles and humiliations of the barrios.

  Luis installed a tiny television in the cubicle and watched, mesmerized, the revolution take form. The 1999 constitution, the 2004 recall referendum, the social missions, the episodes of Hello, President, the comandante’s 2006 reelection, the 2009 referendum abolishing term limits. He cheered it all and revered “mi comandante.” His commitment to the revolution survived evidence of corruption—government officials bought apartments with cash and moved into the building, army officers “borrowed” Ferraris from a dealership to race up and down the avenue in front of his cubicle—and cruel, personal blows. In July 2010 his police officer son was beaten, throttled, and killed by escaping prisoners who had help, it seemed, from other officers. Three months later thieves shot Luis’s twenty-year-old grandson for his motorbike. Untreated for seventeen hours (local clinics weren’t working), he went into a coma and died. Luis’s heart cracked, and the smile was never quite the same; there was hesitation, a forcedness. But if something died in him, it was not faith in the revolution, which only grew stronger. And here was the nub. Because of Chávez, Luis felt empowered. At work he was nobody, one of a million anonymous, barely acknowledged security guards. But back in El Valle he was part of the revolution, an active and respected member of the communal council. A man whose opinion mattered, who was politely but firmly buttonholed in the street by neighbors and asked to consider this, resolve that. He would scribble the petitions in a notebook and smile. Of course! He would raise it at council. They would shake his hand, suddenly hopeful. Thank you, Luis!

  Early attempts at people power such as the Bolivarian Circles and electoral battalions, platoons, and squadrons had faded after Chávez lost interest, but from 2005 he had invested laws and billions of dollars in the communal councils, calling them the revolution’s most important motor, a “new geometry of power” to deepen socialism and advance development, leading to a communal state. Each was to be formed by a citizens’ assembly of two hundred to four hundred families that shared a common history and geography. The assembly would identify work committees for the council dedicated to particular issues—housing, water, electricity, food, sports, media relations—and elect delegates from each committee to the council’s executive. In addition, it would elect administrators, treasurers, and comptrollers. Councils had power to audit public administration, from hospitals to ministries, making the state truly accountable. Resources were redirected from mayors and state governors—legacies of discredited representative democracy—to these “explosions of popular will.” By 2010 there were around thirty-one thousand councils nationwide.

  February 2011. The inauguration ceremony of Luis’s new neighborhood council. Steep slopes, potholes, slab concrete, grilled windows, and satellite dishes abounded. A man on a motorbike roared by doing wheelies. Others huddled in doorways sipping beer. It was 11:00 a.m. Luis was anxious to make a good impression. “We are all patriots here.” He pointed out a house at the end of the street. “The government built that. A fine job.” It had been a long struggle to reach this day, he confided. Previous councils faltered, he said, without elaborating, but stalwarts had regrouped for this new attempt. “Compatriots, comrades, there you are!” A dozen or so women in red T-shirts assembled chairs on a basketball court and passed around papaya juice. Luis, lean and strong for his years, hauled tables to the court. Alí Primera, a left-wing activist and troubadour who died in the 1980s, sang from speakers.

  No, no, no, enough praying

  many things are needed

  to achieve peace . . .

  Nothing can be achieved

  if there is no revolution . . .

  no, no, no, enough praying.

  It felt festive, but the women were agitated. The mayor’s office had failed to deliver an awning, so the ceremony would boil in midday sun. “I’m completely committed to this process, given everything to it, and they can’t even lend us a fucking tent for a few hours.” Worse, only half of the committee had shown up. Grumbles tumbled out. “Previous councils collapsed after members disappeared with the money,” María Hernández, a young mother, said with a sigh. “That happens a lot.” As a result, the state bank that distributed funds had become very cautious and bureaucratic, demanding endless paperwork that drained time and energy, said another woman. “People get fed up, drift away. Carneiro really screwed this up.” Luis returned to the conversation. “It’s difficult persuading people to get involved in politics,” he said, a touch defensive, “but here we are today, making a fresh start.” The women nodded, not wishing to dispute this. “You know,” continues Luis, seeking a brighter topic, “Carneiro helped get all this started.” General Jorge Luis García Carneiro. El Valle was proud of this local hero who was head of the army, then defense minister, then minister for social development and popular participation, in which role he sponsored the councils. Yet Raúl Baduel, in his prison interview, said Chávez moved García Carneiro from defense to punish him for allegedly seeking a $20 million bribe in a Russian arms deal. It was an unsubstantiated claim that prosecutors did not pursue. García Carneiro’s new fiefdom,
the governorship of Vargas state, was a cesspit of corruption and misrule that has left many survivors from the 1999 mudslides still homeless.

  Two hours late the inauguration ceremony got under way. Half the committee was still missing, and those who did turn up wilted in the furnacelike heat. The guest of honor was Jesús Farías, a National Assembly member and son of a well-known Communist Party figure. Farías, who studied economics in Germany, was tall and pale-skinned and wore a baseball cap and an expensive, hiker-style red shirt with breathable fabric. The rhetoric soared over the sweating congregation on the chipped, weedy basketball court. “We are branches on a tree with a mighty trunk. We are advancing, consolidating. Because now”—a pause, so everyone redoubled efforts to squint through the glare—“now the people are in power. The people are power!” Farías waited for the applause to subside. “Let us pray for our children, our revolution, and Comandante Chávez. Let us swear an oath: fatherland, socialism, or death! Remember, you are our hope!”

  Everyone stood and cheered, and for a moment the disappointments, the heat, and the cracked surroundings were forgotten. The words lingered in the air. We are the power. The hope. Council members queued to receive beige certificates. Luis, a popular figure, was singled out for praise. “With Luis we are going to build the country Bolívar dreamed of.” He stared at his shoes, blushing with pride. Farías signaled an aide to fetch something from his car. A surprise gift for the new council. Members murmured in anticipation and resumed their seats. All eyes on a black bag as it was passed to Farías. He cleared his throat.

  “In the name of the revolution I give you this basketball.”

  How to define the silence that followed? Everybody stared at the orange sphere. Farías gazed back. Droplets of sweat pooled under his chin. Luis rose to his feet and clapped. The rest joined in, reluctant, ragged applause, still in their seats. The guest of honor smiled—or was it a wince?—and headed to his car. The ceremony was over.

  —

  Across Venezuela many councils breathed life into grassroots government: planting trees in plazas, distributing subsidized food, fixing houses and roads, liaising with government agencies. Useful, practical empowerment. Chávez called them the revolution’s most important motor.

  On paper the idea was promising. Popular will and energy would complement and eventually replace traditional local government to realize a direct democracy dreamed of since Rousseau. Unlike other initiatives that fell by the wayside, the comandante persisted with the councils after their launch in 2005, calling them the “socialist restructuring of the geopolitics of the nation.” He drew elaborate flowcharts depicting society and state with multiple arrows, representing power, converging on a pyramid that represented the councils. Chávez would, of course, keep control by tying council purse strings to the palace. And by weakening mayors and governors, the councils could in fact bolster central executive authority. Nevertheless, it was a bold experiment in devolution.

  After a fitful start—the 2006 presidential election, 2007 referendum, and 2008 regional elections distracted the palace—the councils multiplied and by 2009 were officially a great success. State television showed a nationwide blossoming in a weekly program called Constructing Republic that opened with an upbeat jingle and scudding fluffy clouds in a blue sky before reporting on councils taking charge, tackling problems, and asserting the new geometry of power.

  —

  February 2010. After the main news of the day—the comandante expropriating jewelry stores at Caracas’s Plaza Bolívar—it was time for Constructing Republic. The jingle and opening credits faded to reveal soaring mango trees, dappled sunlight, and a courtyard with about two dozen men and women seated in a circle. Casually but neatly dressed in jeans and polo shirts, dark brown skin, on the hefty side, and squeezed into the plastic chairs. Typical Venezuelans from the coast, in other words, and not the type you usually saw on private television channels that recoiled from crooked teeth and imperfect bodies, especially dark ones, and filled programs with pale, cosmetically enhanced beauties.

  “Strengthening Popular Power in Morón,” said the legend at the bottom of the screen. Morón was an impoverished crossroads of shantytowns and truck stops near the country’s biggest port, Puerto Cabello. An ugly dump that travelers sped through en route to somewhere better. Runaway slaves found sanctuary here in the seventeenth century, and it was as if the state never forgave the place. It had fallen through the cracks of successive national, regional, and local governments. Right into the 1990s there were families living barefoot without electricity or running water. An oil refinery and petrochemical plant brought pollution but few jobs for locals; workers lived in compounds and came into town for alcohol and sex. Morón’s nickname was Mojón, meaning turd.

  And now here it was on state television showing a swept courtyard, verdant garden, and civic determination. It was straight to business. “Welcome,” said the moderator, Josefa Riera, a grandmotherly black woman with spectacles perched on the end of her nose. “We are here at a gathering of communal councils to discuss their achievements, projects, visions, and missions and their objectives to develop their communities. We give the word first to Eligio Monsalve from Las Colinas.” The microphone was passed around so everybody got to talk. At the end everybody agreed the solution to development was greater consciousness. And coordination. Consciousness and coordination. The words were written and underlined. The moderator thanked everybody for their contributions, they all clapped, and the credits rolled.

  It was not, it must be said, exciting television. Nobody argued or challenged a point or told a story, and the cameras never left the courtyard, so Morón itself remained invisible. But so what? A revolution cannot always march and sing. To transform the material world, it must stop and sit and haggle over a million little things. With Chávez there was so much thunder—soon after this program he was at a summit denouncing British occupation of the Falkland/Malvinas Islands—that it could have been refreshing to listen to ordinary people discuss, without drums and cymbals, an experiment in direct democracy.

  In the 2006 presidential election Morón voted overwhelmingly for the comandante. He erected billboards saying “Gracias, Morón, 81.46%” and renamed the motorway after Cimarrón Andresote, leader of a slave revolt and symbol of resistance. The first councils, formed here the same year, invoked the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, a scripture reference, for the good to come: continuous consultation with the community, mobile committee meetings, monitoring of public services, crime prevention, agricultural development, working with state ventures, especially the port, Puerto Cabello, and Pequiven, a petrochemical plant, to create jobs and infrastructure.

  By the time of the February 2010 broadcast the town was restless. Seven gifts. What about just one or two? Patience, pleaded the councils, we are working hard. Their members were drained by feuding over the mayor, Matson Caldera. In theory, councils were separate from municipal authority, but Caldera, a member of the coman-dante’s socialist party, had a caudillo’s cunning. He paid lip service to the councils’ revolutionary transcendence and autonomy but muscled in, planting supporters and relatives in council posts, swallowing their funding, and expanding a web of nepotism and patronage that muzzled dissent with jobs and money. The mayor’s image and name were plastered and invoked all over town, a micro personality cult.

  The comandante had warned against meddling by mayors and governors, but palace officials were too distracted by rotating ministers and organizational changes to enforce it. In any case, the comandante contradicted his anti-meddling warning by ordering councils to campaign for mayors and governors in local elections. Fighting elections and referenda sapped Morón’s council members. Already overloaded with meetings, they lacked time for their regular jobs and families. Attendance dwindled. Those who remained felt depleted. Suspicions grew that some members were making secret deals with private businesses. Others were accused of pocketing funds, including some of those featured in the televised mango tr
ee assembly. They all denied wrongdoing, and none were charged. In February 2011, a year after the broadcast (and the same month El Valle received its basketball), Morón’s enraged council members stormed the town hall and accused the mayor of smears and corruption. He rejected the accusations and branded them terrorists. The police and courts were too clogged with murders and kidnappings to investigate, so the feuding lingered, unresolved, destroying trust.

  Morón’s infighting left the town leaderless amid mounting economic and social problems: overcrowded schools, dilapidated clinics, a crumbling motorway, an unfinished, abandoned railway, weeklong power blackouts, monthlong water shortages. Some farmers were ruined because a little bridge, their sole route to market, collapsed and was not rebuilt, others because the government flooded markets with cheap, imported food in the hope of capping inflation. The petrochemical plant, Pequiven, could not offer jobs and grants, because it was buckling from blackouts, strikes, and management upheaval (the comandante fired its president supposedly because he raised prices, “a capitalist act”). Puerto Cabello, the country’s biggest port, could not help, because it was tangled in its own problems: a scandal over containers of rotting food and fallout from the arrest of Walid Makled, the drug lord who had run much of the port.