Opinion: Kevin Hattie

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.

Why I joined the SSP

by new SSP Campsie member, Kevin Hattie

In the summer of 2010 I embarked on the journey of a lifetime to South America through the ‘World Challenge’ organisation which gives young people the chance to travel throughout the world and make a difference while they are doing so. 

The idea of the trip is not only to give young people the opportunity to see amazing countries with incredible cultures, but it is also about the personal development of the people who choose to be involved. The trip to Ecuador certainly helped me gain useful life skills such as leadership and better organisational ability but most importantly for me it made me think about the way I see the world.

Ecuador like most countries in Latin America has deep inequality and the difference between the wealthy and the poor is much greater than anything I have ever encountered before or even since. I was aware before I set foot on the continent that it was recognised as part of the developing world, but you can never really prepare yourself for the reality of poverty until it stares you in the face. Latin America has many famous places such as the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest, which I had the pleasure of visiting as well as the Galapagos Islands and the Andes mountain Range. But for me the most amazing thing about the continent is its desire to claim its own identity back from the Northern invaders who have played a role which rivals the Spanish in impoverishing it and making it almost a servant to its empire. I looked upon tropical rainforest as far as the eye could see and I saw an abundance of wildlife found nowhere else on the planet in the most bio diverse place on the earth, I even saw the great South American Condor glide over the rocky cliff tops of the Andes but this is all secondary to the lessons I learned from the people. 

One evening in a village on the edge of the cloud forest region of Golondrinas, I sat down with the woman who was hosting us and another 2 travellers who had been across the central belt of the continent to places such as Paraguay and Bolivia. I was expecting to hear stories of the sights they had seen and to be given recommendations for future travel on the continent, but the advice they gave me was much more valuable and I will always be grateful to them for sharing it with me. The female traveller who lived in France but was born in Chile had told me of her father’s story. He was a school teacher in Santiago and had been a great admirer of the work the then president Salvador Allende was doing in confronting social inequality throughout the country. She went on to explain how he raised the standards of living to even the poorest Chileans and how he pursued a program of mass literacy and nutrition. It was clear to me why her father would admire such a president because even in the developed world where I live problems at the bottom end of societies scale are often neglected and the most vulnerable people are forced to take the heaviest blows in times of economic hardship for the whole country. As she went on to tell me of President Allendes downfall, and how he was overthrow by a coup d’état led by General Pinochet and backed by Washington, I thought to myself why would anyone overthrow such a government? There was real hope for the people of Chile, so why did no one stop this from happening in the name of democracy and justice? She told me of how her father was forced to flee from his home in Santiago and seek refuge with his brother who lived in France. Pinochet had been rounding up Allende supporters and often this resulted in their death a fact that really hit home the brutality of what Chile had to endure after Allende was gone.  I could see the anger etched across her face as she told me of her families’ traumatic experience and this anger did not result in her turning out to be a violent person or anything of the sort, instead she used it to fuel her passion for helping the people of her rightful continent. She explained how she and her companion were travelling across South America working at project after project because they felt lucky in escaping the misery inflicted upon the people by right wing despots like Pinochet. I was inspired by her story and her passion but her desire to help the poor was not a rare characteristic among the communities I had visited in my time in Ecuador.

I travelled from Glasgow to Quito with a book for company. The book was called: From Mud Hut To Perpetual Revolution; The Hugo Chavez story. I read of how Chavez had grown tired of his countries wealthy elite getting rich off of the great resources which blessed Venezuela’s land. I read of how he had emerged from the bottom of Venezuelan society to leading the country into a brighter future. He confronted the large Oil companies who had stolen Venezuelan people’s right to prosperity and he demanded that the people of Latin America wake up and take control of their own destiny, all in the name of Socialism.  I decided being on the continent that Chavez had helped change that it would be a crime to leave without asking people who had first hand experience of the Bolivarian revolution what it was like and what their opinions were on Chavez and their own leader Correa. Back home people told me of how Chavez was another crazy dictator and how his people were not free while he ruled. The news also at times hammered home this message, but in reality the people whom I spoke to said we love Chavez. Chavez has given us a voice! He has given us hope! We are now proud to be Latin Americans! I was pleased to hear the people back home were wrong and that Chavez’ revolution, which had stretched beyond Venezuela to Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay, was embraced by the people who were needing change most.

When I returned home from Ecuador I became desperate to find out more about how Socialism was emerging in Latin America and how it was giving hope to the kind of people I had met. In my research I had found a history of US intervention and state sponsored killing in an effort to stop socialism. The strange thing was it didn’t seem as though they were trying to stop Socialism from becoming the dominant political ideology in the region because it was wrong or causing problems. They tried to stop it because it would be a model that the world could follow in order to create a more equal and just earth. It was an ideology that questioned the injustices and corruption which always seems to follow Capitalism. My reading had left me believing that in order for, not just Latin America but for the world, to become a fairer place that we need to find a way for Democratic Socialism, in its true form with no Greedy corrupt politicians abusing it, to replace Capitalism and end the sheer injustice which is ingrained in Capitalisms bloody and corrupt history.

As a new aspiring member of the SSP, I believe that this party holds the same belief that Salvador Allende of Chile had, the same desire to end Injustice that Che Guevara had, the same desire to join together in unity to fight corruption and greed that Hugo Chavez possessed and the same altruistic and humanitarian values which I feel are important.  Here in Scotland we face our own challenges, Independence and the right to control our own future, ending conservative rule and ridding our society of the values which are preached by people like David Cameron and were preached by Margaret Thatcher, and finally creating a more equal society with everyone having a voice, everyone having enough food on the table and a roof over their head. I hope that in joining the SSP I will be part of making this a reality, because in contrast to what people say about the world just being the way it is and there’s nothing you can do to change it I believe not for the first time they are wrong.

I visited Ecuador in 2010 believing I was going over to help people who were considered the have not’s of the world. When I returned I found I was a have not, and that they gave more to me than I could ever give to them with my material world. The only way I can ever repay the people of Ecuador for the life lesson they gave me is to do everything I can to make this world a better place. I believe the best way I can do this is through Socialism. So fuelled by the thoughts of the smiles of all the little kids that showed me how to be happy with having enough, I will hopefully be able to bring their message to the society I live in and be the change that I want to see in the world.

Join the Scottish Socialist Party HERE