Venezuela; The beginning of the end?
There is
turmoil in Venezuela. Students have been protesting against the government in
nation-wide demonstrations characterised by disorder and violence that have led
to the death of three people. Initially organised to protest against economic
shortages and insecurity, these demonstrations have been calling for ‘la
salida’ – the exit of President Nicolás Maduro. They have been supported by
sections of the opposition alliance, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, led by
Leopoldo López and Maria Corina Machado.
These events mark a rerun of earlier events,
when the opposition pushed for the removal of Chávez through a failed coup in
2002, a private sector lock-out in 2002-3 and a recall referendum against
Chávez in 2004. Maria Corina Machado, a signatory to the 2002 ‘Carmona Decree’
that temporarily dissolved the Chávez government, was a key protagonist of the
recall referendum. Her ‘civil society’ organisation, Súmate, received funding
from the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, where she was feted by
President George Bush in May 2005.
The
Chavistas learned a number of lessons from the events of 2002-2004: the importance of consolidating grassroots
support; the need to build regional solidarity; the capacity of the private
sector to paralyse economic activity; and the urgency of countering false
reporting on the country. It was this period that was the catalyst for the
transformation of an initially centrist Third Way project into Socialism of the
Twenty First Century.
The
opposition similarly absorbed lessons, after anti-government unions, business
associations and the local Roman Catholic Church failed to galvanise public
opinion behind regime change in 2002. It adopted an electoral path as the
balance of power swung to moderate factions, and radicals associated with
unconstitutional tactics were pushed to the margins. This reaped dividends in
national and regional elections after 2008 as the MUD focused on
bread-and-butter voter concerns and wooed Chavistas alienated by the
government’s statist lurch with soothing language of reconciliation and
promises to improve, rather than remove, the benefits delivered by the
Missions. At the same time, the
protagonist role of the private sector media was gradually tempered by
introduction of European-style broadcast regulations.
US-based
lobbies antagonistic toward the advance of Chávez’s socialism no longer saw
these elements of ‘civil society’ as an effective oppositional vehicle and
jettisoned them, deciding that a new tool for regime displacement had to be
nurtured. Students in private sector
universities became the new vanguard of ‘democracy promotion’.
In 2008, the
US-based Cato Institute awarded the US$500,000 Milton Friedman Prize for
Advancing Liberty to student leader Yon Goicoechea for his role in mobilising
protests against the suspension of private broadcaster RCTV’s licence. At the
same time, a sizeable amount of the US$45 million in funding provided annually
by US institutions to Venezuelan opposition groups was channelled to ‘youth
outreach’ programmes.
With
financial support and media training, Venezuela’s student and
opposition-aligned Juventud Activa Venezuela Unida became vociferous and mobilised, focusing
after 2010 on the alleged censorship by the state of private sector
broadcasters and on government legislation intended to democratise the
administration of the universities. The latter was portrayed as a threat to
university autonomy and some public institutions, such as the Universidad
Central de Venezuela, were driven into the opposition camp.
In 2011 JAVU
activists staged a hunger strike in support of ‘political prisoners’ and
demanded that the Organisation of American States should intervene. Protests in
2012 focused on underfunding in the higher education sector and in 2013
demonstrations were organised outside the Cuban Embassy, first to demand the
return of Chávez from chemotherapy in Havana and then to challenge the result
of the April presidential election.
The current
protests are important on two counts. First, they mark a coming together of the
student movement and radical elements of the MUD. López and Machado have been
organising with the student leadership, in particular in relation to the
February 12th demonstrations on Venezuela’s Day of the Youth, which
commemorates the role of young people in the 1814 independence battle of la
Victoria.
Frustrated
by the slow dividends of the electoral route, López and Machado are challenging
the position of Henrique Capriles as MUD leader, even though he defeated them
both in the MUD’s 2012 primaries. As Capriles in recent weeks has nudged closer
toward dialogue with President Maduro on the issue of public security,
following January’s murder of former Miss Venezuela Monica Spear, the
uncompromising López and Machado have sought to open a chasm between Capriles
and grassroots anti-government sentiment.
In turn, the
student movement has embraced the ‘salida’ demand of López and Machado,
threatening to stay on the streets until Maduro leaves office. This is against
a backdrop of growing tension, with
ongoing raids by security forces on private sector warehouse facilities, where
food and goods are allegedly being hoarded to create artificial shortages, and
with the interception of a recorded conversation between a former Venezuelan
ambassador and a vice-admiral where plans for violence and ‘something similar
to April 11th’ were being discussed.
The second
distinctive aspect relates to the role of social media. Although mobilisations
and related violence have been on-going, with two student deaths in 2010, they
have not received the same level of attention as the protests earlier this
month. One indication of an orchestrated campaign has been the frenzied
activity by opposition youth on Twitter, which seems to be substituting for the
once vociferous but now calmer private sector media that could traditionally be
relied upon to galvanise international attention.
Despite
claims that social media ‘democratises’ the media, it is clear that in
Venezuela it has had the opposite effect, exacerbating the trend towards disinformation and
misrepresentation, with overseas media groups and bloggers reproducing –
without verification – opposition claims and images of student injuries
allegedly caused by police brutality and attacks by government supporters. In
its reporting, the Guardian newspaper cited tweets by opposition activists
claiming pro-government gangs had been let loose on protestors. No evidence to
substantiate this extremely serious allegation was provided. It also reported
on the arrest of 30 students on 12th February, following serious disorder,
including barricade building, tire burning and Molotov cocktail attacks, as if
it were an egregious assault on human rights. The report was subsequently
tweeted by Machado. By way of context, 153 students were arrested in the UK
during the 2010 protests against tuition fees.
The images
disseminated, for example, to a Green Movement activist in Iran and then
circulated to her thousands of followers with the tag line ‘pray for
Venezuela’s students’, and to other democracy movements around the world show
Egyptian and not Venezuelan police beating demonstrators. This same image was
carried by the Spanish newspaper ABC. Photographs and video clips of Chilean,
Argentinian and Bulgarian police suppressing demonstrators and carrying out
arrests (in their home countries) have been circulated and published as of they
were assaults in Venezuela, and one widely reproduced image shows Venezuela’s
Policia Metropolitana corralling student protestors. The Policia Metropolitana
was disbanded in 2011. Twitter has additionally been used to harangue
commentators, including this author, who checked the accounts of her abusive critics
to find most had only been tweeting for a day and in that space of time had
accumulated around 40,000 followers.
Capriles has
been steering the opposition down the electoral path in recognition of the fact
that ordinary voters are alienated by violent protest and disorder. It has been
widely acknowledged that such a strategy will take time to produce results, but
it allows the MUD to build an electoral base and credibility as a political
alternative. This hard work will be undone by a return to unconstitutional
activities. The students and MUD radicals offer no governance plan, with
‘salida’ serving as a hash tag, not a strategy, according to one opposition
blogger.
Just as in 2002, radicals have forgotten that
the people they must convince are Venezuelan voters, not international opinion.
There can be no short cut to replacing a movement and government that is
genuinely popular. Attempting to induce regime overthrow is unnecessary when
the option of a recall referendum is available, and it is irresponsible when
the outcome of violent change will only be a cycle of violent revenge. Finally,
journalists have yet to learn that authoritative reporting requires fact-based
accounts, not recycled and unchecked tweets from Twitter – a mechanism that can
be used to promote delusion as well as democracy.
