Comandante: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela

by Rory Carroll

  These tricks earned polite applause and kept eyes on the stage, but were merely the warm-up. The main spectacle was the economy. Moribund dysfunction was transformed—poof!—into glittering whirl and a rain of cash. The comandante had taken care to prepare the stage. Jorge Giordani, the monkish economy minister, directed petrodollars into special funds—the biggest, called Fonden, alone swallowed an estimated $100 billion—over which Chávez had personal control. It helped that the price of a barrel of oil had rebounded from its tumble in 2009 to hover at $100. Even this was not sufficient for the illusion, so the government borrowed billions more from China.

  This itself required conjuring because the revolution could hardly acknowledge the ceding of sovereignty, even if it was to China rather than the IMF. Thus the palace put on a little show when a delegation from the China Development Bank came to deliver a thick white book titled The Strategic Development Plan, 2013–2030, detailing dozens of bilateral accords from oil to railways, factories, housing, and farming. The comandante, wearing military fatigues and shiny black boots with red laces, clapped his hands in delight. “I would like to thank you for this wonderful guide for the next twenty years. Applause!” Ministers applauded. Chávez signed and stamped the book with Venezuela’s official seal, cementing, he said, a historic anti-imperialist front.

  What the book really sealed was Venezuela’s prostration. Beijing had long groaned at Chávez’s clumsy references to Mao, the Cultural Revolution, and their shared Yankee foe. “Not a serious person,” Chinese diplomats and executives murmured. But they held their tongues and funneled loans in exchange for access to the Faja oil reserves. The catch was that Venezuela’s state oil and natural gas company, PDVSA, was too debilitated to keep its end of the bargain and build roads, refineries, and pipelines in the wilderness. China watched in alarm as $36 billion in “development” loans evaporated in the Caribbean haze. The white book handed over at Miraflores was not a tome of solidarity but a list of finger-wagging prescriptions and warnings about the bills faced by future Venezuelan generations.

  What mattered, as the election neared, was having the means to confect a boom. Chávez ordered big pay raises for state workers—he was most generous with the army—and a blitz of new payments to pensioners, mothers, children, and students. For the first time the money supply exceeded $100 billion. To tamp down inflation, which was the hemisphere’s highest, the government fixed the prices of fifteen thousand goods, everything from coffee to toothpaste, based upon “scientific analysis” of what constituted fair prices. Soldiers and civilians in red T-shirts patrolled warehouses and stores to ensure that businesses complied, even if it drove them into bankruptcy. At the same time, ports worked overtime offloading containers from around the world to keep shelves stocked. It was like shaking a bottle of champagne and holding down the cork. Inflation and devaluation waited down the line, but in the short term the strategy worked. People had money in their pockets.

  And many, for the first time in their lives, had hopes of a decent roof over their heads. Venezuelans expected their government to supply cheap housing, but the comandante had built less than his predecessors. Three million people—almost a tenth of the population—lacked adequate accommodation. Thus was hatched the Great Housing Mission, a scheme to build two million houses within five years. “I will not rest in the quest to solve this drama inherited from the curse of capitalism,” said the comandante. It was impossible to build so many houses so fast, not least because nationalized cement and steel factories were sputtering and private contractors feared building anything that could be expropriated. So the government paid firms from Belarus, Russia, China, and Iran inflated prices to throw up apartment blocks all over the country. They also painted slums—those visible from the motorways—bright red, yellow, and blue, Venezuela’s national colors.

  By mid-2012, the comandante claimed to have reached 96 percent of the housing target for that period. Every few days he or a minister appeared on television to hand keys to a jubilant citizen. The 96 percent number was fanciful, but many homes had indeed been built, or at least redecorated, and it was enough to give hope to those on the waiting list. The list was the key. The government bombarded the population with text messages urging it to register for a home. Millions flocked to mobile registration centers where they received receipts with a name, the date, a registration number, and a stamp. A well-off person cannot understand what it means to possess such a slip of paper, cannot appreciate the solemnity with which a poor person memorizes it, makes copies, and guards it as something precious, a potential passport to comfort and dignity. A vote for Chávez would keep it valid. The list did not just give hope—it gave the government a formidable database come election day.

  The wizard of Miraflores was not finished. He ramped up another mission, Mi Casa Bien Equipada (My Well-Equipped Home), which distributed 1.3 million subsidized washing machines, dishwashers, stoves, and flat-screen televisions, all from the Chinese company Haier, with Chávez’s name and face stenciled on the boxes. How do you explain to someone who has never had to live without a washing machine what it means, after a lifetime of scrubbing, to suddenly have one? “My, oh my, oh my, oh my! Thank you!” squealed an elderly woman, her expression beatific, during one of the comandante’s home appliance ceremonies. A mock kitchen was built in Miraflores so that he could display the latest models without moving far from his desk. The comandante had swung the 2004 recall referendum, and subsequent elections, with free health clinics, schools, and courses. Many were now closed or fraying, but rather than revive them he calculated that his socialist revolution would win more votes by boosting private consumption.

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  The comandante notched up forty-seven hours in “chain” broadcasts, but in the last weeks of the campaign the country’s degradation at times punctured the Potemkin facade. The Amuay oil refinery in the Paraguaná peninsula exploded in a giant fireball, killing forty-two people and sending mushroom clouds into the sky. The cause was not immediately established, but survivors blamed a gas leak and lack of maintenance. Workers at the Caruachi hydroelectric plant heckled Chávez during a visit to demand unpaid wages and the restoration of collective bargaining rights. Viewers, surprised by this rare failure of official choreography, heard shouts of “justicia,” justice, until state television abruptly cut the broadcast. The news agency Reuters published an investigation of Fonden’s black accounts and tracked some of the missing billions to white elephants—an abandoned newsprint factory, a “city of aluminum”—and on ill-fated investments in Ecuadorean bonds and Lehman Brothers–issued derivatives. “That is not Chávez’s money. That money belongs to 29 million Venezuelans and as such the information should be available to everyone,” wailed Carlos Ramos, an opposition legislator. A jail riot at Yare prison—the same one where Chávez served time for the 1992 coup attempt, and which he promised to transform—left twenty-five dead. A technician from Corpoelec, the electricity utility, was shot dead in the town of San Mateo, apparently by residents angered by continued blackouts. Living in the shadow of Miraflores, which was ringed by police and soldiers, was no protection from violence. Days before the election José Ramón Montilva, a fifty-six-year-old shop owner who worked a block from the palace, was shot in the neck and throat by a would-be car thief. The police and soldiers declined to treat him, reportedly to avoid bloodstains, leaving relatives to take Montilva to a private clinic where he died. The killer escaped.

  None of it made a difference to the election. Chávez triumphed. He won 8.1 million votes versus 6.5 million for Capriles, 55 percent versus 44. Not the landslide of 2006, when he crushed Manuel Rosales by 26 points, but still an emphatic victory. More than 80 percent of the electorate voted, a historic turnout. Capriles had whipped up huge crowds as he barnstormed through villages, towns, and cities, and won 2 million more votes than Rosales. But the comandante’s red machine went into a higher gear and delivered him 800,000 more votes than he had won in 2006. His big fear—abstention—was not
realized. Chávez won twenty-one of twenty-three states. Of all the regional results, perhaps the most telling was in Morón, the municipality that regularly blocked motorways to protest crumbling public services: Chávez, 73.4 percent; Capriles, 25.9 percent,

  Some in the opposition complained that fleets of state vehicles ferried voters to the polls; that Chinese and Cubans swelled the electoral register; that state media depicted their candidate as an agent of oligarchy and imperialism. Capriles, in a dignified speech, did not make excuses. He congratulated the comandante and told supporters to accept defeat. “To know how to win, you have to know how to lose. For me, what the people say is sacred.”

  Chávez, as was his custom, took to the palace balcony to greet his rapturous supporters below. “Truthfully, this has been the perfect battle, a democratic battle,” he thundered, brandishing a replica of Bolívar’s sword. “Venezuela will continue along the path of democratic and Bolivarian socialism of the twenty-first century.” Unusually, he struck a conciliatory note and invited the opposition to work with him. In a nod to his reduced majority, he acknowledged problems in the country. “Today we start a new cycle of government, in which we must respond with greater efficacy and efficiency to the needs of our people. I promise you I’ll be a better president.” There was another unusual thing about the comandante’s speech. The thousand-watt grin was fleeting. He barely smiled.

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  Another six-year term. Rule until 2019. Then? Then he would win another term, and another, and another. He would stay in Miraflores until 2030. Or maybe 2050. So he had said. Even in the flush of his latest victory, few believed that. Since exploding onto the public stage in the 1992 coup attempt he had outfoxed everyone, all the “traitors” like Baduel who had challenged Chávez’s supremacy, only to be betrayed by his own body. “There will be no death here; we must live.” But death had its own timetable impervious to appeal. The month, the year, uncertain, but there would be no refusing the command.

  Days after the election the comandante appointed Nicolás Maduro, his veteran foreign minister, as vice president. A burly former bus driver who had loyally served his chief and grown into the job, Maduro had support in the military and civilian wings of the movement. Perhaps not enough to keep the fractious revolution together should Chávez die, but he would have a better chance than most. Under the constitution, if Chávez became incapacitated or died in the first four years of a new term the vice president would oversee new elections. If he died in the last two years, the vice president would finish the term. Other ministers and governors circled warily. For years advancement had meant sheathing initiative, lest the glint outshine the chief. Was now a time to shine? The government faced fraught dilemmas: devaluing the currency, salvaging PDVSA, paying creditors, controlling inflation, curbing subsidies. If oil prices stayed high, the government would probably muddle through. If prices tumbled, disaster. A few days after the election, the comandante announced the creation of a half ministry—was this now thirty-two or thirty-four ministries?—dedicated to fighting inefficiency and bureaucracy. Officials sighed and exchanged conspiratorial winks. We turn the wheel and cannot stop it. Todo bochinche, agarra lo que puedas. It’s all a mess, grab what you can.

  The opposition weighed its own calculations. Stay united around Capriles, fracture into rival tribes, turn more populist? Middle-class Venezuelans debated whether to emigrate. The poor were not going anywhere and made the best of whatever the revolution had to offer. Venezuelans were supposed to be the jokers of South America, a spontaneous, gregarious culture, but both sides lost their sense of humor in sullen polarization. If this was democracy, and in many ways it was, Venezuela posed an uncomfortable question: When is democracy not enough?

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  Hugo Chávez boasted real accomplishments. He taught the barrio dwellers that they were the majority and deserved a place at the table, that they were human beings who did not need to apologize for their poverty. He scolded the wealthy, the masters of the valley, for shopping in Miami with petrodollars while ignoring the shacks on the hills. He told them their sense of entitlement was obscene, and he was right. He empowered communities through communal councils, an ambitious and largely well-meant attempt at grassroots democracy. He challenged Eurocentric history and celebrated Latin America’s indigenous heritage. He called time on U.S. meddling in the region and emboldened neighbors to pursue their own interests, not Washington’s. He took rightful pride in Latin America’s coming-of-age.

  Yet the story of Hugo Chávez was one of waste. Here was a sublimely gifted politician with empathy for the poor and the power of Croesus—and the result, fiasco. While he postured on the world stage and talked of bringing equilibrium to the universe, Brazil built a sustainable economy, took care of its poor, and seized regional leadership. Allies like Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador saluted the comandante but did not follow his radical economic prescriptions, for that way lay ruin. The pupils outgrew the teacher. Venezuela was left to atrophy as it sucked on its oil. The revolution had no hunger, no gulags, no torture chambers, but in wasted potential lay tragedy.

  Anomie seeped from the palace across the country, replacing responsibility and enterprise, never Venezuela’s strong points, with apathy and dependence. Clean up the dilapidated plaza, fill in potholes, create jobs? No, let the palace take care of such things, and if it doesn’t, well, block the motorway until it does. Nothing worked, but there was money. A black comedy, no longer funny. Those who couldn’t stand it left.

  Entering 2013, the artist remained in his palace, sketching the great canvas. The revolution was empty. No paradise, no hell, just limbo, a bleak, misty in-between of ambition and delusion. Only Venezuelans had to live with the reality. Foreign idealists still rushed to the comandante’s defense and formed a protective circle with bayonets, exhilarated to have a cause. Others from afar chose to see a nation subjugated by an exotic, clownish tyrant. It was El Dorado all over again, mirage and myth, a lost realm ruled by a giant with a silver tongue and a golden throne.

  Here, pardoned and freed after a 1992 coup attempt, Hugo Chávez is a civilian, a celebrity, and soon to be a presidential candidate.

  Personal contact cements the bond between leader and followers. Security concerns and illness would curb such contact in later years.

  The master communicator directs his own television shows, even selecting camera angles, and reviews footage after each broadcast.

  Foes call him a clown, but Chávez uses props—in this case a parrot with a beret—to stay at the center of attention.

  Chávez reveres Fidel Castro as revolution incarnate and casts himself as his heir.

  Chávez appointed Guaicaipuro Lameda, a number-crunching general, as national budget controller, then as head of the state oil company.

  Happy days at the palace around 2001, but Chávez’s second wife, Marisabel Rodríguez, center, and Lameda would soon turn against him.

  Lameda leads a march on the palace on April 11, 2002. Hours later, gunfire would kill at least nineteen people, and Chávez would fall—briefly—from power.

  María Lourdes Afiuni, a judge who angered Chávez, poses for a smuggled smartphone photograph with daughter Geraldine in the judge's jail cell.

  Chávez called Eva Golinger, his American courtier, Venezuela’s sweetheart. Critics dubbed her the bride of the revolution.

  General Raúl Baduel, Chávez’s lifelong “brother” and his savior in the 2002 coup, was convicted of corruption and jailed after turning against the chief in 2007.

  As bookworm cadets, Baduel devoured Asian mysticism; Chávez, Venezuela’s legends. Both applied Sun Tzu’s ancient text, The Art of War, to politics, Chávez with more success.

  Richard Nuñez, leader of the Cementerio gang, keeps a pistol since he was ambushed and shot by a rival gang in 2010.

  Richard Nuñez’s gang buys bullets from police and rules its neighborhood like a fiefdom.

  Police patrol a barrio in Caracas, one of the world’s most murderous capit
als, in 2010.

  Accused kidnappers paraded before the media. Fear of abduction afflicts all classes. One impoverished mother sold her fridge to pay her daughter’s ransom.

  Jorge Giordani outfoxed cabinet rivals to become economic czar. His web of controls and special funds augmented Chávez’s power but strangled the economy.

  After a decade in power, Chávez uses a campaign caravan to fill the streets with noise and passion.

  Oil Minister Rafael Ramírez, left, Foreign Minister and future vice president Nicolás Maduro, and Minister of the Presidency Erika Farías receive instruction from a convalescing Chávez.

  Bibliography

  Castellanos, Rafael Ramón. Los fantasmas vivientes de Miraflores. Caracas: Pomaire, 1994.

  Coronil, Fernando. The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.