“El No Murio, El Se Multiplico!” Hugo Chávez : The ...

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“El No Murio, El Se Multiplico!” Hugo Chávez :The Leadership and the Legacy on RaceCynthia Ann McKinneyAntioch University - PhD Program in Leadership and Change

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mailto:[email protected],%[email protected]

“ EL NO MURIO, EL SE MULTIPLICO!”

HUGO CHÁVEZ: THE LEADERSHIP AND THE LEGACY ON RACE

CYNTHIA ANN McKINNEY

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Ph.D. in Leadership and Change Program

of Antioch University

in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

May, 2015

This is to certify that the Dissertation entitled:

“EL NO MURIO, EL SE MULTIPLICO!” HUGO CHÁVEZ: THE LEADERSHIP AND THE LEGACY ON RACE

prepared by

Cynthia Ann McKinney

is approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Leadership and Change.

Approved by:

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Al Guskin, Ph.D., Chair date _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Philomena Essed, Ph.D., Committee Member date _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Peter Dale Scott, Ph.D., Committee Member date _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Joseph Jordan, Ph.D., External Reader date

i

Acknowledgments

My Father

My Mother

My Son

My Supportive Family

My Auntie Hazel who survived Jim Crow, but not the U.S. health scare industry

Frank, Katie, and Brian Jackson

John Judge

Antioch University visionaries Al Guskin and Laurien Alexandre

Antioch Faculty, and oh what would we do without Deb!

My supportive Cohort 11

My Dissertation Chair, Al Guskin, and Dissertation Committee

Participants

Dr. Donald Smith and Phil and Elaine Smith

Mario Chatman and Jocco Baccus

Community of Scholars whose work paved the way for this work

Community of supporters and well wishers whose moral support was invaluable, like

Henrietta Antoinin, Faye Coffield, Brother Steve, and Brenda Clemons

Norman Dale for editing

Mirna Lascano for everything!

Donald DeBerardinis who didn’t run away from his computer screaming every time I called

Glen Ford and Dedon Kamathi, and J.R. Valrey–Power to the People!

Unwavering Friends, including Lucy Grider-‐Bradley and Ms. Claude Shaw

David Josué

Eddie Slaughter, Black Farmers, and Reverend Pinkney–Still Fighting to Free the Land!

Dr. Ricardo Wheatley

North South University Vice Chancellor Dr. Amin Sarkar

The Green Party of the United States

All Independent Thinkers

ii

Dedication

El No Murio, El Se Multiplico!

(“He Has Not Died; He Has Multiplied!”)

Mourners at funeral of Hugo Chávez (Photograph courtesy of AFP Photo/Leo Ramirez)

Graffiti in Caracas, meaning, “I am Chávez” (Photograph by author, 2013)

iii

Abstract

“Chávez, Chávez, Chávez: Chávez no murio, se multiplico!” was the chant outside the National

Assembly building after several days of mourning the death of the first President of the

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. This study investigates the leadership of Hugo Chávez and

his legacy on race as seen through the eyes and experiences of selected interviewees and his

legacy on race. The interviewees were selected based on familiarity with the person and

policies of the leadership of Hugo Chávez and his legacy on race. Unfortunately, not much has

been written about this aspect of Hugo Chávez, despite the myriad attempts to explain his

popularity with the Venezuelan people up to the time of his death. It is expected that, as a

result of this research, a clearer picture of Hugo Chávez will emerge. The resulting profile of

Hugo Chávez focuses on him as a person of power as well as of color—of African and

Indigenous descent—who was able to free himself from a colonial mindset (and its

oftentimes accompanying internalized racism) and thereby gain the attention of oppressed

peoples across the planet who sided with him as he used his power to challenge

neoliberalism, the U.S. government, and those who wield power on neoliberalism’s behalf

inside Venezuela. This research serves as important infrastructure for understanding Hugo’s

race-‐conscious leadership in resistance to internalized racism and European domination.

This dissertation is accompanied by an MP4 author introduction video, a PDF Dissertation

Supplement, and four participant supplemental files: two MP3 audio files and two MP4

videos. This dissertation is available in Open Access AURA: Antioch University Repository

and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/etd

iv

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................................................... i

Dedication ..................................................................................................................................................................... ii

Abstract ........................................................................................................................................................................ iii

Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................................................... iv

List of Figures ............................................................................................................................................................. vi

List of Supplemental Files .................................................................................................................................... vii

Preface ............................................................................................................................................................................ 1

Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................. 7

Literature Review: The Social, Economic, and Political Context of Hugo

Chávez’s Leadership ............................................................................................................................................... 20

A Note on the Philosophy of This Literature Review ............................................................................... 23

Social, Economic, and Political Context of Hugo Chávez: 1958–1998 .............................................. 29

Hugo Chávez and the Epic Struggle against Neoliberalism ................................................................... 47

The Role of Race in Latin American and Venezuela ................................................................................. 52

Colonialism ................................................................................................................................................................. 54

Race ............................................................................................................................................................................... 61

Liberation of the Oppressed and Its Influence on Chávez ..................................................................... 76

Battling the United States: When Transformational Leadership Becomes

Leadership on the Line ......................................................................................................................................... 96

v

Research Problem, Purpose, Question, and Design ............................................................................... 106

Research Problem and Question ................................................................................................................... 106

Critical Methodology: Problematics and Pitfalls ..................................................................................... 106

Oral History Tools ................................................................................................................................................ 113

Ethics: Going Beyond the Institutional Review Board ......................................................................... 115

Research Design .................................................................................................................................................... 118

Researcher Positionality ................................................................................................................................... 121

Information Sources—Participants and Documents ............................................................................ 124

Participants and Interviews ............................................................................................................................ 124

Documents on U.S. Actions against the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela ............................. 127

Other Documents on Chávez and the Opposition He Faced .............................................................. 128

Hugo Chávez’s Leadership: Transformational, Parrhesia, Political, and

African-‐Centered Leadership .......................................................................................................................... 130

Hugo Chávez As a Transformational Leader ............................................................................................ 130

Hugo Chávez As Nation Builder ..................................................................................................................... 157

Hugo Chávez As a Feminist .............................................................................................................................. 159

Repression and Charges of Corruption under Hugo Chávez ............................................................. 161

Hugo Chávez, the Pan-‐Africanist .................................................................................................................... 163

Conclusion on Hugo Chávez’s Leadership ................................................................................................. 186

Hugo Chávez—Afro-‐Descendiente and Proud! ....................................................................................... 188

vi

Hugo Chávez’s Identity Reflected in His Leadership ............................................................................ 189

The Role of Race in Latin America and Venezuela ................................................................................. 195

Hugo Chávez: The Liberator ............................................................................................................................ 205

Chávez’s Letter to Africa—Conscious Leadership and Legacy on Race ....................................... 219

Discussion, Conclusions, and Implications of This Research on Practice .................................... 223

Discussion ................................................................................................................................................................ 223

Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................................. 224

Implications for Future Research .................................................................................................................. 228

Implications for Future Practice .................................................................................................................... 233

Implications for My Practice ............................................................................................................................ 235

My Thoughts on This Research ...................................................................................................................... 235

Appendix .................................................................................................................................................................. 237

Appendix A: Review of Literature Search Strategy ............................................................................... 238

Appendix B: Participant Information .......................................................................................................... 240

Appendix C: Interview Excerpt Venezuelan Woman #2 ................................................................... 242

Appendix D: The Idea of the Deep State and the Killing of Lumumba .......................................... 245

Appendix E: Legacy of Covert Action Faced by Chávez ....................................................................... 248

Appendix F: Permissions and Exemptions (for Main Body of Dissertation) .............................. 252

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................................... 257

vii

List of Figures

Figure 2.1 Pictures of “Luzia” Reconstruction, Earliest Skull Found in Americas ...... 47

Figure 5.1 Aristóbulo Istúriz Almeida, Governor, State of Anzoátegui ..................... 183

Figure 5.2 Chávez’s Vice-‐President, Elias Jaua, and Russia’s President

Vladimir Putin ......................................................................................................................... 183

viii

List of Supplemental Files These are available as stand-‐alone files: FILE NAME TYPE SIZE

(MB)

Supplemental_1_Cynthia_McKinney_Author_Introduction.mp4 MP4 Video 4.1

Supplemental_2_Interview_Highlights_with_3_participants.mp4 MP4 Video 7.9

S Supplemental_3_Participant_Roundtable_Chávez_International

_Role.mp4

MP4 Video 24.3

Supplemental_4_Wayne_Madsen_Interview_US_Complicity_In

_Coup.MP3

MP3 Audio 5.1

Supplemental_5_Al Giordano_Interview_Unraveling_a_Coup.MP3 MP3 Audio 6.5

Supplemental_6_Dissertation_Supplement_Hugo_Chávez_Legacy

_ _on_Race.pdf

PDF 14.7

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Preface

Barrett Brown, Barack Obama, and Hugo Chávez: When Telling the Truth Becomes a Crime

Cynthia McKinney January 24, 2015

I am in the process of writing my dissertation on Hugo Chávez. I am in the

final days, actually, of the writing and editing process, and all of a sudden, I find

myself severely constrained by recent events. WikiLeaks is a treasure trove of

information for academic research. Yet, in a library search that I did three days ago,

in preparation for a question from my Dissertation Committee on the status of my

use of WikiLeaks sources, I found that only thirty-‐five articles had been published in

peer-‐reviewed academic journals. In those articles, not a single author had

referenced a single WikiLeaks document, nor did any of those articles provide a URL

for any WikiLeaks document. At the time, I concluded that the academic community

was an extension of The State rather than an extension of The People with a

responsibility to oversee and question the activities, policies, and behavior of The

State.

Then, yesterday, I received a message containing the British Broadcasting

Corporation (BBC) news of the sentencing of Barrett Brown because he posted links

online to the Stratfor e-‐mails that were posted on WikiLeaks.1 Brown did not hack

Stratfor, but as an investigative journalist, reported on the content of the hack and

provided links to his readers.

1. “U.S. Reporter Jailed for Linking to Stolen Data,” BBC News, January 22, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-‐30943886.

2

There have been many news articles about the fact and the content of the

Stratfor e-‐mails.2 As well, information pointing to a Federal Bureau of Investigation

(FBI) informant being involved in the hacking of Stratfor, which raises a whole host

of other questions about the continued unlawful conduct of the U.S. government.3

Despite several news articles containing sensational information on the Stratfor

hack, again, a search of peer-‐reviewed journals that I conducted just now revealed

only one article in a computer-‐related journal. Therefore, whether the topic was

WikiLeaks or Stratfor, the academic community is basically missing in action in

examining and investigating this extremely important information.4

A walk back in time shows the same reticence on the part of the academic

community to use controversial, but declassified, government documents in its

research. In searches of the academic literature while I was studying the Counter

Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) of the FBI as a part of my Ph.D. research, I

found, with a few extremely important exceptions, that the most important

COINTELPRO documents remain virtually by-‐passed by the academic community—

even to this date. With this in mind, I really shouldn’t be surprised to see a lack of

the use of WikiLeaks documents, even though the information contained could lead 2. See for example, Eamon Javers, “Stratfor’s Hacked Emails Expose Some Very Tangled Intelligence Gathering,” Business Insider, February 27, 2012, http://www.businessinsider.com/bi-‐stratfor-‐wikileaks-‐hacked-‐emails-‐2012-‐2. 3. See “The Daily Dot Reveals Extent of FBI Involvement in Stratfor Hack,” PRNewswire, June 5, 2014, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-‐releases/the-‐daily-‐dot-‐reveals-‐extent-‐of-‐fbi-‐involvement-‐in-‐stratfor-‐hack-‐261961141.html; and Dell Cameron, “How an FBI Informant Orchestrated the Stratfor Hack,” June 5, 2014, http://www.dailydot.com/politics/hammond-‐sabu-‐fbi-‐stratfor-‐hack/. 4. Regarding the missed opportunities for sound scholarly analysis of the WikiLeaks materials, see Gabriel J. Michael, "Who's Afraid of WikiLeaks? Missed Opportunities in Political Science Research,” Review of Policy Research 32, no. 2 (2015): 175–199, doi:10.1111/ropr.12120.

3

to critical insights on U.S. public policy. Most importantly for those of us who expect

to create change in U.S. domestic police state and foreign military policy, it is the

most controversial of such documents that deserve scrutiny from not only

journalists, but also from the academic community. The operation of the Deep State

is real and must be exposed if the return to constitutional rule and respect of the Bill

of Rights is to be possible. Thus, not only are the young people who broke into an

FBI office and found and publicized the COINTELPRO papers heroes, so too are our

modern day sunshine activists at Cryptome, Narconews, Wayne Madsen Reports,

and WikiLeaks. Whistleblowers like John Kiriakou, Chelsea Manning, Edward

Snowden, and Jeffrey Sterling who are either already in jail or in exile until a new

United States is created by the rest of us are modern-‐day profiles in courage.

Barrett Brown joins them in exposing illegal behaviors for which we, the

people of the United States, share ultimate responsibility. Therefore, we also bear

the responsibility to stop these actions being done in our name with our tax dollars.

Brown’s case even received mention on the popular Netflix series, “House of Cards.”5

On January 23, 2015, he was sentenced to sixty-‐three months for copying and

pasting a link to a publicly available file.

The Obama Administration has compiled a remarkable record of attacks

upon, rather than lauding of, whistleblowers who expose illegal government

activities. Lee Ann McAdoo at Infowars.com called Brown’s sentence an attack on

5. Alex Pearlman, “Who Is Barrett Brown and Why Is ‘House of Cards’ Talking About Him?” BDCwire, February 18, 2014, http://www.bdcwire.com/who-‐is-‐barrett-‐brown-‐and-‐why-‐is-‐house-‐of-‐cards-‐talking-‐about-‐him/.

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free speech.6 Even a critic of Brown’s says “the charges against Brown give me

shivers as a journalist.”7 In the 1970s, when activists exposed illegal government

activity, two Congressional select committees were established to investigate. The

Otis Pike8 House and Frank Church Senate Committees investigated government

excesses, including assassination plots against foreign leaders and illegal

intelligence activities directed against U.S. citizens. Today, with few notable

exceptions, Congress has capitulated and done nothing to stop to both the egregious

activities exposed by the whistleblowers and the mistreatment of the

whistleblowers. Thus, both the Obama Administration and the elected

Congressional representatives of the people of the United States, sworn to uphold

the Constitution, have made it clear whose side they are on—and it’s not ours or

Barrett Brown’s.

So, now, what does all of this have to do with Hugo Chávez?

I am writing my dissertation on Hugo Chávez. And the released COINTELPRO

and Church Committee Reports only place the opposition to Chávez in historical

context. The very same links that got Barrett Brown into trouble (instead of the

culprits who committed the heinous acts) reveal a contemporaneous attack on the

Bolivarian Revolution that even the CIA World Factbook admits succeeded in

6. Lee Ann McAdoo, “Why You Should Care about Barrett Brown’s Prison Sentence: Feds Moving to Eradicate Free Speech,” January 23, 2015, http://www.infowars.com/ why-‐you-‐should-‐care-‐about-‐barrett-‐browns-‐prison-‐sentence/. 7 .“Who is Barrett Brown…” 8. Otis Pike died on January 20, 2014. For obituary see, “Otis G. Pike, Maverick Congressman Dies at 92,” Washington Post, January 20, 2014, http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/otis-‐g-‐pike-‐maverick-‐ny-‐congressman-‐dies-‐at-‐92/2014/01/20/1e9f6bf2-‐7af2-‐11e3-‐8963-‐b4b654bcc9b2_story.html.

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drastically cutting Venezuelan poverty; was praised by UNICEF9 for decreasing

infant mortality and childhood hunger; UNESCO10 for the distribution of laptops to

all elementary and high school students; and the United Nations for reducing

income inequality. The attacks on the Bolivarian Revolution included efforts to

undermine leadership inside Venezuela, in the region, and in his international

efforts. For example, championed the Africa South America Summit, and the Obama

Administration undermined ’s efforts to coordinate—culturally, economically, and

militarily—South American countries with their African counterparts. In fact, the

Africa South America Summit was to be held in Libya the year that President Obama

launched the seven-‐month “kinetic activity” that completely destroyed Libya.

President Obama’s action also prevented the institutionalization of military

cooperation between the two continents intended to protect their sovereignty and

independence.

Criminals in positions of authority inside our government use the power of

their positions to cower those of conscience who would act to stop the rampant

crime spree that passes for U.S. domestic and foreign policy. They make examples of

national security whistleblowers at a time when the national security state is

expanding well beyond the benchmarks set by the Church Committee and that the

Senator characterized as “illegal and un-‐American.”11 And among the 535 Members

of Congress today, there is not a Frank Church to be found. And President Obama

9. UNICEF is the United Nations Children’s Fund. 10. UNESCO is the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. 11. The entire Church Committee Reports are available at http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/contents.htm.

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has proposed legislation to Congress that would make going after investigative

journalists even easier.

As for me, how can I succumb to an academic research regime that, out of

fear of government reprisal, requires, in essence, complicity in the cover-‐up of

criminal or unsavory behavior by governmental actors? Does acquiescence to this

fear have the effect of making academic research that addresses real political

problems as irrelevant to citizens of conscience and action as the so-‐called

mainstream media? Right now, as I embark upon a new way to solve our problems

as a country and community in academia, I feel that an important tool, made

available to the public because of the sacrifices of conscientious whistleblowers, is

being taken away from us. I feel that criminals inside the government are

orchestrating a massive cover-‐up, insuring their impunity.

So, let me get busy deleting links, eliminating text, and undoing images in my

dissertation, ones that would have provided clear evidence to the people of the

United States that their government is actually engaged in behavior too offensive

otherwise to believe. Something important to the health of our country is certainly

being lost and for me, this is a sad recognition, indeed.

7

Introduction

“Chávez, Chávez, Chávez: El no murio, el se multiplico!” was the chant of the

crowd outside the National Assembly building after several days of mourning the

death of the first President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and just before

the newly installed President, Nicolas Maduro, names his Vice President.

This study investigates the legacy of Hugo Chávez as a powerful man who did

not shrink from his African heritage. Yet, it appears that the academic literature has

done just that, namely, avoided discussion of his racial heritage. Searches of

academic bibliographic indexes available in November 2013 yielded few results. For

example, searches of all EBSCO12-‐accessible databases on “Hugo Chávez” and

keywords for “race” (not indicating political campaigns or elections) yielded only a

handful of citations.13

Chávez, in an interview says “As a matter of fact, we have several

motherlands and one of the greatest motherlands of all is no doubt Africa. We love

Africa.” He goes on to say, “Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of

my big mouth, because of my curly hair. And I’m proud to have this mouth and this

hair, because it is African.” Chávez’s racial and ethnic heritage are important aspects

of Chávez’s identity and are overlooked or minimized in academic approaches to his

leadership of Venezuela as is reflected in the paucity of peer-‐reviewed literature

readily available on the subject. Yet, clearly, this aspect of Hugo Chávez was 12. EBSCO is a privately held U.S. multinational corporation that includes EBSCO Information Services, an online platform through which academic databases and bibliographic indexes can be accessed. 13. These keywords included “postcolonialism,” “embedded racism,” “racism,” “race,” “endoracismo,” “critical race theory,” “Latino Critical Theory,” “LatCrit,” and other terms.

8

important to him and was part of his political discourse. Interestingly, Chávez might

have equated race with Africa and not with his Indigenous roots. This holds for his

particular statements about his physical characteristics—his mouth and his hair.

The literature does discuss class issues in relation to Chávez’s appeal to

Venezuelans. From across the political spectrum, from followers of Marx to

advocates of Washington, D.C.’s neoliberal economic formulations amid

globalization, Chávez’s popular appeal was discussed in terms of his class appeal

and the class divide that he is often seen as representing. However, race and

ethnicity were hardly mentioned by these same writers, even when class is

experienced in relation to race in Latin America. For example, Damarys Canache and

Steve Ellner write penetrating articles in peer-‐reviewed journals about Bolivarian

Venezuela under Hugo Chávez. However, neither discusses the issue of race in

Venezuela.14 This confirms the taboo in Venezuela to talk about race and racism.15

For Hugo Chávez to address these issues openly and from his position as a president

was significant and points to his not shying away from taking risks in pursuit of

justice. One exception is the writing of Barry Cannon whose research brings the

racial aspect of Chávez’s identity and that of his supporters into stark relief. Cannon

writes:

14. See Damarys Canache, “From Bullets to Ballots: The Emergence of Popular Support for Hugo Chávez,” Latin American Politics and Society 44, no. 1 (2002): 69–90, doi:10.1111/j.1548-‐2456.2002.tb00197.x; and Steve Ellner, “Social and Political Diversity and the Democratic Road to Change in Venezuela,” Latin American Perspectives 40, no. 3 (2013): 63–82, doi: 10.1177/0094582X13476002. Race is not mentioned even in peer-‐reviewed articles examining Chávez’s base of political support in elections. 15. For a full discussion of “the racial state” of Venezuela, see Victoria Marie Jackson, Race and Politics in Venezuela (N.p.: Victoria Marie Jackson, 2014).

9

The class/race fusion is an essential element needed to explain Chávez’s continuing popularity but most political analysis has paid little attention to the impact of race on Venezuelan politics… Furthermore, and equally importantly, the paper seeks to show that race, or rather, racism, is an essential, but extremely subtle ingredient in opposition discourse rejecting Chávez and those who follow him.16

Jesus Maria Herrera Salas, himself a Venezuelan, exposes the racist

foundations of Chávez’s Venezuelan opposition when he writes that the “upper and

middle classes opposed to the process of change” regularly refer to Chávez

supporters as “ ‘vermin,’ ‘mixed-‐breeds,’ ‘Indians,’ ‘barefoot,’ and ‘rabble.’” He

explains that this is not a new phenomenon and has its roots in Venezuela history.

He writes, “This political economy of racism is nothing more than the historical

continuation of the long process of conquest and slavery of the Indigenous and

Afro-‐Venezuelan populations that began in 1496.”17 Racism occurs everyday in

Venezuela; Herrera Salas calls it the useful “ideology of the slave system and of

Spanish colonial society.”18 This everyday racism is something that

Afro-‐Venezuelans (as well as Venezuela’s Indigenous and the pardos—those who

are mixed with European, Indigenous, and African heritages—know very well.

Research on the practices associated with and the reactions of the targets of

everyday racism become important in the Venezuelan context.19

16. Barry Cannon, “Class/Race Polarisation in Venezuela and the Electoral Success of Hugo Chávez: A Break with the Past or the Song Remains the Same?” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 4 (2008): 732, doi:10.1080/01436590802075020. 17. Jesus Maria Herrera Salas, “Ethnicity and Revolution: The Political Economy of Racism in Venezuela,” Latin American Perspectives 32, no. 2 (2005): 72, doi:10.1177/0094582X04273869. 18. Ibid., 73. 19. For example, see Lauren E. Gulbas, “Embodying Racism: Race, Rhinoplasty, and Self-‐Esteem in Venezuela,” Qualitative Health Research 23, no. 3 (2013): 326–335, doi:10.1177/1049732312468335.

10

“Everyday Racism,” as theorized by Philomena Essed, demonstrates how

racism can become embedded in “routine and taken-‐for-‐granted practices and

procedures in everyday life.”20 Essed’s pioneering work, Understanding Everyday

Racism, sprang from her desire to research the lived experiences of the victims of

racism. She studied how racism operates in the United States and in the Netherlands

among well-‐educated Whites who denied that racism was a factor in their settings.

She wrote that her work “emerged from the need to make visible the lived

experience of racism and, more specifically, to analyze Black perceptions about

racism in everyday life.”21 Essed believes that the knowledge that Black people have

about racism is relevant, including in an academic sense. She writes, “racism is more

than structure and ideology.”22

Because of Venezuela’s long experience with slavery of some 300 years, and

its religious justification, Herrera Salas maintains that the “ideological influence of

the theology of slavery, however, extended well beyond the colonial period, since

the new dominant class of criollos preserved the system of slavery.”23 Herrera Salas

tells of the purposeful immigration policies instituted in Venezuela over the years to

preserve European domination by prohibiting Black immigration. Herrera Salas

calls this Venezuela’s the “whitening project.” He writes that the discourse of the

European Venezuelans was that they were the “civilizing agent,” while the “’inferior 20. Leonardo Partnership, “Everyday Racism at Workplace. How does it feel? (ERAW),” http://www.ch-‐e.eu/en/details-‐european-‐projects/everyday-‐racism-‐at-‐workplace-‐how-‐does-‐it-‐feel-‐eraw.html. 21. Philomena Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Theory (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1991), 1. 22. Ibid., 2. 23. Criollos, are the White descendants of the Spaniards born in the colony. From Herrera Salas, “Racism,” 75.

11

races,’ the Afro-‐Americans and Indigenous peoples, continued to be the ‘cause’ of the

country’s social ills.”24 This “whitening project” also known as blanqueamiento, was

not Venezuela’s alone, but was common in other Latin American countries, like

Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay which prohibited immigration of people of color.25

The institutionalization of racism as policy in Venezuela sought the forging of

a national identity that did not include either the Indigenous or the Afro-‐Venezuela

populations. Herrera Salas writes that the structures and practices of racism extant

in Venezuela were “initiated by the Spaniards and continued by the republican

criollos in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries [and are] still present in

Venezuela today.”26 Hugo Chávez had lived experiences of racism inside Venezuela.

Herrera Salas boldly writes:

The figure of President Chávez represents an important obstacle to the classism and racism of the Opposition. The fact that he expressly identifies himself as “Indian,” “Black,” or “mixed breed” transforms these supposed insults into positive qualities of which one may feel proud.

When publicly called “rabble” along with his followers, he answers, “Yes, we are the same ‘rabble’ that followed Bolivar.” The names that the President’s followers have given to the Bolivarian Circles [poverty reduction projects organized by the Bolivarian government] include those of Indigenous leaders who resisted the Spanish conquest and Afro-‐Venezuelan rebels such as José Leonardo Chirino and El “Negro” Felipe. It is evident, therefore, that his political discourse and the symbolic and cultural practice of the Bolivarian

24. Herrera Salas, “Racism,” 76. 25. For examples of “whitening” projects in other countries, see Tanya Kateri Hernandez, Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 26. Herrera Salas, “Racism,” 76. See also David Theo Goldberg, “Revealing Alchemies (On Racial Latinamericanization)” in The Threat of Race (Malden, MA: Wiley-‐Blackwell, 2009), 199–244.

12

Revolution have emphasized so-‐called national values, significantly reducing the occurrence of ethnic shame and endoracism27 in the popular sector.28

Hugo Chávez had a working knowledge of how racism functions on a

personal, community, national, and international level. This kind of knowledge is

important when investigating the legacy of Hugo Chávez. This research will make

visible his policies, his statements, and what others said about Chávez on the matter

of race, including, importantly, his “Letter to Africa,” which was written for the

purpose of delivering his message to the Africa South America Summit, just before

he died. Cannon, a scholar Irishman researching in Venezuela, wrote in 2008,

There is a racial subtext to [Chávez’s] support. On the one hand, the poor’s support for Chávez is based on the fact that he is like them: from a poor background and pardo (of mixed Indigenous, African, and European descent)… Conversely, the rejection of Chávez by parts of the middle and most of the upper classes in Venezuela is precisely a rejection of these very qualities: being poor and dark-‐skinned. This rejection is furthermore based on a deeply rooted historical rejection of the Black as being culturally and socially inferior to the White. . . . This association of the Black with backwardness remains strong in Venezuela, especially in terms of media depiction of the poor. Dark skin… is still associated with poverty and, the darker the skin, the more likely that the person will belong to the poorer sections of society.29

The above quote summarizes the importance of studying the meaning and

role of race in relation to Chávez’ leadership. What kind of leader was Chávez; what

did he do with this specialized knowledge of how race works locally and globally,

and, specifically, how African-‐descendant racial identity works in the South

American setting? This study will look at his leadership and how he used his power

combined with this knowledge to affect the lives of people close to him and far away 27. Endoracism or endoracismo are respectively English and Spanish terms for internalized racism. 28. Herrera Salas, “Racism,” 86. 29. Cannon, “Class/Race Polarisation,” 734.

13

from him. Chávez was significant for his direct impact on the lives of people of

Venezuela. But Chávez’s reach extended far beyond the boundaries of Venezuela, as

we will see. One publication printed an article that called him “The Everywhere

Man” with the subhead, “Oil money and an expansive ideology mean that Chávez’s

influence knows no bounds.”30 From the left, Ellner reviewed a book entitled

“Venezuela’s Petro-‐Diplomacy” and from the right Thomas Friedman critiqued

Chávez’s foreign policy in the journal, Foreign Policy.31 Because he celebrated his

pardo identity, which was an unusual thing to do in his country, Indigenous people

and Black people inside Venezuela and around the world paid attention to him.32

Even in Latin American countries that celebrate a mixed-‐race identity, the political

and economic power is still White dominated. This aspect of state policy and racial

practice will be explored further in the second and fourth chapters. Chávez’s

promotion of the interests of marginalized and oppressed people of color, combined

with his global reach, put him at the leading edge of what former World Bank

President James Wolfensohn, in speaking to a group of graduate students at

Stanford University, called a “tectonic shift,” one that is “turning the world on its

head.” Chávez, from this vantage is one part of the forces putting to an end

30. Katherine Yester, “The Everywhere Man,” Foreign Policy, (October 19, 2009): 38, http://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/19/the-‐everywhere-‐man/. 31. See Steve Ellner, Review of Venezuela’s Petro-‐Diplomacy: Hugo Chávez’s Foreign Policy, by Ralph S. Clem and Anthony P. Maingot, Journal of Latin American Studies 44, no. 1 (2012): 202–204, doi:10.1017/S0022216X11001349; and Thomas Friedman, “The First Law of Petropolitics,” Foreign Policy 154 (May/June 2006): 28–36, http://nghiencuuquocte.net/wp-‐content/uploads/2013/09/The-‐First-‐Law-‐of-‐Petropolitics-‐friedman.pdf 32. Kateri Hernandez in Racial Subordination and Goldberg in “Revealing Alchemies,” show the role of mestizaje in maintaining White political and economic domination in Brazil and throughout Latin America.

14

European global domination and that include the economic and political rise of

China and India, and their alliance with the projected two billion people on the

African continent by the year 2050. Wolfensohn states in his speech:

It was a balance where you knew you were the rich countries, the powerful countries; and all the organs of running the world were designed to accommodate that fact. . . . The Western countries were able to stay ahead firstly because of manufacturing. Well, that got taken out and manufacturing moved to Asia. The second thing that happened after that was that in service industries, it moved to the Western countries and now that’s been taken out, in terms of Asian dominance in the service areas. And thirdly, was in technology, we were able to stay ahead… the technological advance has now shifted as well. So, the challenge for our country is, what the hell is it that’s going to be left for us, if Asia is eating our lunch and dinner in terms of the things that we used to be able to do. And it’s not just the United States. It is truly that group of the so-‐called billion plus that were previously the dominant factor who had 80% of the world’s GDP… If it were me, today, the number one thing that I would be thinking about … is that the 80–20 rule which I had comfortably in my hip pocket is going to be a 35-‐65 rule and that puts a challenge of dramatic proportions to anybody who is in a business school today. 33

What is the appropriate leadership response when you know that the system

as it is currently designed contributes to your oppression? According to Ray

Winbush, one can side with the initiators of the oppression and become a

collaborator, one can become a victim of such oppression, or one can resist

becoming either a collaborator or a victim.34

Not only is the legacy of Hugo Chávez important for the reasons already

mentioned, his leadership is also deeply important to me. As a person of African

heritage who grew up in the Southern part of the United States, I know what it is like

33. “Former World Bank President: Big Shift Coming,” YouTube video, 51:21, from an address by James D. Wolfensohn to Stanford University Graduate School of Business, posted by to Stanford University Graduate School of Business, January 29, 2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a0zhc1y_Ns&feature=youtu.be. 34. Ray Winbush, interview with the author, November 30, 2013.

15

to know racism. Because of the experiences of my great-‐grandmother who could

“pass” for White but refused to do so, I know what rejection of White privilege and,

instead, insistence on identity, pride and dignity mean to individuals from

oppressed groups. I ask myself why the legacy of Hugo Chávez is important—yes,

his challenge to the Washington Consensus of neoliberal economics is central; but

what is even more important to me is his assertion of dignity for people of African

descent. Hugo Chávez had a certain kind of knowledge that I, too, share. It makes us

intimates, in a way. And how he acted on that knowledge can be instructive to me

(and others): what to do and what not to do as one attempts to lead change.

According to Essed, “knowledge of racism must be defined as a special form

of political knowledge” worthy of academic inquiry.35 Indeed, for me, Hugo Chávez’s

challenge to the Washington Consensus36 also amounts to an assertion of pride and

dignity for all who are oppressed under today’s edifice of global domination,

inherited by the descendants of the colonizers and the colonized.

Second order change (transformational change), according to Amir Levy, is

the kind of change that goes all the way to the core of an individual, organization, or

even an entire country. Levy writes that second order change involves, “changes in

the core processes, in mission and purpose, in culture, and in organizational world

view or paradigm.” Levy adds that, “the less visible the dimension, the deeper the

35. Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism, 9. 36. “Washington Consensus” denotes the set of economic policies promoted by multilateral institutions based in Washington, D.C. (the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) and also subscribed to by the U.S. Treasury. These policy prescriptions were almost exclusively enforced on Third World (non-‐European) lesser-‐developed countries (LDC’s). It connotes, more broadly, these economic policies and the U.S. foreign policy that undergirds them.

16

change and the greater the possibility that the change will be irreversible.”37 I

believe that Hugo Chávez represented leadership that attempted to inaugurate

second order change, not only in Venezuela, but also across the world—those who

share experiences of marginalization and who try to problematize repression and

marginalization. Leadership that successfully addresses and changes that 80-‐20,

Washington Consensus paradigm will, as Wolfensohn told the Stanford Business

School, “turn the world on its head.”38

Thus, considering the factor of race, the basic question that this research

seeks to answer is, “What is the racial legacy of Hugo Chávez?” When faced with the

knowledge of how a system of oppression operates, one can resist, one can be a

bystander, or one can collaborate.39 Given his challenge to the neoliberal40 economic

agenda, known as the Washington Consensus, given his challenge to everyday

racism that masks institutional structures and personal conventions that serve to

embed power and privilege in the hands of an identifiable few, how did Hugo Chávez

speak his truth to power? By speaking to and for the marginalized? By mobilizing

the marginalized for ideas like liberty and dignity? By inspiring new leaders among

the marginalized?

37. Amir Levy, “Second-‐Order Planned Change: Definition and Conceptualization,” Organizational Dynamics 15, no.1, (1986): 20, doi:10.1016/0090-‐2616(86)90022-‐7. 38. Wolfensohn, “Former World Bank President: Big Shift.” 39. See Kristina Thalhammer et al., Courageous Resistance: The Power of Ordinary People (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007). 40. “Neoliberalism” will be discussed later in this chapter. It is the economic policy that characterizes the Washington Consensus of today: privatization, deregulation, and free market capitalism that is said to have overtaken the state and its responsibilities to its citizens.

17

Tommy Curry decries the exclusion of Black sources in research on racism.

He claims that the “exclusion of Black thinkers as sources of philosophical insight on

racism” is “hegemonic.” He writes that this tradition “perpetuate[s] the under

specialization of race theory.” He concludes that “specific practices in the discipline

of philosophy continue to bar Blacks and non-‐European descended peoples from

describing, addressing, and producing scholarship from their own culturally

relevant experience.”41 Curry refers to the current practices as a type of “Ideo-‐Racial

Apartheid” and calls for a “rigorous engagement with race theory.”42 Curry’s call has

been heard. This research will be distinguished in its subject matter, “The Legacy of

Hugo Chávez on Race,” but also in how that legacy will be approached and whose

opinions and ideas will be solicited and included. It must be kept in mind, however,

that a Black view might represent internalized racism while a White critical view

might well respect the dignity of people of color.

The second chapter will involve a discussion of the philosophy that guided

the literature review. While taking a figurative “snapshot” of the extant literature in

general and specific items, an explanation of why articles were or were not selected

for inclusion in the dissertation will also be covered.

Because this research also involves the issue of race, race theory and critical

race theory will be important search topics. An interesting aspect of the various

search strategies utilized in order to obtain information on the extant literature on

the subject, is its fragmentation or balkanization. In order to produce a 41. Tommy Curry, “Concerning the Underspecialization of Race Theory in American Philosophy: How the Exclusion of Black Sources Affects the Field,” The Pluralist 5, no. 1 (2010): 45, doi:10.1353/plu.0.0042. 42. Ibid., 54.

18

comprehensive snapshot of the literature that addresses race as a standalone

subject term, relevant literature was found under eighteen different headings.43

There is also a huge body of literature on the intersectionality of race and other

factors, such as class, gender, and other structural factors.

Using deep search methods, close to three hundred relevant citations were

found, but zero emerged when several of these terms were combined with the name

“Hugo Chávez.”

The third chapter will describe the research methodology and the rationale

for the chosen methods. It will include as well a rationale for selection of

participants, U.S. Government documents, Venezuelan Government documents,

Chávez statements, as well as official Chávez policies pursued in the area of race.

The purpose of this research positions it clearly inside the realm of critical

theory in that it seeks to “be simultaneously explanatory, practical, and

normative.”44 This research will also seek to tell an interesting story. But this is not

my story. The story will belong to the people who are interviewed and whose voices

will be heard as authentically as they deliver their experiences and opinions. This

story will belong also to the less animated documents of history reflecting official

government actions. Most importantly, this story will belong to Hugo Chávez and the

people he touched. I interviewed people who worked with him as well as people

who knew of him and his work. It is clear that Hugo Chávez remains a controversial

figure and some in the public sphere hesitated to go on the record with their 43. Appendix A contains results of the eighteen literature search terms as paired with the name “Hugo Chávez.” 44. Seppo Poutanen and Anne Kovalainen, “Critical Theory” in Encyclopedia of Case Study Research, ed. Albert J. Mills et al. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2010), 264.

19

assessment of the Chávez legacy. This provides a limitation on the study as some

who were asked to participate refused; a profile of those who agreed, as well as of

those who declined to be interviewed might be a useful part of our analysis.

This research studies what Hugo Chávez did on the issue of color as a leader

of color, what his legacy is, and why his acknowledgment and pride in his African

heritage is an important flower in the centerpiece of his legacy. Also, what does his

kind of leadership mean for the future? Was his the kind of leadership that other

people of color should emulate or avoid? What are the characteristics shared by the

leaders mentioned in Hugo Chávez’s “A Letter to Africa”? I intend to explore these

types of questions and answers that will arise during the course of this research.

Finally, the formulation here is not something that I had in mind when I

started this project; it has emerged, primarily, as a result of working on a video 45 of

Chávez’s “A Letter to Africa,” as I realized that many of the names invoked therein

were leaders on the world stage who did not live long enough to see the results of

their work. This, in turn, led me to contemplate the nature of this kind of leadership,

why it stalks danger, and what could be done to protect the lives of such leaders.

The process of oppression can be never-‐ending if the people are not able to sustain

transformational, Parrhesiastic46 leadership that can put them on the road to

liberation.

45. “Hugo Chávez Letter to Africa,” YouTube video, 5:12, posted by Cynthia McKinney, July 8, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChwbB_zwQrw. 46. Parrhesia, which is discussed in the second chapter, is leadership that takes freedom of speech as an obligation, to tell the truth to power, even at risk of losing that freedom.

20

Literature Review: The Social, Economic, and Political Context Of Hugo Chávez’s Leadership

The Genesis of This Research Project

I have been fascinated with Hugo Chávez ever since I attended a town hall

meeting of his that lasted well into the wee hours of the next morning. People from

all over Caracas, and probably all over Venezuela, had lined up to have a one-‐on-‐one

session with their President. It was exactly the same procedure that I had done

during my District Days while I was in Congress: I would set up shop with the

Congressional Staff at a pre-‐publicized location in the U.S. House District that I

represented and stay there all day (and all night if it took it) to see the Constituents

that brought their issues and problems to me. During this process, I had many all

day/all night sessions with my Constituents—but a President? Well, that is exactly

what happened. President Chávez was having a District Day! And I sat there with

him—in the audience, among the people—until about 1:00 a.m. until the last

Venezuelan had been served. Thus began my fascination with the leadership of Hugo

Chávez.

What struck me was the service. The dedication. The commitment. The trust.

The love. What else could explain this kind of openness? I know how my District

Days made my constituents and me feel; there must have been that same kind of

connection between the people in the room and their President.

And then, I asked myself, “When was the last time the people of the United

States had a District Day with their President?”

I was further convinced of the strong connection between Chávez and the

people, el pueblo, when I traveled to Venezuela during the mourning for its

21

President who had died of cancer on March 5, 2013. I have often been interviewed

on Pacifica Radio Stations about the feelings that gushed throughout my body as I

stood in the midst of one of the largest crowds I have ever been in. In no way could I

experience, even vicariously, the sense of loss of the Venezuelan people. I did,

however, have a sense of loss, myself. This is how I had come to perceive and

experience Hugo Chávez, because gone was a champion of the poor who even

offered heating oil to the poor in the United States.47 Gone was a leader in every

sense of that word, who took on the challenges that the unwanted face everyday,

because he had faced and overcome those challenges, too. And even more than all of

that, Hugo Chávez addressed the all-‐important identity question that has plagued

those of us who have been colonized in one way or another for the past five hundred

years of European domination of the New World (the Western Hemisphere that was

new to them) and since that time, the entire world.

In my view, Hugo Chávez sought justice for the neglected people of

Venezuela, especially the Indigenous who owned the land that was conquered by the

Europeans, and the descendants of the enslaved Africans, transported to the New

World to provide the labor; thereby, the Indigenous throughout the Americas and

the Africans helped to build the magnificent city centers in Europe. The descendants

of the Europeans who settled in the New World protect their privileged positions up

to today. It was this entrenched power, that stemmed from European domination,

that was also based on race, that Hugo Chávez challenged. The Indigenous and

47. Ian James, “Chávez Boosts Heating Oil Program for U.S. Poor; Goes After Bush Again,” Washington Post, September 21, 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-‐dyn/content/article/2006/09/21/AR2006092101163.html.

22

African descendants and those who were mixed—a combination of the two, were

condemned to lives of indigence and ignominy. Those who were White, descendants

of the European settlers, were transformed into an oligarchy for whom the economy

and the Venezuelan polity were constructed. Hugo Chávez challenged that power

and injustice inside Venezuela and he challenged what European domination means

for the rest of the world. He sought to correct the global structural injustice based on

race that resulted from colonialism, neocolonialism, globalization, and its

incarnation today—neoliberalism.48

Hugo Chávez’s message was also one of liberty and sovereignty for peoples

and countries. This would necessitate the transformation of today’s system of

injustice into a system where everyone had rights that were to be respected,

including Mother Earth. Therefore Chávez built new institutions that reflected these

values.

For the purpose of this dissertation, most importantly and probably

foundational to all that has been mentioned above is identity. Hugo Chávez

championed his own identity and his African roots. He spoke proudly of his African

heritage and of “Mother Africa.” He was the first Latin American president to do so.

Because of this appreciation for the multifaceted robustness of the leadership of

Hugo Chávez, I decided to study his legacy with a special emphasis on race. I

recognize that this puts me in a peculiar situation: I must acknowledge that I am

working from a position of bias. I will balance this by putting Chávez’s leadership

48. Neoliberalism, which will be described in detail below, is a set of government policies that favor laissez-‐faire economic activity designed to allow market forces to shape public policy.

23

and race in the broader context of Latin American, leadership models in Latin

America and Africa, and the relationship between Chávez and the United States. My

challenge will be to provide a portrait of Chávez that is new—his advocacy of

liberation with a lens on race—without being uncritical of his leadership in general

and relevant critiques of any Presidential leader.

Researching the legacy of Hugo Chávez’s leadership with a lens on race will

require an examination of the literature along the following major themes: Social,

Economic, and Political Context of the Hugo Chávez Legacy; The Role of Race in

Latin America and Venezuela; Latin American Liberation of the Oppressed and Its

Influence on Chávez; and Political Leadership: Leading Powerful Change.

A Note on the Philosophy of This Literature Review

This research examines the legacy of Hugo Chávez. It explores that legacy

with a focus on an understudied aspect of his identity: race. However, should the

literature considered in this research be exhaustive of the literature on the four

major themes identified or should it be more narrowly tailored just to that pertinent

to considerations of Hugo Chávez’s legacy on race? Joseph Maxwell and David Boote

and Penny Beile have definite ideas on how a dissertation researcher should

proceed.

Joseph Maxwell believes that a dissertation literature review should be

guided by the needs of the research being done in the dissertation. He makes the

distinction between scholarly literature reviews that serve the purpose of informing

on the state of the literature in any given field, which one would then expect to be

expansive in nature, and literature that is undertaken for the purposes of

24

performing research. He writes that a dissertation literature review is “primarily” a

review “for rather than of research.”49 Accordingly, the dissertation literature review

need not be an exhaustive listing of the literature that is available in any given

subject, but should focus on the appropriate background for a research project.

Maxwell indicates that narrow tailoring is called for in a dissertation literature

review and writes, “Relevance, rather than thoroughness or comprehensiveness, is

the essential characteristic of literature reviews in most scholarly work.”50 Maxwell

suggests that the literature review of a dissertation be treated as a “conceptual

framework” for a research project. Boote and Beile have a different idea.

Boote and Beile51 believe that the dissertation is one of the “key cultural

artifacts of academic learning” and that earning a doctorate requires a more

expansive, maximalist approach on dissertation literature reviews. They conclude

that the responsibility belongs to the student to capture the existing literature

successfully and to decide thoughtfully and purposefully what literature to include

in the review. They also write that the literature reviewed should be up to date.

Therefore, this dissertation literature review will seek to use the Maxwell standard

of relevance rather than expansiveness and the Boote and Beile standard of

up-‐to-‐date-‐ness for all literature other than that defined as foundational to each of

our themes. Unless indicated otherwise, all literature reviewed will be from

49. Joseph A. Maxwell, “Literature Reviews of, and for Educational Research: A Commentary on Boote and Beile’s ‘Scholars before Researchers,’ ” Educational Researcher 35, no. 9 (2006): 28, doi:10.3102/0013189X035009028. 50. Ibid., 29. 51. David N. Boote and Penny Beile, “Scholars before Researchers: On the Centrality of the Dissertation Literature Review in Research Preparation,” Educational Researcher 34, no. 3 (2005): 7–9, doi:10.3102/0013189X034006003.

25

peer-‐reviewed journals and other scholarly studies. If dissertation literature

reviews are like the background music that sets the tempo and the mood for a

popular song, then we should probably set this one to a punta beat that elides to

salsa.52

The Important Literature: Leadership, Politics, and Race

In order to undertake this research, I intend to look at the literature that I

believe is critical toward developing an understanding of the type of leadership and

legacy that Hugo Chávez provided on the matter of race. Therefore, literature on

leadership, politics, and race is important. As a method of capturing the full extent of

the literature on race, I found it necessary to search on eighteen terms that included:

“ethnic diversity,” “social justice,” “multiculturalism,” “Negritude,” “embedded

racism,” “subaltern,” “other,” “Latino Critical Theory,” and more. When each of these

eighteen terms was combined with “Hugo Chávez,” the dearth of research on Chávez

through this lens became clear.53

In addition, it is important to contextualize the discussion specifically around

the factors that led to Hugo Chávez’s rise in Venezuela and then, once on the

national scene, how his discourse and his policies catapulted him to international

prominence. I believe that he received such prominence because of the uniqueness

of his approach to race in the Venezuelan and Latin American settings. Hugo Chávez 52. Punta is a traditional form of music of Africans transported to the Americas in the slave trade; Salsa is a combination of the influences of African rhythms and the Spanish language, especially Cuban and Puerto Rican influences. Many examples of punta can be readily found on YouTube, for example, see (and hear) “Dancing Punta – Music Video – Nuru,” YouTube video, 5:14, posted by “goastafa”, September 14, 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynVPIod9lE8. 53. See Appendix A for all eighteen of the search terms and the number of citations produced when Hugo Chávez was added with each of the search terms.

26

transformed into someone who was not shy about talking about a despised race, as

his own racial identity. This made him unique. In fact, Hugo Chávez was the first

South American President to proclaim—and proudly at that—his African heritage.

Therefore, because of his willingness to accept whatever the baggage was that came

along with being non-‐European in the Venezuelan and Latin American settings,

Chávez was ultimately able to speak to a population in a way that affirmed their own

identity. As a result, literature that deals with the inner workings of domination and

oppression based on race is important.

Most who recognize the name of Hugo Chávez recognize it around his

struggle against domination of Venezuela by the United States and its neoliberal

agenda, viewed by some as merely an extension of colonialism that was

accompanied by genocide of the Indigenous and enslavement of trafficked Africans:

neocolonialism; and globalization. By extension, those who became a part of the

attentive public looking on while Hugo Chávez led, were especially, but not solely,

non-‐European people of the region and people of African descent everywhere.

Consequently, literature that discusses race in conjunction with each of these

periods (neoliberal, globalization, neocolonial, colonial) is also important. I will

begin with a discussion of neoliberalism and its effects because that is the most

recent incarnation of what some would say has been the linear pursuit of

European-‐style domination by the United States toward non-‐European countries in

its political and economic policies.

After Chávez became the leader that many of us think we know, the issue

moves directly to the question of what kind of leader he actually was. In this

27

exploration of the leadership and legacy of Hugo Chávez on the issue of race,

literature on leadership and liberation will be included in this review. Specifically, I

will review literature situating Hugo Chávez in the racially-‐charged setting of Latin

America at a time of European domination where the protagonist takes on the

leadership of the United States in its policy prescriptions, for and in the

non-‐European world. This dissertation constructs a particular version of Chávez’s

leadership based on its sources, their transparency, and the reader’s ability to

critique that.

Finally, I would also like to consider the role of those who benefit from unjust

structures and, yet, who want to change these by initiating powerful change. In the

end, that is exactly what Hugo Chávez was trying to do. He was leading powerful

change through his political leadership. I believe that the leadership of Hugo Chávez

on race demonstrates what is possible when one becomes “free” and liberated of the

burden that racial domination can produce for many people of color.

Structure of This Chapter

Having described the philosophy of the literature review, this chapter is

divided into four sections. The first section sets out the context of Hugo Chavez’s

legacy. It is in this section, “Social, Economic, and Political Context of Hugo Chávez’s

Legacy,” that I will discuss the factors that led to Chávez’s rise inside of Venezuela:

The Punto Fijo Pact, by which relations were negotiated among Venezuela’s political

parties; the Caracazo that closed the casket on the Punto Fijo Pact; and Hugo

Chávez’s failed 1992 coup attempt against Venezuela’s compliant, neoliberal state

then led by President Carlos Andrés Perez. This section ends in 1998, when Chávez

28

is elected President. The authors who have been explored in this section write

specifically about these aspects of Venezuela and Hugo Chávez’s rise to power. This

section explains what it is that Hugo Chávez felt compelled to fight.

The section entitled, “Role of Race in Latin America and Venezuela,” covers

the literature on colonialism, Eurocentrism, and racism. I believe, as the literature

also reflects, that the conquest of the peoples of The Americas, when combined with

the treatment of trafficked Africans during (and after) the Trans-‐Atlantic Slave

Trade, constitute a historical continuity in the creation of the political world—its

structures, institutions, norms, and assumptions—that lives on with us today. It is

explicitly my contention that the various iterations of the Washington Consensus

stem from this time, assuring the continued global domination of the former

colonizers over those who were colonized. It is against this set of policies,

structures, and assumptions that Hugo Chávez struggled. And the second chapter

also examines the spawn of colonialism in Hugo Chávez’s context. It is this section

that provides background on the racial context within which Chávez was steeped.

The authors included in this Section begin at the beginning—that is with colonialism

and its impact on both the colonizer and the colonized. The one thing that the

authors have in common is their view of colonialism and its power in the non-‐

European setting: a power that remains until today. This section describes who it is

that Hugo Chávez felt compelled to fight, what Chávez would have had to overcome

in order to speak directly to them and then, ultimately, to fight them.

The third section of this chapter is entitled “Liberation of the Oppressed and

Its Influence on Chávez.” Here, I will situate Chávez in the midst of practitioners and

29

theorists of resistance who are instructive on how the fight for liberation is to be

waged. Chávez situated himself in the tradition of Simon Bolivar. However, other

experiences are instructive, and fit the Venezuelan situation better than the rigid

Marxist prescription for revolution in Europe. I believe these experiences warrant a

closer look when in search of guidance for an examination of Hugo Chávez’s

leadership and legacy on race. Therefore, it is here that some practitioners of

resistance who also have a relationship with Chávez will be discussed. Theorists

ruminating on old and new ways of resisting, especially ones manifesting now in

Latin America, will also be discussed.

The final section is “Battling the : When Transformational Leadership

Becomes Leadership on the Line.” There I will explore leadership models and real

life Latin American leadership examples that situate Hugo Chávez’s struggle. It is

here that, in particular, examples of Leadership on the Line, Fidel Castro and Omar

Torrijos, are explored. Parrhesia, a unique type of leadership is also discussed. It is

in this section, also, that the dangers in this kind of leadership will be discussed,

because one cannot lead powerful political change, as Hugo Chávez did, without also

courting danger, risk, and sometimes, even death. Finally, the Politics of the Un will

be discussed in connection with the creation of the moment when revolutionary or

transformational change is possible.

Social, Economic, and Political Context of Hugo Chávez: 1958–1998

The Punto Fijo Pact

Hugo Chávez rose to international prominence because of the unique

circumstances that existed in Venezuela in 1998, the year of his election to

30

Venezuela’s Presidency. George Ciccariello-‐Maher writes in We Created Chávez,54

that the Bolivarian Revolution came about as a result of the vibrancy of the social

movements in Venezuela that preceded Chávez’s eruption onto the national scene.

Those social movements included armed struggle that resulted in a guerrilla

movement whose aim was freedom from the dictatorship of the Venezuelan

oligarchy in its various political forms. Venezuela had been a military dictatorship

for most of the years between1830 and 1958. In 1958, Venezuela’s three

mainstream political parties, Accion Democratica (Democratic Action), Partido Social

Cristiano (COPEI), and Union Republicana Democratica (URD) came together in a

power-‐sharing agreement, known as the Punto Fijo Pact, that negotiated the limits

of change in the newly democratic Venezuelan polity.55 This agreement included

freedom to vote, depersonalization of debate, the maintenance of a united front, and

the elimination of inter-‐party violence. This agreement guaranteed that the victor of

elections would have the right to govern and that they all would defend each other

in the event of a coup. The three parties also committed themselves to strengthening

democratic processes in Venezuela. Also, each party agreed to select only one

presidential candidate and to establish an inter-‐party committee to oversee

compliance of the Pact, which was signed on October 31, 1958.

In reality, this arrangement allowed Accion Democratica (AD) to gain the

presidency five times and COPEI three times and excluded both the far right and the

54. George Ciccariello-‐Maher, We Created Chávez (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013). 55. For full text of pact see “Pacto de Punto Fijo,” http://analitica.com/opinion/opinion-‐nacional/pacto-‐de-‐punto-‐fijo/.

31

far left.56 The URD eventually left the Pact because of a dispute over its support for

the Cuban Revolution and the government’s crackdown on students who supported

its position. The Venezuelan military was sent onto the campus of Central

Venezuelan University and this caused the URD members who were in the Cabinet

of the National Unity Government to resign. The Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV)

and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), not party to the Punto Fijo Pact, were

banned as political parties soon after the Pact took force. Puntofijismo also marked

the idea of classless, non-‐polarizing politics, according to Andres Serbin, writing in

2010.57 He says, however, that polarization in Venezuelan society began in the

decade of the 1980s as the economy deteriorated and continued thereafter. Punto

Fijo proved to be nothing more than a kind of Concert of the Elites between AD and

COPEI. Webber adds that the Punto Fijo Pact caused the reformist AD to moderate

those inclinations.58 Eventually even organized labor collaborated with

Puntofijoismo and “capitulated”59 to neoliberalism in the 1990s. This marked the

beginning of the decline in relevance to the people of Venezuela of the main political

parties.

Philip Klitzberger, focuses on the media wars that engulfed the new Left

Presidents of South America: Chávez, Morales (Bolivia), Kirchner (Argentina), and

Correa (Ecuador). He writes that the media also played a role in the decline of the

56. Ciccariello-‐Maher, We Created, 25. 57. Andres Serbin, Chávez, Venezuela y la Reconfiguracion Politica de America Latina y El Caribe (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2010), 35. 58. Jeffery R. Webber, “Venezuela under Chávez: The Prospects and Limitations of Twenty-‐First Century Socialism, 1999–2009,” Socialist Studies, 6, no. 1 (2010): 11–44, https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/sss/article/view/23673/17557. 59. Ibid., 27.

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relevance of the Punto Fijo political parties because of its focus on the corruption of

Venezuela’s political class.60 And Barry Cannon writes that there was an

undercurrent of resentment from the Left that eventually erupted. The system of

Puntafijoismo had lent the appearance of consensus to a system that did not

accurately reflect what was happening just beneath the surface. Mass alienation,

writes Cannon, was the result of the government’s neoliberal turn.61

Meanwhile, the success of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 had inspired an

armed struggle in Venezuela that was buoyed with optimism. Fidel Castro had

managed to overthrow the -‐backed administration of Fulgencio Batista in Cuba;

Venezuelans thought they would be able to do the same. Reality crashed that

optimism as the effort was defeated. However, the state began to suppress the

post-‐Cuban armed struggle in Venezuela. It was this repression that secured the

support of Hugo Chávez for Revolution. At the same the Leftists realized that they

needed the military if their plans for revolutionary change in Venezuela were ever

going to be effective.

Chávez had joined the military to escape his life on the plains of Venezuela.

While in the military, he rose quickly through the ranks. He studied political science

and military strategy. He had been well steeped in political ideas through his

friendships and associations at home in Barinas. In Caracas, at the military school,

he learned about the nationalist military leaders of Panama, General Omar Torrijos,

60. Philip Kitzberger, “Giro a la Izquierda, Populismo y Activismo Gubernamental en la Esfera Publica Mediatica in America Latina,” in Poder Politico Y Medios de Communicacion: De la Representacion Politica al Reality Show, ed. Bernardo Sorj (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2010), 61–100. 61. Cannon, “Class/Race Polarisation,” 739.

33

and of Peru, General Juan Velasco Alvarado. After seeing the overthrow of Allende in

Chile and the installation of Pinochet there, he wrote, “With Torrijos, I became a

Torrijist. With Velasco, I became a Velasquist. And with Pinochet, I became an

anti-‐Pinochetist.”62

In the military, Chávez became head of a communications unit that allowed

him to have a regular radio show and a column in El Espacio, a newspaper. Chávez

was an avid reader and one of the books that he read while in the barracks was The

Green Book, written by fellow military man, Libyan Colonel Muammar Qaddafi. He

also read Ché Guevara. According to Cristina Marcano and Alberto Berrera Tyszka

writing in Hugo Chávez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela’s Controversial

President, Chávez also saw the impact of the guerrilla struggle that pitted peasant

guerrillas against peasant soldiers. Chávez confronted himself and asked himself

important questions that would shape his future. Chávez began to work for

revolution in Venezuela while inside the military. His brother, Adan Chávez Frias,

became important connective tissue between the leftists outside the military and a

nucleus of officers and soldiers inside the military.

Chávez’s brother, Adan, was an activist with the banned MIR. Although a

Physics Professor he trained at the University of the Andes, was steeped in the

politics of liberation, including the armed struggle. Even though Hugo Chávez chose

the military, through his brother, he remained in contact with the guerillas and

learned that there were members of the Venezuelan military who were working

62. Quoted in Cristina Marcano and Alberto Berrera Tyszka, Hugo Chávez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela’s Controversial President (New York: Random House, 2006), 36-‐37.

34

with the leftists in order to create a movement comprised of both civilian and

military elements that one day would create a revolution in Venezuela. Marcano and

Barrera Tyszka write that Chávez’s brother, Adan, had a powerful effect on Chávez’s

political thinking.63

With the leftist political parties banned in Venezuela and the failure of its

armed struggle, those who opposed the oligarchic political and economic structure

of Venezuelan society had few options left to them. At the same time, the Venezuelan

economy was failing, too. The Punto Fijo Pact finally failed in 1989 when the poor

descended from the hills that housed their barrios and erupted onto the streets of

Caracas. With the economy failing, the Venezuelan government sought loans from

the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that required its standard structural

adjustment prescriptions of devaluation of Venezuela’s currency, privatization of

state-‐owned companies, and the elimination of subsidies on essential items,

including gasoline. These policies are known today as neoliberalism. On February

27, 1989, the people spoke and deflated any appearance of consensus that might

have been miscalculated with the IMF’s economic agenda. The protests lasted for

one week. While the Leftists had been plotting revolution for years, the people on

the streets were about to make one. On March 3, 1989, Venezuelan President Carlos

Andres Perez received a phone call from U.S. President Bush to ensure that

Venezuela would not turn back on its neoliberal commitments—even at the expense

63. Marcano and Barrera Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, 46.

35

of the people and Perez’s Presidency.64 Basically, President Bush offered no help,

just a word of encouragement to stick with the necessary neoliberal agenda that the

IMF65 had prescribed for Venezuela. Henry Dietz and David Myers write that by

1988, Venezuela had experienced total party system collapse that lasted until

2000.66

Leading up to the Caracazo, so-‐called because it was the rebellion that dealt a

knock-‐out blow to Caracas politics, Venezuela’s economy was in a tailspin. Indeed,

the decade of the 1980s has been described as an economic “disaster” for Venezuela

with “growth” estimated at minus 1.9%.67 As the economy worsened, social

movements became more active. Protest movements were marked by work

stoppages, protest marches, student actions, and occupations.68 Puntofijismo, in its

death throes, was proven to be what many on the Left suspected: it was a political

agreement to exclude radicalism, but also to exclude any discussion of

dissatisfaction or dissent from the apparent consensus between the rich and the

64. George H.W. Bush to Carlos Andres Perez, March 3, 1989, “Memorandum of Conversation,” http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/pdfs/memcons_telcons /1989-‐03-‐03-‐-‐Perez.pdf. 65. The United States is the largest shareholder in the IMF. 66. Henry A. Dietz and David J. Myers, “From Thaw to Deluge: Party System Collapse in Venezuela and Peru,” Latin American Politics and Society 49, no. 2 (2007): 59–86, doi:10.1111/j.1548-2456.2007.tb00407.x. 67. In fact the period from the 1960s to the 1990s could be considered an economic disaster for Venezuela with negative “growth” throughout the period. See Hugo J. Faria, “Hugo Chávez Against the Backdrop of Venezuelan Economic and Political History,” The Independent Review 12, no. 4 (Spring 2008): 519–535, https://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_12_04_2_faria.pdf. 68. Margarita Lopez-‐Maya, “Venezuela after the Caracazo: Forms of Protest in a Deinstitutionalized context,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 21, no. 2 (2002): 199–218, doi:10.1111/1470-‐9856.00040.

36

poor.69 Puntafijismo had taken class off the table. It also exposed the collusion

between organized labor, the Church, the Venezuelan military, and big business.

Victor Figueroa writes that this confluence of interests allowed the government to

proceed while paying scant attention to the needs of the people.70 It was this

combination of circumstances that led to the Caracazo and thereafter, two coup

attempts, one led by Hugo Chávez that resulted in his imprisonment. Ironically, it

was this coup attempt that led to the political opening that permitted the emergence

of Hugo Chávez onto the national scene in Venezuela. But the country would not

have been ready for that emergence without the Caracazo.

The Caracazo

According to Edgardo Lander, a professor at Universidad Central de

Venezuela, approximately five hundred to three thousand people lost their lives in

the government’s clampdown against the mobilization of the masses before and

after the Caracazo.71 According to Cannon, it was the Caracazo that put class issues

back on the table.72 In December 1988, Carlos Andres Perez, who had campaigned

against austerity, was elected to Venezuela’s Presidency. Within days of his

69. Nairbis Sibrian and Mario Millones Espinosa, “Antagonismo y Disenso: Tensiones y Limites en la Construccion Mediatica de la Politica en Venezuela,” Iconos: Revista de Ciencias Sociales 46 (2013): 49–65, doi:10.17141/iconos.46.2013.52. 70. Victor M. Figueroa, “The Bolivarian Government of Hugo Chávez: Democratic Alternative for Latin America?” Critical Sociology 32, no. 1 (2006): 201, doi:10.1163/156916306776150322. 71. Edgar Lander, interview by Paul Jay, Real News Network, video, “From Exile to Radicalization in Venezuela,” April 10, 2014, http://www.popularresistance.org/ from-‐exile-‐to-‐radicalization-‐in-‐venezuela/. 72. Barry Cannon, “Venezuela, April 2002: Coup or Popular Rebellion? The Myth of a United Venezuela,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 23, no.3 (2004): 285–302, doi:10.1111/j.0261-‐3050.2004.00109.x

37

swearing in, in February 1989, he announced that he had signed a structural

adjustment contract with the IMF. He had reneged on his campaign commitments.

He had campaigned against neoliberalism.73 According to Lopez-‐Maya, the protests

spread throughout the country in a matter of hours and, according to Webber, the

protests lasted until March 5, 1989. While Lopez-‐Maya touts the figure of some

8,355 protests that took place in Venezuela between October 1989 and September

2000,74 Webber writes that these protests were isolated and defensive in nature,

actually signaling the weakness of the Left. Organized labor, according to Webber,

had been disabled by its very collusion with the forces of neoliberalism.

Webber also investigates the status of the Left party: La Causa Radical (LCR).

According to Webber, LCR actually had done very well garnering over twenty

percent of the vote in the 1993 Presidential election. However, after that showing,

the party actually split over a dispute on whether or not the party should be drawn

into the politics of the two major parties. This split, and the formation of a new party

with the larger portion of the LCR membership, created the Patria Para Todos

(Fatherland for Everyone, PPT). Webber points out that in the absence of a strong

Left party, Chávez’s new political party, the Movimiento Quinta Republica (MVR, Fifth

Republic Movement) was provided a crucial opening with which to participate in

the 1998 Presidential elections.75 It was in the aftermath of Chávez’s 1992 failed

73. Anthony Peter Spanakos, “New Wine, Old Bottles, Flamboyant Sommelier: Chávez, Citizenship, and Populism,” New Political Science, 30, no. 4 (December 2008): 526, doi:10.1080/07393140802493308. 74. Lopez-‐Maya, “Caracazo,” 202. 75. Webber, “Venezuela and Chávez,” 21.

38

attempt to topple Venezuela’s military leaders that he gained favor from the same

people who were fed up with corruption and neoliberalism.

Chávez had been plotting, along with members of the Left (including his

brother, Adan), former guerrillas, and members of the Venezuelan military for years.

They were just waiting for the right time to strike. The dissolution of confidence in

the political process by the masses of Venezuela’s people laid the foundation for the

next rung to be placed on the ladder of Chávez’s political ascent.

“Commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias has Come to Lay Down His Weapons”

Officers and soldiers inside the Venezuelan military were not immune to the

sentiments that were pervasive in Venezuela against the corruption of the political

class and the economic elite. Chávez became the leader of a pre-‐existing group

inside the military. In fact, after the success of the Cuban Revolution, in May and

June of 1962, leftist military officers allied with Venezuela’s guerrillas of the armed

struggle, failed in two coup attempts, known as El Carupanazo and El Portenazo.

Venezuela’s armed struggle had attracted the support of other revolutionary

governments in Africa, Asia, and Cuba. William Izarra is named by Mascano and

Tyszyk as a veteran organizer for revolution inside the Venezuelan military.76 In

fact, according to Ciccariello-‐Maher, Izarra was a co-‐conspirator of Chávez for the

1992 coup attempt. The various incarnations of intrigue inside the military were

reflected in the creation of several clandestine organizations, for example the

Revolution 1983, Revolutionary Alliance of Active Military Personnel, Ejercito

Bolivariano Revolucionario (EBR, the Bolivarian Revolutionary Army). EBR was

76. Mascano and Tyszyk, Chávez, 21.

39

redubbed EBR-‐200 in 1983, the bicentennial of Bolivar’s birth. There was a parallel

line of officers who were not dreaming of social transformation, like Chávez’s group

was, but were also planning an effort to overthrow the corrupt military officer class.

The EBR-‐200 plan, when the moment appeared to be right, was supposed to take

advantage of a trip out of the country by the Venezuelan President, Carlos Andrés

Perez. Sergei Baburkin and a group of scholars analyzed the failed effort.77 They

write that a 1988 coup attempt against the previous President, Lusinchi, while he

was out of the country failed, but many of the conspirators remained in the military.

According to Baburkin’s researchers, the officers who survived the 1988 attempt

formed the kernel of the 1992 attempt, led by Colonel Hugo Chávez. For EBR-‐200,

the moment came in February 1992.

Marcano and Tyszka write that the Caracazo was the turning point for

Chávez who believed that it had sensitized members of the military for what was to

come next. Chávez’s promotion to Commander was also an important point for the

EBR-‐200 members, and considered a sign by Chávez of the approaching time for

action. On February 3, 1992, Chávez pulled the trigger for action. With hundreds of

soldiers in on the plot, Operation Zamora began to unravel even before it began. The

President went on television to address the country and reassure Venezuelans that

the country was firmly in democratic hands. Baburkin writes that in both instances,

the plotters failed to take the communication apparatus and both groups also failed

to secure the President in their custody. Chávez’s plan got derailed due to stormy

77. Sergei Baburkin, Andres C. Danopoulos, Rita Ciacalone, and Erika Moreno, “The 1992 Coup Attempts in Venezuela: Causes and Failure,” Journal of Political and Military Sociology 27, no. 1 (1999): 141–154.

40

weather that forced the President’s plane to land at a time and place not expected by

the conspirators. Despite the heroism of some of the soldiers under Chávez’s

command, Chávez surrendered to the authorities on February 4, 1992, securing a

commitment that the men involved with him would not be hurt. “My Admiral,

Commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias has come to lay down his weapons.”78

While this might have been the end for some failed plotters, this actually was

the beginning for Hugo Chávez. He negotiated an appearance on live television with

the Interior Minister who was still fearful that some of Chávez’s collaborators would

be unwilling to lay down their weapons. The plan was agreed upon, against the

advice of President Perez, and Chávez washed up and prepared for his debut on

national television, being sure to don his red beret. He had promised that he would

tell his men to lay their weapons down and so he did that, adding por ahora—“for

now.” Chávez also assumed responsibility for the Bolivarian movement inside the

Venezuelan military. People liked that he had taken responsibility for his and the

others’ actions. And they were left dangling at the end of Chávez’s “por ahora.”

Chávez, according to Marcano and Tyszka, felt himself a failure. It was only while

people lined up to visit him in prison that he realized that he was actually popular;

many Venezuelans had greatly approved of what he had attempted to do and of his

performance on national television. Marcano and Tyszka relate that some who were

intimately involved in the planning for the events of February 3 and 4 were

extremely disappointed in Chávez’s leadership because, as it turned out, Chávez was

78. These words spoken after the failed coup of 1992, are from Ivan Dario Jimenez, Los Golpes de Estado Desde Castro Hasta Caldera (Caracas: Centralca, 1996), quoted in Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, 133.

41

the only one who had failed his part of the Operation. All aspects of the plan were

well-‐articulated—except Chávez’s. Nonetheless, for the average person on the

street, Hugo Chávez was now a hero.

Chávez served two years in prison and received an early release by President

Rafael Caldera. Caldera also restored Chávez’s political rights.79 After lengthy

debate, Chávez’s own political party, the MVR, decided that it was time to contest

the Presidential elections. Chávez traveled the length and breadth of Venezuela and

began to organize support for his effort. Therefore, the road had been cleared for

Chávez to accomplish with ballots what he did not achieve with bullets.80

The Rise of the Afro-‐Venezuelan Movement

In 2001 and 2002, during a regional drought in Brazil, Walter Neves and Luis

Pilo traveled to Brazil in order to understand the location of an earlier finding of the

largest number of human skeletons in one place in the Americas. The skulls were as

old as the Ice Age and were neither European nor Native American. The findings of

Neves and Pilo confirmed that the earliest skulls found thus far in the Americans

shared cranial features consistent with Africans and Australian Aboriginals while

northeast Asian human arrivals to the Americas occurred much later in time.81 It is

believed that these early East Africans migrated to South Asia and eventually to

Australia and from there to the Americas. Archeologists have named this oldest 79. Dietz and Myers, “From Thaw to Deluge,” 77. 80. Canache, “From Bullets to Ballots.” 81. Walter A. Neves, Mark Hubbe, and Luis Beethoven Pilo, “Early Holocene Human Skeletal Remains from Sumidouro Cave, Lagoa Santa, Brazil: History of Discoveries, Geological and Chronological Context, and Comparative Cranial Morphology,” Journal of Human Evolution 52, no. 1 (2007): 16–30, doi:10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.07.012.

42

American “Luzia.” Neves confirms that the oldest skull found in the Americas has no

similarity with the Mongoloid features associated with modern Native Americans.82

Despite these rich beginnings in The Americas, descendants of Africans have had to

fight for their rightful place in human history during the current phase of human

civilization that has been shaped by global European colonial conquest. This is

discussed more thoroughly in the Section entitled, “The Role of Race in Latin

America and Venezuela.” There are estimated to be approximately one hundred fifty

million people of African descent in Latin America, with the bulk of them being in

Brazil and approximately ten percent of them living in Venezuela.83

The African presence in The Americas is denoted by the slave trade and the

Asientos de Negros, which was the commercial instrument that “legitimized” the

slave trade to Venezuela. The Africans brought to The Americas constituted a

technology transfer as well as a labor resource. They were knowledgeable in

agriculture, architecture, and other needed knowledge.84 Africans trafficked to

Venezuela as slaves are thought to primarily have originated in Congo, Senegambia,

Benin, Nigeria, and Angola and they worked in sugar, cocoa, and coffee production,

82. “THE FIRST PEOPLES: Ancient Voices–New Evidence Shows That the First Americans Were BLACK! ” YouTube video, 49:11, from British Broadcasting Corporation documentary, Ancient Voices, televised 1999, posted by Michael Heath, August 16, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiumX48gm1w. 83. Daniel Mato, “Forms of Intercultural Collaboration between Institutions of Higher Education and Indigenous and Afro-‐Descendant Peoples in Latin America,” Journal of Postcolonial Studies 14, no. 3 (2011), 332, doi:10.1080/13688790.2011.613104. 84. For example, see Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicolas Rosomoff, In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

43

gold mining, pearl hunting, and other.85 And as a result of miscegenation among the

various populations in the region and in Venezuela, a classification system was

devised by the Europeans that identified people based on their skin color, hair

texture, and parentage. One could be “Jet Black,” “pardo,” “Zambo” (from Black and

Indian) or “’a step backward’ when the skin color was darker than that of the

mother.”86 There were many more classifications of the enslaved used by the priests

when carrying out Venezuelan censuses, as well.

Total subjugation of the Africans was not completed in The Americas and

many rebellions took place from the Sixteenth Century throughout the period of

legalized slavery and after. The “American” colonial landscape was thus pockmarked

with rebellion. This was also true in Venezuela. The first of these Venezuelan revolts,

in the 1550s, was led by the “Negro Miguel” who had become a cimarrones or

“maroon”—a runaway slave. Cimarronaje is the term used to describe these violent

fights against slavery with the intention to be free. Cimarronaje is also an attitude;87

therefore, cimarronaje also entailed the establishment of self-‐governing societies,

called Cumbés. These cumbés dotted the Venezuelan landscape and could be

considered “liberated zones.” Taken to work the gold mines, Miguel escaped and fled

to the mountains where he joined with the Indigenous and created a strong cumbé

community that declared him King and among other things, regularly attacked the

85. Carole Boyce Davies, Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-‐CLIO, 2008), 941. 86. Ibid., 943. 87. For more information on the use of cimarronaje throughout “colonial America” as an alternative to enslavement, see Maria Cristina Navarette, “El Cimarronaje, Una Alternativa de Libertad Para Los Esclavos Negros,” http://doaj.org/toc/42e857e4adae4a0b8e5b3e88b1ad8945/2.

44

mines, making them ungovernable and unprofitable. As a result, the Spaniard

colonizers brought in military reinforcements to protect the mine. In one battle,

Michael was shot and his followers were re-‐enslaved. Cimarronaje is alive in the

culture of Venezuela today.88

Two centuries later, in the 1730s, some Africans had gained their freedom,

but were terrorized by a private cocoa company. The company coveted the cocoa

producing lands and used terror to obtain them. Andres Lopez del Rosario, also

known as Andresote, rose up against the tactics of the company and sabotaged its

operations. While Negro Miguel led the first anti-‐slavery uprising of slaves in

Venezuela, Andresote led Venezuela’s first uprising against corporate behavior. Later

in the century, around the 1790s, José Leonardo Chirino led an anti-‐slavery, anti-‐tax

small farmer uprising against the Spaniards. They were so threatened by Chirino

that they took him to Caracas where he was beheaded on December 17, 1796.

Afro-‐Venezuelans call these leaders their “preindependendistas” and note that

women participated in these rebellions, risking their lives as well, and also became

Maroons.89 By the early 1800s, a movement for independence from Spain had begun

in earnest. This followed the Haitian Revolution in which enslaved Africans

overthrew their French colonial masters and declared themselves a Republic in

1804.

Venezuelan criollos, children of Spanish parents who were born in the colony,

agitated for freedom from Spain. Among them were General Francisco Miranda and 88. See José Bracho Reyes, Chimbanguele: Paradigma del Cimarronaje Cultural en Venezuela (Caracas: Consejo Nacional de la Cultura, 2005). 89. For authentic Afro-‐Venezuelan voices, see, “Historia y Cultura Afrovenezolana,” http://culturaafrovenezolana.blogspot.com/2009/03/el-‐cimarronaje.html.

45

the wealthy Simon Bolivar. In order for the independence struggle to be successful,

the Indigenous and the Africans would have to be involved because they

outnumbered the Spanish living in Venezuela and the creoles—combined. Bolivar

asked the former slaves now in charge of Haiti for help. With Haiti’s help, Bolivar not

only won the independence of Venezuela, he also liberated Bolivia, Colombia,

Ecuador, and Peru. Venezuela declared its independence from Spain on July 5, 1811,

although the independendistas had not won militarily. Miranda was taken prisoner

by the Spaniards while the Spaniards continued their fight to regain their colonies.

In 1816, Bolivar issued two decrees declaring the end of slavery for Africans fighting

in the independence army, but in 1817 executed Manuel Maria Francisco Piar, the

son of a mulatto and someone who had traveled to Haiti. Bolivar accused him of

attempting to overthrow and murder Whites in order to establish a “pardo”

democracy in Venezuela, following the example of Haiti. He was acquitted of those

charges, but was found guilty of insubordination. On October 16, 1817, Piar was shot

at the Cathedral of Angostura, a tragic victim of racial discrimination even after

having secured military victories that rivaled those of Bolivar. His body now rests

with other Venezuelan heroes in the National Pantheon.

By 1824, the Spaniards had been defeated for good, and Bolivar would die on

December 17, 1830. All of Bolivar’s decrees were thrown out. The successful

independence army was dissolved and subjugated to slavery once again; the creoles

of Venezuela benefited from a victory that had been won and secured by the

Indigenous and the Africans. While Haiti abolished it in 1793, slavery did not

officially end in Venezuela until 1851 when owners of slaves were indemnified at

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market rates for the loss of the use of their slaves. No such provisions were made for

the actual slaves themselves, many of who had served in the army during the wars

of Independence. The Africans lived a near feudal existence in their independence.

As a nation-‐building strategy, miscegenation and whitening were viewed by the

political elites as viable strategies, which included the marginalization of Indigenous

and African descendant people from the political and cultural affairs of the country.

It is from these beginnings that the modern-‐day Afro-‐Venezuelan struggle arises.

The struggle of African descendants in Latin America and especially in

Venezuela provides an important context for the rise of Hugo Chávez. The

African-‐descendant populations in Venezuela are urban, rural, and coastal. They are

poor and many are extremely poor. Their portrayals in the media are stereotypical.

And Hugo Chávez’s political ascent takes place alongside the political maturation of

the Afro-‐descendant community. In the 1990s, Latin America saw a significant rise

in African-‐descendant or Black organizations that championed policies to counter

their marginalization in society. These organizations formed national and

international networks that are still growing.90 The Network of Afro-‐Venezuelan

Organizations, founded by Jesus Chucho Garcia,91 unites the community in political,

economic, and cultural goals, starting with self-‐identification as Afro-‐descendants.

In May 2001, during the lead-‐up to participation in the United Nations World

Conference Against Racism, the Network held its first national conference. The 90. Agustin Lao-‐Montes, Amilcar Shabazz, Matilde Ribeiro, and Sonia E. Alvarez, Reconfigurations of Racism, Racial Politics/Policies and New Scenarios of Power: A Preliminary Research Agenda, October 2008, http://www.umass.edu/stpec/ pdfs/Reconfigurations%20of%Racism.pdf. 91. Jesus Chucho Garcia’s FaceBook page, https://www.facebook.com/pages/ Jes%C3%BAs-‐Chucho-‐Garc%C3%ADa/191341336202?fref=ts.

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Network has set both national and international goals. Afro-‐Latinos struggle for

cultural space and recognition, or, as Mato puts it, “citizenship with equity.”92 The

success of the African-‐descendant struggle can be measured by the at-‐large

acceptance by society as a whole of that “citizenship with equity” practically

reflected in favorable laws and policies and also by the readiness of Latino

Americans and Venezuelans to self-‐identify as persons of African descent.

Figure 2.1. Pictures of “Luzia” reconstruction, earliest skull found in Americas. Provided by Professor Richard Neaves, the forensic expert who created the busts from skull from Northeastern Brazil. From his own collection and used here with his permission.

Hugo Chávez and the Epic Struggle against Neoliberalism

The popular citationality93 of Hugo Chávez centers on his leadership of

Venezuela in a Herculean confrontation with the United States. However, from the

standpoint of Chávez, there were serious philosophical underpinnings to that

confrontation that should be explored: for example, liberty versus repression;

92. Mato, “Collaboration,” 333. 93. Bruce Braun, “On the Raggedy Edge of Risk: Articulations of Race and Nature after Biology,” in Race, Nature, and the Politics of Difference, ed. Donald S. Moore et al. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 185. “Citationality” is the term used by Braun to describe the mental frames, images, statements, and narratives associated with any given term or personality whether they are true or not, achieving commonsense status by repetition.

48

self-‐determination versus domination and oppression; beating back the negation of

a prideful non-‐European identity; and a more equitable access to and distribution of

resources by way of national sovereignty and international cooperation and justice.

I believe some of the answers can be found in the neoliberal policies that the United

States sought to impose in Venezuela and the Southern Hemisphere through its

network of political supporters. Thus, the struggle against European domination and

neoliberalism and its disproportionately negative impact on people of color and

disproportionately favorable impact on Europeans in Venezuela unites Hugo Chávez

with a race and class analysis. Chávez is noted for saying that he favored neither a

savage neoliberalism nor statist socialism.94 However, the race aspect of Hugo

Chávez’s struggle both inside and outside of Venezuela is the one that is most

overlooked in scholarship.

So, what, exactly is neoliberalism? Neoliberalism is the name for policies that

ostensibly stress the limited role of government interference in economic activities

of corporations and highly capitalized individuals. Neoliberalism seeks, wherever

possible, to eliminate crowding out in a market by government activity and the

replacement of that government activity by the private sector. Therefore,

privatization is a key policy that is recommended for state action. In addition to

privatization, neoliberals advocate deregulation of the marketplace so that

businesses are allowed to do what they want. In practice, however, neoliberals act

as if the state should be in service to them; subsidies and tax-‐breaks for the wealthy

are considered income and growth generators, but payments to individuals in need 94. Javier Corrales, “Hugo Chávez Plays Simon Says: Democracy without Opposition in Venezuela,” Hopscotch: A Cultural Review 2, no. 2 (2000): 44.

49

are considered government waste. Therefore, the question is not really the size of

the government, but whom the government serves. And therein lies the issue.

Calling South America an “experimental laboratory” for “neoliberal transformation,”

Edgardo Lander and Luis Fierro give an exhaustive accounting of the impact of these

neoliberal policies on the Venezuelan economy and people.95 Lander and Fierro

write that income inequality accelerated, poverty increased by ten points to nearly

half of the entire population, and extreme poverty increased to fourteen percent.

According to David Theo Goldberg,96 the neoliberal state no longer seeks to

ameliorate inequality, but instead exacerbates it. This observation is consistent with

Lander’s findings. In Goldberg’s words, the neoliberal state privileges “the already

privileged.”97 In the Latin American setting, those already privileged are the

Europeans descendants from the Spanish settler colonists and those locked out of

access are the Indigenous whose land was stolen and who were physically subjected

to genocide and the Afro-‐Venezuelans, descendants of the Africans whose unpaid

labor built Venezuela and Spain.

Goldberg’s analysis of neoliberalism joins with a discussion of race.

Understanding the role of race in neoliberal policies is important for an

understanding of what was happening in Venezuela: the further entrenchment of

the wealth and political importance of White Venezuelans at the expense of

95. Edgardo Lander and Luis A. Fierro, “The Impact of Neoliberal Adjustment in Venezuela, 1989–1993,” Latin American Perspectives 23, no. 50 (July 1996): 5073, doi:10.1177/0094582X9602300304. 96. David Theo Goldberg, “Enduring Occupations (on Racial Neoliberalism),” in The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism, (Malden, MA: Wiley-‐Blackwell, 2009), 327–376. 97. Ibid., 332.

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Indigenous and Afro-‐Venezuelans. In fact, according to Goldberg, the neoliberal state

becomes more violent and repressive—as has happened in the United States—

which Goldberg notes is the global driver for neoliberalism. Goldberg writes that

neoliberalism is an intensification of state capitalism and those who resist face

“militarized or policed impositions.”98

Some would say that the incarnations of European global domination have

run from slavery to colonialism (as will be discussed in the next section) to

neocolonialism,99 a concept first advanced by President of Ghana, Kwame

Nkrumah;100 to globalization, discussed in the next section by Anibal Quijano,

currently a professor in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University; and

to that form of European domination that is prevalent today: neoliberalism. In this

way, neoliberalism is also a set of economic, political, and cultural tools that ensures

the continued domination of Europeans over the non-‐European world. Writing

about racial neoliberalism, Goldberg writes that this globalization improved the

lives of Europeans wherever they happened to reside; it increased their access to

economic inputs; it allowed them to exploit new labor pools; it impacted the way

polities was organized and the well-‐being derived from political participation; and it

created new identities. These new identities were created based on race, even

though the exact meaning of race shifted over time. Moreover, racism eventually 98. Ibid., 334. 99. For more information on Nkrumah’s vision of neocolonialism, see Norman E. Hodges, “Neo-‐colonialism: The New Rape of Africa,” The Black Scholar 3, no. 5 (1972): 12–23; see also Kenneth W. Grundy, “World Politics,” World Politics 15, no. 3 (1963): 438–454. 100. Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-‐colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1965).

51

transmuted into a higher ideological claim called “racelessness” or the raceless state,

the impact of which, according to Goldberg, is still as racist in practice as is

undiluted racism. Moreover, the structures of the state, according to Goldberg, are

shaped by globalization’s “foundational pillar,” which is race; race determines who

is included and who is excluded. But Goldberg doesn’t stop with the systemic

structural changes wrought by globalization and race. He adds that the concept of

race, itself, is neoliberalized in neoliberalism. Even race is privatized. And

structurally, power is retained by Whites. This background is important toward

gaining an understanding of why the Venezuelan population erupted after a decade

of neoliberal reforms.

Goldberg cites the attendant violence of neoliberalism, “necropolitical

discipline:” either imprisonment or physical or social death. This is the same

violence that is referred to by other writers about slavery, colonialism,

neocolonialism and so on. Other writers on this subject will be reviewed in this

chapter; those who are not reviewed include Ruth Gillmore and Angela Davis.101

Jacques Rancière, whose ideas will be discussed later, calls this “the police state”

whose purpose is to quash dissent, either violently or by cooptation. Therefore, the

neoliberal script includes the “inferiorization” of people of color. Heterogeneous

states, under the neoliberal model, can even maintain the reality of White power

while wearing the adornments of anti-‐racism. Goldberg writes that “Euromimesis,”

trying to behave and “think White” is the rule for neoliberalism. Racial duress is for

101. See Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (Toronto: Publishers Group Open Media, 2003), and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).

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those who break the rule. This is the function that was played in Venezuela by the

policy of mestizaje, which will be examined in the next section.

Finally, according to Goldberg, the neoliberal state is racist, repressive,

culturally dominating and alienating, and violent. Importantly, Goldberg unmasks

the real threat of race: it reveals a fear of loss of the kind of control and privilege

long associated with Whiteness. Neoliberalism, for Goldberg, then can be viewed as

the response to the impotence of Whiteness. This is the lens through which the

Caracazo should be viewed—as well as the behavior of the United States toward

Venezuela when Venezuela withdrew from the neoliberal agenda.

Dietz and Myers report that the militant neoliberalism of one candidate in the

1988 Presidential elections frightened voters in Peru and that candidate lost. We

have already seen how the Caracazo was brought about because one candidate

campaigned against the IMF structural adjustment policies recommended for

Venezuela and then days after his victory, signed the contract with the IMF. The

Caracazo was the lifting of the veil on the idea of a united Venezuela and the stark

visibility of another reality. And the state responded violently. Inequality, the

hallmark of the neoliberal state, led to the Caracazo. Just as Hurricane Katrina

unveiled huge inequality in New Orleans and the United States in 2005, the Caracazo

revealed inequality that had reached unacceptable levels to the Venezuelan people

The Role of Race in Latin American and Venezuela

In order to understand the significance of Hugo Chávez’s leadership on race,

one must understand the role of race in a world that has been dominated by

Europeans, and their descendants, for the last five hundred years. In order to

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understand the role of race in Latin America and Venezuela, one must understand

the notion of race and how race has been used to aggrandize European cultural,

economic, and political domination over non-‐Europeans. In order to understand the

role of race in Latin America and Venezuela, one must understand slavery,

colonialism, neocolonialism, globalization, and neoliberalism and their contribution

to the notion and the role of race. Marxist-‐Leninism had been tried in the Caribbean

and Latin America, but the situation was different than that contemplated by Marx

or Lenin. Therefore, an adaptation was necessary and this is another aspect of the

revolutionary leadership of color of which Hugo Chávez was but one in a long line.

Besides, Marxists had a blind spot when it came to race. Anibal Quijano and others

point out that Marxists failed to fight slavery or to call for an anti-‐slavery revolution,

leaving many leaders of color with the idea that the Marxist idea of revolution was

an impossibility in Latin America and African colonial settings. Therefore, change

would have to be driven by Indigenous circumstances, by revolutionary,

justice-‐seeking people and their leaders, making sense from the context of their own

circumstances. That is what Hugo Chávez sought to accomplish by way of his

leadership and in some instances has been described as “eclectic” when it comes to

ideology. Thus, I will now turn to colonialism and Eurocentrism and their

implications for race.

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Colonialism

Colonialism was one form of the institutionalization of global European

domination.102 At the same time that Europeans and their values were ennobled and

apotheosized, those of the colonial victim were systematically eroded or eliminated

to a state of abject docility, utter submission, and complete compliance. This was

both an individual internalization as well as an institutional process.

Samina Azad,103 writing from Pakistan, agrees that colonialism changes

“everything” about those dominated through colonization, including a change in

their beliefs, customs, tastes, and knowledge. She writes that the so-‐called “civilizing

mission” of the Europeans, led to their sense of superiority in their knowledge and

the inferiority of those they colonized. She writes that the Europeans secured this

position as a result of their readiness to use violence and advanced weaponry for

that time period. Like Azad, Anibal Quijano,104 localizes the practical impact of

colonialism and Eurocentrism on the people of Latin America with his “coloniality of

power” model. He discounts the reality of European notions of “civilizing the

natives” and instead writes about the reality of colonialism as faced by the

Indigenous and the imported Africans. Quijano notes the violence of the colonial

102. The distinction between “direct” colonialism and other forms of colonialism is made in Charles Pinderhughes “Toward a New Theory of Internal Colonialism,” Socialism and Democracy 25, no. 1 (March 2011): 235–256, doi:10.1080/08854300.2011.559702. 103. Samina Azad, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Postcolonialism,” International Journal of Social Sciences & Education 3, no. 2 (2013): 413–421. http://www.africanafrican.com/folder12/african%20african%20american2/civil%20rights%20movement/Paper-‐15.pdf. 104. Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 533–580, doi:10.1177/0268580900015002005.

55

conquest by the Europeans by noting that it was accompanied by the genocide of

approximately sixty-‐five million people, which he calls the most extreme case of

cultural colonization that Europe was able to accomplish. African cultural

colonization, he writes, was less complete and less successful, so the Europeans just

denied recognition to the Africans whose artistic expressions were Europeanized

and never considered equal to the European cultural norm.105

Azad explains some of the features of colonialism: the center/periphery

phenomenon, the comprador class, and the phenomenon of “dislocation”—a fate

suffered by the local culture. All of these elements are important to note now for the

discussion in the fourth chapter. Azad writes of the center/periphery phenomenon

present in settler colonialism where a few settlers from the metropole or colonial

“motherland” settle in the periphery where the colonized lived. These Europeans,

situated in the land of the colonized, act as the bridge between the two, but with

deference given to European superiority. Azad also uses the notion of the

comprador class of the colonized who are trained by the Europeans to maintain

European control and become agents of the colonial establishment.106 Dislocation

refers to what happens to the local culture during the establishment and

maintenance of colonialism and in its aftermath unless concrete steps are taken to

dismantle the dislocation and relocate oneself inside one’s own or a post-‐colonial

105. Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality,” Cultural Studies 21, nos. 2–3 (March/May 2007): 168–178, doi:10.1080/09502380601164353. 106. Indeed, Hairston finds that President Obama continues and reinforces White domination and White superiority in education by his neoliberal approach. See Thomas W. Hairston, “Continuing Inequity through Neoliberalism: The Conveyance of White Dominance in the Educational Policy Speeches of President Barack Obama,” Interchange 43 (March, 2013): 229–244, doi:10.1080/09502380601164353.

56

culture. Goldberg’s idea of Euromimesis is the product of such colonial dislocation.

Indeed, this is a phenomenon that can be identified wherever European domination

has taken root.

Therefore, one can see Euromimetic behavior in Asia as Ruth Holliday and

Joanna Elfving-‐Hwang found with plastic surgery in South Korea where both men

and women seek more global, as well as regional, ideas of beauty.107 They find that

the most popular surgery is the eyelid surgery and secondly, the rhinoplasty that

eliminates the wide, flat nose. Euromimesis and dislocation can also be seen in the

ideas of beauty in Latin America and the Caribbean, which I will further explore

below.

European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere was accompanied by

capitalism and the theft of land from the Indigenous and the importation of Africans

as unpaid labor to work that land. Another distinguishing factor for the European

colonial model of power is that capitalism produced products for a world market.

Quijano writes of the gold and silver and other commodities that were produced

with unpaid Black and Indigenous or mestizo labor: it all contributed to the

comparative advantage of Europeans everywhere around the world. Europeans

controlled the capital and Europeans controlled the labor. Thus, the important

feature of European colonialism, as Quijano writes, is that non-‐Europeans worked

all over the world, literally, for nothing—they got paid nothing, and all over the

world, Europeans received wages. Soon, non-‐wage work came to be associated with

107. Ruth Holliday and Joanna Elfving-‐Hwang, "Gender, Globalization and Aesthetic Surgery in South Korea,” Body & Society 18, no. 2 (2012): 58–81, doi:10.1177/1357034X12440828.

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non-‐European workers and became inferior work, because non-‐Europeans were

defined as inferior. Quijano says that this system continues to this day of unequal

pay for equal work, adding that Indigenous serfdom was only recently eliminated.

The system became global as Europeans expanded their control over America, then

Africa, then Asia and Oceania. Quijano sees three stages in that the process of

domination:

1. Expropriated the cultural discoveries of the colonized peoples;

2. Repressed their forms of knowledge production; and

3. Forced the colonized to learn the dominant culture so as to serve

Europe and not themselves

Thus, European success led to a kind of European ethnocentrism where they

equated themselves with rationality and modernity; Blacks and Indigenous were

characterized as primitive and Asians were characterized as an inferior “Other.”

Quijano writes that for the European, race is the basic category. He says in

scholarship, these issues can be found in Post-‐Colonial, Subaltern, Cultural Studies

and others. Demonization of the non-‐European was not only morally necessary from

the point of view of the Europeans, but also expedient. The location of European

values and culture became central to life in the metropole as well as in the colony.

Thus, Eurocentrism is the handmaiden of European colonialism.

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Eurocentrism

Eurocentrism is a term that has been most closely studied by Samir Amin108

in 1989 in the first edition of his book of the same name, who says that the

phenomenon of Eurocentrism commenced around the same time as capitalism. It is

a kind of prejudice that believes that the non-‐European world has nothing to teach

the European West. According to Amin, the exploitation of others requires a

rationale and Eurocentrism became the ideology that justified the ultimate

exploitations represented by genocide of the Indigenous and the human trafficking

and enslavement of the Africans. Ironically, while Europeans took their ideas on a

so-‐called civilizing mission to the rest of the world, Amin believes that Europeans

and their capitalism have endangered human civilization. Therefore, Eurocentrism,

to Amin, is the ideological force that creates the notion of a periphery and thus is

anti-‐universal even as it is global.

According to Kamran Matin,109 Eurocentrism is a belief that the world starts

and stops in Europe, which means this: there is Europe and there is not-‐Europe;

Europe is responsible for human progress; and not-‐Europe is dominated as a

natural outcome of the meeting up of Europe with an inferior culture so that

domination had nothing to do with violence. Matin sees this Eurocentrism in

108. Samir Amin, Eurocentrism: Modernity, Religion, and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culture, trans. Russell Moore and James Membrez, 2nd ed. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009). 109. Kamran Matin, “Redeeming the Universal: Postcolonialism and the Inner Life of Eurocentrism,” European Journal of International Relations 19 (2013): 353–377, doi:10.1177/1354066111425263.

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International Relations Theory. Fernando Suarez Muller110 adds that Eurocentrism

has four levels of conceptualization: as a perspective: as an exclusion, as a sense of

superiority, and as a system of oppression.

Writing about the impact of Eurocentrism on sociology, Julian Go111 suggests

that post-‐colonial theory seeks to de-‐Eurocenter sociology and to recognize the

parochialism of Eurocentrism while Irene Visser112 writes of the need to recognize

Eurocentrism in trauma theory even in the study of the trauma that accompanies

colonialism. Finally, it is important to understand that Eurocentrism in practice

gives way to racism. And, as we have previously discussed, racism becomes

embedded in unintentional thought and action and so, becomes structural and

systemic.113

Quijano’s first point, while writing in the year 2000, is that the phenomenon

of globalization is the culmination of Eurocentered capitalism; and Eurocentered

capitalism classifies populations based on race. For Quijano, globalization is

Eurocentrism. That could be updated to read neoliberalism. In fact, in 2007 he

updated his theory by adding the notion of “coloniality”— a colonial structure of

European political, social, and economic domination without political colonialism,

much as Goldberg writes of “racisms without racism,” which are racially driven

110. Fernando Suarez Muller, “Eurocentrism, Human Rights, and Humanism,” International Journal of Applied Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2012): 279–293. doi:10.5840/ijap201226221. 111. Juian Go, “For a Postcolonial Sociology,” Theory & Society 42, no. 1 (2013): 25–55, doi:10.1007/s11186-‐012-‐9184-‐6. 112. Irene Visser, “Trauma Theory and Postcolonial Literary Studies,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47, no. 3 (July 2011): 270–282, doi:10.1080/17449855.2011.569378. 113. For a fuller discussion of this, see Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism.

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expressions of today’s neoliberal policies. Eduardo Bonilla-‐Silva writes about this

convenient self-‐characterizing neoliberal turn as “racism without ‘racists’” from his

book by the same name.114

Quijano writes that the vestige of colonialism that remains is the “racial axis,”

outliving the colonialism, which birthed it. He posits that the model of power for

today is a global one, hegemonic, and based on race. He writes that America—and by

America he does not mean only the United States—was the laboratory for this first

exercise of global power. He writes that the Conquistadores started it, but quickly it

became a global practice. He traces this exercise of power back to the desire of the

colonial hegemon to control labor. According to Quijano, slavery was just the most

recent manifestation at that time. Before, he writes, it was serfdom. According to

Quijano, race is now a part of the structural control of labor. Quijano is not alone in

this view and is joined by Jeffrey Perry115 who writes and lectures extensively on the

role of the concept of “Whiteness” as a method of social control for labor. Perry has

tested his ideas while developing policies for organized labor. He also provides a

prescription in the fight against White Supremacy and Eurocentrism, which I will

discuss in the final section of this chapter.

Interestingly, Quijano points out that Eurocentrism is actually based on

myths: that human civilization culminated in Europe, and that power really had

nothing to do with their domination of the rest of the world. According to Quijano, it 114. Eduardo Bonilla-‐Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-‐Blind Racism and the Persistence of Inequality in America, 4th ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). 115. Jeffrey B. Perry, The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight Against White Supremacy, http://www.jeffreybperry.net/files/Perry.pdf.

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is only because of their power that they were able to convince the rest of the world

of their myths. Thus, Quijano provides a powerful counterpoint to the notion put

forward about the benevolence of colonialism, Eurocentrism, or its concomitant

racism. Quijano is not alone in providing this assessment: Barrueto116 discusses

Eurocentrism in Latin American literature and concludes that writing in Latin

America is openly pro-‐European. He also mentions “mimicry,” theorized by

Bhabha,117 which is an important result that occurs among those who are colonized

and whose culture is dislocated. Mimicry, according to Barrueto, is the colonial

victim’s attempt to imitate or conform to the values of the colonizer. This also occurs

when one is considering a standard of beauty in a racialized context. In the end,

European colonialism was the first to consume the entire population of the planet.

Thereby, a “Eurocentric perspective of knowledge”118 is imposed on the world. Race

became a new way of legitimizing old practices. Social relations between the

dominated and the conqueror became regulated by race. And it is to a discussion of

race that I will now turn. Race and racial identity become the major area of focus.

Race

For the reasons enumerated above and more that will follow, the political

problem confronted by Hugo Chávez was that the Europeans in Venezuela identified

more with Europeans in the United States than they did with their fellow

Venezuelans. Therefore, race and racial identity are at the core of this discussion, as

116. Jorge J. Barrueto, “A Latin American Indian Re-‐Reads the Canon: Postcolonial Mimicry in El Senor Presidente,” Hispanic Review 72, no. 3 (2004): 339–356. 117. See Homi Bhabha, “Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,” October 28 (Spring 1984): 125–133, doi:10.2307/778467. 118. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power,” 534.

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has been pointed out in the literature reviewed thus far. After five hundred years of

domination, the challenge for leaders looking to liberate themselves and others is

how to navigate all of these hidden—and not so hidden—identity landmines. And,

because of its citationality, race has proven itself to be a long-‐lasting and effective

“instrument of universal social domination.”119 At some point in their lives, most

non-‐Europeans have to grapple with the exclusivity of the European “club” and their

devaluation in it. However, membership depends as much on other factors as it does

on “race.”

Race is a concept that is not supposed to exist: “biologically, there is one race

and that is the human race that originated in Africa.”120 First publishing on this in

1942, Ashley Montagu was among those early scholars who saw race as more

construct than genetic intelligence determinant.121 Then, in writings from 1994 to

1997, Theodore Allen described how notions of race were specifically tied to class.

He believed that race was political and not biological. He wrote, “When a group of

human beings from ‘multiracial’ (the anthropologist’s term) Europe goes to North

America or South Africa and there, by constitutional fiat, incorporates itself as the

‘white race,’ that is no part of genetic evolution.”122 Allen maintained that race was a

ruling class social control formation. Finding the “white identity” to be problematic,

119. Ibid., 535. 120. Jeffrey B. Perry, “Race,” (Unpublished paper, 2014), 1. 121. Ashley Montagu, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race (Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1997). 122. Allen, Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-‐America (London: Verso, 1997).

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Allen went further and characterized it as a form of class collaboration.123 Following

in Montagu’s footsteps two generations later, the American Anthropological

Association in May of 1998 adopted a statement that human populations are not

biologically distinguishable and that most DNA evidence suggests that human

variability lies within racial groups.124 They go on to state that European Americans

“fabricated” characteristics associated with each race, which became a mode of

classification. They write that this classification was tied to people living in a

colonial setting. Race, then, is merely an “idea.” As we can see, this is an idea whose

ramifications have damaged people all over the planet for centuries.

Quijano writes that when the Europeans arrived in America, they found

advanced civilizations of Incas, Aztecs, Maya, Aymaras and more. Three hundred

years later, they are all merged into one category: Indian or Indigenous. He says that

the same thing happened with the Africans who were Ashanti, and Yoruba, and

Zulus, and Congos, but all became just Blacks. He writes that people were

dispossessed of their own identities and their new identity involved the plunder of

their place in history and their cultural production.125 In America, Quijano writes,

social relations found new identities on the basis of race: Indigenous, Blacks,

Mestizos. He says that in the beginning, Whites were Spanish or Portuguese, and

only much later became “European.” These social relations, according to Quijano,

were based on domination. Race became an instrument of social classification.

123. Theodore Allen, “White Supremacy in U.S. History,” speech at the Guardian Forum, April 28, 1973, http://www.sojournertruth.net/whitesupremushist.html. 124. See “American Anthropological Association ‘Statement on ‘Race,’ “ (May 17, 1998), http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm. 125. Quijano, “Coloniality of Power,” 552.

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“White” comes to mean domination imposed by conquest, according to

Quijano. Thus, “a new global model of labor control” was called for: race. Thus, race

and labor became linked. And the division of labor was constructed by race. In this

way, the racial labor distribution became a global system. New identities were

created and they had their place within this “racist” hierarchy of labor. According to

Quijano, whiteness meant wages or a high position and each form of labor control

was done by a particular race. This allowed the Europeans to control entire

populations of people. Race became a new technology of domination, exploitation,

and control.

So, the dominated became an inferior phenotype. And yet, they had to cope.

Azad discusses the cultural dislocation that takes place. Goldberg discusses the

phenomenon of Euromimesis. This domination manifests itself differently in men

and women, and the signs of gendered racial domination can be pointed out. Monica

G. Moreno Figueroa and Megan Rivers Moore126 argue that race is always a

consideration when it comes to notions of beauty—especially in Latin America

including the Caribbean. Utilizing Feminist Theory, they look at the factors

underlying the definition of beauty, that is the “socio-‐political framework” of beauty.

The Feminist Theory approach looks at the pragmatics of beauty, its definition,

deployment, marketing, that all lead to the place of gender and value in a society.

They found that race is central to the idea of beauty in Latin America and the

Caribbean. They write that it is relatively new that this approach is being taken in

126. Monica G. Moreno Figueroa and Megan Rivers Moore, “Beauty, Race, and Feminist Theory in Latin America and the Caribbean,” Feminist Theory 14, no. 2. (2013): 131–136, doi:10.1177/1464700113483233.

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the Latin American and Caribbean context where the mestizaje idea just put people

at a “whiter than” or “darker than” kind of situation because everyone had Black

(Afro or Indigenous) in them. The question was how much. Mestizaje was a national

policy in Venezuela that denied that there was a race or class issue because,

according to the policy, everyone was mixed. However, the real effect, according to

the Venezuelan authors reviewed here, was that the Indigenous and Afro identities

were eliminated.

Sandra Angeleri127 is professor of Ethnic Studies and Race at the Central

University of Venezuela. She also mentions this aspect of Latin American

considerations of beauty and more. She adds that the use of a woman’s body created

the Creole: Indigenous or African—to make mestizaje a feature of Venezuelan

identity. This new identity had, as its real purpose, to “bleach out” the Indigenous

and African in order to create a “criollo latina.”128 She writes that they called

themselves “Latino” to avoid contamination with Black or Afro-‐descendant or

Indigenous.

Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols carries the same Feminist Theory application

of the notion of beauty into the Venezuelan setting, where an authentic Venezuelan

identity was forged by suppressing the African and the Indigenous aspects of it.129

The goal of this project, she writes, was to maintain a pure European bloodline: this

would be done by controlling women’s bodies. Decent girls, then, had hair that was 127. Sandra Angeleri, “Ponencia_Coro,” (Unpublished Paper, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2014). 128. Ibid., 5. 129. Elizabeth Gackstetter Nichols, “‘Decent Girls with Good Hair’: Beauty, Morality and Race in Venezuela,” Feminist Theory 14, no. 2 (2013): 171–185, doi:10.1177/1464700113483243.

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not too wooly (that would indicate too much Afro) and not too straight (that would

indicate too much Indigenous). Women linked good with White and this was

furthered in Venezuela with its national identity of Mestizaje. Because of the high

degree of mixing in Venezuela, skin color alone was not the marker—the wide nose

and the curly hair—were also used to gauge lineage. Non-‐White was equated with

“ugly” and “deformed.” In this way, Venezuela’s racist past has produced a racist

present.

This racist present is evidenced in the research of Lauren Gulbas who

investigated the incidence of rhinoplasty in Venezuela and found that the plastic

surgery provided a boost in one’s self–esteem while allowing so motivated women

to pursue the ideal of Whiteness.130 Gulbas says that women of color in pursuit of

this ideal live in a place of body insecurity.

Because of the patriarchal nature of a colonial setting, women are cast in the

role of “the body,” Nichols writes. And Black women carry the double stigma of

savage and “out of control.” La negra becomes the plaything for the White male; La

negra is the servant of the White female. Racial purity was elevated to a moral value.

Thus is the status of women in a patriarchal colonial setting and this status

continues generation after generation because the young are enculturated “into

gendered and racialized” standards of beauty.

Angeleri also recalls Venezuela’s history: over four hundred years ago,

Africans were forcibly taken from West Africa and forced to work on the plantations.

“Portugal, Holland, France, and Spain did this,” she says, “to millions of men, women,

130. Gulbas, Embodying Race.

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and children to ensure the economic and political power of Europe on American

soil.”131 She identifies a matrix of racism and patriarchal capitalism as the offspring

of these centuries of slavery.

Angeleri writes that Venezuelans are well steeped in racism, which she

characterizes as a technology of death. And the goal of the social movements that

resulted from the Caracazo is control of the state so that Venezuela can have a public

policy that supports and reproduces life. According to Angeleri, Afro–Venezuelans

and Indigenous in Venezuela are the ultimate expression of the struggle for life—of

the will to live—because of the way racism affects them. She writes that racism has

excluded them from the life of Venezuela. Racism has discriminated against them.

Racism has been harsh to them and yet, they have developed the will to live despite

racism. Therefore, to Angeleri, Afro–Venezuelans are the teachers on the struggle for

life. She credits Afro–Venezuelan spirituality as the inspiration that sustains the

movement and that is its source of political power; it is their spirituality that allows

them to survive the many forms of oppression. It is their spirituality that allows

them to overcome the death technology of racism.

Angeleri characterizes the struggle in Venezuela as a struggle for the poorest

sectors of Venezuelan society. She then asks, “Who are the poor that we struggle

for?” She says that in Venezuela, poverty has a female face—women from the inner

city and women from the countryside. In addition to women, the poorest sectors of

Venezuelan society are Afro–descendants and Indigenous. According to Angeleri, it

is the Afro–descendants and the Indigenous who fight discrimination—that comes

131. Angeleri, “Ponencia Coro,” 4–5.

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from racism; that live in the most polluted environments—that comes from racism;

that have the poorest quality of education available and the fewest choices; that

suffer with the worst medical care whether one is pointing to primary care, hospital

care, or private practice.

Jesus Maria Herrera Salas continues where Angeleri ends and situates the

matter of race squarely in Venezuela in his books and articles. Herrera Salas has

written extensively about race in Venezuela. His first book, published in 2003, was

entitled: The Black Miguel and the First Venezuelan Revolution: The culture of power

and the power of culture.132 In it, he recounts Venezuela’s slave insurrections for

freedom. In 2005, Herrera Salas published another accounting of the slave era

covering the wider Caribbean region, How Europe appropriated the African Mother’s

Milk in the Caribbean: An Essay on ‘Barbarism’ and ‘Civilization.’133 And then finally,

in 2010, Herrera Salas published The Political Economy of Racism in Venezuela. In

2005, Herrera Salas writes “Ethnicity and Revolution: The Political Economy of

Racism in Venezuela.”134

Herrera Salas credits Jun Ishibashi, a Japanese professor at the University of

Tokyo, with cracking wide open and shattering the glass encasement that

constituted “racial democracy” in Venezuela. In fact, what Ishibashi did, was to put a

lie to the myth of Venezuelan democratic exceptionalism—that Venezuela was 132. Jesus Maria Herrera Salas and Miquel Izard, The Black Miguel and the First Venezuelan Revolution: The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture (Caracas: Vadell Hermanos, 2003). 133. Jesus Maria Herrera Salas, How Europe Appropriated the African Mother’s Milk in the Caribbean: An Essay on ‘Barbarism’ and ‘Civilization’ (Bogota: Editorial Tropykos Fund, 2005). 134. Jesus Maria Herrera Salas, “Ethnicity and Revolution: The Political Economy of Racism in Venezuela,” Latin American Perspectives 32, no. 2 (2005): 72–91.

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uniquely democratic in the region. Hererra Salas also states that Ishibashi’s work

sparked serious debate in Venezuela on race—the heretofore “taboo subject.” (I will

review Ishibashi later in this chapter, but for now I will say that Ishibashi explored

the Black image in the Venezuelan media.135). Adriana Bolivar and her co–authors

tackle this issue in van Dijk’s Racism and Discourse in Latin America.136

Herrera Salas states that the political economy of racism in Venezuela is

nothing more than a continuation of the Spanish conquest and enslavement of its

Indigenous and Black populations that began in 1496. According to Herrera Salas, it

is this background of slavery and the Spanish colonial system that can lay claim to

the roots of racism that Venezuela experiences today.

Herrera Salas writes that the economic crisis of 1983 led to a reopening of

the ugly, open racism that had been masked by several policies associates with

nation building and identity. He says that one must go back to the era of the slave

and colonial period where Africans were imported to work the land stolen from the

Indigenous people, in order to fully understand racism in Venezuela today.

According to Herrera Salas, this “legalized” human trafficking and subjected the

Africans to “physical humiliation, economic exploitation, social exclusion, and sexual

violence.”137 Importantly, Herrera Salas notes that this human trafficking and

135. Jun Ishibashi, “Hacia una Apertura del Debate Sobre el Racismo en Venezuela: Exclusion y Inclusion Estereotipada de Personas ‘Negras’ en los Medios de Communicacion,” in Politicas de Identidades y Differencias Sociales en Tiempos de Globalizacion, ed. Daniel Mato (Caracas: FACES, Universidad Central de Venezuela, 2003), 33–61. 136. Adriana Bolivar et al., “Discourse and Racism in Venezuela: A Café Con Leche Country,” ed. Teun A. van Dijk, Racism and Discourse in Latin America (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 291–334. 137. Herrera Salas, “Political Economy,” 73.

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violence [now internationally recognized as a crime against humanity] contributed

to the overall wealth that Europe enjoys today.

Herrera Salas notes that although the slave trade became illegal in Venezuela

by 1797, it did not end right away. Just prior to the outlawing of the trade, the Royal

Certificate of Special Dispensation allowed those of mixed race to “purchase” the

White classification. This move was roundly rejected by the local criollos. The

criollos continued slavery and promoted White immigration while prohibiting Black

immigration into Venezuela. This guaranteed White hegemony with or without the

Special Dispensation. Whitening became the national policy of Venezuela.

Herrera Salas asserts that the economic crisis of 1983 brought racism out of

the closet and back center stage in Venezuelan politics. Blacks and Indigenous who

had migrated to Venezuela from surrounding countries were blamed for the

downturn. This is when, according to Herrera Salas, the Black and Indigenous

peoples counter organized. He writes that by 1998, the political situation had

massively deteriorated and there was a loss of confidence by the electorate in the

major political parties. Writing in 2005, Herrera Salas recognized that the political

and economic power in Venezuela at that time was still in the hands of the Whites

who are as resentful of the gains of the people as they were in the days when the

Special Dispensation became policy from the Spanish Monarch.

Jun Ishibashi, George Ciccariello–Maher, and Barry Cannon provide what I

believe to be the most compelling explanations for the role of the media in

perpetuating the “coloniality of power” in Venezuela and racism without racists. In

2003, the University of Central Venezuela published a book in which Jun Ishibashi

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wrote a chapter whose title can be translated from the Spanish as “Towards an

opening of the debate on racism in Venezuela: Exclusion, inclusion and stereotyping

of ‘black ‘ people in the media.”138 In his meticulous study, Ishibashi exposed a

devastating picture of the purposeful stereotyping of Blacks in the Venezuelan

media. Portrayals were intentional and when questioned by Ishibashi, producers of

television commercials pointedly said to him that they did not want to cast Blacks in

certain roles that would appear to make them equal to Whites.

George Ciccariello–Maher writes about the “racial geography” of Caracas and

White Venezuelan racism as a “structural fear of penetration.” Similar to Goldberg’s

“threat of race” thesis, Ciccariello–Maher points out that the polarization that exists

in Venezuela today is more than a matter of class. He writes that it “touches the

heart of questions of race.” Remembering Foucault and quoting Fanon,

Ciccariello–Maher recognizes the wall–building and newly–created insulated

municipalities around Caracas, as efforts to contain the penetration of Venezuela’s

people of color. Ciccariello–Maher recalls Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks, “the

Negro symbolizes the biological danger . . . [and] . . . is castrated.”139

Barry Cannon supplies an important piece of knowledge that is missing from

articles seeking to explain voting behavior in Venezuela: the role of race and class in

the electoral success of Hugo Chávez.140 Cannon goes to great lengths to explain the

demographic realities of Venezuela and its history of miscegenation among Africans,

Indigenous, and Spaniards and other Europeans. He writes that by the end of the 138. Ishibashi, “Hacia una Aperture.” 139. George Ciccariello-‐Maher, “Toward a Racial Geography of Caracas: Neoliberal Urbanism and the Fear of Penetration,” Qui Parle 16, no. 2 (2007): 43. 140. Cannon, “Venezuela, April, 2002” (see n. 72).

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colonial era “60% of Venezuelans had African origins and of the 25% classified as

White, probably some 90% had some African ancestry.”141

Cannon brings his reader up to modern–day Venezuela and the role of the

media in devaluing darker–skinned Venezuelans. He writes that Blacks in the media,

especially darker–skinned Blacks, are veritably invisible. Cannon writes that

Afro–Venezuelans are considered “ugly.” Canon then says that roughly 64% of

Venezuelans self–identify as non–White, but that given the context of the

undervaluation of the Black, the probability of under–identifying as Black, Afro, or

Indigenous is probably quite high. It is the probability that Venezuelans with darker

skin will vote for Chávez that Cannon brings into the discussion. And why not?

Chávez, himself, incorporated race and class into his own discourse. Many

academics have focused on class, as one of the few, if not the only factor; Cannon

focused on Chávez, his voters, and race.

Cannon goes on to provide evidence of the racism in Venezuelan media rising

to the level that one of the private channels, Globovision, was publicly rebuked

because it portrayed Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as a monkey. A

contemporaneous news report by Venezuelanalysis.com explained the context of

what the African Ambassadors from Egypt, Libya, South Africa, Nigeria, Western

Sahara, and Algeria found so offensive. The host of Globovision TV show “Alo

Cuidadano,” Leopoldo Castillo, laughed while saying that Zimbabwean President

141. Cannon, “Class/Race Polarisation,” 735.

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Robert Mugabe reminded him of the monkey–people142 from the movie “Planet of

the Apes.” A former Venezuelan state oil executive, Gustavo Coronel, has likened

Chávez to Mugabe in a bitter diatribe aimed at the former and rife with not so subtle

allusions to sub–human characteristics of both.143

Another example of racial bias in the media directed toward Chávez is seen in

a number of published, offensive, racially charged political animations of him. One,

by Kiko Rodriguez, circulated in private Venezuelan media is entitled, “Miko

Mandante,” a play on the words, “Mi Comandante” (My Leader); “Miko Mandante”

can be translated as “Ape Leader.”144 In it, Chávez is portrayed as thick–lipped

gorilla wielding a baseball bat dripping blood and on which is written “revolucian”.

In Chávez’s right hand is a small desperate blue bird representing the endangered

free press. Rodriguez’s caricature followed a venerable—and enduring—racist

142. Oscar Heck, “This is One of the Main Reasons Why I Love Venezuela…” Aletho News, November 12, 2010, https://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/oscar-‐heck-‐this-‐is-‐one-‐of-‐the-‐main-‐reasons-‐why-‐i-‐love-‐venezuela-‐%E2%80%A6/. 143. See Gustavo Coronel, “Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chávez: God Creates Them and They Get Together,” http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/ 200402280436. Coronel was a member of the Board of Directors of Petróleos de Venezuela (1976–79) and has also written critically of Chávez for the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-‐based libertarian think-‐tank, funded in part by the Koch Brothers. See Robert Greenwald and Jesse Lava, “Cato Institute Koch Brothers,” Huffington Post, May 13, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/cato-‐institute-‐koch-‐brothers/. 144. For the visual image and discussion by Rodriguez of it, see David Schonhauer, “Latin American Ilustracion Winner Spotlight: Kiko Rodriguez,” AI-‐AP Dispatches from Latin America, May 22, 2013.

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tradition of depicting Africans and their descendants as monkeys or gorillas. 145 This

cartoon won the First Annual Latin American Illustration Competition. 146

Similar in their use of primate symbolism are many caricatures that have

appeared in El Universal, done by a popular Venezuelan cartoonist, Rayma Suprani.

In one, she vulgarly depicts a purported changed standard of beauty in Bolivarian

Venezuela showing three pretty and pale–skinned flight attendants from other Latin

American countries but a hairy ape from Venezuela. Another showing the “Nuevo

Ordin Politico (New Political Order), illustrated chessboard pieces with a banana

instead of a King.147 The same sort of motif appeared in a January 2009 cartoon

showing Chávez leaving a trail of bananas behind him.148 Non–government

organizations protective of press freedoms have publicized anonymous threats

against Suprani urging supporters to write and demand public inquiries from the

Venezuelan government. No mention is made by these “defenders” of her long

sequence of racist “artwork” intended to incite White and criollo opposition and

hatred towards Chávez and, more generally, toward the rise of Black and Indigenous

power in Venezuela.

Understanding this background, I queried Barry Cannon, an Irishman in

Ireland, on how he came to be an author who focuses on race in Venezuela. He found 145. See for example “The Coon Caricature: Blacks as Monkeys,” http://www.authentichistory.com/diversity/african/3-‐coon/6-‐monkey/. 146. Latin American Illustracion, http://www.aiap.com/publications/article/6584/ latin-‐american-‐ilustracion-‐winner-‐spotlight-‐kiko.html. 147. Rayma for El Universal, December 10, 2012, http://www.eluniversal.com/ eu3/vinetasdelMes12_2012.html. 148. Rayma Caricaturas FaceBook page, https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1086702040132&set=pb.1003856565.-‐2207520000.1408032770.&type=3&theater.

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my question interesting; his response is equally so; it was basically that he came to

understand how race works as an Irish Catholic growing up in Northern Ireland

[still colonized by Britain), and then lived in London where he could witness exactly

the phenomena tackled by Essed and Goldberg, and their contributing authors.149

Cannon responded:

It mostly stems from personal experience in the sense that I grew up during “the Troubles” in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s and was conscious of issues of discrimination along religious lines. I was also interested in music and followed the great anti–racist battles in London in the punk and new wave era. Finally, I worked in London during much of the Thatcher era—for seven years in local government— where the issue of race was salient, especially in the inner city areas where I lived and worked. Issues of racial discrimination and identity were at the forefront of thinking in the Labour controlled borough councils where I worked. All these experiences made me sensitive to the question of race within wider political economy contexts. When I began to study Venezuela I noticed that it was sometimes alluded to but rarely addressed in work on Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution. When I did my field work there in 2002 I felt that much of the objections to Chávez coming from opposition groups had subtle racist– and classist– connotations. That is why I tried to tackle it, first in my 2004 article in Bulletin of Latin American Research and then later and more directly in my 2008 article in Third World Quarterly. It is still an area I'm interested in and I hope to work on it again at some time. I hope this answers your question.150

In the first chapter, I wrote about the familiarity that I felt that I had

with Chávez because of my own struggles that arose from this notion of race,

especially when one is non–European in a Eurocentric world. As Frantz Fanon

discussed, the problems of identifying with both the colonizer and the colonized

make it necessary to de–Eurocentrize and de–colonize a way of life that for

centuries has “epidermalized” a status of inferiority in people of color. According to 149. Philomena Essed and David Theo Goldberg, Race Critical Theories: Text and Context (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004). 150. Barry Cannon, e-‐mail message to author, February 7, 2014.

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Victor Figueroa,151 only a radical transformation could be counted on to make the

kind of changes necessary to accomplish this. Quijano agrees with him and writes

that revolution must be directed against the entire spectrum of domination—

against the whole of the dominating power. These writers, therefore, view radical

revolution as one way for Latin Americans to throw off the effects of slavery,

colonialism, Eurocentrism, globalization, neoliberalism, and racism. Hugo Chávez,

the kid from the plains of Venezuela, who was called “ugly” as a child growing up,

absorbed all these aspects of race that have played out in Venezuela for the past 500

years, and overcome them in order to become the leader that we know him as today.

Liberation of the Oppressed and Its Influence on Chávez

Many see Hugo Chávez as a Liberator following the same trajectory as his

beloved Simon Bolivar. But, before he could liberate others, he had to liberate

himself and see himself through eyes freed from the shame internalized as a result

of European domination.

Theories of liberation and resistance became particularly prominent during

the periods of resistance to colonialism. Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire feature

prominently in this literature. Because of the fervor of the times, the clamor for

freedom and decolonization by those dominated by European oppression sparked

revolutionary imagination of liberation that swept the colonized world. Frantz

Fanon and Paulo Freire, giants in the liberation literature, undoubtedly had an

impact on a younger Hugo Chávez. Their thoughts permeated the colonized world, 151. See Victor M. Figueroa, “The Bolivarian Government of Hugo Chávez: Democratic Alternative for Latin America?” Critical Sociology 32, no. 1 (2006): 187–211.

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including Latin America and the Caribbean. As a young military officer, Chávez also

read Muammar Qaddafi’s The Green Book. I will conclude this section with a brief

mention of The Green Book and of C.L.R. James’s book, Black Jacobins, also a primer

for revolutionary leadership in the region.

Hugo Chávez had heroes and he spoke of them often. Of course, we know that

Simon Bolivar was his hero, and he named his movement after him; but Chávez

entered the military academy with The Diary of Ché Guevara tucked underneath his

arm and read Muammar Qaddafi’s The Green Book while in military academy,

according to Marcano and Tyszka. Consideration of Latin American liberation must

include the pivotal figure of Ché Guevara. However, any discussion of race and class

liberation must include Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire.

Free Your Mind and the Rest Will Follow?

Frantz Fanon and Paulo Freire make it abundantly clear that mental

liberation is the precursor to physical and political liberation. In the colonized

setting, such identity work is critical to becoming free. And one cannot free others

without first freeing oneself—as much as is possible within the given circumstances.

Frantz Fanon (1925 – 1961), born in Martinique (a French colony) and a

trained psychiatrist, stands at the intersection of identity work, race, and

colonialism. He wrote that all colonized people have an inferiority complex. This is a

result of the colonial experience, which amounts to systemic dehumanization that is

not accidental, but is part of the structure of colonialism. Fanon wrote that our

participation in this structure contributes to our further dehumanization. Thus,

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colonialism and its violence worked on both the European colonizer and the

non–European colonized.

Fanon supported the Algerian War of Independence from France and became

a revolutionary post–colonial theorist who focused on the psychological effects on

individuals of colonialism. He collected his data through the lived experiences of not

only himself as a colonized Black man in Martinique and France, but also during his

psychiatric practice in Algeria and Tunisia during Algeria’s War of Independence. In

his two epic writings, Black Skin White Masks and Wretched of the Earth, Fanon

detailed his observations on the damaging impacts of French colonialism and racism

on the colonized identity and that of the colonizer.

Black Skin, White Masks152 is a phenomenological excursion through the lived

experiences of Fanon and others. In it he tries to understand the Black/White

relationship by exploring the psychology of racism and colonialism. He also wrote

about the role of violence in the liberation struggle and the Eurocentrism of the field

of psychoanalysis. He begins his philosophy of decolonization by describing the

psychological harm of colonialism, noting importantly, that colonizers have

psychological damage, too.

Fanon noticed that language is important and then recorded that Black skin

amounts to impurity in the way it is seen and the language that is used. Internalizing

this attitude leads to self–hatred. This, in turn, leads to bizarre behavior, an example

of which he calls “lactification.” To Fanon, lactification occurs when Black women

152. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Park Press, 1967). The work was originally published in French in 1952 under the title Peau Nore, Masques Blancs.

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seek out White men as partners.153 Another example of such behavior is the anxiety

felt by Blacks when in the presence of Whites: the fear of revealing any inferiority or

stereotypical behavior. Fanon says that this leads to one thinking of one’s Black self

as White, hence, the title, Black Skin, White Masks.

Fanon detailed the identity issues created by colonialism. He said that the

Black man wants to be White; some Whites consider themselves superior to Blacks;

some Blacks feel the need to prove their intellect to Whites. He believed that the

Black person who tries to “whiten” the race “is as wretched as the one who preaches

hatred of the White man.”154

Fanon writes about the “disalienation” from the dominant—that is

European—culture for the victim of colonialism and the “epidermalization of

inferiority.” This disalienation arises from being called “Black rabble,” and the

multiple complexes created by colonialism. Colonialism, according to Fanon,

discards one’s local culture “to the grave” and attempts to move the mind of the

victim of colonialism closer to the culture of the metropole, or colonizing country.

Colonialism defines the Black man as the “missing link” between humans and apes.

Analysis of this condition allows for its destruction. Therefore, one purpose of Black

Skin, White Masks was the liberation of the Black person from him or herself. Fanon

wrote: “We believe the juxtaposition of the Black and White races has resulted in a

massive psycho–existential complex. By analyzing it we aim to destroy it.”155

153. For a discussion of Fanon and feminism see T. Denean Sharpley-‐Whiting, Frantz Fanon: Conflicts and Feminisms (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). 154. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, Introduction. 155. Ibid., Introduction.

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In Wretched of the Earth,156 written in 1961 during the Algerian War of

Independence, Fanon developed his ideas further on the decolonization process. For

Fanon, colonialism was conceived in violence, maintained through violence, and

could only be removed through violence. For Fanon, it was through this violent

process that the colonized psyche would be liberated. He writes that the colonized

liberate themselves by way of violence and that it is this action which illuminates

both the appropriate method and the goal. He notes, “Every colonized subject” can

imagine “blow[ing] the colonial world to smithereens.”157 Finally, Fanon believed

that a decolonized world would open up the possibility of a new humanity and a

new humanism. The goal of the anti–colonial struggle was to replace one type of

mankind with another.

Post–colonial theorist Homi Bhabha wrote in his foreword to the 2004

edition of Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth:

Is his [Fanon’s] impassioned plea that ‘the Third World must start over a new history of man’ merely a vain hope? Does such a lofty ideal represent anything more than the lost rhetorical baggage of that daunting quest for a nonaligned postcolonial world inaugurated at the Bandung Conference in 1955? Who can claim that dream now? Who still waits in the antechamber of history? Did Fanon’s ideas die with the decline and dissolution of the Black Power movement in America, buried with Steve Biko in South Africa, or were they born again when the Berlin Wall was dismembered and a new South Africa took its place on the world’s stage? Questions, questions. 158

My answer to Bhabha’s question is: no! Fanon’s ideas did not die when Steve

Biko was murdered in South Africa while in police custody. In 2005, Vijay Prashad

156. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York, NY: Grove Press, 2007). This work was originally published in France under the title Damnés de la Terre. 157. Ibid., 5. 158. Homi K. Bhabha, “Foreword” in Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, xxi.

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wrote that the Third World did not build international institutions strong enough to

withstand U.S. global economic integration schemes.159 Charlie Samuya Veric

updates that thought with his recent description of how the Third World Project

failed.160 The Third World is the name given to the non–European colonized world.

According to Veric, the Third World Project was birthed by Frantz Fanon after the

historic Bandung Conference of 1955 brought together the countries and liberation

movements whose populations were victims of European colonialism,

neocolonialism, or apartheid. Veric writes about the estrangement, even in academe,

of that liberation project through its marginalization of José Maria Sison, one of the

architects of decolonizing thought and the author of Struggle for National

Democracy. Sison was a Philippines independence activist who is still alive, yet has

not taught in post–colonial studies programs. Veric sees Fanon, Sison, and Paulo

Freire as foundational to understanding the Third World Project, and defines this as

a new and living map of the planet. Veric writes that Fanon was deeply affected by

the U.S.–supported assassination 161 of Congo’s first democratically–elected Prime

Minister, Patrice Lumumba.162 He recalls that Lumumba’s fate, as well as Nkrumah’s

Ghana, served as backdrops for Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth. For Veric, the Third

159. Vijay Prashad, “American Grand Strategy and the Assassination of the Third World,” Critical Asian Studies 37, no. 1 (2005): 117–127. 160. Charlie Samuya Veric, “Third World Project, or How Poco Failed,” Social Text 114 31, no. 1 (2013): 1–20. 161. For more on the U.S. role in the assassination of Lumumba, see Stephen R. Weissman, “An Extraordinary Rendition,” Intelligence and National Security 25, no. 2 (2010): 198–222. 162. See Appendix C for a fuller discussion of Patrice Lumumba and the recent U.S. admission of its policy to assassinate Patrice Lumumba.

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World project is not dead and will not die as long as “unfreedom” exists in the Third

World as a result of globalization.

Another pillar in freeing oneself—liberating oneself from oppression and

then liberating others—centers on the idea of “consciencism.” In January 1964,

Kwame Nkrumah published his ideas on how to restore the African conscience,

ripped apart and strewn far away from the continent as a result of colonialism in his

book, Consciencism.163 In 1968 in Portuguese, and in 1970 in English, Paulo Freire

published his ideas on the role of conscientizaçao in the liberation of all who are

oppressed in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 164

Veric, like Pablo Martins, agreed that Paulo Freire was affected by Fanon’s

work. In a study of the confluence of ideas between Fanon and Freire, Pablo Martins

writes that the influence of Fanon on Freire and all of Latin America is palpable.165

In his powerful book on the dehumanizing nature of oppression, Pedagogy of the

Oppressed, Freire wrote a prescription of action to end oppression. He began by

declaring that a new underclass had been created; he later denounced

neoliberalism, for the same reason.166 Freire was careful on race, denouncing

racism, but also noting that race was not monolithic and that some from an

163. Kwame Nkrumah, Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Revolution (New York: Monthly Press, 1964). 164. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012). 165. For more on the similarities between Freire and Fanon, see Pablo Martins, “Confluencias entre el Pensamiento de Frantz Fanon y el de Paulo Freire: El Surgimiento de la Educacion Popular en el Marco de la Situacion Colonial,” Educaçao 37, no. 2 (2012): 241–256, doi:10.5902/198464443250. 166. Freire specifically wrote of neoliberalism in Pedagogy of the Heart (New York: Continuum International, 1997).

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oppressed group could join the class of the oppressor, as we saw earlier with Azad’s

work on the comprador class.

According to Freire, dialogue was a method of knowing that led to the

oppressed having a conviction for freedom. In fact, for Freire, dialogue was the only

way in which the oppressed could come to understand and express their own

reality. In education, this meant a rejection of a system of teaching that stifled rather

than encouraged critical analysis and creativity. Dialogue–based education, then,

was the route to freedom by way of conscientizaçao or critical consciousness.

Critical consciousness was the ability to see political, social, and economic

contradictions. One could not be free without this awareness. The reason? Because,

according to Freire, once one was critically conscious, one could not remain passive

in the face of the oppressor’s violence. Critical consciousness also created Subjects—

that is, individuals who act to eliminate oppression. Critical consciousness created

“knowledge in solidarity with action and vice versa.”167

Freire believed that the liberation struggle of the oppressed actually also

liberates the oppressor. He warned, however, that in order to engage in this

struggle, the oppressed would have to shed the internalized images of themselves

that have been adopted from the point of view of the oppressor. Hauntingly

reminiscent of Fanon, Freire wrote, “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by

gift.”168 And part of that conquest would have to be over one’s own fears and

feelings of inferiority and self–doubt that have been well–honed by the oppressor.

167. Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 38. 168. Ibid., 47.

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Therefore, for Freire, the first stage of this liberating pedagogy was consciousness

because consciousness would lead to action.

Also, powerfully and importantly, Freire delineated the mechanisms used by

the oppressor: conquest, divide and rule (of which class conflict played a role),

manipulation, and cultural invasion. The antidote to these mechanisms is

cooperation, unity for liberation, organization, and cultural synthesis—by which he

meant cultural action that overcame the alienating culture of the oppressor. Freire

wrote that all authentic revolutions are cultural revolutions. He offered these

thoughts as a theory of liberating action to counter the theory of oppressive action

that is the reality faced by the oppressed every day until they ignite the struggle for

freedom in themselves.

Ché Guevara

Ché was an Argentinian guerrilla leader who was also trained as a medical

doctor. He was Fidel Castro’s lieutenant and helped in the armed, revolutionary

overthrow of the –backed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba. Guevara traveled

the Third World, even going as far away as to Congo, where he met with Laurent

Desiré Kabila, later to become Congo’s President who would later be assassinated.

Ché said that the revolutionary, Marxist forces of the world should help both the

people of Vietnam and the people of Congo repel imperialism’s thrust.169 His aim

was to create “one, two, three Vietnams” with which, he believed, imperialism could

not successfully contend. This belief took him to Bolivia where he was captured and 169. For Che Guevara’s speech at the Afro-‐Asian Conference held February 24, 1965, see “At the Afro-‐Asian Conference in Algeria” in Che Guevara Reader, ed. David Deutschmann (North Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press, 2005), 340–349. Also available online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/02/24.htm.

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assassinated. With access to the Chávez personal diary, Marcano and Tyszka note a

variant of Guevara’s famous inscription in the page margins: “Vietnam. One and two

Vietnams in Latin America.”170 Perhaps this is an important window into Chávez’s

future rejection of U.S. imperialism. Ché Guevara did not have to die so soon, nor did

he have to live his life as a revolutionary, but his desire to liberate the poor people of

Latin America was so intense that he forsook all in order to accomplish this goal. Ché

Guevara is an example in action of Cabral’s theory of the “class suicide” necessary in

successful revolution. He wrote his own epitaph, which appeared in 1967 in The

Guardian obituary of him: " Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome,

provided that this our battle cry may have reached some receptive ear and another

hand may be extended to wield our weapons."171 In 1997, Guevara’s remains were

repatriated to Cuba, along with those of six of his compatriots where they are now

housed in a monument and mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba, the site of Guevara’s

military victory in the Cuban Revolution.

Amilcar Cabral

Chávez spoke of Amilcar Cabral who used armed struggle to rid the African

Continent of the Portuguese colonial presence. Therefore, in order to fully

appreciate Hugo Chávez’s legacy on race and his race–conscious leadership, I believe

a discussion is necessitated on the political leadership of liberation and resistance.

But first, how does one become personally free so as to help begin the process of

freeing others? Both Ché Guevara and Amilcar Cabral used armed resistance. In his 170. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, 39. 171. Richard Bourne, “Che Guevera, Marxist Architect of Revolution,” The Guardian, October 10, 1967, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/19/che-‐guevara-‐obituary-‐guardian-‐archive.

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press conference after the failed coup attempt Chávez asked his co–conspirators to

lay down their weapons, but por ahora, leaving open resort to armed resistance in

the future. After all, Chávez was the first in South America to bring revolution

through the ballot box.

Amilcar Cabral initiated, along with Sekou Touré of Guinea, a project to rid

Africans of the destructive personal and national effects of colonialism and

Eurocentrism. According to Cabral, this would be accomplished by way of a return

to African centered life principles—such as communalism and democratic,

transparent, and collective leadership.172 According to Hotep, this is an example of

African Centered Leadership–Followership, which Hotep views as a Pan–Africanist

leadership typology that follows the form of Servant Leadership as theorized by

Robert Greenleaf. Cabral was an African leader who actually produced freedom for

African people. Cabral, a prolific writer, developed an ideology of liberation and a

theory of socialist revolution from his experiences leading the anti–Portuguese

colonialism struggle in Guinea–Bissau and Cape Verde. His theory of socialist

revolution in the Guinea–Bissau and Cape Verde setting was more about grassroots

mobilization than theory borrowed from another place and time that was not

applicable to the situation in Cape Verde and Guinea–Bissau. From his experience on

the ground in Guinea–Bissau and Cape Verde, he realized that the revolution and

freedom would come from the peasants and not proletarians.

172. For more on African Centered Leadership-‐Followership, see Uhuru Hotep, “African Centered Leadership-‐Followership: Foundational Principles, Precepts, and Essential Practices,” Journal of Pan African Studies 3, no. 6 (2010): 11–26.

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Cabral’s thought and practice had to straddle the peculiar race/class/mestizo

issues that were a part of Portuguese colonialism.173 Cabral also understood that

transformational change would occur only with the mobilization of not just the

peasants in the countryside, but also with a broad swath of the internal classes that

could be aligned with the forces and interests of imperialism. Therefore, it was

important, to Cabral, to understand tactical places of contradiction among

supporters of imperialism, while using education to iron out differences among the

colonized. This would produce an “organic leadership” of peasants and workers and

the petty bourgeoisie united behind an ideology for political transformation.

Cabral’s notion of the necessity of “class suicide” is inherent in this multi–class path

to liberation. This combination of several classes working toward the same goal of

liberation contains, according to Cabral, a kernel of class suicide: for the revolution

to succeed, the petty bourgeoisie will have to set aside its class interest for the

national interest. Leadership with moral courage, collective and individual, would be

able to provide the necessary ideology, consciousness, and inspiration for this to

occur.

For Cabral, that uniting ideology of liberation for Guinea–Bissauians and

Cape Verdeans was nationalism and its material benefits. The goal of Cabral’s armed

struggle was the complete liberation of the people. And because the people were

primary, those in the liberation struggle should always remember not to veer onto

the road of militarism. Cabral wrote:

173. For more on Cabral’s Marxist approach to leadership and liberation, see Timothy W. Luke, “Cabral’s Marxism: An African Strategy for Socialist Development,” Studies in Comparative Communism 14, no. 4 (1981): 307–330.

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I swear that I will give my life, all my energy and all my courage, all the capacity that I have as a man, until the day that I die, to the service of my people, in Guinea and Cape Verde. To the service of the cause of humanity, to make my contribution, with the means possible, for the life of man to become better in the world. This is what my work is.174

Amilcar Cabral was assassinated on January 20, 1973. Cabral’s experience is

instructive because Cabral had to delicately navigate a terrain similar to that of

Chávez in Venezuela. According to Reiland Rabaka: “Cabral’s theoretic–strategic

framework is extremely useful for those critical theorists concerned not merely with

colonialism, neocolonialism, and postcolonialism, but also racism, critical race

theory, revolutionary nationalism, revolutionary humanism, re–Africanization, and

the critique of capitalism and class struggles in contemporary society.”175

Muammar Qaddafi and the Green Book

According to Marcano and Tyszka, The Green Book was one of the

basic texts Chávez and his military co–conspirators used before the 1992 attempt to

overthrow Chávez’s fellow, but corrupt, military leaders and the equally

unsatisfactory civilian leadership. The Green Book was written by Muammar Qaddafi

as an explanation of his theories and philosophies that would eventually see the

withering away of the State in favor of direct, popular democracy. According to

Marcano and Tyszka, many Latin American military traveled to Libya to meet and

learn from the experiences of Muammar Qaddafi, new leader of Libya. One of the 174. Amilcar Cabral, Revolution in Guinea: An African People’s Struggle (London: Stage One, 1969), 72. Quoted in Peter Karibe Mendy, “Amilcar Cabral and the Liberation of Guinea-‐Bissau: Context, Challenges and Lessons for Effective African Leadership,” African Identities 4, no. 1 (2006): 19, doi:10.1080/14725840500268440. 175. Reiland Rabaka, “Weapon of Theory: Amilcar Cabral and the Weapon of Critical Theory” in Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral, eds. Firoze Manji and Bill Fletcher, Jr. (Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA/Daraja Press, 2013), 109–127.

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1992 coup co–conspirators with Chávez was even chosen to travel there. Therefore,

according to Marcano and Tyszka, The Green Book was a foundational text for the

Venezuelan officers group.

The Green Book was written in three Parts. Qaddafi called its contents his

“Third Universal Theory.”176Part One, entitled “The Solution of the Problem of

Democracy,” laid out Qaddafi’s view of the central problem of government facing the

people at that time. He wrote that parliaments were only representations, and

therefore subject to misrepresentations of the will of the people. Political parties

presented the same problem in that the will of the people should be indivisible, but

political parties only represented certain people. Qaddafi wrote that the best means

of ascertaining the will of the people was to actually ask them and that true

democracy was based on the participation in decision–making of all of the people—

popular democracy. Therefore, the people should be organized so as to consider

questions of governance and appropriation of funds. Thus, according to The Green

Book, the basis for government was the authority of the people. Hence, the name of

the Libyan government after the overthrow of the monarchy was Jamahiriya, which

in Arabic means nation of the masses of the people. The Green Book, then, advocated

direct democracy as the surest form of obtaining the authority of the people.

Part Two of The Green Book spoke to the place of wage–earners and domestic

servants in society. Entitled, “The Solution of the Economic Problem,” Part Two

describes the problems engendered by wages and capitalism. Its basic 176. Copies of The Green Book, that were available for free in Embassies of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya around the world, were destroyed by the United States-‐backed group that overthrew that Government. It is available online at http://www.mathaba.net/gci/theory/gb.htm.

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understanding is that those who actually did the work were the real producers;

therefore, producers should take over production. Hence, socialism was seen as the

solution to the economic problems encountered by Libyans as the Revolution

needed to deepen. Qaddafi also spelled out in The Green Book that people would be

liberated and happy when their basic needs were met. Those basic needs were

described as food, housing, clothing, land, and transportation. Wealth disparities

and exploitation of others were not to be tolerated and surpluses that were

generated accrued to the society at large. This meant that the masses of the people

shared in both the authority of the country (Part One) and in its wealth (Part Two).

Part Three of The Green Book proclaimed that the nation was the umbrella

under which the tribe and the family were made secure, and that a state may consist

of many nations whose natural inclination is to be free. Qaddafi also spoke to the

role of women in Part Three and stated that they are different from males, but are

equal. Part Three also states that education is equivalent to freedom and that no one

should have the right to deny anyone access to knowledge. He also wrote that the

rights of minorities should be observed whether they were inside a state or were

stateless. In The Green Book, Muammar Qaddafi recognized that history is made by

mass movements that seek recognition for the identity of an oppressed group.

Despite the prevailing situation of Black people in the world, his belief was that

Black people will eventually triumph on the world stage. This is what Chávez and his

cohort of revolutionaries in Venezuela were reading. Muammar Qaddafi was

assassinated on October 20, 2011 during –orchestrated bombings of Libya to

overthrow its Jamahiriya government.

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The Black Jacobins, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and the Haitian Revolution

C.L.R. James, a Trinidadian, published the book, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint

L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution,177 in 1938. It is a history of the Haitian

Revolution set in the context of the French Revolution. The book was received with

critical acclaim and James came to be considered one of the great thinkers on human

emancipation. He is also considered to be one of the fathers of Pan–Africanism.

James noted that the West Indian identity was born with the Haitian Revolution.

And that the French call for liberty, equality and fraternity was heard all the way on

the island of Hispaniola by the enslaved Africans, colonized by the French

themselves. James envisioned The Black Jacobins as a harbinger of things to come

elsewhere in the world.

James attributes the initial impetus and organization of the Haitian

Revolution to the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture who was a slave until he was

forty–five years old. L’Ouverture was a teacher and also a learner, but it was the

masses whose desire to be free that made L’Ouverture. James wrote, “Great men

make history, but only such history as it is possible for them to make. Their freedom

of achievement is limited by the necessities of their environment.”178 James also

believed that the people of the Caribbean needed unity; he believed that they lived

in the twentieth century, but under Seventeenth Century economic conditions. His

prescription was unification; he recommended a federation of the whole of the

Caribbean, to include all of the islands and countries of the littoral, regardless of

177. C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). 178. James, Black Jacobins, x.

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language.179 He believed that the basis of everything that promoted change was the

mass movement. At the same time, James presented Black Jacobins as a political

contest and the story of the rise and fall of a great leader: Toussaint L’Ouverture

ended slavery in Haiti, but died while in custody in France. It was at this point, James

writes, that Jean–Jacques Dessalines enters the scene. It is Dessalines who declared

Haiti’s independence from France in 1804.

James broke with the Communist line on how the workers’ revolution was to

occur and demonstrated in his book on Haiti that revolutions can occur in contexts

other than those predicted by Marx. He met with Trotsky in order to understand the

place of Blacks within that part of the movement; but, according to James, Trotsky

failed to answer a single question that he posed on the matter of race.180 James

understood that race and class were not the same thing in the Caribbean setting and

contended that he could not allow race to be subsumed into the issue of class. The

Haitian Revolution, he believed, was the beginning of the colonial upheavals. He

wrote of the barbarity of slavery, which the Africans in Haiti endured: “The difficulty

was that though one could trap them like animals, transport them in pens, work

them alongside an ass or a horse and beat both with the same stick, stable them and

starve them, they remained, despite their black skins and curly hair, quite invincibly

179. Some of the speeches can be watched and heard on “C.L.R. James (West Indian Writer and Activist), YouTube video, 6:38, posted by “Afrikanliberation," July 22, 2009, https://www.y.com/watch?v=viwYx3uIYiU. 180. An interview of C.L.R. James conducted by critical theorist, Stuart Hall, can be viewed at “In Conversation with Stuart Hall,” 51:51, posted by “susie2010ism,” April 19, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gf0KUxgZfI.

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human beings…The slaves worked on the land, and like revolutionary peasants

everywhere, they aimed at the extermination of their oppressors.”181

In a preface, James explained his intent: “The writer has sought not only to

analyze, but to demonstrate in their movement, the economic forces of the age; their

molding of society and politics, of men in the mass and individual men; the powerful

reaction of these on their environment at one of those rare moments when society is

at a boiling point and therefore fluid.”182 George Ciccariello–Maher in his book, We

Created Chávez, captures this moment in Venezuela when society was at a boiling

point and the politics became very fluid. That story, too, is of movements and men:

the Caracazo and Chávez were both symptom and product as had been the Haitian

slave rebellion and Toussaint L’Ouverture.

Resistance Theory and New Ways of Resisting

In many ways, Chávez’s leadership was also about the positive

affirmation of a new identity—one forged from the process of resistance. This

approach is straight from Fanon and Freire, whose ideas will be revisited here after

a brief discussion on Resistance and Liberation Theories in general.

Resistance Theory is a form of political thought that discusses oppositional

behavior to power and that has social or political purpose. Resistance can

sometimes even be viewed as not only politically necessary behavior, but also as

181. James, Black Jacobins, 11, 85. 182. Ibid., x–xi.

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morally necessary behavior. Therefore, resistance is also an act that communicates

to others one’s position and creates a community of like–minded actors.183

Some theorists derive their thinking about resistance from Hobbes. Glenn

Burgess is one who writes that Hobbesian resistance rests on three pillars: the right

of the individual to protect his life; the responsibility of the people for the actions of

power; and the consequences for power when it acts in evil or wickedness.184 If one

believes that power starts from below and is popular consent, then resistance to

power is non–cooperation with power malpractice and disobedience from below.

Stellan Vinthagen185 sees power as subordination and resistance as insubordination.

Borrowing from Foucault, Vinthagen asserts that power comes in many forms—and

so too does resistance. With this as background, a look at resistance in Latin

America is useful.

Liberation Theology is perhaps the best–known form of Latin American

resistance from priests and nuns in the Catholic Church. These clerical activists

often were opposed by the Church hierarchy locally and in Rome. Practitioners of

Liberation Theology took a stand on behalf of the poor and marginalized and many

paid the ultimate price for doing so. One was Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo

Romero who openly opposed U.S.–supported genocide in El Salvador where

183. Although her focus is on education, Kathleen Knight Abowitz gives a good backgrounding on resistance theory in “A Pragmatist Revisioning of Resistance Theory,” American Educational Research Journal 37, no. 4 (2000): 877–907, doi:10.3102/00028312037004877. 184. Glenn Burgess, “On Hobbesian Resistance Theory,” Political Studies 42, no. 1 (1994): 62–83, doi:10.1111/j.1467-‐9248.1994.tb01674.x. 185. Stellan Vinthagen, “Power As Subordination and Resistance As Disobedience: Non-‐violent Movements and the Management of Power,” Asian Journal of Social Science 34, no. 1 (2006): 1–21, doi:10.1163/156853106776150207.

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approximately three thousand people per month were being killed.186 On March 24,

1980, Archbishop Romero was murdered in public while leading Mass. Months later,

on December 2, 1980, four Maryknoll nuns in El Salvador were raped and murdered

by death squads. Liberation Theology seeks to read the Bible through the eyes of the

poor. The path to justice, then, was to oppose those structures of injustice wherever

they appeared.187

George Leddy focuses on new ways of resisting in the globalized world of the

twenty–first century.188 Assassination was a factor in the cases of Cabral, Ché,

Torrijos, Qaddafi, Romero, the Maryknoll nuns, and others. Some of the United

States’ assassination attempts on Fidel Castro have been documented in declassified

U.S. Government documents.

Leddy points out that there are now many ways to resist. He writes that

globalization led to the creation of new forms of resistance, both violent and

non–violent. While taking an inventory of resistance movements in Latin America,

he writes that protracted violence is a form of resistance in Colombia, while the

Zapatista “Other Campaign” sought to unite various groups representing

marginalized populations in Mexico. Leddy believes that neoliberalism and

globalization have changed the nature of the types of resistance needed in Latin

186. For an explanation of U.S. military support in an “anti-‐Communist” environment, see Paul P. Cale, “The United States Military Advisory Group in El Salvador, 1979–1992,” Small Wars Journal, www.smallwarsjournal.com/documents/ cale.pdf. 187. For a discussion of Liberation Theology rooted in religious texts, see James M. Dawsey, “Liberation Theology and Economic Development,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 60, no. 5 (2001): 203–212, doi:10.1111/1536-‐7150.00145. 188. George Leddy, “New Structures for Capital and Forms of Resistance,” Latin American Perspectives 40, no. 5 (2013): 5–13, doi:10.1177/0094582X13497927.

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America. He says that neoliberalism’s policies of outsourcing and privatization have

led to migration from Latin American states just for survival and dignity. This has

caused a new kind of racism, according to Leddy. Furthermore, neoliberalism feeds

off that forced migration and shifts the main source of foreign exchange income of

many Latin American states to financial services, a sector that only entrenches the

wealth of the elite and immiserates everyone else.

Finally, Leddy points to social participation as a Latin American strategy of

resistance that has resulted in an increase in democracy. He also points to the Banco

del Sur as an example of a new form of resistance—in counterpoint to the neoliberal

structural adjustment mandates that come from the International Monetary Fund

(IMF) when countries borrow money. The structural adjustment mandates from the

IMF normally result in price increases of staple foodstuffs, foreign ownership of

state entities, and massive job loss. Thus, Leddy offers as examples of new forms of

resistance the mobilization of the masses and alternative institutional structures

with different developmental goals. He acknowledges that the new identity that is

being formed in Latin America leads to a new way of thinking which also leads to a

new way of resisting.

Battling the United States: When Transformational Leadership Becomes Leadership on the Line

Hugo Chávez was not the only leader who championed his Africanness and

tried to right the wrongs of colonialism and the centuries–long trafficking and

enslavement of Africans, acknowledged by the United Nations in 2001 to be a crime

against humanity. But Chávez was the first national leader to do so from the South

American continent. In so doing, Chávez qualified himself as a transformational

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leader. He transformed the shame of being Black (Indigenous or African) into a

source of pride for one’s thick lips or for a woman’s straight black hair, culminating

in a movement that continues to exercise power today in Venezuela.

There is a tradition of such struggle, against colonialism, slavery, and mental

slavery, including against the more modern manifestations of those systems of

oppression. Coming straight from colonialism to political independence, President of

Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah called the new form of colonialism that he confronted,

neocolonialism. Neocolonialism had to be fought as vigorously as colonialism

because the lack of independence and freedom was still the hallmark of the

post–colonial period.

A.B. Assensoh investigates the leadership of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, along

with that of Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta. These three are

considered African Founding Fathers who transformed a continent. In African

Political Leadership189 Assensoh presents the trio as exemplars of African leadership

comparing Nkrumah, Kenyatta, and Nyerere, notably in regard to the status of

women, heath care and education. Promotion by the states they led came through

Nyerere’s non–Marxist socialism, and, in the case of Nkrumah, a fervent

Pan–Africanism.

Assensoh posits that Africa’s foremost problem today is its lack of leadership

practice. Assensoh counts Nyerere, Kenyatta, and Nkrumah as African leadership

exemplars despite their difficulties and imperfect records. He holds them up as

examples of African Political Leadership worthy of emulation. All lived long lives 189. A.B. Assensoh, African Political Leadership (Malabar, FL: Krieger, 1998).

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and experienced the taste of their success. For political leadership that leads

powerful change, that is not always the case. As we now know, Hugo Chávez died on

March 5, 2013 after a long bout with cancer that was discovered in 2010. When

Chávez died, he was fifty–eight years of age. Yet he shared some characteristics that

will be examined in the fourth chapter with those African leaders.

Leadership on the Line: Fidel Castro and Omar Torrijos

Fidel had invited Chávez to Cuba after the latter’s release from prison for his

role in the 1992 attempted coup in Venezuela. The two hit it off immediately and

remained close until the end of Chávez’s life. While in military academy, Chávez had

the opportunity to meet the son of Omar Torrijos, the nationalist military

Commander of the Panamanian National Guard. Torrijos is best known as the Latin

American leader who regained the Panama Canal for Panama. Marcano and Tyszka

relate how proud the Venezuelans felt to meet the Torrijos son and that they all sat

around, Venezuelan military cadets and Panamanian, reveling in the Panamanian

Revolution. Marcano and Tsyzka write that Torrijos headed a nationalist

government that ended the lock on the economy that the elite had enjoyed in

Panamanian politics. They indicate that the talk about Torrijos taking back the Canal

from the United States made a great impact on Chávez.190 These two revolutionary

leaders put their lives and their leadership on the line in their struggle for freedom

from the yoke of the United States. As a cadet, Chávez spoke of himself as a

Torrijist.191

190. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, 35–36. 191. Ibid.

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We know the extent to which these revolutionary Latin American leaders put

their leadership on the line because of the reports written by the Senate Select

Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities

(hereafter referred to as the Church Committee, named after its Chair) and from

John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hitman.192 The Church Committee outlined

the –sponsored assassination plots against Fidel Castro beginning with Castro’s

treatment in the U.S. media. Castro was seen as a charismatic leader and the CIA

wanted to destroy that image. Of attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, the Church

Committee wrote: “We have found concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving

the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro from 1960 to 1965.”193 The Committee also found

that the U.S. Government sought information on Raul Castro, assuming he would

succeed his brother, Fidel, in case the latter had an “ ‘accident’ to neutralize this

leader’s influence.” Raul Castro is Cuba’s current leader.

John Perkins was assigned to also research Omar Torrijos and says that

Torrijos was killed because he was a nationalist who would not yield to U.S.

interests in negotiations for a larger canal. Perkins says that Torrijos knew that the

whole world was watching him because of the Panama Canal and his demand that it

be turned over to the Panamanians. Perkins said that the concern of the U.S.

Government was that Torrijos would set an example that others were bound to

192. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hitman (San Francisco: Berrett-‐Koehler, 2004). 193. U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Interim Report, 71, http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/ reports/ir/html/ChurchIR_0043a.htm. Note: in subsequent footnotes this Committee will be referred to as “Church Committee.”

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follow. Perkins explains that his job was to either bribe Torrijos, in order to get him

to accept huge loans that would bankrupt the country, or assassinate him if he

refused such bribes. Perkins says that these leaders were all aware of the history

and they knew that it had happened before. Perkins even describes the manner in

which Torrijos was killed: he had been handed a tape recorder that had a bomb in it.

Perkins says that he was personally aware of what happened. Such was the end of

Hugo Chávez’s hero, Omar Torrijos.194

Thus, Fidel Castro and Omar Torrijos had different outcomes personally with

respect to their longevity, but both successfully challenged the United States for the

dignity and independence of their countries. They both constitute classic examples

of the kind of transformational leadership that knowingly courts danger. In my

opinion, this is the kind of leadership also exemplified by Chávez, who challenged

the United States, despite knowing well that such a challenge was fraught with

danger. Therefore, I believe that Hugo Chávez was not just a transformational

leader, but also a unique transformational leader—and one who practiced

Parrhesia, as we now discuss.

Parrhesia

Another type of leadership that involves risk and outspokenness is called

Parrhesia. The word Parrhesia has different meanings: one is in the ancient Greek

sense of free speech, from which the word is derived. The other meaning of “bold

194. For an interview of Perkins, see “Ex-‐Economic Hit Man John Perkins in Panama,” YouTube video, 4:11, posted by Alan Duke, October 8, 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiQsmgaBkzw.

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speech” is used in the Greek New Testament.195 Foucault explains these differences

in connotations of the word in a series of lectures on the subject. Here, we will focus

on the use of the word by Michel Foucault who outlined the requirements necessary

for parrhesia to exist. Foucault popularized the notion of parrhesia and wrote of the

nature of “fearless speech,” one of the ways that the word parrhesia has been

translated. According to Foucault, the word first appeared in the writing of

Euripides in the Fifth Century BC and continued to be used through to the Fifth

Century AD. Parrhesia was the act of speaking freely and fearlessly and the

Parrhesiastes is the person who does it.

According to Foucault, one who merely speaks his mind—as free speech

might connote—does not meet the requirements to be considered a Parrhesiastes.

Parrhesia requires five criteria to be met: frankness, truth, danger, criticism, and

duty. According to Foucault, the Parrhesiastes “is someone who says everything he

has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to

other people through his discourse.”196 Foucault continues that the speaker must

not only speak freely, but authentically, saying that in parrhesia, when the speaker

speaks freely and authentically, the audience can sense that what is said is believed.

Thus, the Parrhesiastes is frank, but that frankness comes within a certain context,

and without that context the free speaker is merely that and not a Parrhesiastes. The

Parrhesiastes must also be perceived to know the truth and to speak it. Thus,

parrhesia is related to a moral truth telling.

195. NAS New Testament Greek Lexicon, “Parrhesia,” http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/Parrhesia.html. 196. Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech (Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2001), 12.

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Then, Foucault adds danger to the ingredients necessary for parrhesia to

prevail: the moral truth teller must also be in some danger because of the truth

telling. Foucault gives the example of the philosopher and the tyrant:

When a philosopher addresses himself to a sovereign, to a tyrant, and tells him that his tyranny is disturbing and unpleasant because tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks the truth, believes he is speaking the truth, and more than that, also takes a risk (since the tyrant may become angry, may punish him, may exile him, may kill him)… When you accept the Parrhesiastic game in which your own life is exposed, you are taking up a specific relationship to yourself: you risk death to tell the truth instead of reposing in the security of a life where the truth goes unspoken. Of course, the threat of death comes from the Other, and thereby requires a relationship to himself: he prefers himself as a truth–teller rather than as a living being who is false to himself.197

For Foucault, parrhesia also entails criticism directed to those “above” from

those “below.” He states that most of the time, the use of parrhesia requires that the

Parrhesiastes know his own genealogy, his own status.” In other words, the

Parrhesiastes must know his place and be in a place where the freedom of speech is

granted. Therefore, the “Parrhesiastes risks his privilege to speak freely” when he

discloses his truth.

Foucault’s last requirement to be a Parrhesiastes is that the truth telling,

done at risk, from someone in a position to know and speak the truth, done from

below to above, must be viewed as a duty. Ultimately, for Foucault, parrhesia is

about the self and the motivations of the self. Parrhesia is transformative for society

as well as for the self.

Hugo Chávez was not only a product of his historical context; he is also a

product of the decisions that he made and actions that he initiated. Foucault says, “a

197. Ibid., 16.

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given problematization is not an effect or consequence of a historical context or

situation, but is an answer given by definite individuals.”198 Hugo Chávez, despite all

of the limitations discussed in the preceding sections of this chapter, challenged the

entrenched leadership of the Deep State199 belonging to the United States with its

allies in Venezuela.

While some may raise questions about calling Chávez a Parrhesiastes since

he was a very powerful man who was President of a country, I believe that the

preceding discussion makes it clear that being a president of a Third World country

who speaks the truth against Empire and imperialism is, in fact, knowingly putting

him or herself in danger because of what has happened to those others who have

done so. Hence, even though Chávez was a powerful political figure, there was real

risk in what he did and documented danger seen for others who have attempted to

lead powerful change against the imperial aims of the United States of America.

The Caracazo and the Politics of the Un

Jacques Rancière200 provides a definition of politics that I believe is

appropriate for any discussion of the phenomena observed surrounding the

leadership and the legacy of Hugo Chávez on race. According to Rancière, politics is

about inclusion and exclusion and for the Un, their proper place in politics is 198. Ibid., 172. 199. A brief overview of the idea of the Deep State and its meaningfulness in the case of the assassination of Congo liberation leader, Patrice Lumumba, is presented in Appendix C. For a fuller explanation of the Deep State and how it works, see Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993) and Peter Dale Scott, The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on American Democracy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Also see “Peter Dale Scott,” http://www.peterdalescott.net. 200. Jacques Ranciere, “What Does It Mean to Be Un?” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 21, no. 4 (2007): 559–569, doi:10.1080/10304310701629961.

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invisibility. The Un are the people who are not supposed to be involved in politics.

They are not expected to have a political opinion and they are not asked—just like

the invisible people before the Caracazo. According to Rancière, when it comes to

politics, the Un are the “un-‐qualified,” the “un-‐identified.” The role of the police, then

is to maintain this order about who is allowed inside and who must remain outside;

which bodies are in the right place and which bodies are out of place.

Rancière describes the Un: Jews in Nazi Germany, Aboriginals in Australia,

Blacks in the United States And for Rancière, not until they undergo a process of

“dis-‐identification” do they become a political Subject (in the Freirean sense). It is

this dis-‐identification that Fanon and Freire wrote about. And both Fanon and Freire

warned that without this de-‐identification—Freire called it conscientizaçao—the

most that would occur would be a reordering of domination. Instead, according to

Rancière, these unidentified and unqualified political objects are the ones who have

the “anarchic power.” When they cease being objects and become political subjects

they also cease being a part of the police order. According to Rancière, It is in these

anarchic moments when the Un cease to exist as Un that real politics takes place.

This occurs when the Un express their dissensus with the existing consensus. For

Rancière, this is the highest form of politics. He writes, “the very definition of politics

entails this anarchic moment.” 201

This is the zone within which Hugo Chávez operated. It is this politics of the

Un that describes and defines Chávez’s struggle. In order to understand and fully

appreciate the legacy and the leadership of Hugo Chávez, one must capture the

201. Ibid., 561.

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Rancièrian notion of politics. Hugo Chávez, the once-‐skinny boy from the

Venezuelan plains, took his dissensus from the Washington consensus where very

few national leaders dared to go. It is the politics of the Un that made the rise of

Chávez even possible, with the Caracazo. And once in place, Hugo Chávez crafted a

politics of the Un that was global in its reach. The possibilities for change created by

this one man and the community of people inside Venezuela who lifted him up are

tectonic.

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Research Problem, Purpose, Question, And Design

Research Problem and Question

Hugo Chávez was both loved and loathed. This dissertation is about race and

the legacy of one man who tried to change the racial power configurations inside

Venezuela and in the rest of the non-‐European world. The question this research

seeks to answer is “What kind of leadership does Hugo Chávez exemplify and what

is his legacy on race?”

We will explore Hugo Chávez’s leadership and his legacy on race. We will

explore what Hugo Chávez said about race, his African heritage, his African identity;

we will explore what others wrote and said about Hugo Chávez and race. And we

will explore Hugo Chávez in the spaces where his name is not mentioned.

Critical Methodology: Problematics and Pitfalls

Here, I introduce problematization because of the tool it offers the researcher

when questioning what is presumed to be “conventional wisdom.” Some of the most

dramatic developments have occurred when the underlying and accepted

assumptions of the literature itself were questioned by new ways of research.202

Mats Alvesson and Jorgen Sandberg203 posit that problematization, itself, could be

seen as a methodology and that challenging existing assumptions underlying

202. An example of this is the research of David Cunningham on the implementation of the Counter-‐Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) and the FBI’s selection of targets for repression. He found that the groups that were targeted and suffered the most repression were not the most violent ones, thereby exploding conventional wisdom up until that time in the literature. See David Cunningham, “The Patterning of Repression: FBI Counterintelligence and the New Left,” Social Forces 82, no. 1 (2003): 209–240, doi:10.1353/sof.2003.0079. 203. Mats Alvesson and Jorgen Sandberg, “Generating Research Questions through Problematization,” Academy of Management Review 36, no. 2 (2011): 247–271, doi:10.5465/AMR.2011.59330882.

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existing literature is far more interesting to the audience than conventional

approaches, and is more likely to lead to “more influential theories.” They believe

this is true even in the Academy, and that mere gap-‐spotting, which often is all that

social research really does, does not add to the discipline. They write, “our idea is to

use problematization as a methodology for challenging the assumptions that

underlie not only others’ but also one’s own theoretical position.” They present “a

typology of assumptions open for problematization” 204 including in-‐house, root

metaphor, paradigmatic, ideological, and field assumptions.”205 According to

Alvesson and Sandberg,

In-‐house assumptions exist within a particular school of thought… The ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions that underlie a specific literature can be characterized as paradigmatic assumptions… Ideology assumptions include various political-‐, moral-‐, and gender-‐related assumptions held about the subject matter… Field assumptions are a broader set of assumptions about a specific subject matter that are shared by several different schools of thought within a paradigm, and sometimes even across paradigms and disciplines.206

Alvesson and Sandberg provide an important tool to not only problematize

the subject matter, but to also problematize the literature on that topic as I have

done above.

Boldly challenging positivist notions of detachment that might still lurk

within ivory towers interested in Critical Theory, Minerva Chávez puts herself in the

204. Ibid., 252. 205. Ibid., 255. 206. Ibid., 254–255.

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center of her research and asserts five reasons to use Critical Race Theory (CRT).207

She insists on being an explicit part of her own research. Her reasons to use Critical

Race Theory are:

• It draws attention to the centrality of race and racism as one of many

means of oppression—along with gender, class, language;

• It challenges the “American” narrative and exposes liberal/progressive

use of “colorblindness” as a means of prolonging White privilege;

• It calls for social justice;

• It recognizes diverse forms of knowledge and is a form of resistance

knowledge;

• It uses multiple segments of The Academy for a “transdisciplinary

perspective.

Being aware of and eliminating researcher bias is a concern in research. Specific

strategies have been devised in qualitative research to diminish the impact of

researcher positionality. Additional strategies have been explored to diminish this

impact specifically in Critical Research. Vandenberg and Hall208 see Critical Theory

and critical ethnography in particular as fraught with the problem of researcher

positionality due to the importance of interpretation when assessing the results.

They write of Critical Theory as a tool that is used “to understand power

207. Minerva S. Chávez, “Autoethnography, a Chicana’s Methodological Research Tool: The Role of Storytelling for Those Who Have No Choice but to Do Critical Race Theory,” Equity & Excellence in Education 45, no. 2 (2012): 342–343, doi:10.1080/10665684.2012.669196. 208. Helen E.R. Vandenberg and Wendy A. Hall, “Critical Ethnography: Extending Attention to Bias and Reinforcement of Dominant Power Relations,” Nurse Researcher 18, no. 3 (2011): 25–30, doi:10.7748/nr2011.04.18.3.25.c8460.

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relationships, social structures, oppression and social justice.”209 Critical

ethnography “is intended to help researchers understand relations of power by

merging a critical stance dealing with unjust situations with a complex and dynamic

qualitative strategy of enquiry.” The critical researcher who studies networks of

privilege might not sympathize with the participants. Besides, many mainstream

researchers empathize with their participants, or they are indifferent (which is also

an emotional stance) but they pretend to be objective.

I have chosen the topic of this dissertation because of sympathy with Hugo

Chávez. This is not unusual for biographers, however this is not always the case.210

Although my approach is not the same as a biographer, I am using some of the same

tools: Hugo Chávez’s own words, documents from his Administration and from the

United States government, and statements by others about Chávez. The problem for

a researcher, like me then, is to navigate the subject matter while maintaining an

acceptable scholarly distance at the same time. Nathaniel Comfort calls this being

sure to maintain empathy with our subject matter while not allowing that empathy

to reach the quality of sympathy.211 To resolve this dilemma, Vandenberg and Hall

recommend a three-‐pronged approach to deal with researcher bias: “reflexivity,

relationality, and reciprocity.”212

209. Ibid., 25. 210. For example, see Ann Oakley, “The Social Science of Biographical Life-‐Writing: Some Methodological and Ethical Issues,” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 13, no. 5 (2010): 425–439, doi:10.1080/13645571003593583. 211. Nathaniel Comfort, “When Your Sources Talk Back: Toward a Multimodal Approach to Scientific Biography,” Journal of History of Biology 44, no. 4 (2011): 667, doi:10.1007/s10739-‐011-‐9273-‐9. 212. Vandenberg and Hall, “Critical Ethnography,” 29.

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They define reflexivity as “open reflection about researchers’ beliefs and

values during the research process.”213 This reflexivity is what occurs when one is

mindful throughout the research process of how the researcher affects the research.

This mindfulness should hopefully prevent the researcher from tipping the scales of

balance too far in one direction. Vandenberg and Hall write that this reflexivity

makes the researcher conscious of decisions made during research design and data

collection.

The researcher and the participants should be seen as coequals in the

process of arriving at the conclusions of the research. Because critical research

entails a focus on power in relationships, it is important that external power

differentials not become internal to the research. This is where Vandenberg and

Hall’s idea of relationality becomes important, and it also decreases a type of

researcher bias that accords more power to the researcher than the participant. In

fact, the research would not be successful without the participant, and therefore,

that co-‐equitable status should be reflected during the research process and in the

conclusions. According to Vandenberg and Hall, relationality is achieved when the

participants share power and decision-‐making with the researcher.

Understanding the special or unique needs of the participants creates a kind

of reciprocity that Vandenberg and Hall believe is also important in reducing

researcher bias. Sometimes these needs are unspoken, like, for example, the need

for anonymity. When the researcher satisfies these special needs of the participants,

according to Vandenberg and Hall, the result is an atmosphere of heightened trust.

213. Ibid., 29.

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Vandenberg and Hall write, “Reciprocity is the creation of trust and support

between researcher and participants.”214 Vandenberg and Hall believe that

reciprocity increases participant involvement and that all three of these strategies,

taken together, increase participant involvement and reduce researcher bias. They

believe that their recommendations are particularly important in the use of

Carpsecken’s Critical Methodology, which I will discuss in the next section. This

research will utilize both Vandenberg and Hall’s recommendations and the

Carspecken Methodology to reduce the impact of researcher positionality on the

researcher project, itself.

The Carspecken Critical Qualitative Methodology is a particularly useful way

to reduce bias because it is flexible and comprehensive in that it accommodates

different types of data and data collection. Carspecken uses the term “critical

qualitative research” (CQR) to describe the kind of research that he prefers to do as

a “form of social activism” and calls those who follow the CQR approach as

“criticalists.” Carspecken’s methodological approach “incorporates the basic tenets

of critical theory”215 in a five-‐stage framework. The five stages proceed like this:

• Stage One: Building a primary etic216 record that consists of

non-‐participant data collection and reflection, analyzed for cultural

reconstruction that explains, “What’s Going On?”;

214. Ibid., 30. 215. Mary-‐Ann Hardcastle, Kim Usher, and Colin Holmes, “Carspecken’s Five-‐Stage Critical Qualitative Research Method: An Application to Nursing Research,” Qualitative Health Research 16, no. 1 (2006): 153, doi:10.1177/1049732305283998. 216. Etic data are those items, such as documents, considered by the researcher as stand-‐alone units for analysis. They come from outside the system that is being studied.

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• Stage Two: Researcher interpretation of the etic perspective in

“preliminary reconstructive analysis that also engages in cultural

reconstruction in which the researcher asks him or herself “Why is this

going on?”;

• Stage Three: Emic217 dialogic data generation with participants as

collaborators with an objective of emic cultural reconstruction while the

researcher begins to get answers from insiders on “Why things are the

way that they are”;

• Stage Four: Describe systems relations in an etic systems analysis where

similar knowledge exists;

• Stage Five: Explain relational systems by linking findings to broader

existing theories in an etic systems analysis.218

Examination of the problematized scholarly literature on Hugo Chávez and

information about U.S. covert actions and perspectives constitute Stage One data.

According to Carspecken’s methodology, these data have been collected while being

mindful of the choices of data that are selected for analysis. This roughly

corresponds to Vandenberg and Hall’s reflexivity. Participant interviews constitute

Stage Three data, roughly corresponding to Vandenberg and Hall’s relationality and

reciprocity. However, Carspecken adds another expectation of these data: that they

will begin to answer the question of why things are the way that they are. In this

research, then, the global system of neoliberalism and its interaction with race

217. Emic data are units of evidence, such as participant interviews, that are considered in research to be generated from within the system of interest. 218. Hardcastle et al., “Carspecken’s,” 153.

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provides the Stage Four systems analysis. The combination of the use of Vandenberg

and Hall’s approach and Carspecken’s methodology should increase researcher

mindfulness, increase participant participation, increase internal validity, and

therefore reduce bias as much as is practicable.

The goal of this research is to describe the legacy of Hugo Chávez on race as

accurately as possible after input from participants, document analysis, and a

reading of the literature. Also, where necessary, Spanish language translators—

human and electronic, including Google Translate—have been used to translate

articles and Spanish language material.

Oral History Tools

According to Mary Larson, Oral History is a genre of qualitative research

known as a “populist methodology”219 whose researchers have developed deep

concerns about privilege and power in society and in recorded history. Oral History

relies heavily on interviews and its domain is sound. It is concerned not only with

the collection of data, but also with the translation of that data. Therefore, Oral

History is not just what was said, but how it was said, the setting within which it was

said, and the expression with which it was said. Emerging in the 1950s and 1960s as

a methodology, the use of Oral History has seen explosive growth, especially in

human rights work in Latin America.220 While this creates additional burdens and

ethical responsibilities, which will be discussed in the next sub-‐section, the

219. Mary Larson, “Steering Clear of the Rocks: A Look at the Current State of Oral History Ethics in the Digital Age,” Oral History Review 40, no. 1 (2013): 42, doi:10.1093/ohr/oht028. 220. Ronald J. Grele, “Review Essay: Oral History Theory by Lynn Abrams,” Oral History Review 38, no. 2 (2011): 357, doi:10.1093/ohr/ohr059.

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combination of the internet and the Creative Commons, a liberal copyright system,

have made Oral History and its audio and video documentaries available to a much

wider audience.

Borrowing some of the tools of the Oral History methodology is appropriate

for this research that seeks to understand Hugo Chávez, race, and his struggle

against the exclusion, invisibility, and marginalization of African and Indigenous

descendants ensnared in the grip of neoliberal policies, run from Washington, D.C.

Interviews provide more depth than just the examination of documents, alone.221

Oral Historians are clear that the process of the interview is a two-‐way

experience that should be considered “as an exchange between two Subjects.”222

Both the interviewer and the narrator are impacted by each other. There is a tension

between the individualized aspects of the interview process in Oral History and the

need for generalizing in research. Therefore, Oral History has been exempted from

some Institutional Review Board (IRB) requirements,223 although this is not the case

for Antioch University. However, the ethical needs and considerations of Oral

History go beyond the IRB process, for example, in constructing a reality within a

highly politicized setting. At least one researcher, Erin Jessee, found herself omitting

huge swaths of information provided by the narrators due to self-‐censorship in

order to protect the narrators and her not being able to sift propaganda out of the

221. Comfort, “When Your Sources.” 222. Stephen Sloan, “On the Other Foot: Oral History Students as Narrators,” Oral History Review 39, no. 2 (2012): 306, doi:10.1093/ohr/ohs086. 223. Karen M. Staller, “Epistemological Boot Camp: The Politics of Science and What Every Qualitative Researcher Needs to Know to Survive in the Academy,” Qualitative Social Work 12, no. 4 (2012): 400, doi:10.1177/1473325012450483.

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stories of the participants.224 Jessee concludes that Oral History does not provide

enough guidance for these types of situations.

My research will use the tools of oral history, but is not an Oral History

project. I will interview participants knowledgeable on the leadership and legacy of

Hugo Chávez on the issue of race.

Ethics: Going Beyond the Institutional Review Board

An important recognition in Oral History is that it is an exchange and not

done in isolation; both parties impact each other. The interviews are often recorded

and Oral Historians like to keep, rather than destroy, these data. Because of this,

attention must be paid to the ethics of the interaction. However, because of the

nature of most Oral History research, it has clashed with many Institutional Review

Boards that govern institutional research ethics. Oral Historians prefer named

participants rather than anonymous ones; because of the fluidity of the interview,

there are rarely set questions; most times Oral History is not meant to be

generalizable; and Oral Historians claim conscience and ethics over the IRB.225

However, Oral History requires honesty in the field and honesty in the editing room.

Teresa Iacobelli gives an example of how her research exposed that the Canadian

Broadcasting Corporation intentionally manipulated the oral histories that it had

224. Erin Jessee, “The Limits of Oral History: Ethics and Methodology amid Highly Politicized Research Settings,” Oral History Review 38, no. 2 (2011): 287–307, doi:10.1093/ohr/ohr098. 225. See Mary Larson, “Steering Clear,” 36–49.

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recorded and had broadcast an inauthentic story on two occasions lionizing

Canadian military prowess in World War I and World War II.226

Because of the political turmoil taking place in Venezuela currently, and

because of the contested views on Hugo Chávez worldwide, participants in this

research, in particular Venezuelans who agree to participate in this research, should

be considered a vulnerable population. Their words taken down today for a

research project should not come back to haunt them tomorrow. Therefore, all

participants in this research have been made anonymous—unless they specifically

chose to be identified after I discussed with them the possible risks of doing so. This

ethical decision to protect especially the Venezuelan participants in this research is

consistent with the notion of “ethics in practice,” that is advanced by Guillemin and

Gillam.227

Research is supposed to be systematic, rigorous, and, in the case of

qualitative research, transferable. That is, according to James McMillan and Jon

Wergin, research “relies on careful, formal procedures” that include “procedures

designed to reduce and control bias” and that “relies on data that are tangible.”228

For the purposes of my research, Chávez is viewed through the prism of

transformational Parrhesiastes, and, further, of a transformational Parrhesiastes of

African descent or of color. But that is not enough. There is another basis on which 226. Teresa Iacobelli, “ ‘A Participant’s History?’: The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the Manipulation of Oral History,” Oral History Review 38, no. 2 (2011): 331–348, doi:10.1093/ohr/ohr099. 227. Marilys Guillemin and Lynn Gillam, “Ethics, Reflexivity, and ‘Ethically Important Moments’ in Research,” Qualitative Inquiry 10, no. 2 (2004): 261–280, doi:10.1177/1077800403262360. 228. James McMillan and John Wergin, Understanding and Evaluating Educational Research (Boston: Pearson, 2010), 1.

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this research rests: Chávez’s resistance to neoliberalism and its disproportionately

marginalizing effect on people of color, especially people of African descent. By way

of his discourse, Chávez grounds himself in this history and with those who have

similarly resisted oppression, colonialism, and racism. Hence, both the oppression

and the resistance are necessary parts of the story of Hugo Chávez. The legacy of

Hugo Chávez, then, it is hoped, will explain how one transformational Parrhesiastes

of color resisted racial oppression and economic domination.

I am interested in how Hugo Chávez’s legacy informs us of transformational

leadership and Parrhesiastes, overall. I am looking for deep understanding of

transformational leadership and Parrhesiastes in the legacy of Hugo Chávez seen

from the perspective of racial liberation.

The goals of this research are modest: its purpose is to shed some light on a

little known aspect of the race-‐conscious leadership of Hugo Chávez. That is,

through the citationality that the described experience evokes in the reader. It is my

hope that this Dissertation will help to rebalance the bias against Chávez while

shedding more light on his struggles against European domination and

neoliberalism. Some will ask us to gaze into the future and assess the strength of the

social movement led by Chávez; research into social movement resiliency could be

used to peer into the future, without Chávez’s leadership, of the Bolivarian process

in Venezuela.229 In other words, will the social movements that spawned the

leadership of Chávez now be resilient enough to thrive without his leadership?

229. For example, Jenna Jordan, “When Heads Roll: Assessing the Effectiveness of Leadership Decapitation,” Security Studies 18, no. 4 (2009): 719–755, doi:10.1080/09636410903369068.

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Others, who had begun to count on his vision and his voice, no doubt, are asking

themselves, “What next?” But, in this research, those questions will have to wait for

another time.

For now, the matter at hand is how selected participants and available

documents perceive the legacy on race of Hugo Chávez, a South American leader

who proudly proclaimed his African and Indigenous heritage. I will situate his

struggles by analyzing the challenges he faced from the United States as he fought

both European domination and neoliberalism. I will use his own words to better

know him; I will seek interviews from participants who knew or knew of him.

Criteria for the type of people who will be interviewed in this research are discussed

in the upcoming section.

Research Design

This dissertation has been carried out as a case study as well as utilizing

some tools of the oral history methodology—interviews and documentary audio

and video. The research uses a variety of types of data in order to understand Hugo

Chávez’s legacy on race. I utilize original data that are informative about the racial

context of Hugo Chávez’s leadership. This is accomplished, first, by utilizing

documents that are a critical component to picture hegemonic views and

perceptions of Chávez. These documents provide an impression of what is

happening in Chávez’s world in relation to race, from the perspective of those highly

critical of Chávez focused on the communications of government officials in a

number of countries. U.S. Government documents were analyzed to gain this

understanding. Interpretation and analysis of these documents, should not only

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inform us on what was happening, but also who the central characters are in this

unfolding drama. These sources may also help to explain the prevalence of literature

critical of Chávez. The careful construction of this dataset was also done, mindful of

my own positionality and along the lines suggested for Critical Qualitative Research

by Carspecken. This means that the government documents, the literature reviewed,

the selection and analysis of participant input, all have been carried out with a goal

of reducing researcher positionality, for the purpose of making the case for the

legacy on race of Hugo Chávez. His own words, retrieved from audio and video

documents, policies, actions, and writings are critical elements in the data.

Particular attention was paid to Hugo Chávez’s “A Letter to Africa” as reflective of

his ideas on race and Africa and the racial interpretation of his policies. Insights

from analysis of this data should also tell us why this drama has been taking place.

What is the core of the struggle that has been involved in the Hugo Chávez story?

Interviews were conducted and analyzed to search for explanations from an

insider’s point of view, what and who the key players were in Hugo Chávez’s

struggle against European domination and neoliberalism and why. Here, it is

important to note that the participants in this research came from those who have

special insight into the Chávez journey and were asked the meaning they attached to

Hugo Chávez as a Venezuelan President of color who identifies with Africa. This

special insight came from journalists charged with covering Chávez and from

academics familiar with how the issue of race interacts in Latin America and the

Caribbean or inside U.S. foreign policy. This special insight also came from

Venezuelans who understand racism when they see it whether they identify as

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Afro-‐Venezuelans or not. These voices are from people who are underrepresented in

The Academy: this includes some academics who have not been heard, as well as

community voices that have not been listened to before in this type of academic

research. These are the voices who do not hesitate to explore the topic of Hugo

Chávez and race.

Participants were selected based on the following criteria:

• They know Hugo Chávez and know of the racial significance of his

leadership and work; or

• They know of Hugo Chávez and know of his leadership and work on race;

or

• They are active in social movement organizations and understand the

significance and reach of the leadership of Hugo Chávez on race; or

• They are scholars involved in the study of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, or

race.

All participants did not necessarily know Chávez directly, but instead must

have known of Chávez’s leadership on race directly. There is no geographic

limitation on who was selected to be a participant.

Participants were identified in a snowball fashion, based on referrals from

other similarly situated Participants. The interviews began with a brief description

of the purpose of the research. After explaining the ethical information that

participants should know, I audio-‐recorded the interviews. I asked participants,

“What do you consider to be Hugo Chávez’s legacy on race?” I concluded the

interview by asking the participant if there is anything that I failed to ask that they

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would like to contribute to this research. I then thanked the participant and ended

the interview.

I am interested in the lived experiences of the participants that make them

amply suitable to participate in this research and thus their reflections on this topic.

By that I mean what it is about Hugo Chávez that drew their attention to him and

what is it about them that drew their attention to Hugo Chávez. I am interested in

the lived racial experiences of Hugo Chávez that make him a suitable topic of

exploration.

Always mindful of my positionality, and in order to ensure accuracy, the

participant interviews were member-‐checked. That is, the used quotes and

paraphrases were sent to the participants and confirmed for accuracy. They were

changed where indicated by the participant. The participants also have access to the

audio of our interview if needed or requested.

Researcher Positionality

I write this Dissertation as someone who simultaneously wears many aspects

of my identity: I am known as someone who believes and participates in politics and

elective office; I am also known around the world as a peace and human rights

activist. Because of these two aspects of my identity, I know and have access to

people from different walks of life; I believe I gained this reputation because I am

also an advocate for causes that are much greater than me. I have risked my life to

witness destruction after bombing and to witness horrific war crimes being

committed during bombing. Therefore, I have witnessed the ultimate in oppression.

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I am Black. I have extensively studied the U.S. program to quash legitimate

dissent by using “illegal and un-‐American” means, as described, for example, by

Senator Frank Church, who investigated the U.S. Government crimes against the

people of the United States in the Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO).

All of this gives me a special kind of knowledge. I have participated in

government actions that produced cable traffic. No doubt, my actions both inside

and outside of Congress have been the subject of cable traffic. I know how to read

U.S. Government cables, noting what they do and do not contain. In my career so far

I have inconveniently exposed the Deep Politics that sit alongside Deep Events.

As a Black “Child of the South” and direct beneficiary of the U.S. Civil Rights

Movement, I know how important leadership is; I have been in the presence of

transformational leaders and Parrhesiastes. I know the danger that walks with

them. I am part of an oppressed group whose faces are at “the bottom of the well” all

around the world. If there were anyone who would pay attention—out of the sheer

need for survival—to leaders, governments, repression, and resistance, it would be

me.

So, when I experienced the emotions of the crowd as they circulated in

Caracas two days after the death of Hugo Chávez, I decided that I needed to know

more about this leader. I decided that I would use the tools of my unique

experiences to understand the legacy of Hugo Chávez and the importance of his

leadership. I do believe that his case can illuminate the nature and needs of

resistance leadership for people of color.

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I can’t help but be a part of this research. I am a known commodity. I feel that

I have much to learn about my own leadership for the study of the Chávez legacy. My

intention is to bracket myself for the research contained in this dissertation by

stating plainly what my perspectives are. I have already done this in the first and

second chapters and will include my concluding perspectives in later chapters.

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Information Sources—Participants and Documents

To conduct this study I relied on three main categories of data and

information:

• Unstructured interviews undertaken from December 2013 to August

along with one group interview.

• Literature on Chávez including U.S. opposition to him and his regime;

• Other documentary materials (books, articles, websites etc.) that speak to

the wider political, social and economic context within which Hugo

Chávez rose and led his country.

This chapter comprises descriptions and elaborations on these sources,

following the above order.

Participants and Interviews

From December 2013 to August 2014, nineteen open-‐ended, unstructured

interviews were conducted, along with one group interview of six, for a total of

twenty-‐five participants. A description of all of the interviewees is available in

Appendix B. Approximately one half of the participants were from the United States

and nearly one half were from countries closely affected by Hugo Chávez, like

Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, or Ghana, as well as Bolivarian Venezuela under Chávez’s

leadership,

Focus Group

The focus group of six participants was among the last interviews conducted.

It was comprised of Akinyele Umoja, Ph.D., Chair of the Georgia State University

African American Studies Department who is also active with the Malcolm X

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Grassroots Movement; Cynthia Hewitt, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology at

Morehouse College who is also active with the All African People’s Revolutionary

Party, begun by Kwame Nkrumah and led in the United States by Stokely Carmichael

also known as Kwame Turé. Professor Hewitt was the only woman involved in the

focus group. In addition to the two scholar activists who are originally from the

United States, other activists representing Caribbean, Latin American, and African

origins were included in the discussion. These were people who happen to be in the

United States, but are of African, Jamaican, or Haitian descent. The six group

participants were equally divided: three born in the United States and three born

elsewhere. The four distinguishing characteristics of all of these Participants were:

• Knowledge about the work of Hugo Chávez on race;

• Extensive knowledge of the politics of the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin

America;

• Active participation in a Pan-‐Africanist or humanitarian organizations;

and

• U.S. residency in the Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia area.

Individual Interview Participants

In addition to the focus group participants, individual interviews were

conducted with nineteen participants. These participants included individuals who

were scholars, journalists, or activists with extensive knowledge of Hugo Chávez,

Venezuela, or race. For example, Professor Molefi Asante is the Chair of the

Department of Africology at Temple University; Professor Lewis Gordon is the

renowned expert on Frantz Fanon and issues pertaining to identity, especially

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African or Black identity; Donald Smith, Baruch College Professor Emeritus, was so

moved by Freire’s work that he retraced Freire’s steps in Brazil and required his

education students to read Freire’s seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. George

Ciccariello-‐Maher is Assistant Professor of History and Politics at Drexel University,

whose first book We Created Chávez, (reviewed in the second chapter) is about

Venezuelan social movements. Activists like Larry Pinkney, founding member of the

Black Panther Party, who has something to say about Black Political Leadership, and

James Early, Director of Cultural Heritage Policy for the Smithsonian Center for

Folklife and Cultural Heritage, who had actually met Hugo Chávez and queried him

on the issue of race, were also included as participants. Three journalists were

interviewed; two of them specialized in U.S. “Deep State” politics, that is, the

activities of the U.S. Government that it would not want publicly known. One of

those two journalists is based in Latin America, the other, in the United States. Both

are United States citizens.

Four of the individuals interviewed were Venezuelan women. One woman

was of a Haitian descendant and was also a U.S. citizen who happened to be in

Venezuela conducting research at the time of her interview. Another woman

interviewed was an Afro-‐Cuban who just happened to be giving a lecture in the

United States and I was allowed to participate in her lecture and question her after it

by electronic means. There were a total of seven women, including the panel

participant, Cynthia Hewitt. Five of them have a Ph.D. Of the nineteen men who

participated in this research, six had obtained a Ph.D. Therefore, of the total number

of twenty-‐five participants; twelve had obtained a Ph.D., with five of the Ph.D.’s

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being held by women. All of the participants met the requirement set forward in the

third chapter of having knowledge of Hugo Chávez’s leadership, legacy on race, or of

specialized work on race.230

Documents on U.S. Actions against the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela

One of the principal themes in this study of Hugo Chávez’s

race-‐consciousness and leadership is how he courageously chose to confront the

Washington Consensus, the hegemony of the United States in its global reach and

control of other nations’ economies, resources and governments. Thus it is

important here to look behind the veil of U.S. push-‐back against Chávez’s Bolivarian

Revolution. Much of this has been covert and so the advent of WikiLeaks seemed a

solid opportunity for furthering understanding of the U.S. “war against

Venezuela”231 Unfortunately, at least for now, there is reluctance on the part of

many academic institutions to use this trove of information because, by its very

nature, it is unauthorized information from unwilling sources.232 There is also the

chill of possible legal action by the U.S. Government. Therefore, with regret, this

research will not include information drawn from those WikiLeaks documents.233

Fortunately, many journalists, some in the United States and many more

abroad, have drawn on the WikiLeaks cables as part of their broader research into

230. Audio of participant interviews is available in supplemental files as listed in front matter; additional information about each is in Appendix B. 231. A phrase used by many critics including Eva Golinger, Bush versus Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela, (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008). 232. For a thoughtful critique of the idea that using WikiLeaks in academic research is unethical, see Gabriel J. Michael, "Who's Afraid of WikiLeaks? Missed Opportunities in Political Science Research,” Review of Policy Research 32, no. 2 (2015): 175–199, doi:10.1111/ropr.12120. 233. See my preface for more perspective on the non-‐use of such documents.

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U.S. subterfuge against and other world leaders whose activities are perceived as

antithetical to multinational and U.S. military interests. The perspectives of some

such authors are reviewed here, along with other secondary sources, as a significant

basis for understanding the nature and depth of the U.S. war against Chávez.

Overall, then, from such secondary literature sources, it is clear that the

United States government engaged in provocative behavior and then criticized

Chávez’s response as hate-‐engendering rhetoric based on the belief that “Chavismo

poses a serious threat to democracy not just in Venezuela but the region, and it

directly competes against U.S. influence in Latin America.”234

Other Documents on Chávez and the Opposition He Faced

The context of Hugo Chávez’s leadership on race must be set by a

consideration of the region, significant United States behavior, and events in

Venezuela. Fortunately, there is a wide range of critical and insightful revelations of

this context in the literature. An important part of the context is documentation of

the now-‐well-‐established role the U.S, has played globally in the overthrow of

popular, socially progressive regimes, including assassinations, both attempted and

successful, on leaders seen to be unfriendly to capitalism. We have learned that the

murder of Patrice Lumumba affected Frantz Fanon and Hugo Chávez calls out

Lumumba’s name in his “A Letter to Africa.” Recent acknowledgement from the

United States Department of State of the U.S. authorization of and funding for

Lumumba’s murder is extremely important confirmatory information of long-‐held 234. This kind of fear-‐mongering language was reported in “U.S. and Venezuela Diplomats Fight Over Everything, Including Fast Food,” Before It’s News, July 14, 2011, http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2011/07/u-‐s-‐and-‐venezuela-‐diplomats-‐fight-‐over-‐everything-‐including-‐fast-‐food-‐818744.html.

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suspicions. Declassified Operation Condor235 documents reveal that Phase Three of

that Operation included the assembly of kill teams ready to travel anywhere in

order to assassinate the target. Hugo Chávez was aware of Operation Condor and

other covert U.S. actions against progressive regimes. Appendix D includes further

discussion of this contextual information and on other covert interventions such as

the CIA’s “Family Jewels.”236 This mind-‐set of relentless domination is what Hugo

faced—and confronted.

235. “Operation Condor” was an ostensibly anti-‐Communist intelligence and repression program that coordinated operations among the United States and Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, later joined by Ecuador and Peru. Activities included assassinations. 236. “Family Jewels” is the name given to a series of CIA operations that included illegal activities in Latin America as well as inside the U.S. “Family Jewel” documents were declassified in 2007.

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Hugo Chávez’s Leadership: Transformational, Parrhesia, Political, and African-‐Centered Leadership

Hugo Chávez As a Transformational Leader

According to James McGregor Burns, a “transformational leader” is a person

who uses his or her intellectual leadership at a time of political opportunity to

mobilize others with impact in collective purpose for end values like liberty, dignity,

or justice. Burns writes that the transforming leader “engages the full person of the

follower” and stimulates followers to become leaders as leaders become moral

agents.237 I will examine each of these components of Chávez’s actions from what is

written about him and from those who knew him. But, before I do that, I will quote

one of my participants, Al Giordano, on Chávez’s impact on his followers and the

transformation of Venezuelan society that resulted.

Al Giordano is founder of the Authentic School of Journalism where Evo

Morales, President of Bolivia, and his current Vice President, once attended. He

founded the website, Narconews.com. Giordano explains that Chávez directly

challenged the Venezuelan oligarchs. In our interview, he said, “In South America,

there is this oligarchy—a set of elite families, and then an upper middle class below

them—that enjoy unique protections from the state that the rest of the population

doesn't have. These people were freaked out by Chávez, because all of a sudden, the

gardener, the maid, the nanny, all of these domestic employees these people had in

their homes began to feel their own power.”

237. James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper-‐Collins, 1978), 4.

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Chávez’s Intellectual Leadership As a Part of His Transformational Leadership

Hugo Chávez was an avid reader and political mind. Marcano and Tyszka

write about his political astuteness, and those who knew him and were interviewed

in this study also speak of that aspect of his leadership. For example, James Early

had the opportunity to meet Chávez and appear on his television show, Alo

Presidente, several times. Early is currently the Director of Cultural Studies and

Communications at the Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies at the

Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. “I think he [Chávez] was a genius kind of

mind.” Early goes on to state that Chávez had a thirst for learning and for reading

“and an extraordinary ability to remember and to synthesize what he read.” Early

notes that Chávez’s “mind capacity” was reflected as he moved into more formal

leadership roles. Early observes, “He could give these very long dissertations and

speeches without any notes. Without any paper around and quote dates and names.”

Early notes that Chávez’s grasp and love of history combined with his understanding

of history informed his own personal development and also informed his leadership.

So, according to Early, Chávez’s “first leadership was self-‐actualization, I would say.”

Venezuelan Woman Participant #2, a professor of sociology with an

emphasis in globalization and development, calls Chávez an “organic intellectual.”

She repeatedly noted how he was so voracious a reader, saying how he understood

that in order to transform Venezuela, a new form of governance, a new form of

production, and a new man, as Ché Guevara called for, was needed. She felt Chávez

also understood that societal changes result from internal psychological processes.

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Giordano agrees on Chávez’s intellectual prowess. In an interview for this

research, Giordano told me that Chávez could hold minute budget details in his

head, surprising hostile U.S. press many times. Giordano related his experience with

Chávez:

In his press conferences, Chávez would get asked a question from the international reporters like from the Wall Street Journal trying to stump him with a very nuanced question on a sub-‐budget within some sub-‐department of the oil company. Chávez would spend the first 20 minutes talking about whatever he wanted to talk about. And then he would come back and say, ‘now about your question. The budget is X number of bolivars a year and we’ve increased that by 16% over last year.’ And he had all of that information in his head. While the international media tried to treat him as some kind of buffoon, he was really one of the smartest and most intellectual political leaders that I’ve been in the room with and I’ve been in the room with many.

Chávez’s Mobilization for Transformational End Values As a Part of His Leadership

According to Chávez, Venezuela was struggling and fighting the good fight for

inclusion of everyone, not just a privileged few. In 2003, when addressing the group

of poor countries known as the G-‐77 at the United Nations, Chávez said:

Venezuela’s sin in recent years has been to wage a thorough battle against inequality; our sin in Venezuela is to dare, as we have done and continue to do, to make our words match our deeds in our daily actions, Venezuela’s sin has been to date, for the first time in a hundred years, to go up against the ostentatious privileges of a stupid and insensitive oligarchy that for a hundred years led a people sitting on gold and oil to a degree of poverty that affects more than eighty percent of our population. That is our sin. Our sin, in the eyes of that Venezuelan oligarchy, is that we have been able to keep our promise to the people that elected us to run the country in the interests of the majority.238

Chávez spoke about justice and peace; equality and equity. His Bolivarian

Project was to provide dignity to a people who had been betrayed by their political 238. Hugo Chávez, The Fascist Coup Against Venezuela: “The Life of the Homeland is at Stake Here”: Speeches and Addresses December 2002–January 2003,” 2nd ed. (Havana, Ediciones Plaza, 2003), 152–153.

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leadership. Speaking on January 17, 2003, before the Venezuelan National Assembly,

a body that existed as a result of Chávez’s mobilization of the people for a new

Constitution—the Bolivarian Constitution—that gave them important recognition

and rights, Chávez said: “We are not going to give an inch when it comes to the

principles of justice, equality and equity that guide the Bolivarian project, because to

do so would be to once again betray the most betrayed people in the history of our

America.”239 Additionally, in a speech that hauntingly reminds me of a President

John F. Kennedy speech, Chávez asked, “Do Venezuelans want peace?” Answering

his own question, he added: “Yes, we do want peace, but we don’t want the peace of

the graves; we don’t want the peace of slaves; . . . the only peace possible is through

justice.”240

Speaking at a school, Chávez compared the educational policies of the

Bolivarian Government to those of previous governments. He said: “Their project is

marginalizing; their project means that only the children of the privileged, those

who can pay for education, go to school. The children of the poor families that make

up eighty percent of the population couldn’t go to the privatized schools. That’s why,

at all costs, with all our courage, we must defend our wonderful Revolution and this

Constitution, this Bolivarian Constitution.”241

On January 10, 2003, Chávez spoke about the significance of the Bolivarian

Revolution in Venezuela as he handed out land titles to peasants in the countryside.

He said that the Bolivarian Revolution was built on truth and on reality. He said that

239. Ibid., 165. 240. Ibid., 124. 241. Ibid., 55.

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the Land and Agrarian Development Act was one of the reasons that the Opposition

had lashed out against him in the way that it had. He said that the oligarchs wanted

to stop the justice of the Bolivarian Revolution and that these titles he was about to

distribute represented justice. He said that the Bolivarian government had handed

over thousands of hectares of land, provided millions of bolivars in credits, and

hundreds of government-‐subsidized apartments through the National Housing

Institute. He concluded his remarks by repeating that his only sin had been to be

faithful to the confidence that the people had placed in him. He said that he would

not abandon them and that he would continue the struggle for justice and for

equality. He said that he believed that if the goal was to eliminate poverty, then

power must be put into the hands of the poor. He said that the Bolivarian Revolution

gave power to the people and power to the poor. His parting remarks included this

message: “This is a government of the people, this is a government for the people.

This is not a government of the oligarchy, nor is it a government for the oligarchy,

because the first commitment of a democratic government is to the people that

elected it, and, above all, the neediest among those people: the poor, the poorest, the

middle classes.”242

While definitely uncomfortable with Chávez’s rise in the late 1990s, the

United States, through a delegation chaired by its former Ambassador to Venezuela,

Otto Reich, had to concede that the new President’s “16-‐point margin of victory—

coupled with the election’s impressive 64 percent voter turnout—suggest a strong

242. Ibid., 104.

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mandate for change.”243 For conservative “western” commentators, Chávez’s

ascendancy was but an “untypical throwback” (see below). Later, as we will soon

see, the U.S. attitude towards Chávez turned from unenthusiastic indifference to

covert and overt hostile activity.

Perhaps the most powerful demonstration of the importance of Chávez and

his legacy can be seen in the enactment of a new Constitution in 1999 and the

massive public mobilization after his kidnapping during the attempted coup against

his Presidency in 2002.

In order to write the new constitution, Chávez first had to win the

Presidential election; then he had to win the referendum on a new constitution and

the Constitutional Assembly, called the Constituyente. The Constituyente would then

draft the new constitution to be implemented in the last phase of the process. This

was a massive process that could not be done without full mobilization of all sectors

of the Venezuelan society—a process that the United States seemed immediately

suspicious of. As the framing and eventual referendum on Chávez’s constitutional

reform moved along, there was an abrupt and significant increase in what would

become a major U.S. thrust for what was called “democracy promotion” in

Venezuela. “NED (National Endowment for Democracy) spending in Venezuela

during the period illustrates that the organization responded to Chávismo almost

243. International Republican Institute, Venezuela’s 1998 Presidential, Legislative, and Gubernmatorial Elections: Election Observation Report (Washington, D.C.: IRI, February 12, 1999): 1. Notwithstanding, Otto Reich would continue on, especially during George W. Bush’s presidency, to be a key part of strategizing against Chávez. On this, see Rodrigo Guevara, “Otto Reich: Planificator del Golpe Mediatico contra Chávez,” IAR Noticias.com, June 21, 2004, http://iarnoticias.com/secciones/latinoamerica/0041_otto_reich_19jun04.html.

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from the start. In 1999 Venezuela ranked the highest of 11 countries in the region

for NED-‐funded programs. The IRI (the International Republican Institute) received

the most funding out of all NED grantees in Venezuela during the period, and it

responded to Chávez’s push for a new constitution by using a US$194,521 grant to

develop a network for offering input into the drafting process.”244 This funding was

entirely for parties and players who were openly opposed to Chávez and what he

was doing.

Mobilizing for Transformation: The Bolivarian Constitution and Chávez’s Transformational Leadership

Before 1998 Venezuelan elections had long been plagued by poor turnouts.

Noam Lupu, who questioned the conventional wisdom about who Chávez voters

were, found that he drew support from the poor as well as the middle class.245

Further, he determined that Chávez did not disproportionately decrease voter

absence from the poorest segment of the voting population. He determined that

Chávez’s support consistently grew with the middle class representing the greatest

increase of support. Lupu concludes that Chávez’s voter base was not

disproportionately poor and that it was only the extremely wealthy who

overwhelmingly opposed Chávez.

At the outset of Chávez’s candidacy, the United States did not appear overly

concerned, perhaps thinking that Chávez would not win the election due to his

244. Christopher I. Clement, “Confronting Hugo Chávez: United States ‘Democracy Promotion’ in Latin America,” Latin American Perspectives 32, no. 3, (2005), 6, doi:10.1177/0094592X05275529. 245. Noam Lupu, “Who Votes for Chavismo? Class Voting in Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela,” Latin American Research Review 45, no. 1 (2010): 7–32, doi:10.1353/lar.0.0083.

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failure to attract large crowds. Seven months later, in September, Chávez had

become the front-‐runner. Oxford University political scientist Laurence Whitehead,

writing in a book that was funded by the National Endowment for Democracy,

maintained an upbeat view of Latin American democratization, pausing but briefly

to refer to Chávez as an “untypical throwback.”246

But after Chávez won, and especially when early actions including the

constitutional initiative, removing US troops from, and banning of US over-‐flights of

Venezuela (many of which were part of the US interventions in Colombia) the

United States, through the NED, ramped up its financing of oppositional groups.

Scott and Steele summarize how NED grants to so-‐called democracy groups in

Venezuela went from $1 million in the whole previous decade to $2 million in

2002-‐2003 alone, in “efforts to resist the (democratic) backsliding of the regime.” 247

Elsewhere American foreign policy critic, William Blum, likens NED to a “Trojan

horse” where what seem to be innocent gifts of democratization funding are actually

inciting all forms of opposition against Chávez: “From 1999 to 2004, NED heavily

funded members of the opposition to President Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to

subvert his rule and to support a referendum to unseat him.”248 Notwithstanding,

within a few short years, Chávez had won his Presidential election, won the 246. Laurence Whitehead, “The Hazards of Convergence,” in Emerging Market Democracies: East Asia and Latin America, ed. Laurence Whitehead (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press and the National Endowment for Democracy, 2002), 83. 247. James M. Scott and Carie A. Steele. "Assisting Democrats or Resisting Dictators? The Nature and Impact of Democracy Support by the United States National Endowment for Democracy, 1990–99,” Democratization 12, no. 4 (2005): 439–460, doi:10.1080/13510340500225947. 248. William Blum, “Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy,” http://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-‐state/trojan-‐horse-‐the-‐national-‐endowment-‐for-‐democracy.

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Constitutional referendum, and won re-‐election with multi-‐class support. The

importance and depth of these electoral mobilizations was be seen in 2002 when

the oligarchic class in Venezuela attempted a coup against Chávez with the support

of the United States.249

The People’s Movement for Chávez and the Overturning of a Coup

To understand the full reach of the United States and its unhesitating use of

direct intervention, let’s first consider what happened in the parallel situation of

Haiti with its popularly elected and social progressive President, who was also a

friend of Hugo Chávez’s. In 2004, President Jean-‐Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped

by U.S. forces, put on a plane, and taken out of his country, first to Central African

Republic, and then to the Republic of South Africa.250 Aristide would later confirm

that United States diplomats threatened him with the withdrawal of his U.S. security

detail which at that time was provided by a California firm, and that he and his

family would be killed by Guy Philippe, a death squad leader who was trained by the

United States military in the 1990s before he returned to Haiti. According to

Aristide, this United States diplomat came to Aristide’s home and told him that he

had to “go now.” Aristide said that the diplomat was accompanied by United States

marines. Aristide and his family left with the diplomat and boarded a plane with its

249. One of the participants in this research, Wayne Madsen, was an eyewitness to the U.S. support of the 2002 anti-‐Chávez coup attempt. 250. See Noam Chomsky, Paul Farmer and Amy Goodman, Getting Haiti Right This Time: The U.S. and the Coup (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2004). Details of behind-‐the-‐scenes planning and action were confirmed and expanded when cables from that time were released by WikiLeaks, information now openly available from Kim Ives and Ansel Herz, "WikiLeaks Haiti: The Aristide Files," The Nation, August 5, 2011, http://www.thenation.com/article/162598/wikileaks-‐haiti-‐aristide-‐files#.

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destination unknown to him. The diplomat was identified by Congresswoman

Maxine Waters as someone she thought to be the Embassy’s Deputy Chief of

Mission, Ambassador Moreno. The world was told that Aristide had resigned. When

Aristide was able to make phone calls, he insisted that he had not resigned and that

a second coup had been carried out against his presidency.

That was 2004. It now seems that a “practice run” had been executed two

years before that, in Venezuela in 2002, that did not go as well. The failure was

attributable to the Venezuelan people’s mobilization in the aftermath of Chávez’s

kidnapping when they learned that he had not resigned, but instead had been

kidnapped, the first phase of the anti-‐Chávez coup d’état.

There is an eyewitness and minute-‐by-‐minute replay of the events recounted

by two participants in this research, Wayne Madsen and Al Giordano.

Wayne Madsen, a former Naval Intelligence and National Security Agency

Officer, was present at a Pentagon function at the time of the coup and learned of the

U.S. involvement first-‐hand as everyone’s cell phones went off during the reception

and everyone left the dinner. It was upon their return during the latter part of the

dinner that Wayne heard one Pentagon insider say, “We nailed the S.O.B.; we got rid

of Chávez.” That confirmed for Wayne U.S. participation in the coup effort against

Chávez. Wayne spoke of his experience in a story that was picked up by The

Observer, a London-‐based daily newspaper. Chávez just happened to have been in

Spain while Madsen was in France. Madsen received phone calls from journalists

because while at a Press Conference in Spain, Chávez pointed to Madsen’s quote in

The Observer to prove his assertion that the United States was behind the coup.

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Madsen says that Chávez already knew that the United States was involved because

he saw the tail number of the plane that was waiting to carry him out of Venezuela.

“So, he knew the U.S. was involved without me.” Madsen remembers that a few years

later he had the chance to meet Chávez who recognized Madsen’s name; Chávez

gave Madsen a big bear hug.251

Giordano explains in riveting detail the people’s mobilization that saved the

Chávez Presidency. His website became “the first English language news outlet to

reveal that Chávez had not resigned, but that he had instead been kidnapped.”

Giordano reports that he used other bloggers as sources, like Mike Ruppert at “From

the Wilderness,” who had reached inside the U.S. military and reported that U.S.

warships were off the coast of Venezuela. Giordano adds, “Narconews was the first in

the English language to say that the Bush Administration was behind the coup, had

helped to plan it, and was stoking it.”

Giordano concludes that by taking back the media, the grassroots supporters

of Chávez ended up taking back the state. He says that the people “came down from

the hills and began occupying every public space, the state was ungovernable. Not a

shot was fired. It was a textbook case of nonviolent civil resistance.” Giordano

believes that this was the first time in the history of this hemisphere that an

attempted coup d’état was defeated by nonviolent resistance. He says, “I see that as

very important and historic to everything that came next in Latin America because a

year later, Brazil decides to elect Lula. Argentina and Ecuador and Bolivia each

251. Wayne Madsen, interview by author, January 18, 2014.

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toppled two or three presidents in a row nonviolently—all of this is happening in

2003, 2004—and these countries are starting to elect guys.”

After the 2002 coup attempt was over, Giordano was personally and publicly

thanked by Chávez on his television show, Alo Présidente, along with the grassroots

community television operators who retook the state-‐owned television transmitter,

reopened the station, and began the call for people to come down from the hills into

Caracas. Giordano relates, “When Chávez walks into the studio, the people all stand

up and put their fists in the air and start singing this song, ‘El pueblo unido, jamas

sera vencido!’ And the President ends up putting his fist in the air and starts singing

with them. At that moment, the President realized that these people who might be

unruly, were a part of the Revolution.”

Hugo Chávez as Parrhesiastes

According to Michel Foucault, there are specific requirements for parrhesia

or “fearless speech” to exist. The orator must:

• Be in a position to remain silent, but choose to use his or her freedom to

tell the truth to people who are not ready to accept that truth;

• Voluntarily offer criticism out of a sense of moral duty;

• Tell the truth even at the risk of personal danger for doing so;

• Express him-‐ or her-‐self frankly because that is seen by the orator as a

duty in order to help other people.

Foucault illustrates the idea of Parrhesia in reference to standing up to the

classic Machiavellian-‐style Prince. It is an act of Parrhesia for anyone who dares to

point out the Prince’s weaknesses so as to help him become better than he is. The

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orator who chooses chosen to speak this truth may do so at the risk of her or his life.

According to Foucault, such speakers use their freedom, choosing truth instead of

the silence of a lie; they may even risk death by offering criticism instead of flattery,

and by putting duty ahead of self-‐interest. This activity, Foucault calls parrhesia and

the person who engages in this kind of speech is called a Parrhesiastes.

For Hugo Chávez to be considered a Parrhesiastes, he would have had to

speak frankly when he could have remained silent. Moreover, he would have had to

candidly express his version of the truth to people who were not ready to accept

such words. In addition to that, he would have had to speak that truth to persons not

ready to accept that truth and who could do something to punish him for speaking

his truth. These persons could take away his freedom or even take away his life.

And, then, he would have to choose to speak anyway because of a sense of moral

duty to do so. All of these conditions must be present in order for us to consider

Hugo Chávez a Parrhesiastes. Let’s examine each of these criteria individually.

Hugo Chávez: Was Remaining Silent An Option?

The important consideration here is whether Hugo Chávez had the option of

remaining silent and more peacefully enjoying his days as President of Venezuela

and with little risk. Of course he did! The history books are filled with successful

people who have remained silent in the face of injustice, including politicians who

promised one thing in a political campaign only to actually do another after

successfully attaining the position of authority sought. Indeed, voters in the United

States as well as in Venezuela have experienced this disappointment. Could Hugo

Chávez have disappointed the voters of Venezuela in this manner, as did Carlos

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Andres Perez before him? He certainly could have. He could have merely used his

socially progressive-‐sounding campaign as a political marketing tool just to gain

election.

Hugo Chávez could also have played that game on the other side, too. He

could have kept his options open and become very cozy with the United States

Embassy in Venezuela, saying as little as possible to them about his intentions

before and after he won the presidency. He did not do that despite the United States’

repeated and threatening condemnations about Chávez’s not listening to them and

that there was, therefore, no room in his agenda for U.S. counsel and input. As a

result, the United States engaged in an effort to contain Chávez’s influence in the

hemisphere and with Africa by isolating him on multiple levels simultaneously.

After the 2002 failed anti-‐Chávez coup attempt, Chávez could have

recalibrated and toned down his rhetoric so as to not invite a repeat of that

traumatic experience for himself or his country. He did not do that. In fact, on

January 11, 2003 at an urban land titling ceremony, Chávez said: “You all know that I

already belong to you. Now, what is left of my life, what God wills… every year that’s

left of my life, I will devote completely to the struggle for the Venezuelan people,

whom I love more than my life, because you are a heroic people, you are a beautiful

people, you are a great, heroic and liberating people.”252 On May 16, 2004, Chávez

gave a speech at a rally for peace in Caracas. During that speech, he confirmed his

decision to ask all U.S. military personnel in Venezuela to leave. In addition, he

announced the formation of popular homeland defense organizations as well as

252. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 135.

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other measures to protect the Revolution from imperialism. In fact, he took the

opportunity of this speech to announce that the Bolivarian Revolution was now

about to advance to another stage—the Anti-‐Imperialism stage.253

All the while, from within Venezuela and from outside, clandestine forces

mounted against Chávez. On January 6, 2005, the Venezuelan Archbishop Baltazar

Porras told the U.S. Ambassador that the Church and the traditional labor

organizations and Venezuelan civil society were imperiled by Chávez’s policies.

According to the Archbishop, the Church saw its interests encroached upon by

Chávez’s activities inside poor neighborhoods, the educational system, and the

military. The Archbishop described Chávez to the Ambassador as a long-‐term

problem.254

In the region, the United States reached out to Peru and encouraged its

government to continue in a policy of containment of Chávez while the United States

would use an NGO (CANVAS), labor, and human rights contacts inside Peru to

253. Chávez’s words were: “La revolución bolivariana . . . ha entrado en la etapa antiimperialista” (“the Bolivarian revolution . . . is entering the anti-‐imperialist stage”). Quoted in Marco Aponte Moreno, “Metaphors in Hugo Chávez’s Political Discourse: Conceptualizing Nation, Revolution, and Opposition” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2008), 137. See also reference to the speech and the announcement of “the anti-‐imperialist character of the Bolivarian Revolution,” in Jorge Martin, “The Transition to Socialism in Venezuela: What is to be Done?” In Defence of Marxism, March 5, 2015, http://www.marxist.com/the-‐transition-‐to-‐socialism-‐in-‐venezuela-‐what-‐is-‐to-‐be-‐done.htm. 254. Justina, “WikiLeaks Impacts Venezuela, Exposes Traitor,” Daily Kos, December 14, 2010, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/14/923066/-‐WikiLeaks-‐Impacts-‐Venezuela-‐Exposes-‐Traitor.

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publicly criticize the government of Venezuela.255 It was clear that the United States

would stop at nothing in its “global lobbying campaign”256 against Chávez’s bid for a

Venezuelan seat on the UN Security Council.257 Covert efforts by the United States

were revealed: that the United States pressured Chile, even threatening to not train

pilots for the F-‐16s it was then in the process of selling to Chile if that nation

supported Chávez’s bid;258 questioned Jamaica’s mixed messages;259 and tried to

counter Chávez’s lobbying for the position in Malaysia.260

By 2010, the Serbian-‐based Center for Non Violent Action and Strategies

(CANVAS), formerly known as OPTOR, an NGO seen as instrumental to regime

change in its home country, was busily engaged in assessing the vulnerabilities of

Chávez and his government. 261 That this planning work was closely linked to the

255. Dawn Paley, “WikiLeaks Cables of Interest on Latin America, Released May 9–22, 2011,” Upside Down World, May 23, 2011, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-‐briefs-‐archives-‐68/3044-‐wikileaks-‐cables-‐of-‐interest-‐on-‐latin-‐america-‐released-‐may-‐9-‐22-‐2011. 256. Bill Varner, “Chávez’s Push for UN Council Seat Sets Up a Showdown with U.S.,” Bloomberg, October 11, 2006, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/ news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aHbR19zyxptU&refer=news. 257. COHA, “Venezuela’s Candidacy for the UN Security Council Appears on Track,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, August 10, 2006, http://www.coha.org/venezuela’s-‐candidacy-‐for-‐the-‐un-‐security-‐council-‐appears-‐on-‐track/. 258. Paul Richter and Maggie Farley, “U.S. Is Aiming to Block Chávez,” Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/19/world/fg-‐venezuela19. 259. Robert Buddan, “Foreign Diplomacy and Local Democracy,” The Gleaner, June 5, 2011, http://jamaica-‐gleaner.com/gleaner/20110605/focus/focus3.html. 260. Reuters, “Venezuela Gains Support of Malaysia in UN Bid,” Montreal Gazette, August 28, 2006, http://www2.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/ story.html?id=0a3e7c15-‐d1bb-‐4cb5-‐9f43-‐984be8f12fda. 261. CANVAS Analytic Department, “Analysis of the Situation in Venezuela, September 2010. (DRAFT)”, http://www.canvasopedia.org/images/books/ analysis/ Venezuela_Anlysis_sep_2010.pdf?pdf=Analysis-‐Venezuela.

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U.S.-‐based privately-‐owned intelligence organization, Stratfor, was compellingly

asserted by news sources who viewed the WikiLeaks cable releases of 2011.262

At any one of these points of challenge, Chávez could have backed down or

relinquished engagement. Instead, he forged ahead and continued to speak out,

stating his truth.

Hugo Chávez: Was His Challenge to Washington Seen As a Moral Duty?

Chávez quoted Spanish revolutionary Miguel Hernandez when he announced

in his Annual Message to the National Assembly in Caracas on January 17, 2003 that

the winds of the people “pull me” and “fan my throat.” He went on to say that it was

“these powerful and legendary winds, the wind of the people’s cause that come from

so far away in time, which are now being felt in Venezuela, and becoming invincible

winds of victory, despite all the adversities and against all the obstacles.” Even at a

time when Chávez stared death in the face during the 2002 failed coup attempt and

the three days of his kidnapping and detainment, he recalled a brief conversation

that he had with an officer. He said, “My personal fate was totally uncertain. My

status was that of an imprisoned president.” He told the young officer who was

guarding him, “I am not I, it is a people.” Chávez went on to say that on that day, he

spoke “with the conviction and steadfastness of one who swears an oath, of one who

has sealed and is sealing once again a sacred commitment.”263

262. For example, see “WikiLeaks Revela Complots Imperialistas de EE.UU. contra Hugo Chávez,” RT Sepa Más, February 24, 2013, http://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/view/87373-‐nuevas-‐filtraciones-‐wikileaks-‐revelan-‐complots-‐eeuu-‐hugo-‐chavez. Also see Paul Dobson, “WikiLeaks Reveals Imperialist Plots Against Venezuela,” Green Left, February 24, 2013, https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/53422. 263. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 161.

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He made two additional points in this conversation: first was that Venezuela

is a sovereign and capable country, and second, that Venezuelans should be able to

talk to each other—Government and Opposition—and discuss ideas that are good

for Venezuela. He admitted that he had privately met with the leaders of the

opposition parties and the Church. He admitted that Venezuela needed an

Opposition that discussed ideas and that abided by the Constitution. He announced,

however, that he would not engage in backroom politics represented by “pacts

among the ruling classes.” On the former matter, Chávez stated publicly, “Venezuela

is not and will not be a country under anyone’s guardianship. Venezuela is, and will

always be, a free and sovereign country, that adopts its own laws and solves its own

problems. Its own people have the mechanisms to solve them.”264 Chávez

acknowledged the moral strength, integrity, endurance, intelligence, and awareness

on the part of the people, the institutions, the military, and in general in turning back

the efforts of the oligarchs to destabilize Venezuela.

Indeed, Venezuelan Woman #4 of my participants discusses the spiritual

aspect of Chávez’s relationship with the people, also mentioned by Zuquete265 in his

discussion of the “missionary” aspects of Chávez’s politics. Chávez often referenced

his Cross or made the Sign of the Cross during his remarks. Chávez’s open

spirituality and articulation of his values resonated with the people. Indeed, we

learn that Chávez’s religious practices bonded him with the masses of the

Venezuelan people. 264. Ibid., 161–202. 265. Jose Pedro Zuquete, “The Missionary Politics of Hugo Chávez” Latin American Politics and Society 50, no. 1 (2008): 91–120, doi:10.1111/j.1548-‐2456.2008.00005.x.

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Jeanette Charles is a recent graduate of Scripps College who, at the time of

this writing, lives in Venezuela studying the relationship between Bolivarian

Venezuela and Haiti. Charles is a nominee for a Fulbright Scholarship and a 2010

recipient of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Charles spoke of Chávez’s spirituality in

my interview with her and the fact that Chávez advocated religious freedom.

Ironically, according to Charles, many Venezuelans who do not self-‐identify as

African-‐descendant practice African-‐origin religions. Charles believes this is a

reflection of a growing trend of Venezuelans to explore and embrace their African

roots, just as Chávez had done to embrace his own heritage. Anonymously, I was

told that Chávez practiced two African religions: Ifa and Santeria. Ifa is the religion

of the Yoruba people of Nigeria, and Santeria, prevalent in the Caribbean, is a

religion that is a combination of Catholicism and African religions.

Hugo Chávez: Did His Speech Put Him at Risk?

The third criterion for parrhesia to be present is that the free speech, the

truth frankly spoken, puts the speaker in danger. That danger could be the

restriction of the speaker’s freedom to speak or it could be life threatening. This

third element was evident during the failed anti-‐Chávez 2002 coup attempt, where

Chávez’s ability to continue speaking at the level of the Presidency was nearly cut

short.

The COINTELPRO Papers, and the findings of the Church Committee that

investigated COINTELPRO, disclose covert activities of the FBI and the CIA in the

name of national security. In their shocking report, the bipartisan investigating

Senators found that the American people, through their tax dollars, had paid for

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illegal and immoral electronic surveillance; infiltration, dirty tricks, public opinion

manipulation by cultivation of friendly media journalists and outlets willing to

publish lies about the leaders of social movements; break-‐ins, IRS targeting, and

more. Targeted assassinations were also investigated and exposed in the area of

foreign activities. The Committee concluded that “government officials—including

those whose principle duty is to enforce the law—have violated or ignored the law

over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the

law.”266 Ominously, the Committee found that tactics honed in matters of foreign

intrigue found their way back home, being used domestically against U.S. citizen

targets not affiliated in any way with foreign governments.267

As has been discussed earlier, Chávez would have known about the risks of

his chosen path because of his friendship with Fidel Castro, the Cuban President

known to have survived at least eight acknowledged attempts on his life, as

explained by the Church Committee. In fact, we know that Chávez and Castro had at

least one such conversation because Chávez mentioned it publicly when discussing

his cancer and the strange coincidence of Chávez-‐friendly Latin American Presidents

having experienced cancer. I think it is clear that, based on the United States

government documented track record in these matters, Chávez’s speech, not only

266. U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, Book II, April 23, 1976, 94th Congress. Rep. No. 94-‐755, at 5, http://www.aarclibrary.org/ publib/church/reports/book2/pdf/ChurchB2_1_Introduction.pdf. 267. U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans, April 23, 1976, 94th Congress. Rep. No. 94-‐755, http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/html/ChurchB3_0007a.htm.

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put him in danger of losing his freedom to speak from his unique position as

President of a country, it also put him in danger of losing his life. In additon to

Castro’s experiences, Chávez would also have followed the tragic death of his hero

from Panama, General Omar Torrijos.

Hugo Chávez: Did He Frankly Speak His Truth?

Hugo Chávez’s 2006 Speech at the Opening Session of the United Nations

General Assembly is a strong example of frankly speaking his truth. On that

September 20, 2006 morning, he made history by calling George W. Bush a devil. He

introduced his remarks by mentioning Noam Chomsky’s book268 about the U.S.

Empire placing humanity at risk. Chávez called on the United States to halt this

greatest threat to the planet. He said that the people of the United States must surely

read Chomsky’s book because it is the citizens of the United States who are firstly at

risk. He said that “the devil” is in their own house. He appealed to the people of the

United States and the world to halt this threat.

He said while making the Sign of the Cross, The devil came here yesterday. Yesterday, the devil came here. Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today. This table that I am now standing in front of, yesterday, ladies and gentleman, from this rostrum, the President of the United States, the gentleman whom I refer to as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly, as the owner of the world. I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the President of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums; to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation, and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario; I will even propose a title: The Devil’s Recipe. As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the American Empire is

268. Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003).

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doing all it can to consolidate its hegemonic system of domination. We cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.269

Chávez continued to state that the United States represents the elite while it

speaks of democracy, but imposes that democracy with bombs. He said that

President Bush would look at the color of someone’s skin and conclude that that

person is a terrorist. Chávez continued that despite hostile reactions from the

United States, people are standing up all over the world for equality, sovereignty of

nations, and rising up against the model of domination. Chávez said that those in

doubt should take a walk on the streets of the United States in the Bronx or San

Francisco; the citizens will say that they want peace. But, he asserted, the United

States does not want peace, it wants war and threatens the people of Iran and

Venezuela. He called the United States and Israel fascist empires that kill people, like

the Palestinians. It is clear that Hugo Chávez spoke his truth frankly.

Hugo Chávez: Did He Speak Frankly to Help People?

In 2005, Hugo Chávez addressed the United Nations and spoke of the need

for United Nations reform because the model was an exhausted one, in his opinion.

He said that the world is interconnected and that the peoples of the world must

spread their wings and fly. This means leaving neoliberalism behind, because

neoliberalism has left too many poor people behind. Mentioning Iraq and Palestine,

Chávez said that if international law continued to be broken, then perhaps it is time

to move the United Nations from the United States He proposed an international city

269. Full speech begins at 1:01:19 at http://webcast.un.org/ramgen/ga/61/ga060920am.rm.

.

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to host the idea of planetary unity. This, he said, was an idea that originally came

from Simon Bolivar.

Chávez spoke of transnational problems, like energy, environment and

blamed a socioeconomic model that is so destructive. He named the neoliberal

capitalism, the Washington Consensus that is a tragedy for the world’s people.

Chávez called for a new international order. He then recounted the meaning of the

Bolivarian Revolution to the people of Venezuela: “In just seven years of Bolivarian

Revolution, the people of Venezuela can claim important social and economic

advances.”270 He went on to name them:

• One million four hundred and six thousand Venezuelans learned to read;

in a few days, Venezuela was to be declared an illiteracy-‐free territory. He

added that three million Venezuelans who were too poor to study, are

now a part of the primary, secondary, or higher studies;

• Seventeen million Venezuelans, almost seventy percent of the population,

receive for the first time, universal health care, including medicine. He

announced that in a few years, every Venezuelan would have access to

excellent healthcare service.

• Over twelve million Venezuelans receive subsidized food, with one

million getting food totally for free;

• Over seven hundred thousand new jobs have been created reducing

unemployment by nine points.

270. For full written text of his 2005 UN address, see “President Chávez’s Speech to the United Nations,” venezuelanalysis.com, trans. Nestor Sanchez, http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1365.

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Chávez concluded his remarks by saying that his fight is for Venezuela, for

Latin America, and for the World. “Now”, he asserted, “is the time to not allow our

hands to be idle or our souls to rest until we save humanity.”271

In his 2006 Speech before the United Nations, Chávez said that he wanted to

be a part of the creation of a better world. He mentioned that those who perpetrated

the crimes against Chile are free still. Those who killed 73 innocents by downing a

plane containing athletes, are free.272 He accused the United States of having a

double standard, protecting its terrorists, and fighting others. He mentioned that the

people who led the coup against him in 2002 are free, protected by the United States

government. Chávez announced also the launching of the Non-‐Aligned Movement. A

new strong movement has been born—a movement of the South. He ended by

saying that he wanted ideas to save the planet with a world of peace, with a renewed

United Nations. Chávez received rousing applause from those who remained to hear

him in a mostly empty Chamber. Conspicuously absent during Chávez’s remarks was

the U.S. delegation.

271. Ibid. 272. Chávez was referring here to Luis Posada Carriles who, with accomplices, blew up a Cubana airliner carrying Venezuelan athletes. The FBI’s attaché in Caracas provided the man who placed the bomb on the plane a visa to the United States five days before the bombing. Posada was in regular contact with the FBI and the CIA and reportedly stated in advance that a Cuban airliner was going to be hit. The archives state that there is no indication that Cuba was alerted that its planes were under threat. For the declassified record on Posada, see “Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record, CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153” The National Security Archive, May 10, 2005, http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/.

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While the best-‐selling work of French Economist, Thomas Piketty, on wealth

inequality found that it grows naturally as modern economies expand,273, the

Bolivarian Republic seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Venezuela was

praised by the United Nations for drastically reducing childhood hunger, infant

mortality, and maternal childbirth mortality. The United Nations representative

announced that Venezuela had met its goals in children’s rights and children’s

education. Venezuela’s Project Canaima, which distributes laptops to primary and

high school students, was awarded a prize in 2013 for its pioneering work in

technical literacy. Venezuela’s Housing Minister announced that Venezuela was on

track to deliver over seven hundred thousand new units by the end of 2014.

Construction is being carried out by volunteers, public servants, and some private

companies that have won government contracts.274

It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that Hugo Chávez spoke

frankly his version of the truth in order to help people, just a few people but the vast

majority of the Venezuelan population. The most recent United Nations

announcement is testimony to the progress that Venezuela experienced during the

period of Chávez’s leadership.

Hugo Chávez: Does Being President of a Country Impede Parrhesia?

I believe that it should be clear that President Hugo Chávez satisfies the

requirements for parrhesia as outlined by Michel Foucault. It could be argued that

273. Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-‐First Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). 274. Arlene Eisen, “United Nations, UNICEF Praise Venezuelan Equality As Government Takes on Steep Housing Goals,” venezuelanalysis.com, May 9, 2014, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10672.

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no matter where Hugo Chávez had landed professionally, that he would have been

an outspoken leader. I posit here that being President moved him into a better

position to speak more freely, to help more people, to try and help even his

adversary—the neoliberal United States of America—become a better international

citizen. But it also moved him into even greater danger. Because Hugo Chávez was a

president of a small South American country does not mean that his speech is less

frank, less truthful, or less risky. I argue, that in fact, at that level of political

responsibility, there is all the more reason to remain silent because the pitfalls of

outspokenness and insisting on national dignity and sovereignty are well known.

His position as President of Venezuela made his speech even more risky. Therefore,

I posit here that President Hugo Chávez chose to speak the truth, frankly, in order to

help people, and that that speech put him in danger—a risk that he accepted

because of the strength of his convictions and his moral courage.

Hugo Chávez As an Exemplary African-‐Centered Political Leader

This section blends the thoughts of Assensoh and Hotep on political and

African-‐Centered leadership, respectively, to reach a further understanding of Hugo

Chávez’s leadership qualities. Both authors express an ideal type of political

leadership that is also Pan-‐African in orientation. According to Assensoh, exemplary

African political leaders fight hard for African liberation as did the three leaders that

he profiled: Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, and Julius Nyerere. All inherited state

structures that did not serve the needs or interests of the Africans they were

determined to serve. Decolonization meant transforming those state structures to

ones that worked for the people. In addition to this type of state transformation, all

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three of the political leaders chosen by Assensoh expanded African liberation

beyond the borders of their state by their own methods, in a nod to Pan-‐Africanism.

All also had to deal with corruption, economic dysfunction, and disappointment.

Assensoh bases his examination of these exemplars on their success at

nation-‐building, their work to improve the status of women, and the record of their

leadership in political conflict or repression. According to Assensoh, they all excelled

in stating a Pan-‐Africanist vision and a commitment to nation-‐building; each leader

instituted socialist policies for development and preferenced indigenous over

foreign trade and ownership, especially of essential items like rice, maize, and sugar.

The three were uneven in their promotion of the status of women with Kenyatta

lagging behind Nyerere and Nkrumah. In the area of repression of opponents,

Kenyatta was accused of being too lenient with foreign interests and faced a split

that was put down ferociously. According to Assensoh, Nkrumah made “remarkable”

progress on nation-‐building, including having women in his Cabinet, but fared

poorly in the handling of political opposition—although Assensoh concludes that

various governments, not just Nkrumah’s, violated the Ghanaian Constitution.

Assensoh writes that corruption in the three countries was no worse than in other

African countries at that time. Nyerere chose to retire from politics and allow others

to try their leadership skills, especially in addressing the matter of corruption.

Uhuru Hotep takes his African-‐Centered Leadership-‐Followership model

even further and states explicitly that authentic African-‐centered leaders mobilize

their constituents to construct sovereign, life-‐sustaining organizations that are

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institutionalized and passed on to future generations. According to Hotep, an

African-‐centered leader must (among other things):

• Think like a free and independent African with vision and courage;

• Believe in the righteousness of the struggle for sovereignty;

• Be goal-‐oriented, confident, and loyal;

• Maintain historical connectedness in connection to nation building; and

• Stress the importance of collective work and cooperative economics in

pursuit of goals.

Just as Chávez spoke of the new type of man that would be created by a turn

away from neoliberalism and a turn toward twenty-‐first century socialism, Hotep’s

paradigm also seeks to create a new leader-‐follower that he calls an “intellectual

maroon,” someone who has been freed from the psychological baggage of

colonialism (and its variants) so well described by Fanon. I posit here that Hugo

Chávez’s legacy of leadership on race places him as an exemplary African-‐centered

leader. I will examine both Assensoh’s and Hotep’s paradigms in relation to the

legacy of Hugo Chávez on race.

Hugo Chávez As Nation Builder

Like Kenyatta, Nyerere, and Nkrumah, Chávez, on winning the Presidency of

Venezuela in 1998, inherited a political structure and apparatus that was not

designed to serve all of the people of Venezuela. Thus, the challenge was to build

new institutions and organizations as well as decolonizing the minds of the people

long oppressed because they were not European. Chávez initiated his project of

nation-‐building in two ways: reform of existing institutions, like the military; and

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initiation of new institutions as does the Constitution he championed. In terms of

the military, the government integrated it more with civilian authority and rooted

out corruption that caused even the media in 1998 to heap scorn on the political

system that existed at that time of the run-‐up to the election. It was the corruption of

the generals that had led Chávez and others inside the military to rebel in 1992.

Many inside the military were ready for change. Of course, Chávez was intimately

aware of what was right and what was wrong with the military because that is

where he became knowledgeable about Venezuela and the rest of the world. He also

learned about Latin American revolutionary politics there. Chávez also extended

contacts with other South American militaries through the organization that he

founded, UNASUR (Union of South American Nations).

George Ciccariello-‐Maher, author of We Created Chávez: A People’s History of

the Venezuelan Revolution, observes that military transformation has occurred away

from hierarchical structures to a grassroots strategy that includes popular militias.

In interview, Ciccariello-‐Maher said he believes that this will allow Bolivarian

Venezuela to “resist a threat from the United States, but also a threat from a military

coup, or a rightist turn.”

Part of nation-‐building is creating and allowing space for the development of

political talent that can lead the country. Besides bestowing civil and human rights

to all the people of Venezuela, the Constitutional process also gave the most talented

and politically-‐inclined citizens an opportunity to run for office at many different

positions of authority, thereby creating a reservoir of leadership skills on which

Venezuela could call. This was a hugely important task as in 1999, when Chávez

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took over as President, as more than thirteen million Venezuelans—over half the

population—had less than subsistence income. At the other end of the income

spectrum, neoliberal structural adjustment in Venezuela had done what Piketty

found in his more general examination of wealth inequality: it concentrated more

wealth in the hands of an even smaller percentage of the population. Lander and

Fierro also describe the transformation needed as the change from a rentier society

to one in which collective and individual work was supported.275

Another aspect of nation-‐building is an outgrowth of the drive for a new

constitution and its implementation The 1999 Bolivarian Constitution provides,

among other things, for the right to housing, the right to work, freedom of peaceful

assembly, gender equality, and it specifically recognizes the right to culture of all

Venezuelans and includes specific mention of indigenous rights. There is a Ministry

of Women’s Affairs and Gender Equality and a Ministry of Indigenous Affairs. When

confronted by Early and others on the lack of specificity for Afro-‐Venezuelans,

Chávez agreed that there was more work that needed to be done on that aspect of

the Constitution.

Chávez built a number of multilateral institutions because he was not

satisfied to liberate Venezuela only; he also wanted to liberate the peoples of the

Caribbean and Africa.

Hugo Chávez As a Feminist

My participant, Venezuelan Woman #2 related her personal story of how

Hugo Chávez’s 1999 Bolivarian Constitution gave her rights that she had never

275. Lander and Fierro, “Impact of Neoliberal Adjustment.” (see n. 82 above.)

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before enjoyed as a Venezuelan citizen. As a woman, she said, she believes in the

leadership of Hugo Chávez because she was directly, and personally, impacted by

him. She said that Hugo Chávez was a feminist and that he freed women. She also

believes that Chávez created political and cultural space for Afro-‐Venezuelan voices

and an Afro-‐Venezuelan presence.276

Venezuelan Woman #1 described herself as a Feminist cartoonist. Although

living in an Opposition neighborhood, she supported Chávez and the Bolivarian

Revolution. She was eager to voice her opinion on what is happening in Venezuela.

She complained that they propagandize “the kids from the middle classes” and that

propaganda, combined with “lies and manipulation, induces violence to justify a

coup against the government.” She added “the kids don't dare go into the poor

neighborhoods so they remain in the rich and middle class neighborhoods.” It was at

that point that I realized that she lives in either a middle class or rich neighborhood

because “the kids” were outside her home at two in the morning and it was hard for

her to hear me because the pots and pans were banging so loudly. She also

complained that the Opposition is racist and gave some examples, which will be

discussed in the next few sections.

Jeanette Charles agreed with our two Venezuelan women that Chávez was a

feminist. She described him as a feminist, a socialist, and an anti-‐imperialist. She

maintains that from her experience in Venezuela today, she finds that the people are

trying to incorporate socialism and feminism into their own daily practice.

Venezuelan Woman #4 cited Chávez’s support for and creation of the Women’s

276. For Hugo Chávez’s impact on the life of Venezuelan Woman #2, see Appendix C.

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Development Bank (BanMujer), a microcredit institution that provides both

financial and non-‐financial services (like small business training) to women as an

example of Chávez’s pro-‐woman policies. Five of seven women interviewed agreed

that Chávez was, indeed, a feminist. The sixth woman was more interested in telling

me that she knew for a fact that Chávez had read C.L.R. James’s book about the

Haitian Revolution and so we did not speak about feminism or policies toward

women. This woman, a Cuban scholar, wanted me to know that Chávez was

pro-‐Caribbean. And the issue of Chávez’s feminism was not mentioned by

Venezuelan Woman #3.

Repression and Charges of Corruption under Hugo Chávez

Although Assensoh classified Nyerere, Nkrumah, and Kenyatta as exemplars

for their vision, leadership, organizational skills, and legacy, he acknowledges that

as heads of State, each also had to deal with the temptations that come with high

office (of the leader or the inner circle) and the wielding of state power when

political opposition arose. While Assensoh says that comparatively these leaders

were not significantly worse than other African leaders of their time, it is important

to learn from these examples in order for an even more visionary generation of

African political leaders to mature and come forward. Journalist Giordano directly

addresses the issue of repression under Chávez. In our interview, Giordano speaks

from a journalist’s point of view:

Not one reporter went to jail under his watch. Were there mistakes, were there abuses, did he get over the top with his rhetoric at times—yes. But I would have taken my chances as a dissident or as a radical journalist in Venezuela. The international press freedom and human rights organizations viciously attacked the Chávez Administration. It revealed to us what the international NGO machine is really all about: preserving the status quo

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rather than human rights or press freedom or its about press freedom for corporate media but when the city government of Caracas is rounding up community journalists, not a peep from the Committee to protect journalists. Venezuela was, for a number of years, a way to wage an international teach-‐in on a whole host of issues.

Giordano also speaks of the way Chávez used the media to instill

accountability of the government to the public. Giordano explains: “On his TV show,

he would have his Cabinet sitting off to the side in the studio. And when he took a

call, then he would have the Cabinet member with jurisdiction over that area, come

up on the stage and receive instructions on what was expected of him. Then, Chávez

would add that he wanted that Cabinet member to come back one week later and

tell what he had done to resolve that constituent’s problem.”

Writing in the introduction to Marcano and Tyszka’s book 277, Moises Naim

relates how a journalist for The Miami Herald discovered that Chávez was a hero all

the way over in India. When that journalist was disputed in his speech by young

Indians and professors who applauded Chávez’s attack on neoliberalism and the

elite. Naim, an opponent of Chávez, admits that Chávez had three causes into which

he enlisted the Venezuelan people: corruption, injustice, and inequality.

Marcano and Tyszka also relate a relevant story told to them by Jésus

Urdaneta Hernandez, who ended up resigning from the Chávez Administration.

Urdaneta says that he complained to Chávez about the corruption of two of his

Cabinet Members. Chávez received the information patiently, but asked Urdaneta to

be patient because those two lieutenants had expertise lacking among the

revolutionaries. None had the knowledge and expertise that the two Urdaneta

277. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez.

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accused of corruption had. Chávez asked Urdaneta to be patient and at least allow

the Constitution to be put in place. Urdaneta did wait, but eventually tendered his

resignation because he lost confidence in Chávez’s handling of the two Cabinet

members. One of the accused Cabinet Members became the first in the Chávez

Administration to be tried and charged with corruption. He was acquitted of those

charges at trial. In fact, the seasoned politicians had old ways and the

revolutionaries wanted Chávez to take a more forceful stand against those old ways.

They were disappointed when he did not.

Hugo Chávez, the Pan-‐Africanist

The way the story goes, as told to me by Jeanette Charles, Chávez first spoke

to his African heritage on his weekly television show, “Alo Presidente.” In 2005, an

Afro-‐Venezuelan called into the show to complain about racial discrimination in

Venezuela and Chávez’s response was something to the effect of “We can’t have that

because I’m Afro-‐descended, too!” For this, Ray Winbush,278 believes that Chávez is

one of the most important Latin American leaders of our time and has been a fan of

his for a long time. Early agrees noting that Chávez’s entry into the world of African

identity was a relatively recent one—at least in terms of his public discourse. He

believes that Hugo Chávez was unique among Latin American leaders for his

willingness to discuss his identity and his African heritage. Early has this to say of

Chávez on the issue of race: “There is no Latin American leader, and that incudes

Fidel Castro, who spoke more forthrightly and consistently on the matter of race. 278. Director of the Institute of Urban Research at Morgan State University, an institution with the designation “Historically Black College or University (HBCU).” He is the author of Belinda’s Petition: A Concise History of Reparations for the Trans-‐Atlantic Slave Trade (Xlibris.com, 2009).

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Not just in metaphors, but by noting, in his own terms, that his grandmother was

Black. Hugo Chávez spoke about his grandmother and then a few months later in an

interview he talked about his thick lips and his curly hair. He felt deeply about this

issue and he was called a monkey, reflecting his admixture biologically. He felt very

close to Black and Indigenous communities.”

In a meeting with Chávez, Early recalls raising the issue of race, and Chávez

gave him a very sincere and quick response. “He was not coy about his feelings. You

always knew how he felt.” Early says that Chávez celebrated the African part of his

ancestry. He did not have a long history of speaking about race. But when the issue

was put before him, he had a swift and synthesizing mind. He heard something that

seemed true to him and said, “We left Black people out of the 1999 Constitution and

we have to go back and correct that.” By contrast, Early asked Fidel about race and

racism, and recounts the exchange: Castro “curiously” told Early to “speak with

Chávez about that.” Early notes the contrast with Chávez on the topic of race and

racism. He adds, “On the issues of race, Hugo Chávez was just so much more

dynamic, sensitive, responsive. That’s not to put down Fidel Castro, but that is to say

that even a Fidel Castro, when it came to such questions as identity, he says, speak to

Chávez about that.”279

Winbush focuses on reparations and regional and Continental integration. He

says, Chávez “always talked about reparations even though the media didn’t call it

that. After nationalizing the oil company, which infuriated the West, he turned the

279. James Early, interview by author, January 22, 2014.

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oil revenues back to the people—similar to what Qaddafi was doing in Libya.” 280

Winbush says that this act changed the very fabric of Venezuelan society—“socially,

educationally, and the relationship between the military and civilian society, and

control of the resources of the country. He didn’t just move wealth to Venezuela, he

also wanted regional unity among South American nations.” Winbush adds, “I regret

that he didn’t live long enough to see the eleven Caribbean nations now that are

suing their former colonial masters for reparations. He would have been thrilled

about that.” Winbush continued, “The U.S. used its propaganda machine to demonize

Chávez. I believe there will be a lot of them over there in the Caribbean like Chávez.

There will be more people on the African Continent doing the same thing. Chávez

spread the Bolivarian idea throughout the world.”281

Molefi Asante, currently Chair of the African American Studies Department at

Temple University and originator of the theory of Afrocentricity.282 He agrees on the

enduring influence and adds, “This is not the last time that we will see the Hugo

Chávez model.”283

Chávez also showed his Pan-‐Africanist orientation when he did not reject a

Caribbean identity—as was common to do in European Venezuelans’ policy—and

embraced the Caribbean in PetroCaribe. This was Chávez’s pan-‐Caribbean

development organization, where Early explains, Chávez “subsidized oil for

280. Ray Winbush, interview by author, January 21, 2014. 281. Ibid. 282. Molefi Asante, Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change. (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1990). Molefi Asante is currently Chair of the African American Studies Department at Temple University. He created the first Ph.D. program in African American Studies at Temple University. 283. Molefi Asante, interview by author, January 23, 2014.

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developing countries from the profits he made by selling oil to the developed

countries.” CELAC, the Community of Caribbean and Latin American States, another

Chávez product, united the multi-‐lingual Caribbean and Latin American states into

one strong organization that did not have the United States or Canada as members.

Donald H. Smith284 sees Chávez’s legacy on race as not just Venezuelan. He

believes that Chávez helped Black people all over the world and that he did great

damage to global White Supremacy. Smith says that when Hugo Chávez

acknowledged his African roots, “Chávez was making a very important statement,

not only for Latin America, but for people of African ancestry everywhere.” Smith

characterized Chávez as a fearless leader. He visited Venezuela before Hugo Chávez

became President and saw that people of African ancestry there were neglected and

had very little support. Smith says, “The United States and its allies recognized that

Chávez had the potential to energize people of African descent, not only in Latin

America, but in other parts of the world and was seen as a nemesis and someone

who could do great damage to White Supremacy.”285 Smith served as a delegate to

the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) in Durban, South

Africa in 2001. He says that Chávez was right there at the midpoint of helping people

of African ancestry throughout the world to recognize enslavement and the historic

deprivations that they had been subjected to “and so he was seen as a great threat to

284. Smith is professor emeritus of education at Baruch College where he served as Associate Provost. He is also the former Chair of the New York City Board of Education’s Commission on Students of African Descent and also served as President of the National Alliance of Black School Educators. 285. Donald H. Smith, interview by author, February 26, 2014.

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White supremacy.”286 Smith goes further in his comments. He recounts that the

WCAR found that slavery was a crime against humanity and that people who had

been enslaved were due recompense. Durban, Smith says, was a very significant

world moment. Smith believes that unity among states of the Southern Hemisphere

—sometimes called the South-‐South Dialogue— “is a threat to White supremacy, a

threat to the United States, to Europe, to Australia where White people have

historically been in control and have benefited from the work of enslaved

Africans.”287 According to Smith, “This was a clear threat and was recognized as

such.”288

Chávez knew exactly what he was doing and for whom he was doing it. Aleida

Guevara, Ché’s daughter, a physician in Cuba who has treated people in Angola and

other parts of Latin America, interviewed Chávez in 2005. She begins the

Introduction to her book with the following quote from Chávez: “This is a different

Venezuela, where the wretched of the earth know that they can free themselves

from their past. And this is a different Latin America.”289

Chávez became so comfortable in his skin that he openly and repeatedly

welcomed the election of the United States’ first African-‐American Barack Obama in

2008. While expressing dismay about Obama’s subsequent international policies, to

his life ‘s end Chávez’s seemed to maintain the hope that Obama would, like himself

286. Ibid. 287. Ibid. 288. Ibid. 289. Aleida Guevara, Chávez: Venezuela and the New Latin America (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2005), 5.

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eventually embrace closer empathy and connection with African nations and with

African-‐Americans of Latin America.290

Hugo Chávez: Thinking Like an Independent African with Vision and Courage

Based on what we know from Fanon, Freire, and others, it is impossible to

think as an independent African with vision and courage without first having dealt

with the internalization of attitudes that come from racism, domination, and

oppression. One of this study’s participants, Lewis Gordon291 gives us a glimpse into

what that kind of identity work must be like. Gordon believes that Chávez is the

Latin American “Steve Biko,” awakening Black consciousness in Latin America just

as Biko had done in apartheid South Africa. Gordon continues by saying that Hugo

Chávez is doing several things at once in terms of identity. He points out that “the

identity question preceded [Chávez] in a politically powerful way.” Gordon then

provided me with a history lesson. Describing French concern with the spread of

Anglophone countries, he described France’s penetration of the Americas on the

basis of language, considering themselves the highest culture of the Latin languages.

The French wanted to rule over the region of French, Spanish, and Portuguese

speakers. In their view, a French-‐controlled Latin American bloc could thwart the

tide of Anglophone world zones.

290. See CNN, “2009: Chávez Praises Obama, Hits U.S, ” video, September 24, 2009, http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2009/09/24/sot.chavez.un.imperialism.cnn. See also Chávez’s discussion on CNN with Larry King, viewable at “Larry King Live, 2009: Larry King Interviews Hugo,” YouTube video, 25:30, posted by CNN, http://panafricannews.blogspot.ca/2009/09/cnn-‐interview with-‐venezuelan-‐president.html. 291. Lewis Gordon, interview by the author, January 19, 2014. Gordon is currently a professor of Africana Philosophy in the African American Studies Department at the University of Connecticut.

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However, Simon Bolivar had other ideas. According to Gordon, Bolivar’s

discourse comes with what Gordon called a “heavy, heavy” amount of racism,

although he was trying to be progressive. Gordon continues: “Mixture is often

celebrated, as long as it is not with Black. So a big source of anxiety was the

mulatto.” The “mestizo” has a different connotation being a European mixture with

Indigenous peoples. “This has led to the presupposition of erasure in Latin America,”

says Gordon. “Now,” he continues, “you cannot divorce race from gender because

servitude or identity status was inherited from the mother.” In Latin America, there

is a saying that “My grandmother was Black.” Gordon says that it sounds

progressive, but all that really means is that White males had access to Black

females. He quickly adds, “Black males were often used in wars in Latin America.

They were often promised their freedom, but the wars were so bloody that most of

the Black men died. This resulted in a radical decline of the numbers of Black males.

This facilitated the erasure of Blackness in Latin America.” Eventually, Black

solidarity and resistance groups began to gain ground in Argentina, Brazil, and

elsewhere in Latin America. The tricky question, then, was how does one deal with

Black recognition. So, Gordon finds that “if you look at any class issue in the Latin

American setting, because Blackness was tied to slavery and servitude, the class

issue is a race issue.” He asserts that although Castro is not Black, he formulated the

fundamentality of Black Cubans.292

292. When Castro was challenged by the United States for sending Cuban troops into southern Africa to fight apartheid and the South African military, he responded, “African blood runs freely through my veins.” See Fidel Castro, “Fidel Castro: “We shall defend Angola and Africa!” The Militant 78, no. 45, last updated December 15, 2014, http://www.themilitant.com/2014/7845/784549.html.

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This allowed the United States to then frame anti-‐Castro politics by White

Cubans.

Gordon also gives the example of Puerto Rico. He acknowledges that there is

a stronger identification with Blackness in Puerto Rico, even though their skin might

be light. “Even the Whitest-‐looking Puerto Rican is located within Black politics,” he

says. “In the Latin American context, if you are going to present yourself in a

revolutionary way,” if you are going to challenge the system, then “raising the

question of Blackness” is the issue that hits the strongest chord for Gordon.

According to Gordon, empowering two groups challenges the system: Indigenous

and Black. Instead of stressing his Whiteness or his Indian-‐ness, Gordon points out

that Chávez stressed his Blackness. This, according to Gordon, aligned Chávez with a

type of liberation politics presupposing a bottom-‐up movement. It is undisputed

that Black people are at the bottom in Latin America, Gordon continues.

It is powerful that a national leader acknowledges his Black identity. At the

time of Chávez’s emergence, many Black movements had begun to assert

themselves. Yet while direct action was in defense of small land holdings that were

being taken over by affluent White farmers, South American violence reported in the

United States failed to reveal such underlying causes. Gordon argues that “the White

farmers wanted access to Black land.”293 He continued that their powerful cartels

are doing the business of “ethnic cleansing of the land” and that much of what is

presented by the U.S. media as drug wars is really the racial politics of land tenure.

293. Gordon, interview.

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In bringing out the racial dimensions of power and politics, Chávez understood the

critical role of identity in a way that eludes most people.

While most people look at identity as a way of being in your body, Gordon

recognizes that identity is also a social relationship. Chávez was a political leader.

Gordon asserts, “What he was really announcing was a form of relationship with the

Global South.” Gordon believes that Chávez was asserting that he was a part of a

geo-‐political group: Chávez offered heating oil to low-‐income people in the United

States; 294 to Gordon, there is no issue that has more moral consideration in the

United States than the racial issues. Gordon continues, “No one thinks of the U.S. on

gender; but when you say race, the only other country you can think of is apartheid

South Africa. He is doing exactly what Castro did when Castro stayed at the Theresa

Hotel in Harlem when he first came to the U.S. for the United Nations General

Assembly.” By raising this, Gordon asserts that Chávez sets up his narrative around

race. This, to Gordon, makes Chávez similar to Steve Biko who raised the Black

Consciousness issue in apartheid South Africa.

Further, according to Gordon, Chávez brings out of the closet the notion of

“illicit appearance.” Chávez was fighting this notion. His articulation of his Blackness

is important. The hugely predominant White identity of Latin American television

and newspapers can remind you of Sweden! In contrast, Chávez talks about his lips

and his hair. He attacks the presupposition that if you are Black, you should not

appear. Chávez asserted the legitimacy of being Black and also of being a part of the

State. He eliminates any notion of deference to others and establishes the locality of 294. Tim Padgett, “Why Can’t Big Oil Match Hugo Chávez?” Time, January 7, 2009, http://content.time.com/time/business/ article/0,8599,1870219,00.html.

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Blackness inside Venezuela as also representative of the State. This means that

Black people can assert themselves politically. This posed a threat, not only to the

United States, but also to the established way of doing business inside Venezuela.

Chávez subscribed to the notion of Mulatinidad that asserts that there is a strong

Black presence within the genetic pool of Latin America.

It took a special kind of courage to touch the taboo of racial identity, but

Chávez did that in his public discourse and also in state policy. Ciccariello-‐Maher

would agree with Gordon that Chávez was unique. He says, “Many Chavistas don’t

want to talk about race.” Ciccariello-‐Maher mentions that after the failed 2002

anti-‐Chávez coup attempt, there was a shift toward talking about race because “no

matter what he thought he was, he was seen as Black by the opposition”295 who

called Chávez derogatory names like “monkey” and “gorilla.”

Indeed, Marcano and Tyszka mention several times that Chávez was called

“ugly” in elementary and high school. We have seen that the standard of beauty in

Latin America and in Venezuela and everywhere else European colonialism has

visited, is set by a European ideal. Of course, Chávez was far from that. He spoke

openly of his thick lips and his curly hair. He had managed to take something for

which he was not supposed to have pride and turn it into an asset.

Askia Muhammad, Senior Editor at The Final Call Newspaper, a publication

founded by Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, agrees. Muhammad believes that

Chávez successfully used his African heritage as a bludgeon against those who

would denigrate him for it. Muhammad states that while for some it is easy to “run

295. George Ciccariello-‐Maher, interview by the author, February 6, 2014.

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away” from their African heritage, Chávez “called out” his African heritage and was

proud of it. He concludes that Chávez is even more admirable because he “used it as

a bludgeon against those who would use it against him.”296 In a 2005 interview with

journalist Amy Goodman, Chávez openly connected hateful opposition to him, to his

African physical features: “As a matter of fact, we have several motherlands and one

of the greatest motherlands of all is no doubt, Africa. We love Africa.” He goes on to

say, “Hate against me has a lot to do with racism. Because of my big mouth, because

of my curly hair. And I’m so proud to have this mouth and this hair, because it’s

African.”297

Hugo Chávez gained the attention of hardened African-‐centered community

leaders in the United States like members of the Black Panther Party. Larry Pinkney,

a founding member, says that the Panthers were steeped in political education. He

says that Fanon, Nkrumah, Mao Tse Tung, and Marx were all required reading.

According to Pinkney, Chávez was just an ordinary person who adhered to principle

and “never forgot where he came from.”298 Pinkney adds, “ ‘To serve the people body

and soul’ was a saying of the Black Panthers, but Hugo Chávez embodied that: he

served the people body and soul.”299 Chávez made the point of his African-‐descent

296. Askia Muhammad, interview by the author, January 17, 2014. 297. See Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the United States, “Afro-‐Venezuelans and the Struggle Against Racism,” venezuelanalysis.com, April 29, 2011, http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6159. For an audiovisual excerpt from that interview, see “This Mouth, This Hair,” YouTube video, 1:15, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqCgiv6QBeQ, posted by Cynthia McKinney, October 6, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqCgiv6QBeQ. 298. Larry Pinkney, interview by the author, January 26, 2014. 299. Ibid.

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clearly. “He was reaching out to African people throughout South America and the

Caribbean.

That took boldness, he was audacious,”300 Pinkney said. He added, “That’s

why he was so despised by the United States under both Bush and Obama.”301

Pinkney points out that Chávez was a man of action. He says that the Black Panthers

would say, “Talk is cheap, but action is supreme.”302 Pinkney recalls Chávez’s bold

actions: “He nationalized the oil company in Venezuela and wanted the people to

benefit from their oil. Of course this is totally contrary to what the United States

wanted. Chávez increased the literacy and health care for the people of Venezuela

which included the Black people in Venezuela.”303 Pinkney points out that the

policies and the programs of the Bolivarian Revolution were the same objectives

that aroused the action of the members of the Black Panther Party.

Research participant, Donald Smith speaks directly to the courage that

Chávez displayed by remaining true to his course. He interjects that alerting people

to critical and terribly important information of the type that Chávez did, basically,

that the people are very powerful, and of the tyranny of those who control wealth

and power, is “personally risky.”304 Smith says that when “the economic giants—the

United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia—recognized that Chávez and Qaddafi

were working together, they recognized that those two people must be destroyed

300. Ibid. 301. Ibid. 302. Ibid. 303. Ibid. 304. Donald Smith, interview.

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and that others like them must be destroyed.”305 He says that it took a great deal of

courage for these leaders to do what they did recognizing that they would be

targets.

Finally, Asante mentioned Chávez’s relationship with Haiti and the role that

Haiti played in the liberation of the South American Continent, including Bolivar,

and the Bolivarian project. He explains, “When Bolivar was running out of arms

during his fight against the Spanish, it was the Haitian government that supplied him

with soldiers and with guns. Chávez understood all of those historical

connections.”306 Asante concludes: “The Revolution is not complete in Venezuela,

not in Latin America, not in the Western Hemisphere.”307

Hugo Chávez: Firm Believer in the Struggle for Sovereignty

James Early, one of my participants who personally knew Chávez, concludes

that Chávez was preparing Latin America to confront neoliberal philosophy. 308He

believes that Latin America is holding its own. He says that it is the most dynamic

part of the world. It is the place for searching for alternatives. Early feels that these

alternatives and Chávez’s practical institutional structures laid the ground for an

integration and interdependence of regions, like Africa and South America, vis-‐a-‐vis

the West.

Chávez believed that sovereignty and independence started with the

individual. Asante also believes that Chávez modeled the behavior that he expected

of others. Asante says, “He led by showing the people what they could do. He led by 305. Ibid. 306. Asante, interview. 307. Ibid. 308. Early, interview.

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showing that regeneration was possible. He tried to build a new civil servant class.

Civil Servants began to see themselves as owners of the government.”309 Asante also

said that he believed that Chávez was an honest man and would be the first person

to admit that he made some mistakes.

Chávez also sought institutional change and sovereignty, especially within

the Venezuelan military and its oil sector. According to Asante, Chávez was also

trying to lead an institutional regeneration. He believes that Chávez understood that

the entrenched bureaucrats either had to be transformed or removed. Asante also

suggested that Chávez was a real optimist because he believed that he could have

some concrete institutional regeneration inside an institution whose members “had

been poisoned by the capitalist class.” Asante adds “the cleaning out of the oil sector

was necessary to get control of the politics of that sector for the country.”310

Chávez also sought to build an independent and sovereign Venezuela and

implemented agricultural, food, and land reform policies toward that end. The goal

was food sovereignty for Venezuela. Despite criticism for dismantling Venezuela’s

latifundios, Chávez persisted with his vision of sustainable agriculture, enshrined in

the Bolivarian Constitution. Just three months after the death of Chávez, the United

Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recognized Venezuela for its

progress on eliminating hunger. In its June 2013 press release, “Progress is proof

that hunger can be eliminated,” the FAO praised Venezuela for its early attainment

of both the “Millennium Development Goal One (to halve the proportion of hungry

309. Asante, interview. 310. Ibid.

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people by 2015)” and the “World Food Summit goal of halving the absolute number

of hungry people by 2015.”311

Ciccariello-‐Maher believes that there was method to Chávez’s Bolivarian

mission and to the people’s direct and participatory democratic practices. He

explains that the communes “are both political and economic; they are cooperatives

and state-‐run enterprises; the community council will determine who will work,

how much they will make, and what they will produce.”312 Ciccariello-‐Maher sees

this as both a permanent and defensive strategy: “If the government turns to the

right, then the popular movement will have some basis to resist this as a leverage

point.”313 Jeanette Charles314 agrees and believes that the appeal of the communes,

called Kumbés after Venezuela’s historical maroon cities, stems from the fact that it

is autochthonous. Charles says that the Kumbé is also a space of organizing and

spiritual resistance.

Thus, within the Bolivarian process, Chávez ensured that there was space for

independence and sovereignty, from the level of the individual to that of the region.

Despite being attacked, Chávez continued on his path, creating new organizations,

reaching out around the world and working on his twin projects of Latin American

and Caribbean integration and African integration. These organizations were

designed to help small countries protect their sovereignty and their right of

self-‐determination when under attack from the neoliberal policies of the United 311. Food and Agricultural Organization, “Progress Is Proof That Hunger Can Be Eliminated,” FAO, June 16, 2013, http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/ 178065/icode/. 312. Ciccariello-‐Maher, interview. 313. Ibid. 314. Jeanette Charles, interview by author, March 25, 2014.

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States and the Washington Consensus. Pinkney concluded from his own experiences

that the struggle for end values and against domination requires resilience “from

Rosa Parks to Rosa Luxembourg.”315 Pinkney asserts that “Hugo Chávez

remembered that the struggle—across the board—is a struggle of resilience.”316

Pinkney says that Chávez understood that “Revolution is not an overnight affair, it’s

an ongoing process.”317 Indeed, Chávez had insisted that he was able to maintain his

resilience because of his well-‐developed consciousness. He told Guevara that a

well-‐developed consciousness, even in the hardest of times, allows no negativity.318

Hugo Chávez: Goal-‐Oriented, Confident, and Loyal

Hugo Chávez set goals for himself. Marcano and Tyszka write that he had said

that one day he was going to be somebody in Venezuela. It is clear from his

accomplishments that Hugo Chávez dreamed big dreams. It is also clear that he set

goals and he accomplished many of them. Asante says that Chávez was an “organic

leader”—at one with the people. Asante also believes that Chávez was a

“breakthrough leader” who got things done. By organic leader, Asante means

someone who was not above the people, but who was one of the people. Asante

asserts that it was “the way that Chávez identified with the masses of people that

gave him the legitimacy to do what he wanted to do.”319 He continues that Chávez

inspired a response on the part of the masses to neoliberalism. It was Chávez’s view,

according to Asante, that the objective of neoliberalism was to moot the ability of

315. Pinkney, interview. 316. Ibid. 317. Ibid. 318. Guevara, Chávez, Venezuela, 29. 319. Asante, interview.

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the masses to rise against the capitalist class. Therefore, the masses of his people

would always be poor; “so he wanted to inspire a response to that.”320

Asante continues, “Chávez understood that the aim of social democracy, as it

had been interpreted, was to prevent cultural transformation from occurring

because it co-‐opted the potentiality of people from having a radical politicization of

their society.” Asante emphasizes the “breakthrough” nature of Chávez’s leadership:

“Breakthrough because he decided to take on the entrenched Eurocentric and

European-‐dominated capitalist class in Venezuela. They had the money, the system,

the institution, even though they are in the minority. Chávez took them on. This was

inspirational for Black people and oppressed people all over the world.”321

Ciccariello-‐Maher also adds in this same vein, that Chávez was like a

spearhead as well as a unifying figure. Chávez could go inside the state bureaucracy

and make things happen for the people and the social movements. “What Chávez did

was to unify and draw together” this energy. Ciccariello-‐Maher continues, “And

within the State apparatus, an enemy apparatus, he was able to break through

bureaucracy in a lot of ways and was able to help movements.”322

Hugo Chávez: Maintaining Historical Connectedness for Nation-‐Building

It is well known that Chávez rooted his discourse in Simon Bolivar, even

naming his Revolution after him. In an interview with Aleida Guevara,323 Chávez

says that he was surprised to learn that Bolivar had been exiled from Venezuela.

And who did that? Chávez had a ready answer: “The Venezuelan oligarchy… That 320. Ibid. 321. Ibid. 322. Ciccariello-‐Maher, interview. 323. Guevara, Chávez, Venezuela, 55.

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same oligarchy murdered Marshal Sucre when he was only twenty-‐five years old.

They expelled Bolivar’s wife, Manuela Saenz. They expelled Simon Rodriguez and all

other Bolivarians and made themselves lords of the land.”324 Chávez knew who he

was and that made it easier for him to connect the historical dots of who

Venezuelans really were. In an interview with Guevara, Chávez said that he was a

mixture of Indigenous and African on his father’s side and that he was very proud of

his roots. He said that the “Indigenous means being part of the deepest and most

authentic roots of our people and our land.”325 And he said that the mix works very

well. Like in Cuba. And he gave the example of a very beautiful Black Cuban girl to

whom he was to give an award. He mentioned her beauty to her and she responded,

“You Venezuelans and we Cubans are the perfect blend: Indigenous, African, and a

touch of White as well.”326 In this interview with Guevara, Chávez said that he was

proud of his roots.

According to Asante, Chávez inspired people to stand up for the truth. When

he was kidnapped in the 2002 coup attempt, the people believed in him almost

personally. They understood that the love for his people was a great love. And I

think it goes back to his heritage, his identity. His great-‐grandmother was a

Mandingo woman. If you look at the totality of this man, his African-‐ness, part

African, part Indigenous, but he understood that he was a part of the flowering

world that was to be. By embracing his identity, he embraced all of the people,

including those who had been denying their own African identity.

324. Ibid., 9. 325. Ibid., 14. 326. Ibid.

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Reflecting on the birth of the country, Chávez said that the people became an

army and they went to war for freedom. He was confident that Venezuelans could do

that again. Asante affirms tone aspect of Chávez’s leadership was that he was

“historically conscious.” This is why he attached his movement to Simon Bolivar.

Bolivar was the great, mass revolutionary leader to this part of the Americas. Asante

believes that it was the organic nature of Chávez’s leadership that made the people

feel a part of their own government. Asante asks, “Can you imagine what would

happen in the United States of America if we went block by block and told the

people, ‘Look, the government belongs to you and we are going to struggle for

transformation of society because the government belongs to you!’ ”327

My participant, Venezuela Woman #2, gives a little history of Venezuela. She

says that the children of the Second World War II immigrants are the current

Opposition in Venezuela. She works in the Venezuela Embassy during election time

and said she has never seen so many White Venezuelans in Venezuela as she sees in

the United States: “the way they behave, the way they talk, the color of their skin,

there is no difference between them and any White upper class Anglo-‐American.”328

She continues, “They are second and third and fourth generation Europeans—

Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, French, Eastern Europeans, and German comprise

the hard-‐core Venezuelan opposition. They created their own notion of Venezuela,

the Venezuela of their own creation is not the Venezuela of the masses. We are a

mixed country and the people who live in the United States are not representative of

327. Asante, interview. 328. Venezuelan Woman #2, interview by author, March 31, 2014.

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the entire country.”329 She adds that Chávez changed the language to reflect the

many cultures of Venezuela and not just one. She says that Chávez changed the

language away from the very racist policy of the mestizaje which denied the African

part of Venezuelan culture. “The three cultures are undeniable: African, European,

Indian. Chávez was able to recognize that mestizaje was not just Indian and

European, but was also African. He said, ‘Mother Africa’ and changed the racist

language. He made a presence. He took a stand to change the language and told the

people, ‘Unless you are a part of the 20% you are Indian, African, and European.’”330

She further asserts that the racism against President Chávez was against his

phenotype; “he looked Venezuelan; they were prejudiced against his non-‐European

phenotype. And they felt that he did not belong in politics because he did not have a

European phenotype. They saw him as an inferior. They feel the same way about

Maduro” and the others in the current government. Moreover, the opposition don’t

see themselves as ‘Caribbean’ because the Caribbean is African and that is another

part of their racist attitude.”331

By making these changes from the racist attitudes of the past and by

embracing the revolutionary spirit of the past, Chávez was able to create a

Venezuela that was for all Venezuelans. Venezuelan Woman #2 says that she has

never seen the presence of Afro-‐Venezuelans like she has seen under Chávez and

Maduro. “Afro-‐Venezuelans have become more present. Governors in Venezuela are

Afro-‐descendant. People are in official posts as Afro-‐Descendants. To see

329. Ibid. 330. Ibid. 331. Ibid.

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Afro-‐descendants in Venezuelan diplomacy was unlikely before Chávez. They are

present in government and in the National Assembly. Afro-‐descendants were

invisible, they didn’t exist before Chávez.”332 Noting that Elias Jaua, Chávez’s Foreign

Minister, was also Afro-‐Venezuelan, Venezuelan Woman #2 drew attention to

images of several current Afro-‐descendant political leaders (Figures 6.1 & 6.2).

Figure 5.1. Aristóbulo Istúriz Almeida, Governor, State of Anzoátegui. He was formerly Minister of Education in Chávez’s cabinet. Photo by Lucino Bracci. Retrieved and adapted from https://www.flickr.com/photos/lubrio/ 2375776015/in/photolist-‐5Exrre-‐9rFBMB-‐4BWtrr-‐7xPj41. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-‐NonCommercial-‐ShareAlike 2.0 License.

Figure 5.2. Chávez’s Vice-‐President, Elias Jaua, and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Photo by Premier.gov.ru. Retrieved from http://premier.gov.ru/events/ news/17334/photolents.html Used under Creative Common 3.0 Attribution License.

332. Ibid.

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James Early notes that Chávez’s grasp and love of history informed his own

personal development and also informed his leadership. He remembers Chávez as

someone who did a lot of reading and who was “very eclectic.” He also recalls that

Chávez cited to him Julius Nyerere’s idea that the Non-‐Aligned Movement needed its

own satellites for communication.

Asante points out the historical connectedness of Chávez with Fidel Castro.

He says, “He was a brilliant man” and a lightning rod for change in Latin America.

Asante points out Chávez’s leadership even in countries nominally in opposition to

Chávez. He points out that people were inspired by Chávez in Colombia, even though

Colombia’s President was on the “other side.” Asante concluded, “People gained

their courage on the back of Hugo Chávez just as Chávez had gained his courage on

the back of Fidel Castro.”

Toward the end of his interview with Guevara, Chávez had this to say: “We

have to finish burying what has to die and give birth to what has to be born. We are

still a long way from this.”333

Hugo Chávez: Collective Work and Cooperative Economics

Hugo Chávez took the Revolution in Venezuela to the verge of the creation of

free, independent, self-‐reliant maroon societies. Now, according to Charles and

Ciccariello-‐Maher, the Revolution is deepening and headed in that direction. Maroon

societies existed throughout the Caribbean archipelago and were the result of

successful slave revolts, where Africans fled enslavement by running to the hills.

There, they created self-‐sustaining societies that became known as Maroon towns.

333. Guevara, Chávez, Venezuela, 109.

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Maroons also existed in the United States and often mixed with Native Americans

and remained free.334

The Kumbé communes were not the only way in which Chávez instituted and

practiced collective work and cooperative economics. Some of the initiatives today,

like the alternative currency, the sucre, used for intra-‐regional trade, is another

example of such economics. I believe that there are two potent examples of ongoing

institutions that illustrate Chávez’s collective and cooperative spirit: Comunidad de

Estados Latinoamericanos y Caribeños (CELAC), mentioned earlier, and PetroCaribe.

Just this year, 2014, CELAC accomplished a milestone in that every country in the

region, whether they could be considered a friend of the Bolivarian Republic of

Venezuela or not, participated in the CELAC Summit held in January in Havana,

Cuba. The first Summit was held in Venezuela. Chávez proclaimed that a united Latin

America, from Mexico to Antarctica, was Bolivar’s dream and Latin Americans today

were making that dream come true.

PetroCaribe, an oil program for the Caribbean region, will be discussed in the

sixth chapter. However, it too is an example of the collective economics that guided

Chávez’s leadership. Graciela Chailloux Laffita, Ph.D. is a professor at the University

of Havana in Cuba and is the co-‐author of Subjects or Citizens: British Caribbean

Workers in Cuba: 1900–1960.335 She just happened to be giving a lecture at Boston

University during the research for this dissertation, and so I joined in by Skype.

334. See Richard Price, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979). 335. Robert Whitney and Graciela Chailloux Laffita, Subjects or Citizens: British Caribbean Workers in Cuba: 1900–1960 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013).

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Chailloux suggested that while European Venezuelans pulled away from a Caribbean

identity, Cuba and Venezuela did the opposite. She added that once she learned that

Chávez had read Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James, she published a formal translation of

that book in Spanish. In that translation, Chailloux writes that an organization like

PetroCaribe would be unthinkable if Europeans had been allowed to write both the

history and the present of Latin America. Chailloux commented as follows in her

translation of James’s monumental book, The Black Jacobins, (which I have discussed

in the second chapter):

When history is written from the centers of power, with the aim of defending the superiority of western civilization, the only way a politically and ideologically radical group can be only acknowledged as legitimate is within the framework of a process like the French Revolution. The only way to allow for the existence of Jacobins in the Caribbean, especially if they are Black, is by taking the audacious step of flatly rejecting the idea that there are higher and lower models of civilization. Otherwise, when history sees the Third World (making up no less than three-‐quarters of humanity) through the eyes of the centers of power, it explains that we are an odd, strange, anomalous offshoot of Western civilization, and that we will remain so until we reach the levels of civilization that they have achieved at our expense. From this perspective, then, the existence of, for example, Petrocaribe is completely unthinkable and totally improbable.336

Conclusion on Hugo Chávez’s Leadership

It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that Hugo Chávez was not

only an African-‐centered, political leader, according to Hotep and Assensoh, but that

he was also a Parrhesiastes and Transformational Leader, according to the theories

of Foucault and Burns. As we shall see later, it is my assessment that these

leadership attributes combined to make him by far the most important

African-‐descendant political leader of a generation. He produced not only pride in 336. Graciela Chailloux, “The Black Jacobins, Teachers of Revolution,” Caminos 48, (2008), http://www.walterlippmann.com/docs2352.html.

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other African descendants, but also racked up a solid list of policy accomplishments

that moved the people of Venezuela forward. Hugo Chávez sits among the pantheon

of African leaders, whose names he revered, who tried to arrest the “intolerable

humiliations”337 that go along with the dehumanizing neoliberal development that

occurs at the expense of people of color, whether they are in the Global South or in

the belly of the Washington Consensus.

337. Philomena Essed, “Intolerable Humiliations,” in Racism Postcolonialism Europe eds. Graham Huggan and Ian Law, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009), 131–147.

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Hugo Chávez—Afro-‐Descendiente and Proud!

In this chapter, I intend to discuss specific references to Africa, African

descent, or a more inclusive (in other words, not Eurocentric) worldview in the

Chávez discourse. This will also include instances of African pride that can be

pinpointed by his words or policies that resulted in the uplift of the Afro-‐Venezuelan

people. Before 2005, race was a factor in the discourse of Hugo Chávez and against

him. In his interview with the daughter of Ché Guevara, Aleida, Chávez

acknowledges that by the time he was twenty-‐one years of age, he had acquired “a

certain level of consciousness.”338 He speaks incredulously of the fact that Simon

Bolivar was expelled from Venezuela and says that the oligarchy that did that to

Bolivar is the same being opposed by the Bolivarian Revolution today. In that

conversation, he also acknowledges that he soon came to realize that the

Venezuelan military was being used against its own people who were protesting the

structural adjustment policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Chávez acknowledges that it was the people’s reaction to neoliberalism that

allowed him to have an opening and an opportunity. At a January 2003 press

conference in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the World Social Forum, Chávez said: “The last

time that Venezuela signed a package with the IMF, there was a popular uprising

when thousands died (The Caracazo). After that, we had two military uprisings. The

popular and military uprising curbed the neoliberal program and cleared an

alternative path, the one we are taking now.”339 Further, Chávez reflected on

temporal events in 1989 and 1991. He noted that 1989, not only was the year of the 338. Guevara, Chávez, Venezuela, 9. 339. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 289.

189

Caracazo, it was also the year that the Berlin Wall fell. 1991 was also the year that

the Soviet Union fell. He observed that after these events, neoliberalism raised its

flag and proclaimed global victory. However, in Venezuela, at that very moment,

neoliberalism was dying. He said that the people took to the streets in a rebellion

that continues to this day.

Chávez said that during the Caracazo, he was down with the measles and was

not in the streets with his fellow military officers. But he learned that soldiers fired

upon unarmed people. And he remembered what Bolivar said: “The soldier who

ever turns his weapon against his own people must be damned.”340 According to

Chávez, Venezuela was under Bolivar’s curse until the February 4, 1992 coup

attempt, led by Chávez, which allowed the Venezuelan military to exorcise its sins

committed during the Caracazo. According to Chávez, his Presidency was actually

the culmination of the historical factors that led to the awakening of the people.

This, he said was the new Venezuela, the Venezuela of the Bolivarian Revolution.

When he emerged from prison and a journalist asked him where was he going next,

he remembers that his response was two words: “To power!”341 Chávez says that he

resigned from the military and went into politics.

Hugo Chávez’s Identity Reflected in His Leadership

Several participants in the interviews spoke of how Hugo Chávez was an avid

reader. That is reflected in his discourse. In his speeches, Chávez quoted those

whom he had read. Chávez, too, talked about his love of reading and the works that

he read. He also learned from his reading. For example, he told Guevara that he read 340. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 303. 341. As told to Guevara in Chávez, 12.

190

history books that told him how the Indigenous people of the Americas were

slaughtered. He said to Guevara, “They slaughtered us.”342 The “us” used by Chávez

is very indicative of him speaking from the non-‐European identity: the Other, the

Subaltern, the Un. Chávez continues, “I feel the Caribbean stirring within me,

because I am Indian, mixed with African, with a touch of White thrown in.”343

Chávez told Guevara a story that seems reminiscent of the ones he loved to

tell. It featured an old Black woman whom Chávez characterized as strong. He said

that the oligarchs, with help from their international friends, were trying to produce

collapse in the country. They had sabotaged the oil refineries, thrown away millions

of liters of milk, and slaughtered cows so that there would be no food. He told

Guevara of the international solidarity shown to Venezuela by Cuba and Brazil. And

so, it was during this time that he thought he would take a look at how things were

going up in the hills of Caracas. While he was there, he was grabbed by this woman

and marched to her home where they were cooking plantain, rice, and potatoes. She

told him that she had used the wood from her chairs for firewood and that the fire

that he saw was because she was burning the legs from her bed. And then she told

him, taking him by the lapels, “We’ll burn the furniture, the roof, and we’ll even

break down the doors and cook with them, but don’t you dare give in, Chávez.”344

And like Cabral, Chávez believed that one of the most potent weapons they had in

their peaceful, but armed revolution, was their ideology and consciousness.

342. Guevara, Chávez, Venezuela, 15. 343. Ibid. 344. Ibid., 17.

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Chávez received many of his ideas from his voracious reading. Chávez

paraphrased President John F. Kennedy in a speech at an Urban Land Titling

ceremony in 2003: he asked, “Do Venezuelans want peace? Yes, we do want peace,

but we don’t want the peace of the graves; we don’t want the peace of slaves.”345

Chávez also quoted Kennedy when asked about the nature of his revolution;

Kennedy supplied the answer: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible

make violent revolution inevitable.” Chávez was clear that the Bolivarian Revolution

would be peaceful, but armed.

Participant Graciela Chailloux told me that she was sure that Chávez was

familiar with Black authors of the Caribbean and that his acknowledgement of his

African ancestry was an important milestone for Afro-‐Latinos and the Caribbean.

Chávez also acknowledged that during his time in the military academy, he

was an avid reader. It was while he was in the academy that he conceived the

Bolivarian Army for the Liberation of the Venezuelan People and deepened his

consciousness as well as that of his fellow military cadets and officers. He says that

he recalled those readings while he was in prison and that those readings allowed

him to feel free despite being confined to a very small cell. Chávez said in his

interview with Guevara that he used the two years and two months of imprisonment

after his unsuccessful coup attempt, to do a good deal of reading. He said that he was

able to strengthen both his soul and his convictions.

345. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 124. In 1963, President Kennedy’s words were, “What kind of peace do we seek? Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.” President John F. Kennedy, “1963 Commencement,” speech at American University, June 10, 1963, http://www1.american.edu/media/speeches/Kennedy.htm.

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Chávez recognized that the Bolivarian Revolution had touched people as far

away as Asia. In 2003, in a nationally broadcast speech to the people of Venezuela,

Chávez said: “Millions, millions upon millions of human beings in this Continent, in

Africa, in Asia, and many other places, identify with Venezuela’s voice. Venezuela is

now a voice in the whole world, on the whole planet.”346 Chávez realized that the

vast population of the world outside Europe resonated with his ideas and with the

Venezuelan experience. And, yet, at the same time, he realized that the

circumstances in Venezuela were unique. When comparing the people of Chile when

Allende was overthrown to the people of Venezuela when the attempted coup

against him was thwarted, he noted that the people of Chile did not take to the

streets while the people of Venezuela did.

Chávez also seized every opportunity to congratulate a crowd when he was

outside of Venezuela that looked like the world. He would acknowledge the faces of

the world in his audience: Black and White faces; Indigenous and mestizo faces; men

and women; the young and the still young at heart. This inclusiveness in his

discourse indicated, also, an easily discernible level of comfort.

Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution had solid results for Afro-‐Venezuelans. In a

compilation of achievements up to 2012, the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela

boasts eleven improvements for Afro-‐Venezuelans. It is interesting to note that most

of these targeted actions began in 2005 and this is also when it is reported that

Chávez publicly acknowledged his own African roots. My participant, Venezuelan

Man #1, agrees that there was a burst of activity in recognizing Afro-‐descendants

346. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 205.

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and that at first Chávez kept this aspect of his identity at a distance. In fact,

Venezuelan Woman #3 asserts that Chávez really was Indigenous and had no

African roots and actually used race and his purported racial identity to divide the

country. She said, “Chávez isn’t considered a Black person in Venezuela by

Venezuelans. He is not considered a person of African ancestry. But Venezuelans,

when you ask them, they would say ‘He has Indigenous roots.’ Those are the

features of the Native Venezuelans, which of course, we call Indians.” She believes

that Chávez used his considerable charisma to fuel racial division and polarization in

the country.

The Bolivarian Government’s eleven cited accomplishments for

Afro-‐Venezuelans under Chávez were:

• The 1999 Constitution that declares Venezuela a multiethnic and

multicultural society with equality among cultures;

• A ninety-‐seven percent voter registration rate as a result of campaigns

since 2001 targeting the poor and marginalized;

• The 2003 creation of Missions that target poverty in Venezuela;

• The creation of a post in 2005 that handles Afro-‐Descendant Affairs

within the Ministry of Culture;

• The 2005 designation of a Vice Minister for African Affairs and the

opening of new embassies in Africa;

• The 2005 designation of May 10 as Afro-‐Venezuelan Day (celebrating José

Leonardo Chirinos and his armed rebellion against Spain in 1795) and the

month of May as Afro-‐Descendants Month;

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• The 2005 creation of a Presidential Commission for the Prevention and

Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination in the Educational

System;

• The 2009 Education Law recognizing Afro-‐Descendants;

• The 2011 decision to include “Afro-‐Descendant” on the Venezuelan

Census;

• The 2011 Law Against Racial Discrimination;

• The decision to place the image of Pedro Camejo, known as Negro

Primero, on the new Venezuelan currency; and

• The 2012 Council for the Development of Afro-‐Descendant

Communities.347

Not mentioned by the Venezuelan government is the 2005 establishment of

an “Africa Chair” in the Bolivarian University System. The Venezuelan Embassy in

the United States also notes the Chávez interview during which he acknowledged his

mouth and hair, saying that he is proud to have these features because they are

African. In so doing, Chávez became the very first Venezuelan President to

acknowledge his Africanness. The Embassy also touts its relationship with the

Caribbean countries through PetroCaribe, which helps Caribbean countries import

Venezuelan oil with favorable financing. I would add Venezuela’s successful

launching of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) as

347. Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the U.S., “The Struggles and Achievements of Afro-‐Venezuelans, May 1, 2012, http://venezuela-‐us.org/live/wp-‐content/uploads/2009/08/05-‐10-‐2012-‐FS-‐Afro-‐Venezuelans1.pdf.

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another very important example of this multilateral cooperation reflecting Chávez’s

idea that Latin Americans, Caribbeans, and Africans were all one people.

Speaking in 2003 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Chávez

told the story of a young child who had died; he and some fellow travelers went to

see the mother. He explained that the baby’s mother was a young Black Venezuelan

who, in tears, told him that the baby had died of hunger, but would be buried in a

cradle of gold because in Guyana gold is plentiful in the dust and sand. He compared

her plight to Venezuelan farmers and said that they live in “absolute poverty” while

a “sea of oil” lies underneath the soil. Chávez began the wind-‐down of his comments

in Brazil by saying that the transformation that will engulf all of Latin America does

not depend on one person, but instead would be the result of a collective awareness.

He said collective consciousness is the force above all that is responsible for social

transformations. I believe he could say that because he, himself, had become aware

of his own identity, his ideology, through consciousness and had transformed

himself as he sought to transform others.

The Role of Race in Latin America and Venezuela

As we know from Fanon, Azad, and others, there are multiple ways that the

colonized and dominated cope with their status. Denial of the attributes that

contribute to that status is one coping mechanism. Denial of African descent is not

unusual. My study participant, Jeanette Charles, noted, in my conversation with her,

that there is a revival of religion in Venezuela and that many people who have not

yet come to the realization of Africa being a part of their identity, practice African

religions. She told me, “There are a lot of people in Venezuela who do not consider

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themselves Afro-‐descendant, but who actually are.” With their culture dislocated,

they become practitioners of Euromimesis—a fancy way of saying what Fanon

originally said, Black Skin, White Masks. They become White in every way except

phenotype. Plastic surgeries obliterate this genetic scar tissue of too much nose or

too much lips. European partners are chosen to lessen the pronouncement of these

features in successive generations.

As discussed in the second chapter, Fanon calls this phenomenon

“lactification.” The idea is that everything that is different from the European feature

is a mark of ugliness and unacceptability. Lactification is a manifestation of

self-‐contempt. And such psychologically destructive patterns of behavior are passed

down generation to generation. As Azad points out, the “Comprador Class” (that is,

that class of colonized people who are provided education and special privileges by

the colonizers and who knowingly or unknowingly collude in the oppression of the

colonized), are specifically trained to extend the reach and deepen the depths of

European domination outside of Europe. Anyone who is trained in this setting is

trained, then, to maintain this Eurocentrism and European domination. In essence,

the formal training under such a system is the training for a non-‐European to

become a member of the Comprador Class. So, how did Hugo Chávez escape the trap

of Euromimesis?

I believe that Chávez’s African pride or love of the Africanness in his

phenotype would have been a gradual development for Chávez. Venezuelan Man #1

agrees and suggests that the turning point for Chávez came after the failed United

States-‐backed 2002 coup attempt. He said that it was at that point the media came

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out very heavily with the use of words like gorilla, monkey, darkie and it became

clear to Chávez who the Venezuelan political elite thought he was.348

Venezuelan Man #2 described in painstaking detail the horrors of being a

dark-‐skinned teenager in Venezuela before the rise of Chávez to power. He recalled

for me that he had the good fortune of attending a private school in Caracas where

the elite went. He attended a party, but not a single White girl would dance with

him. He says that it took him three years to figure it out, but that eventually, he

realized that this had been because of his dark skin color.

He went on to describe how endoracismo affects the Blacks: he says that they

want to marry Whites. They feel that they are improving themselves and the race

when they marry White. All of his siblings “married White.” Despite warnings from

his family, he married a Black woman to whom he is still very happily married and

now even his family adore her, he told me.

Indeed, Marcano and Tyszka write that Chávez’s second wife, Marisabel

Rodriguez, was the equivalent of what is now known in the political world as a

“trophy wife” and that Chávez’s political advisor used her a lot in his 1998

presidential campaign. In fact, according to Marcano and Tyskza, this advisor

decided to frontline Rodriguez in order to soften Chávez’s image and make him

more acceptable to the voters. This is exactly the kind of arrangement to which

Fanon refers to when he writes about “lactification.” Marcano and Tyska write:

348. Jesus Chucho Garcia dates these changes in Chávez’s identity from an Afro-‐descendiente meeting where, on January 11, 2004, Chávez declared his African heritage. See Jesus Chucho Garcia, “A Maroon President Called Hugo Chávez,” America Latina en Movimiento, March 15, 2013, http://alainet.org/active/62495&lang=es.

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Marisabel is well educated, kind, attractive, and spontaneous. Her type of beauty was especially useful to the campaign because there is something about her that recalls the stereotype that so many people seem to adore: she is White, she has blue eyes, and in fact, she had even participated in a competition sponsored by Revlon to find the most beautiful face in Venezuela. At the side of the unpredictable, aggressive soldier, suddenly there was a real-‐life Barbie doll who even made sense when she talked.349

Rodriguez agrees that she played a very special role in the presidential

campaign of Chávez. According to Marcano and Tyszka, Marisabel said, “I was there

to lower my husband’s rejection rate in the polls, and to win over a segment of the

population that was totally unwilling [to support him.]”350 Shortly after Chávez won

the presidency, Rodriguez ran for and won a seat in the National Assembly. It was

Rodriguez who, in the midst of the 2002 anti-‐Chávez coup, confirmed on United

States television that Chávez had not resigned, but had, instead, been kidnapped.

Two years later, in 2004, Rodriguez and Chávez divorced. The popular press claimed

that Rodriguez felt “the feeling of hatred in Chávez’s world.”351 The New York Times

quotes Rodriguez as saying, at a Venezuela press conference, that she “could be

attacked at any time by these hordes he has on the street.”352

Chávez’s older brother, Adan, was his political inspiration. Adan, a physics

professor influenced him and encouraged him to run for President. But, before that,

Adan put Hugo in touch with the members of the Party for the Venezuelan 349. Marcano and Tyszka, Hugo Chávez, 17 (see second chap., n. 51). 350. Ibid., 237 quoting Sebastian de la Nuez, Marisabel, la historia te absolvera (Caracas: Editorial Exceso, 2002), 51. 351. Veronique de Miguel, “Hugo Chávez’s Women: The Ex Wives and Mistresses Who Loved Venezuela’s Ailing President,” Huffington Post Latino Voices, January 11, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/11/hugo-‐Chávezs-‐women-‐the-‐ex_n_2455974.html. 352. Simon Romero, “Venezuela’s President Scorned by Bitter Political Foe: His Ex-‐Wife,” New York Times, May 12, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/ world/americas/12venezuela.html?_r=0.

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Revolution and former guerrilla members who were dissatisfied with the corruption

of both the military and political leaders. Chávez credited Adan with providing him

the background and political orientation to know his place in Venezuelan politics

and when it was the proper time to pursue it. Chávez was steeped in political theory

before he went to the military academy and that only accelerated in his studies

there. But while in the military, Hugo Chávez developed heroes who were

progressive generals in charge of countries (like Omar Torrijos of Panama and Juan

Velasco of Peru)353 and who were doing progressive things by asserting national

sovereignty. While in the military, he also had the opportunity to learn about United

States-‐backed alternatives to the populist, nationalist generals on September 11,

1993 when Salvador Allende was toppled by Augusto Pinochet. It is study

participant Wayne Madsen who reminds us that Chávez was prone to dislike United

States-‐backed military leaders and Organization of America States (OAS) operations

because their regimes created the context within which Indigenous people in

Guatemala were being massacred. In our interview, Madsen recalls that Chávez was

changed by that:

I recall that Chávez once said that he once participated in an Organization of American States peacekeeping operation in Guatemala. At the time he was a low-‐ranking Army officer, he may have been a Major. This would have been back in the ‘70s or early ‘80s. He said that he was supportive of his own government, which was corrupt, of course, until he witnessed how the Guatemalan Army, backed by the United States, treated the Indians and he counted himself amongst the Indigenous peoples of Latin and South America. He was appalled by that, and this is when he started to have his first doubts, because he witnessed this genocide.

353. Velasco served in Peru from 1968 to 1975 and Torrijos served in Panama from 1972 to 1981.

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Chávez told Guevara about the process for choosing what was to be included

in the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution. He said that the gays came and asked for

same-‐sex marriage; the women came and asked for abortion; the Indigenous came

and asked for respect for their rights; Blacks came and “took over the Congress.”354

He said the children visited with the First Lady and asked for their rights, too. In the

end, the Constitution specifically addressed the cultural rights of all Venezuelans

and the right of the Indigenous to speak their native language.

Chapter VIII of the Venezuelan Constitution outlines the Rights of Native

People. In eight Articles, from Article 119 to Article 126 the Constitution recognizes

the existence of Indigenous communities and their right of recognition of their

practices, customs, religions, languages, habitat, and their original rights to the land.

Ciccariello-‐Maher points out that Afro-‐Venezuelan women pushed hard for a

pro-‐woman Constitution that recognized the value of women’s labor (Article 88), as

well as women’s sexual and reproductive rights (Article 76). Their push led to the

success of the women’s agenda in the Constitution, including wages for housework

Article 88). Blacks came, as Chávez notes, to press their case for inclusion in the

Constitution, but they walked away with nothing. When talking to James Early,

Chávez admitted that this was a mistake. And from the flurry of activities in the year

2005, it seemed that Chávez sought to correct that mistake with changes in the law

and ministerial appointments. Ciccariello-‐Maher notes that the Constitution is

obvious in its silence on Afro-‐Venezuelan rights. By contrast, he writes, the

Indigenous community got almost everything that they asked for. Ciccariello-‐Maher

354. Guevara, Chávez Venezuela, 34.

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writes that Chucho Garcia, creator of the Afro-‐Venezuelan Network, believes that

Afro-‐Venezuelans who were in a position to push for recognition in the Constitution,

“just did not grasp the importance of Afro struggles when the time came.”355 I

believe that this is also a reflection of the only-‐nascent awareness at the time of

African heritage in Chávez’s own identity.

Clearly, something changed between 1999 and 2005 to increase Chávez’s

awareness of and appreciation for the African part of his identity. According to

Ciccariello-‐Maher, it was the failed anti-‐Chávez coup attempt that put Chávez’s

identity in stark relief—for European Venezuelans—and for him.

However, according to Venezuelan Man #1, Chávez could have and should

have gone even further. He says that the Durban World Conference Against Racism

provided a golden opportunity to put the plight of Afro-‐Descendants on the

Venezuelan center stage and that did not happen. Now, without Chávez, he says, the

possibilities arising from the United Nations upcoming Decade of Afro-‐Descendant

People (from 2015 to 2025) will suffer.

I believe that in 1999 Hugo Chávez just was not ready mentally to accept and

then champion the African part of his identity. He acknowledged that Blacks came to

Caracas to plead their case for inclusion in the Constitution and yet it did not

happen. The Durban World Conference Against Racism came and went without a

strong Chávez push. I would suggest that Chávez didn’t fully become “Black” until

after the 2002 coup attempt against him and its failure released a torrent of racist

vitriol against him. This was probably the period that presented Chávez with his

355. Ciccariello-‐Maher, We Created Chávez, 156.

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own “disorienting dilemma.”356 The Chávez that we now know is the Chávez that

emerged from that moment.

Many of my study participants noted the racist nature of the opposition to

the Bolivarian state. In the highly racialized context of Chávez’s policies and the

assertion of his identity, Venezuelan Woman #1 says that Chávez had to endure

withering racist assaults in the media. Some of the cartoons appearing in

Venezuela’s elite press were described earlier. He could easily have dodged these

bullets by taking a different course. He demonstrated his belief in his struggle by

continuing to go out there, round after round, getting beaten and bruised for an idea

and an ideal, what Burns would call an end value. This participant characterized the

attacks on Chávez as a propaganda war and characterized the Opposition to the

government as “full of hate.” She freely mentioned the “component of racism” in

those attacks that makes her sad. She said that the part of the population that

support the government are described on FaceBook by the opposition Venezuelans

with all kinds of names: “ignorant, monkeys, gorillas, donkeys, and other ugly

words.” I pressed her for these other ugly words, as she put it, because I wanted to

see how those who perceived themselves as White characterized Hugo Chávez. She

continued as I asked and repeated the “ugly words” leaving the worst for last:

Hordas, which means hordes and niche which means “poor, ordinary, dirty,

mixed-‐race,” and more. I further pressed her on what she meant by “more.” I asked 356. Sociologist and educator Jack Mezirow theorized that transformative learning took place after reflection and crisis that were caused by an experience that did not fit in with an existing belief system. Transformative learning, according to the theory, takes place when one uses new interpretations of experiences to guide future behavior. See Jack Mezirow, Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning (San Francisco: Jossey-‐Bass, 1991).

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her if niche equals “nigger,” her response using someone else’s Skype account was

“sort of.” I followed up with Venezuelan Woman #1 to ask her if niche is a word used

by poor, uneducated, darker-‐skinned Venezuelans to refer to themselves. She

responded: “niche’ is a term of disdain used by those who feel superior.” In a follow-‐

up message on FaceBook, she elaborated telling me even more insults that were

hurled regularly at Chávez and that continue with his successor, Maduro.

When I asked Venezuelan Woman #3 if she was familiar with the word, niche,

her response to me was “Of course, I’m Venezuelan, of course.” She continued, “ Yes.

Niche is related to black, poor, from the barrios. Hordas is hordes. Another

frecuent(sic) insult is chabestias, it’s a mix of chavistas and bestias (Beasts). Maduro

is often called Maburro. Burro means donkey. It’s 3 a.m. Some people are banging

pans in my neighborhood. This is an opposition neighborhood.”

Giordano describes the attitude of Venezuelans who are opposed to the

Bolivarian Revolution. He calls the opposition Venezuelans “Miami Venezuelans,”

who are like the “Miami Cubans” in that they believe that “the country” is composed

only of them and that “those people who are just a little more brown than us—who

are poorer than us, who don’t speak English—those people aren’t really people.”

Giordano adds, “It’s really easy to dislike these people.” Ciccariello-‐Maher says that

whatever Chávez considered himself to be, the opposition was clear that he was a

monkey, gorilla, beast, or other sub-‐human species and that he was one of the

“hordes” or qualified as a “niche.” This probably crystalized for the opposition

because for the first time in the history of Latin America, a coup was reversed by the

people—the very people who were hated by the opposition and for whom the ship

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of state was never to turn. It probably crystalized for Chávez, too, who came to know

exactly what he was in the eyes of the opposition, the basis for which he was so very

much hated. In his conversation with Guevara, he acknowledged that the opposition

called him a “beast.”357

It is interesting, then, that in January 2003, Chávez quoted Dr. Martin Luther

King, Jr. He said, “As Blacks, we must combine a strong spirit with a tender heart if

we are to move positively toward the goal of freedom and justice.” In introducing his

new Minister of Education, although he really did not have to do so, Chávez noted

that the Minister, Aristobulo Isturiz, is of African descent.358 In reading Chávez’s

entire speech, I believe it is clear that Chávez was proud to make the introduction

and the identification of Isturiz as an Afro-‐Venezuelan minister.359 Isturiz is now the

Governor of Anzuategui state, one of several prominent Venezuelan statesmen of

African descent.

In 2003, on his television show, Alo Presidente, Chávez attacked the

opposition because it had just accused Chávez of turning over the Venezuelan

state-‐owned oil company (PDVSA) to the Cubans. Their evidence? They saw

dark-‐skinned people in the building. The opposition accused Chávez of having

armed Cubans in his security detail. Why did they make that accusation? Because

Chávez had dark-‐skinned individuals around him who served as his security, and

they had guns.360 It was at that point that Chávez announced that Cuba did not

charge Venezuela one cent for the surgeries, medicine, and treatment that 357. Guevara, Chávez, 40. 358. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 51. 359. For entire speech, see Ibid., 49–75. 360. Chávez, Fascist Coup, 138.

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Venezuelans received in Cuba. In the twenty speeches or interviews that I examined,

Chávez never hesitated to name Africa as a friend of Venezuela or to hail Latin

America as mixed-‐race America. Also, he included the Caribbean in his discourse

and in his policies—a Caribbean that was distanced in policy and pronouncements

from the European Venezuelans because of its association with Black peoples,

according to Venezuelan Woman #2. But every one of the speeches or interviews

that I examine is dated after 2002. It very well could be that because he was so

broadly insulted in the same demeaning terms that had previously been applied to

Afro-‐Venezuelans, that Chávez decided to own his racial identity.

Hugo Chávez: The Liberator

At last, completely liberated from the endoracismo, or internalized racism,

experienced by people of color in Eurocentric, neocolonial, dominator/oppressed

situations, Hugo Chávez turned his attentions to the rest of the region in order to

liberate it. As has already been stated, Hugo Chávez quoted Frantz Fanon in 2004

when, in describing his policies, he said, “This is a different Venezuela, where the

wretched of the earth know that they can free themselves from their past. And this

is a different Latin America.”361

Freedom From Neoliberalism

Speaking specifically of the Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA),

another neoliberal proposal from the United States to open local markets to United

States corporations, Chávez said that Brazil and Argentina were close to his position

of opposition and that the fifteen member states and the five associate members of


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the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) were opposed almost in entirety. In speaking

to Guevara, Chávez said that the idea of The Bolivarian Alliance (formerly

Alternative) for the Peoples of Our America, ALBA, came to him while he was

speaking with Fidel and was in the midst of what he called the second coup attempt

against him, the PDVSA workers’ strike. The idea of an alternative, a Bolivarian

Alternative, for the Americas was developed right then and there and ALBA against

the FTAA was born. He believed ALBA could become an alternative development

model for Latin America, utilizing the key resources of each state in a cooperative

way. Chávez counted among the achievements of ALBA:

• The ALBA Bank;

• Increased cooperation among Latin Americans;

• Sovereignty as a result of union;

• The ALBA Food Security Treaty;

• A telecommunications treaty to be signed that would include a submarine

cable from Cuba to Venezuela that would eventually connect Central

America as a reflection of liberation through technology;

• Latin American School of Medicine, which was funded on April 15,

2007.362

Chávez envisioned ALBA as a counter to the “free trade” mantra of

neoliberalism that always served the interests of those making the proposal to the

362. Hugo Chávez, With ALBA, Peoples Awaken: Words of the President Hugo Chávez FrÍas. Opening of the VI Presidential Summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) (Caracas: La Imprenta Nacional, Colleccion Discursos, 2008): 14–41.

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detriment of those on the receiving end of the demand. He told Guevara that the free

trade agreements proposed by the United States violated the Venezuelan

Constitution and therefore, were unconstitutional for Venezuela to ratify. He said

that the power of imperialism is immense and that they can conduct blackmail with

a single simple phone call.

Freedom Inside Venezuela

In Venezuela, the Revolution set up state-‐owned companies that operated in

partnership with the workers. Missions were created to address the specific needs

of the poor and marginalized, like for example, health care, vocational training, food,

and literacy. To cut down on imports, the Missions take the unemployed and give

them work on idle land to produce what is imported. The idea is to provide work

that is also training that is also needed production. Chávez also followed the lead

from two ideas of Mohammad Yunus,363 winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for

his pioneering work with Grameen Bank: microloans made to individuals, but in the

name of a community, and social business that allows the poor to become

self-‐sufficient while the entire society gains by recycling money for greater impact.

Venezuela now has over three thousand communal banks making such loans.

Chávez believed that the appropriate economic structures for Venezuela in the

Twenty-‐First Century were Venezuelan Indigenous Socialism. By that, he meant a

homegrown economics of equality based on love and solidarity.364 Chávez created

363. Muhammad Yunus, with Karl Weber, Building Social Business: The New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s Most Pressing Needs (Dhaka, Bangladesh: University Press, 2010). 364. Hugo Chávez, Speech of Unity, December 15, 2006 (Caracas: Socialism of the XXI Century, 2007), 41.

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defensive organizations in order to blunt European penetration into the

revolutionary ethos that was developing in Venezuela.

The Revolution also stopped and reversed the privatization of Venezuela’s oil

company, PDVSA. Chávez had seen that the business and technocratic elite in

Venezuela were allied with Washington, D.C. and took their orders from there.

Freeing the Venezuelan Military

Chávez cultivated that new Latin America by nurturing a new consciousness

inside the military and with the radicals who were in touch with the guerrillas and

political operatives who all believed in a better Venezuela. He remembered Bolivar’s

curse for any military that turned its swords against its own people. He sought to

free the military from this curse and from its use by non-‐Venezuelans to achieve

non-‐Venezuelan goals.

Chávez also knew the character and nature of his opposition. First of all, he

said that the previous Venezuelan heads of State were merely puppets and lackeys.

Washington, D.C. was the real seat of power in Venezuela, according to Chávez. His

insight came when, as a military officer, he was sent to Colombia to fight against the

guerrillas there. He said that the Venezuelan military had been mobilized as a result

of orders from Washington, D.C. In his conversation with Guevara, Chávez said that

the Bolivarian Revolution stopped all cooperation with the United States against the

Colombian guerrillas while maintaining that this was a matter for Colombians to

sort out.

Chávez declared that it was this new spirit that gelled and allowed him to

defeat the anti-‐Chávez coup from inside the military. He said to Guevara that many

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of the military, from the army, navy, air force, and national guard just flatly refused

to follow the orders that came down from “the Pentagon and the traitor generals.”365

Securing Freedom through Hemispheric and Global Cooperation

In 2003, Chávez was ready to share Venezuela’s good fortune with the rest of

the world. He wanted to reestablish the North–South Dialogue (a process of dialogue

aimed at ironing out differences between the European countries of the Northern

Hemisphere and non-‐European countries in the Southern Hemisphere). He also

wanted to reestablish South–South Cooperation, a philosophy that non-‐European

countries of the Southern Hemisphere should practice cooperative economics as

much as possible. Chávez developed an approach to help feed the world’s hungry

and made that proposal to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization

(FAO). The idea was for Venezuela to provide the land, water, fertilizer, and for

other countries to provide everything else needed to grow food. Then, at harvest

time, those countries that had contributed to the production could reap some of the

bounty. Everything produced within that particular geographic area would be

donated and not sold. When he made the proposal, the response was to remind him

that the World Trade Organization (WTO) regulations would not allow him to feed

hungry people. Chávez was both astonished and disgusted.

Chávez also saw South-‐South Cooperation in the Hemisphere as necessary.

He focused his attention on Haiti, the Caribbean, and South America, as well as Latin

America as a whole.


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Freeing Haiti, Again

Chávez readily drew from the experiences of those who had created

revolution in the past: the Haitians. I have already discussed how Chávez was the

first Latin American Head of State to travel to Haiti to thank the Haitians for their

assistance in freeing Latin America due to their work with and support of Simon

Bolivar. On returning from a state visit to that country, Chávez posed the question to

the National Assembly, “Why is Haiti Poor?” and then answered, calling the Haitians

“The Black Jacobins,” using the name of the book written by C.L.R. James.

In this speech,366 Chávez acknowledges that Haiti, the land of the Black

Jacobins, the land of Toussaint and Pétion, is the place where the dream of freedom

was birthed. Including freedom for the people of Venezuela and the revolution of

South America. He says that Haiti is a sister. He reads what Fidel Castro has given in

his most recent reflections, as the reason that Haiti is poor.367 Fidel wrote that not a

single person speaks of it, but Haiti was the first country that stopped the European

human trafficking that was slavery.368 Castro had noted that Africans were trafficked

for more than one century to Haiti to work the sugar and coffee plantations of the

Europeans. Yet, those slaves were able to defeat Napoleon.

Chávez’s speech continued quoting Fidel’s statement that Haiti is in misery

today because the nation is the product of colonialism and imperialism. In this

speech, Chávez says that from military interventions and the extraction of Haiti’s 366. “Hugo Chávez R I P Venezuela President Why Haiti Is Poor?” YouTube video, 6:21, posted by Cynthia McKinney, May 22, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fbeMKi51xc&feature=youtu.be. 367. Fidel Castro, “Haiti’s Lesson,” Cubadebate, http://en.cubadebate.cu/reflections-‐fidel/2010/01/14/haitis-‐lesson/. 368. C.L.R. James, Black Jacobins.

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riches, Haiti today is a shame for our age. When Chávez visited Haiti, the public

response was so huge that Chávez was motivated to get out of his truck and join the

Haitians running alongside. He told a person next to him that the gates of hell had

opened and it was full of Black angels. These Haitians, he said, are an angelic people.

Freeing the Caribbean

Chávez embraced the Caribbean. I have already discussed CELAC, which

brought together every one of the countries in the region for a successful 2014

Summit, and I have mentioned PetroCaribe as another demonstration of his

outreach to, instead of his fear of, Caribbean countries. PetroCaribe was the

brainchild of Hugo Chávez and was launched in 2005. It began as an oil alliance, but

is creeping into other areas of economic cooperation. Chávez envisioned both

PetroCaribe and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) as

examples of revolutionary union among the people. In 2007, at the Fourth Summit

of PetroCaribe, Chávez opened his welcoming speech369 with a reminder that the

Carib Indigenous peoples were America’s first victims of European colonialism in

this Hemisphere. He described the Caribbean as the place where the first African

slaves were trafficked to and where the fight against imperialism is historic. He said

that it is in the Caribbean that the world’s two most important revolutions took

place: the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804 and the Cuban Revolution from 1959

to today. This initiated, to Chávez, a tradition of rebellion that the region would

become known for—from Toussaint L’Ouverture to Fidel Castro. Chávez said that

the insurgents of the Caribbean are like Shakespeare’s Caliban, the rebel slave. And 369. Hugo Chávez, PetroCaribe, Towards a New Order in Our America (Caracas: La Imprenta Nacional, Coleccion Discursos, 2008).

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citing the Caribbean literary tradition, Chávez questioned how long it would be that

the United States would dominate the Latin American and Caribbean people. He

said, recalling the conclusion of Cuban writer, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, “Our

Caribbean-‐influenced identity is more accurately expressed through Caliban.”370

And he proclaimed to his fellow heads of government that they should be Calibans

every day.

Chávez said that, because of the geostrategic value of oil, the resource must

be Caliban, too. After all, it is Black. Chávez said that PetroCaribe must be

understood in relation to Caliban. PetroCaribe represents energy cooperation, he

said, that can overcome capitalism and the remaining vestiges of slavery and

colonialism that were inherited by all of the region’s countries. Chávez added that

PetroCaribe was formed to counter an increasingly inhuman and unfair global order.

He said that PetroCaribe was aimed at solving asymmetries and that it was about

liberation. Noting that “free trade” did not exist, Chávez elaborated how PetroCaribe

would be a liberating, fair exchange system among Caribbean countries. He stressed

that PetroCaribe is not just about oil, but also about all appropriate energy

platforms, including solar and wind.

In talking about the Caribbean and revolution, Chávez was sure to mention

Cuban revolutionary hero José Marti as well as Venezuelan heroes Negro Miguel

who headed Venezuela’s very first Black revolution in 1533 and Simon Bolivar.

Chávez said that from these rebellious traditions came the revolutions that now

mark Latin America and the Caribbean and he once again thanked Haiti for its role

370. Ibid., 15.

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in the liberation of the Caribbean and Latin America. He recalled that two

PetroCaribe summits were held in 2005, one in June in Venezuela in Puerto La Cruz

and the other one in September in Montego Bay, Jamaica. At those two summits

attendees described the energy situation of each state and assessed the renewable

energy potential of each state. At the Third Summit, leaders signed the Energy

Security Treaty. At the Fourth Summit, they set forward six objectives, according to

Chávez:

• Bring the Cienfuegos [Cuba] Refinery online for processing and storing oil

so that the region has another processing center other than that in

Venezuela;

• The development of a fund to finance alternative energy products in the

region, that is, solar, geothermal, and wind;

• An exchange when the bill is due for the oil supplied by Venezuela so that

the countries pay by supplying goods and services;

• To propose other financing mechanisms;

• Creation of two Committees that would process requests; and

• Consolidation of the PetroCaribe Secretariat Office to broaden planning,

operations, and follow up.371

Chávez said that PetroCaribe was a matter of national security for Venezuela

because having access to enough energy was a matter of security for the entire

region. Chávez reminded the attendees of Bolivar’s words that if the Americas did

not come together, a new kind of colonialism could be imposed on the region.

371. Ibid., 37–54.

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In total, there are eighteen members of PetroCaribe. Through this

mechanism, Chávez foresaw national debt becoming not a problem, but a “great leap

forward”372 to liberation. Chávez did not stop dreaming: He foresaw a

“PetroAmerica”373 comprised of Venezuela’s PDVSA, Brazil’s PETROBRAS,

Colombia’s COPETROL, Ecuador’s PETRO-‐ECUADOR, Peru’s PETROPERU, and

Trinidad’s PETROTRIN. With his imagination rolling, he remarked to Guevara that

PetroAmerica had the makings of a Latin American OPEC.

Chávez said that ALBA and PetroCaribe were linked, begun from the same

conscience. He said that the greatest weakness of the PetroCaribe and ALBA

countries was transportation. Therefore, Chávez proposed a Caribbean naval fleet to

allow commerce among the member countries of both ALBA and PetroCaribe. He

was proposing nothing less, he said, than the creation of a new economic space that

could be a model for the rest of the world of political and economic integration,

crafted in harmony and respect—unlike the free trade agreements proposed by the

United States.

Freeing South America

When Chávez was visiting Brazil on May 23, 2008, he spoke about the

identity of South Americans. He said that sometimes South Americans are called

Latin Americans and they accept that; and that sometimes they are called

Ibero-‐Americans, but that he preferred Indo-‐American. But what he wanted to

stress was that he recognized that South America also exists. And therefore, in order

to prevent its recolonization, he envisioned UNASUR, the Unión de Naciones 372. Ibid., PetroCaribe, 47. 373. Guevara, Chávez, Venezuela, 103.

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Suramericanas (the Union of South American Nations). He compared the Union to a

fist—a block of nations to counter neoliberalism. He also said that while

neoliberalism promotes integration, what he was promoting was union. He noted

that millions of people in South America had voted liberationists into power: Lula in

Brazil, him, Chávez, in Venezuela, the Kirchners in Argentina, Correa in Ecuador,

Morales in Bolivia and that the winning coalition was of the poor and the middle

class. He said that the oligarchy must not be allowed to separate the middle classes

from their winning coalition. All twelve governments of South America signed the

Treaty and joined UNASUR.

Chávez added that the militaries of the region must never become troops of

occupation for imperial power. He spoke of the United States decision to reactivate

its Fourth Fleet. He said that the Fourth Fleet was now a reality—although a relic

from the Cold War—and that Latin America would have to deal with it. He said that

this force was there to serve as a distraction and to dissuade South America from

the revolutionary path that they are currently on. Chávez asked, “Are they going to

dissuade us?” And then he answered his own question, “No one will stop us. No one

will frighten us. No one will dissuade us from the path we have chosen… The Fourth

Fleet is a threat for all of us.”374 Chávez reminded the others in attendance that in

1998, he floated the idea of a “South Atlantic Treaty Organization” that went

nowhere. But now, ten years later, when Brazilian President, Lula, suggested that

there must be a way to end their subordination to the Inter-‐American Defense

374. Chávez, ALBA, 58–59.

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Board,375 eleven of the twelve members supported it, with only Colombia saying that

it could not at that time participate.376 Chávez was elated that history had been

made.377 He ended his remarks by saying that he was sure that eventually Colombia,

too, would join with them militarily. Elated at the tremendous success of the

UNASUR Summit, Chávez concluded that the United States empire lost on that day in

May 2008.

Freeing Africa

In 2006, Abuja, Nigeria hosted the first Africa-‐South America Summit. Chávez

envisioned the Africa-‐South America Summit process as a way to invigorate

South-‐South cooperation. This meeting produced the Abuja Plan of Action where the

heads of state agreed to meet every two years, with ministerial meetings to take

place during the interval. At the first Ministerial meeting in 2008, the decision was

made to group the areas of cooperation into eight working groups:

• Culture and Education;

375. The Inter-‐American Defense Board is headquartered in Washington, D.C. and has twenty-‐seven members. It was created in 1942 to provide military advice to membership of the Organization of American States. It can hardly be expected to intervene when one of its more powerful members, especially the United States takes threatening or even military action against other less powerful member states. See COHA, “The South American Defense Council, UNASUR, the Latin American Military and the Region’s Political Process,” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, October 1, 2008, http://www.coha.org/the-‐south-‐american-‐defense-‐council-‐unasur-‐the-‐latin-‐american-‐military-‐and-‐the-‐region’s-‐political-‐process/ 376. Colombia’s hesitation to join UNASUR arose from its reliance on United States military support and presence in struggles against guerillas. UNASUR’s founding philosophy of South American solidarity against the US was seen as a threat to those relations. See “Colombia Refuses to Join Regional Defense Council,” Colombia Reports, May 24, 2008, http://colombiareports.co/colombia-‐refuses-‐to-‐join-‐south-‐american-‐defense-‐council/. 377. Trinidad and Tobago was invited to join UNASUR by Venezuelan President and successor to Hugo Chávez, Nicolas Maduro.

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• Science, Technology, ITCs, and Media;

• Agriculture and Environment;

• Social Issues and Sports;

• Trade, Investment, and Tourism;

• Capacity Building, Public Administration, and Governance;

• Infrastructure, Transport, and Energy; and

• Peace and Security.

In 2009, Venezuela hosted the Second Africa-‐South America Summit where

the participating heads of state and governments affirmed the decisions made in

Abuja. They also affirmed the historical and cultural ties that inspired the

relationship and that they would seek closer cooperation between UNASUR and the

African Union378 Participating leaders declared that this new relationship was good

for South-‐South relations. The Delegates also recognized the participation of

Afro-‐descendant population in South America in the ASA process. They stated their

objections to arms and human trafficking, mercenarism, and transnational

organized crime. Delegates also talked about piracy and its root causes, and called

for peaceful resolution of current disputes about the Malvinas Island, South Georgia,

the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, Tromelin, Mayotte Island, and the

South Sandwich Islands They reaffirmed their commitment to the reform of the

United Nations. And finally, they “gladly” accepted Libya’s offer to host the Third

Africa-‐South America Summit in 2011.

378. The African Union (AU) is a continent-‐wide organization, precursor to the United States of Africa that Kwame Nkrumah envisioned when he helped to form the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The AU is a successor organization to the OAU.

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The Africa-‐South America Summit that was to be held in Libya in 2011 was

postponed and held instead in February 2013 in Equatorial Guinea. It was decided

to invite the Caribbean and Central American states to join the Summit process and

that the Fourth Summit would be held in Ecuador in 2016 and every three years

thereafter.379

The Africa-‐South America Summits were envisioned by Chávez as a way to

bring closer political and economic ties between Africa and South America and was

the cornerstone of his idea of South-‐South collaboration. This meant new levels of

cooperation between countries of the “South” (or Third World) as opposed to the

normal post-‐ or neo-‐colonial relations with Europe.

A “Radio of the South” and a “Bank of the South” were ideas that were

formalized in the Second Africa-‐South America Summit held in Venezuela in 2009.

The plan for Radio of the South, RadioSur, was that it be an exchange of news to

reach audiences in North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The

station is now fully operative, including live streaming online.380

The idea of a “Bank of the South” was negatively critiqued by Vikram Modi in

the Harvard International Review as the “Banco del Chávez.”381 The purpose of the

Bank would be to stop the transfer of wealth out of the South into the North and

eventually to replace the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

379. For more on the Africa-‐South America Summit, see Tamara Pearson, “Africa-‐South America Summit in Venezuela Cements South-‐South Collaboration,” venezuelanalysis.com, http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/4822. 380. It can be listened to at http://laradiodelsur.com.ve/. 381, Vikram Modi, “Banco del Chávez: Undermining Liberal Capitalism,” Harvard International Review 29, no. 3 (October 1, 2007): 10–11, http://hir.harvard.edu/archives/1671.

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Therefore, the Bank of the ASA, Banasa—envisioned as a South-‐South financial

system—was seen by Chávez to be a key point toward the liberation of South

finances from their neocolonial character. He said, “The transfer of resources from

the South to the North is a tremendous figure and they lend that money back to us

with interest rates far superior to what they pay us . . . but we’re not stupid, we are

waking up and they won’t keep manipulating us with this tale of the ‘free market.’

”382 Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela became

the Bank’s first signatories at the Second ASA Summit. Banco del Sur opened its

doors in June 2013.

Importantly, at the 2009 Africa-‐South America Summit, Chávez and Qaddafi

made a joint call for a Southern Hemisphere collective security pact like NATO

(North American Treaty Organization) to prevent future interventions, further

aggressions, and resource theft by the North. But events took an opposite course.

With the bombing of Libya completed, along with the disintegration of its Great

Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya,383 Hugo Chávez wrote his “A Letter to

Africa” in February 2013. And a few days later, Chávez himself was dead.

Chávez’s Letter to Africa—Conscious Leadership and Legacy on Race

Hugo Chávez’s “Letter to Africa” is an indication of the importance that he

placed on relations with the people of Africa. In the letter he insisted that the Latin

382. Pearson, Africa-‐South America Summit. 383. Libya was known in ancient times as the land of Northwest Africa. The name “Libya” was officially adopted in the 1930s. After the bloodless coup against the King of Libya by Muammar Qaddafi, the country was renamed the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya. Jamahiriya means “nation of the masses” or “people’s nation” in Arabic. For more information on the history of Libya see, for example, John Wright, A History of Libya (London: C. Hurst, 2012).

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Americans and Africans were actually one people. He wrote, “I won’t tire of

repeating that we are one people.” Chávez wrote that the two continents must move

forward together in order to ensure their sovereignty. He also said that the two

peoples were joined together not only by racial ties, but also by spiritual ties. The

“Letter to Africa” is a powerful marker, in the Chávez context, of race pride, the

fulfillment of his statement that he loved “Mother Africa.”

Because of his cancer, President Chávez was not able to personally attend the

Third Africa-‐South America Summit. But his “Letter” was read by Foreign Minister

Elias Jaua (himself an Afro-‐descendant Venezuelan) to the sixty-‐three countries

attending the summit in Equatorial Guinea in February 2013. The Third Summit was

supposed to have been hosted by Libya in 2011, but had to be postponed and the

location changed due to the NATO bombing of Libya initiated by United States

President Barack Obama in March 2011 and which lasted throughout the remainder

of that year.

Similarly, the empires of the past, guilty of kidnapping and murdering millions of daughters and sons of Mother Africa, as a means of feeding an exploitative slave system in their colonies, implanted the seeds of African warrior blood and fighting spirit in our America, which produced the burning desire for freedom. Those seeds germinated and our land engendered men as grand as Toussaint L’Ouverture, Alexandre Pétion, José Leonardo Chirino, and Pedro Camejo, among many others, resulting in the initiation of an independentist, unionist, anti-‐imperialist and restorative process in Latin America and the Caribbean, over 200 years ago.384

By invoking the names of these rebellious slaves and former slaves, Chávez’s

“Letter to Africa” was a discourse rooted in history, unequal power, European

domination by way of enslavement and settler colonialism, oppression, identity, 384. English translation from “Letter from Hugo Chávez to Africa” Pambazuka News 625, April 10, 2013, http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category/features/86934.

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resistance, and, generally, of global structures laced with unjust outcomes. This is

typical of the Chávez discourse on race, power, and history.

In this “Letter,” Chávez writes of his love for these two continents and

reiterated a point that sounded the alarm of subjugated identity in Freirean terms: “I

say this from the depths of my consciousness; South American and Africa are one

single people.”385 Chávez goes further and states that the unity between the peoples

of Africa and “Our America” “is not only racial, but also spiritual.”386 As if prompted

by Iris Marion Young,387 he recites the historic injustice: “Similarly, the empires of

the past, guilty of kidnapping and murdering millions of daughters and sons of

Mother Africa, as a means of feeding an exploitative slave system in their colonies,

implanted the seeds of African warrior blood and fighting spirit in Our America,

which produced the burning desire for freedom.” But not lingering just in the past,

Chávez quickly moves to twentieth century transformational leaders who he sees as

heroes and martyrs: “Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, and Nelson Mandela, just to

name a few,” he writes. And consistent with Fanonian resistance, he writes, “Today,

more than ever, we are the children of our liberators and their heroic deeds. We can

and must say with conviction and resolve, that this unites us in the present, in a vital

struggle for the freedom and definitive independence of our nations.”388

385. Ibid. 386. Ibid. 387. The late University of Chicago political scientist, Iris Marion Young wrote about the responsibility of those who benefit from unjust structures to correct injustice. See Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 388. Ibid.

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Finally, Chávez makes clear his goals for Africa and South America. As if he

heard the lecture of the former World Bank President, John Wolfensohn, Chávez

writes about Wolfensohn’s “tectonic shift:”

It is in our continents that sufficient natural, political and historical resources can be found, which are necessary to save the planet from chaos that has been brought about. We must not miss today’s opportunity provided by the independentist sacrifice of our forefathers, to unify our capabilities to turn our nations into authentic centers of power which, to quote our father Simon Bolivar the Liberator, would be greater for their freedom and glory than for their extent and riches.389 Referring to the United States-‐led NATO bombing of Libya in 2011, Chávez

states his belief that the attack on Libya represents an effort on the part of the West

to thwart African union and the deepening South–South cooperation that ASA

represents. In closing, Chávez states the vision and the goal: “Let us form one

homeland, one Continent, one people at all costs.”390

All the while that Chávez was trying to make a more just society for

Venezuelans and the world, the United States was engaged in secretive tactics to

thwart his work on the Africa-‐South America Summit. Specifically, the United States

worked behind the scenes to not only find out what countries planned to attend the

Summit, but also to thwart its success.

389. Ibid. 390. Ibid.

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Discussion, Conclusions, and Implications of This Research On Practice

Discussion

In this research I sought to typify the leadership of Hugo Chávez and to

answer the question of his legacy on race. And I had no idea what I would find going

into the research. What I found is that the record is replete with answers to that

question and examples of leadership extraordinary for his setting in Venezuela, in

Latin America. What is surprising is that so few before me have researched that

particular question. I do believe that the research question has been answered:

Hugo Chávez was able to pay attention to the matter of race in such a way as to

compile an impressive record of relief for those who had been subjected to racism.

His initiatives garnered support for him from all quarters of oppressed peoples in

many parts of the world. In fact, at several international conferences that I have

participated in,391 I have witnessed Venezuelan delegates cheered and hailed almost

as if they are “rock stars” in the struggle for recognition, human rights, and dignity

for those who are oppressed. Hugo Chávez was also a leader who fulfilled the

requirements of Burns’ Transformational Leadership; he satisfies Foucault’s

parrhesia paradigm as well as Assensoh’s African Political Leadership and Hotep’s

African-‐Centered Leadership-‐Followership.

The purpose of the study was accomplished. Now, in one place, a reader may

find an exhaustive review of the standing of Hugo Chávez on the matters of race and

race pride, in his own words, and in his policy aspirations. In one place one can also

391. I have participated in peace conferences in the mid-‐2000s in Lebanon (twice) and Malaysia where Venezuelans were greeted with wild applause and standing ovations.

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find a thorough assessment of how race influenced Hugo Chávez’s leadership. The

literature reviewed was from a broad spectrum of related topics, from race and

racism to leadership to Hugo Chávez. Looking at Hugo Chávez from this particular

prism provides a new way of understanding both his allure and the loathing for him

in certain quarters.

Conclusions

Controversy arose not only from what Chávez said, but also from what he

did. As the Head of State of a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum

Exporting Countries (OPEC), Chávez had the means to do a lot. If threat is calculated

as the product of motive, opportunity, and means, Chávez’s access to petrodollars

added considerably to his ability to threaten transformation of the global economic

and political system so long as he possessed both motive and opportunity—and he

did.

Hugo Chávez was on the cutting edge of tectonic global demographic change:

the kind of change foretold by former World Bank President James Wolfensohn.392

In this research, my goal was to look at an understudied aspect of the life,

leadership, and legacy of Hugo Chávez—that of his racial identity—and how that

racial identity was manifested in the policies and practices of the Bolivarian

Republic of Venezuela under Chávez’s guidance. I used scholarly literature about

leadership, neoliberalism, race, and justice and on Hugo Chávez, as a part of the

conceptual framework for the investigation. I used a qualitative research

methodology to analyze Hugo Chávez. I used participant interviews, published

392. “Former World Bank President: Big Shift.” (See chap. 1, note 22).

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literature on information about U.S. covert action against the Bolivarian Revolution,

and Hugo Chávez’s own speeches and policies. I found that much of the

peer-‐reviewed literature on Hugo Chávez portrays him negatively. This negative

portrayal of Chávez in the peer-‐reviewed literature is consistent with the depictions

of Chávez in politically influential and non-‐peer-‐reviewed United States foreign

policy literature.

Hugo Chávez demonstrated characteristics of Transformational Leadership,

parrhesia, African-‐Centered Leadership-‐Followership, and African Political

Leadership. I found that Chávez’s epic struggle against neoliberalism was grounded

in the experience with inequality caused by it—an inequality that was built upon

five hundred years of European domination of the Americas through genocide,

human trafficking, slavery, capitalism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and

globalization.

This research found that Hugo Chávez’s leadership arose from the unique

circumstances of the Caracazo, where Venezuelans rebelled against neoliberal

policies after having voted for a presidential candidate who promised relief and then

reneged on that promise after he was elected. Chávez recognized, also, the role of

the Caracazo and the people’s rebellion against neoliberalism in his rise to power.

The rebellion signaled that the people were ready for revolution.

This research explored the taboo topic of race in Latin America and found

that the policy of mestizaje and the terminology and phraseology around the Latina

identity were merely the latest policy and language tools that perpetuate European

domination and distancing from the Africanness of the majority of the Venezuelan

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population. Interestingly, this research also found that identity is such a powerful

pull, especially among the dominated, that someone who could overcome and attack

racism, like Fidel Castro, was unable to discuss racial identity when asked about

that, in the way that Hugo Chávez was freely able to do.

Hugo Chávez was an avid reader and read everything from Muammar

Qaddafi’s Green Book to C.L.R. James’s Black Jacobins, about the Haitian Revolution.

Chávez rooted his own discourse in his readings of prolific African leaders and

writers like Amilcar Cabral and Julius Nyerere.

It is believed that Hugo Chávez first proclaimed his African heritage publicly

around 2005 on his weekly television show. This was after the passage of the 1999

Bolivarian Constitution for the state of Venezuela; Indigenous Americans were

included in that document with special recognition of their rights and

Afro-‐Venezuelans were not included. However, in the year 2005, in a flurry of

activities—almost compensatory in nature—he began to address issues of concern

to Afro-‐Venezuelans. Four items of importance culminate this trajectory: Chávez’s

outreach to Caribbean countries, previously shunned by the European Venezuelan

political leadership as being too African; Chávez’s Africa South America Summit

process with its first Summit being held in 2006 in Nigeria; Chávez’s 2012 visit to

Haiti and his thank-‐you to Haiti for helping Simon Bolivar that occurred long before

that; and Chávez’s 2013 “A Letter to Africa.” Domestically, anti-‐discrimination laws

were passed outlawing all forms of racial and other discrimination; at long last,

Afro-‐Venezuelans occupied positions of authority within the Bolivarian Government

as Ministers and Ambassadors.

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Hugo Chávez’s race pride evoked a strong and negative reaction from

European Venezuelans.

• Mockery of Chávez, Maduro, and supporters in cartoons and other media;

• Attempts to turn back the social programs for the poor;

• Assertion of the idea that there are no Black Venezuelans and the Blacks

in Venezuela are actually Cubans;

• Criminalizing Blacks in the media, exacerbating White Fear;

• Glorification of “Gochoismo” [White Supremacy]

It was found in this research that Hugo Chávez grounded himself in the

struggles of previous Latin American or African leaders who sought to liberate the

oppressed, especially Simon Bolivar whose name was used by Chávez to define his

military rebellion when he formed the Revolutionary Bolivarian Army from within

the ranks of the Venezuelan military. I found that Hugo Chávez actually

accomplished one of the most important types of liberation for those who are

oppressed, and that is liberation of the mind. This led to Hugo Chávez celebrating

the very parts of the Venezuelan culture that were looked down upon by European

Venezuelans, like his singing of the old folk songs and wearing the clothes familiar to

those growing up on the plains of Venezuela. For example, he campaigned wearing

the liqui-‐liqui, traditional clothes of the Venezuelan plainsman.

Finally, unlike most of the peer-‐reviewed literature on Hugo Chávez, this

research looked overtly at the leadership and legacy of Hugo Chávez through the

lens of race. This study found that Hugo Chávez grounded his historical discourse in

the triumphs and trials of African leadership inside Venezuela, in the Caribbean, and

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on the Continent of Africa. Thus, Hugo Chávez led powerful political change that

personally improved the lives of Venezuelan women, Afro-‐ and Indigenous

Venezuelans, and that helped in the liberation struggle of people of color and their

supporters all around the world. In a compliment of the highest order for

African-‐centered political leadership, after his death, Hugo Chávez was called “A

Maroon President” by the founder of the Afro-‐Venezuelan Network, Jesus Chucho

Garcia.393 Finally, this research found that Hugo Chávez practiced parrhesia,

Transformational, and African-‐centered, and African Political Leadership that

liberated the oppressed and inspired a new generation of leaders both inside

Venezuela and around the world.

Implications for Future Research

By focusing the spotlight on Hugo Chávez and race while contextualizing his

struggle for justice and equality against neoliberal prescriptions of domination

coming from Washington, D.C., it is hoped that a new type of conversation can be

started about the impact of Hugo Chávez’s leadership. That conversation can now be

held, not from the vantage point of the United States or of Europeans inside or

outside of Venezuela, but instead, from the point of view of people of color and those

under the thumb of domination and injustice. What previously has been a

monologue can now become a true conversation.

The nature of Burns’ transformational leadership is that it begets more

leaders. If transformational leadership could be viewed within the prism of complex

adaptive leadership, then emergent leadership along the lines of Ché Guevara’s

393. Garcia, A Maroon President.

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“One, Two Three Vietnams,” becomes a real possibility. In fact, this is exactly what

happened in the United States during the Civil Rights Movement and the

anti-‐Vietnam War agitations. Recognition of the possibilities associated with this

kind of potential development also increases the threat—to the unjust system and to

the leaders who emerge to combat it. Knowledge then, of the methods by which the

unjust system has extended its power, is critical information to the success of any

counter movement whose goal is the replacement of unjust structures with those

that produce justice for all. In this regard, the work of Iris Marion Young394 and

Jeffrey B. Perry395 provide critical insights on what individuals who benefit from

unjust structures can do to increase justice. However, it is equally clear that good

individual deeds will not be sufficient to transform historic and unjust global

structures. For that task, leadership is necessary. And further research specifically

on the Hugo Chávez model of leadership and solutions is appropriately called for in

future research.

My research also generates other questions that are only hinted at here: for

example, the fate of transformational, parrhesiastic, leaders who operate at the

national and international levels. Heifetz and Linsky discuss their concept of

394. Iris Marion Young, Responsibility for Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 395. For Perry’s discussion of Theodore W. Allen’s work including the pioneering book, The Invention of the White Race, as well as discussions on Hubert Harrison (who pioneered work on how race operates in the United States and the Caribbean); see Jeffery B. Perry, “The Developing Conjuncture and Some Insights from Hubert Harrison and Theodore W. Allen on the Centrality of the Fight against White Supremacy,” Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory in Practice, 2010, http://clogic.eserver.org/2010/Perry.pdf. See also Perry’s website, www.jeffreybperry.net.

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“Leadership on the Line”396 for leaders who operate in risky situations, but they do

not provide enough guidance for those transformational leaders or their staffs

operating at the cutting edge and leading transformational global change that

empowers those at the bottom against those who are already at the top. This is the

substance of Chávez’s leadership and Chávez was not alone operating at this level. It

should be noted that Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro are unique in living to ripe

old ages. Most of Chávez’s heroes and other transformational leaders who acted

with them did not live long lives and many were assassinated.

This leads me to methods that transformational leaders and their followers

can use to signal to the public at large the authenticity of the transformational

leader. How else can the public protect the leader if they do not know that one

leader is authentic as opposed to being one that has been planted for the purpose of

tricking and controlling the people? The number two man at the FBI, Assistant

Director William Sullivan, serving under longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, was

explicitly working on a project to “switch” leaders for Blacks in the United States by

providing Blacks in the United States a hand-‐picked leader who had been chosen by

the FBI, instead of by the people, themselves. Thus, political and other powers in the

United States found authentic Black leadership inconvenient, that is, leadership like

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and members of the Black Panther Party and

other Black nationalist or Pan-‐African groups inside the United States I liken this to

regime change on Blacks in the United States, similar to the art of regime change

396. Ronald Abadian Heifetz and Martin Linsky. Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leading (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press, 2002).

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practiced against foreign governments.397 It is my belief that the documents

released during the time frame of U.S. Congressional investigations of U.S. domestic

and foreign intelligence activities provide a roadmap for determining the risks that

such transformational leaders must navigate. Without firm knowledge and acute

awareness, including self-‐awareness, in such circumstances, transformational

leaders will continue to experience heightened risk and danger above that normally

associated with the job and the lifestyle. In the end, it is unlikely that most risk can

be mitigated. However, if the transformational leaders themselves are to experience

the product of their labors, then they and those who love them must ensure their

longevity. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about longevity in the last speech that he

gave on this Earth. Dr. King said:

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not worried about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So, I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.398

Dr. King was acutely aware of the danger that stalked him. He did not change

his moral positions; but perhaps had his supporters known then what we know

now, there might have been a way to provide Dr. King the longevity about which he

spoke. Hugo Chávez spoke openly about his cancer and the cancer of the leaders of

397. Information on this aspect of the COINTELPRO program and the Sullivan memo is located at http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-‐committee-‐report/part-‐2e.html#domestic. 398. For full text and audio of this speech see Martin Luther King, Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” delivered April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee, American Rhetoric Top 100 Speeches, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/ mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm.

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Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. In addition, the former Haitian President, René

Préval also has made the regular trek to Cuba for cancer treatments. Clearly,

something is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean among Chávez-‐friendly

government leaders that has direct implications for practice at this level.

To more accurately assess the danger that such leaders invite by their

political positions, I believe that more research needs to be done on COINTELPRO

because this represents the documented extent to which the United States

government will go to quash dissent on the national and international levels. In

addition to the COINTELPRO documents, restricted government documents,

combined with information on CRYPTOME, can give a glimpse into official and

semi-‐official United States government conduct when it does not appreciate the

political positions of foreign leaders. The limitation on relying solely on these

documents is that they exist only to the extent that there are insiders who are

willing to blow the whistle on conduct that they believe is unconstitutional or

otherwise unlawful or immoral. In addition, there are no documents classified at the

“TOP SECRET” level in the WikiLeaks Cablegate documents.

More research needs to be done on how transformational leaders, operating

at the political national and international levels can be protected. And, more

research needs to be done on the Heifetz and Linsky concept of “Leadership on the

Line”, extending their analysis to the kind of political leadership that challenges

power, empowers the powerless, and walks with a unique type of danger. Of course,

the dangerous nature of this kind of leadership—and by definition with

Parrhesiastes—will not be eliminated completely, no matter how much one studies

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or researches. However, there are two points to this line of reasoning: one, to

mitigate the danger as much as possible with awareness of it and two, to

communicate both the danger and the transformationality of the leader to the less

attentive public for increased penetration of the message of hope and change.

Finally, there must be some mechanism for communicating to potential

followers of such leadership the authenticity and potential of that leadership. The

leader-‐follower process has been studied, but in a political setting, where there is

much controversy and negative and untrue information paraded as news, how do

the kinds of leaders that we discuss here, transformational leaders operating at

especially high national and international political levels, command enough of the

inattentive public’s attention? Chávez was able to use sixty seconds of live television

to communicate his message to a public that had become attentive due to his

attempted coup against a government mired in neoliberal prescriptions that were

hated by the people. How might this be accomplished short of attempted coups

d’état?

An additional finding in this research was the use of civil rights tactics and

pro-‐democracy language to destabilize revolutionary, pro-‐democracy governments.

New research should follow this up with more specific examples of the turning on its

head of the work, language, and memory of civil rights and dignity icons of the

twentieth century.

Implications for Future Practice

For a small group of transformational political leaders operating at the

national and international levels, Hugo Chávez represents a model that future

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leaders might be able to follow. All of these were not only admirable but worthy of

imitation: his ability to seize the moment and turn disaster into good political

fortune; his deft use of even the hostile media to promote his cause; the grounding

of his discourse in historical figures with whom the target population would be

familiar; his decision to try with ballots what others in Venezuela had attempted

with bullets; and his willingness to share what he learned so as to inform others.

Hugo Chávez also created a network of leaders around him who shared his political

ideology, so that his impact was multiplied worldwide. Any one of these could be

used as a topic for more research. Every one of these aspects of Hugo Chávez’s

leadership is important for practitioners. Perhaps most important to me, personally,

is spreading the news that Hugo Chávez was fighting hard for those who today are

voiceless in the international political arena. What a shame it is for people to have a

champion and not even know it. The means by which dissent and potentially

adversarial leadership are quashed are far more sophisticated today than in the

time of COINTELPRO. However, awareness of at least these means is crucial in

today’s practice, especially if we are ever to see a more just international structure.

Another important lesson that can be drawn from the Chávez experience is

that United States efforts to destabilize Venezuela using the same template that had

been used in other countries was not successful because Chávez refused to fire on

his own people. Personnel at the U.S. covert private spy agency, Stratfor were,

indeed, frustrated by and deeply regretted Chávez’s restraint!399

399. See “Don’t F*ck with the M*rigold, B*tches,” BoRev.net, November 11, 2007, http://www.borev.net/2007/11/dont_fck_with_the_mrigold_btch.html.

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Implications for My Practice

One of the most significant messages to me of Hugo Chávez’s practice of

leadership is that it is possible for those of us who want a more just world to win.

With everything that was against him—where he was born, what he looked like, the

daring steps he had taken in failure—Hugo Chávez was able to win and, in victory,

he garnered the love of the people that he had for them. Hugo Chávez withstood the

most vicious attacks on him by media allied with the opposition. He operated in an

environment where shame of African-‐ness was the norm and his racial phenotype

was used in and by the media against him in an effort to use that shame to deny him

support from the public. Therefore, Chávez was attacked at his very essence. He

withstood the attacks and was able to deliver a counterblow that was heard by the

very people who were supposed to be made ashamed by their very own phenotypic

attributes. The Hugo Chávez model of leadership demonstrates to me that it is still

possible to challenge power at the highest levels and win—although longevity is not

necessarily assured.

My Thoughts on This Research

As a result of this research, I have contemplated the nature of

transformational leadership in our present-‐day circumstances and how it might

look. I have wondered if such leadership could be successful in implanting in the

people a hopeful sense of what is possible and get them busy actually doing it.

Venezuela is a good example of what the people can do to create their own

leadership and what that leadership can do to create more possibilities for freedom

and justice for the people. Who would have thought that, so far, the best twenty-‐first

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century example of African-‐centered leadership would not have emerged on the

African Continent, but instead arose from South America?

This has led me to contemplate the nature of good and moral leadership, in

general. I asked myself, “Is it possible for a European to be an African-‐centered

leader?” And conversely, “Is it possible that Europeans will ever accept

non-‐European leadership that truly seeks to overturn the injustice of the current

global order?” Actually, this is just me playing with the future. The real work for

justice must be done in the present. This research reaffirms that such work is

necessary and that a successful product is possible.

Venezuelans are on their own now—without the day-‐to-‐day guidance and

leadership of Hugo Chávez. But the foundation that he provided to them was so

affirming, beginning with the Bolivarian Constitution, that circumstances have been

arranged to withstand the current instability being orchestrated from outside. Also,

the people are stronger knowing that they produced the Caracazo and Hugo Chávez

and that they can withstand the hardships imposed by those unfriendly to their

liberation and that yet another revolutionary, transformational, Parrhesiastes, like

Hugo Chávez, already resides among them.

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Appendix

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Appendix A: Review of Literature Search Strategy

First of all, let me share the results of EBSCO searches using all of the

databases available to Antioch University on the intersection of Hugo Chávez and

the various placeholders for race that I found in the literature:

1. Ethnic Diversity -‐ 1 including academic journals (1)

2. Social Justice -‐ 33 citations including academic journals (7), newspapers

(14), magazines (18), books (4), and e-‐books (4)

3. Multiculturalism -‐ 3 citations including e-‐books (1), academic journals (1),

reviews (1)

4. Negritude -‐ 0

5. Embedded Racism -‐ 0

6. Whiteness/Whiteness Race Identity -‐ 0

7. Blackness -‐ 0

8. Critical Theory -‐ 2 citations including newspapers (2) and ERIC database (1)

9. Postcolonialism/postcolonial analysis -‐ 0

10. Postsecularism -‐ 0

11. Subaltern -‐ 2 citations including conferences (1) and academic journals (1)

12. Internal Colonialism -‐ 0

13. Critical Race Theory -‐ 0

14. Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) -‐0

15. Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) -‐ 0

16. Other -‐ 73 citations (2013) but this includes the word “other” when it is NOT

used to indicate an identity including magazines (21), academic journals

(18), newspapers (17), trade publications (5), and reports (1)

17. Endoracismo/Internalized Racism -‐ 0

18. Race/race and politics -‐ 133 citations before eliminating duplicates,

including newspapers (63), magazines (55), academic journals (28), books

(7), ebooks (6); 49 citations after duplicates eliminated

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Because of the relative lack of specific literature from the combined search terms of

“Hugo ” and “Critical Race Theory,” another literature search strategy was effected

in order to obtain the depth and breadth needed. In this section, I was guided by

Maxwell’s maxim of relevance not exhaustion. I accomplished this by restricting the

time frame of this Literature Review. In order to know who is currently writing on

the subject, I restricted this Literature Review to articles published in 2013 unless

the article is considered as foundational as the books that have already been

reviewed. With this limiter, the following results were obtained for peer-‐reviewed

articles:

1. Ethnic Diversity -‐ 0 2. Social Justice -‐ 0 3. Multiculturalism -‐ 0 4. Negritude -‐ 0 5. Embedded Racism -‐ 0 6. Whiteness/Whiteness Race Identity -‐ 0 7. Blackness -‐ 0 8. Critical Theory -‐ 1 (By Mike Cole) 9. Postcolonialism/postcolonial analysis -‐ 0 10. Postsecularism – 0 11. Subaltern -‐ 0 12. Internal Colonialism -‐ 0 13. Critical Race Theory -‐ 0 14. Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) -‐ 0 15. Latino Critical Theory (LatCrit) -‐ 0 16. Other -‐ 5 17. Endoracismo/Internalized Racism -‐ 0 18. Race/race and politics -‐ 0

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Appendix B: Participant Information

In all, there were twenty-‐five Participants. Following are their profiles:

1. Venezuelan Woman #1: A feminist cartoonist. 2. Venezuelan Woman #2, Ph.D.: Professor of Sociology. 3. Venezuelan Woman #3, Ph.D.: Professor of Communications. 4. Venezuelan Woman #4, Ph.D.: Professor of Anthropology. 5. Venezuelan Man #1: Afro-‐Descendant 6. Venezuelan Man #2: Afro-‐Descendant, serving as Ambassador at the time of

this writing 7. Cuban Woman, Graciela Chailloux, Ph.D.: Professor at the University of

Havana and author of Subjects or Citizens: British Caribbean Workers in Cuba: 1900 – 1960.

8. Haitian-‐American Woman Jeanette Charles: Scholar doing research at the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, Charles is a recent graduate of Scripps College and 2010 Thomas J. Watson Fellow.

9. USA Afro-‐Descendant Activist Larry Pinkney: A founding member of the Black Panther Party, a 1960s revolutionary social movement that worked in Black neighborhoods in the U.S. to protect that community from police brutality.

10. USA Afro-‐Descendant Professor, Lewis Gordon, Ph.D.: Currently professor of Africana Philosophy in the African American Studies Department at the University of Connecticut. Expert on Frantz Fanon and author of Fanon: A Critical Reader.

11. USA Professor, George Ciccariello-‐Maher, Ph.D.: Author of We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution and Assistant Professor of History and Politics at Drexel University.

12. USA Afro-‐Descendant Professor, Molefi Asante, Ph.D.: Currently Chair of the African American Studies Department at Temple University.

13. USA Afro-‐Descendant Professor, Ray Winbush, Ph.D.: Director of the Institute of Urban Research at Morgan State University, an institution with the designation of “Historically Black College or University (HBCU) and author of Belinda’s Petition: A Concise History of Reparations for the Trans-‐Atlantic Slave Trade.

14. Donald H. Smith, Ph.D.: Professor Emeritus of Education at Baruch College; served as Chair of the New York City Board of Education Commission on Students of African Descent and as President of the National Alliance of Black School Educators.

15. Jeffrey B. Perry, Ph.D.: An independent scholar who focuses on the centrality of the struggle against White supremacy to progressive social

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change. According to Dr. Perry, “white skin privileges” are not in the interests of working-‐class European Americans. He believes that these privileges are a “poison bait” that are like a “shot of heroin” to European American workers and they should be opposed. He adds that the system of white race privileges was invented and is maintained by the ruling class and it serves the interests of the ruling class.

16. James Early: Director of Cultural Studies and Communications at the Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Knew Hugo Chávez and appeared on his television program, Alo Presidente, several times.

17. Askia Muhammad: Senior Editor at The Final Call Newspaper, a publication founded by Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and reports from Washington, D.C.

18. Al Giordano: Founder of the Authentic School of Journalism where Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, and his current Vice President, once participated. Also founded Narconews.com

19. Wayne Madsen: An investigative journalist whose beat comprises his former employers, Naval Intelligence and the National Security Agency.

20. Akinyele Umoja, Ph.D.: Afro-‐Descendant Chair of the African American Studies Department at Georgia State University and author of We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. Also active with Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Panel Participant.

21. Cynthia Hewitt, Ph.D.: Afro-‐Descendant Sociologist who teaches at Morehouse College and is active with the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), an organization founded by Kwame Nkrumah and popularized during the U.S. Civil Rights Era by Stokely Carmichael (also known as Kwame Turé). Panel Participant.

22. David Josué: Afro-‐Descendant. Haitian, now living in the U.S.; Active on African, Haitian, and Caribbean Issues. Traveled to Brazil to ask that country to remove its troops of occupation from Haiti. Panel Participant.

23. Sobukwe Shakura: Afro-‐Descendant. Veteran community leader with over thirty years’ experience with the AAPRP. Panel Participant.

24. Reverend P.D. Menelik Harris: Afro-‐Descendant. Jamaican, now living in the U.S. Secretary General of the World African Diaspora Union (WADU). Panel Participant.

25. Kofi Adjei: Afro-‐Descendant. Ghanaian now living in the U.S. Co-‐Chair of the Georgia Chapter of WADU. Panel Participant.

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Appendix C: Interview Excerpt Venezuelan Woman #2

i) Venezuelan Woman # 2 tells her story

Venezuelan Woman #2 testified on the personal impact of Chávez’s

leadership on her life. She told me her personal story, although, she says, she prefers

not to talk about her own story. Here is her story:

After completing her undergraduate degree in Venezuela, she wanted to

study “women in development and education” on the graduate level, but

the resources of feminist literature were just not there in Venezuela. She

made a decision to pursue her advanced degrees in the United States. This

sparked grave disagreement from her husband at the time and a bitter

divorce ensued. She was a mother of three—so her family was put on the

line by her decision to pursue higher education. She began to research her

rights as a Venezuelan woman and mother of three and soon found herself

saying, “I have no place in my own society.” She discovered that as a

Venezuelan woman, she had no right to divorce her husband; She adds, “At

least there was the civil rights movement in the U.S. which gave women

the right to fight for their rights.” She says that she found herself saying, “I

want to be a scholar; I am intelligent; I don’t need a man to tell me ‘You

can’t do this.’” As a part of her struggle with her husband, She discovered

that she was smart, intelligent, that she could produce, and that she could

make a contribution in her field of study; she did not want any man to tell

her, “No, I want you to be my wife; you don’t need to work.” She continued

that she is not a “trophy.” Her parents did not want her to divorce her

husband and have a career. She even went to the United Nations to

interview a Venezuelan feminist who gave her important information, not

only for her studies, but also about herself and her role in society as a

woman. What she learned about the rights of Venezuelan women was that

she had no rights. No right to leave her husband. No right to say I want to

study. No Constitution gave her her rights like women had in the United

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States. By law, she could not say I want to study; I do not want to go back

to Venezuela. If she refused to follow her husband, she would lose the

custody of her children—and she did. This is the personal thing that she

never talked about. By the time she was at Penn State University, she was

close to getting her Ph.D., her husband withdrew all financial support for

her; her mother took away her inheritance; she lost custody of her

children all because as a woman she had no rights in

Venezuela. Venezuelan Woman #2 says that she loves her field, she

wanted to be a college professor, and she wanted to be a researcher. Yet, in

the Venezuelan Constitution this desire for a place in society cost her her

marriage and her children. At this point, according to Venezuelan Woman

#2, “Venezuela was a country that died for me.” Her husband made the

case before the Court that she chose her career over her children. He won

everything and she lost everything. “I became a poor woman with all of

this education and a struggling woman and there are still lingering things

from my past. Even when the Caracazo took place, I didn’t care. Then, into

the political life of Venezuela comes Chávez and his proposal for a new

Constitution: the Bolivarian Constitution.

She says that it was Hugo Chávez who “opened her eyes when he

changed the Constitution.” He gave the Venezuelan people the right to be

human and the right to have rights—real rights. What the opposition is

doing to Presidential Maduro is based on Constitution rights. I grew up in a

society where I did not have the right to protest my government. I did

begin to pay attention to what he was doing. She wasn’t comfortable

having a military leader, but her curiosity led her to explore more of his

policies—although she was still living in the United States.

Liberal Democracy in Venezuela meant no participation. Only the

right to go to vote. We had no voice. It was Hugo Chávez who changed

that. And that is why I admire Hugo Chávez as a leader. He has been

misunderstood, many people in the Western world don’t understand that

people have the right to be free and to fight for their ideals and Hugo

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Chávez brought that to Venezuela. He was loved in Venezuela. He was

proud to be Venezuelan. She did not go back to Venezuela until her mother

passed and she said that it was a Venezuela, prior to the arrival of Chávez,

that she did not recognize: “Burger King and McDonald’s restaurants

everywhere. It was like New York.”

Chávez also understood that neoliberalism and capitalism work for

some but not for most. When you have a marginalized majority,

individualism doesn’t work. Chávez understood that these were cultural,

economic and political values that were important to

Venezuela. Venezuela needed continuity; it was not that Chávez wanted to

be in power forever. He understood that continuity in terms of policy was

very important. Every five years, Venezuela had had a new government

with new policies and ‘there was never a continuity in terms of social

policies.” To eliminate the profound inequality in the society, capitalism

was not the way to go. Chávez understood that that was his role as a

leader.

Even here, they don’t believe that I like Chávez. They don’t

understand that there are personal reasons why people tend to like a

leader. President Chávez gave full support to Nora Casteneda and her

organization BanMujer (bank for the development of women). I believe

that he understood in his way women’s liberation because he had

daughters and he loved his mother.

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Appendix D: The Idea of the Deep State and the Killing of Lumumba

The idea of “The Deep State” has been popularized by Peter Dale Scott,

Professor Emeritus of the flagship campus of the University of California, Berkeley.

“The Deep State” is revealed to onlookers by way of “Deep Events” that arise from

the practice of “Deep Politics.” A “Deep Event” is an event about which

governmental authorities want the public to know little, nothing, or only its

unenlightening, but tailor-‐made explanation. It is Professor Scott who has given us

the appropriate language to characterize and define these phenomena. Deep

Politics, according to Dr. Scott, describes the way the United States is managed in

order to maintain the existing distribution of wealth and to limit the possibility of

democratic resistance. According to Scott, Deep Politics is the part of government

policy and practice that intentionally suppresses or that contains deceptive

information about government activities. Therefore, perception management

techniques are used by the State alongside its practice of Deep Politics. Thus, the

Deep State consists of the secret politics of a state and the actors who carry out

those politics. Deep State actors carry out violent and non-‐violent

policies. Recognizing the existence and practices of The Deep State are critical to

understanding, not only the importance of resistance, but also how to effectively

resist. Therefore, it is critical to understand and not be fooled when the Deep State

utilizes familiar pro-‐democracy, non-‐violent action and strategies to further its

own ends against independent democratic states and the people’s right of

democratic expression and self-‐determination. President Eisenhower’s approval of

the assassination of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba is one example of

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the Deep State. It took the United States 19 years to officially admit its role in the

murder of Lumumba when it finally did so in December 2013.400

U.S. Officially Admits Eisenhower Approval of Patrice Lumumba’s Murder

The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with

Respect to Intelligence Activities (The Church Committee) did not confine itself to

domestic matters; it also issued an interim report on U.S.-‐inspired assassination

plots “involving foreign leaders.”401 Alleged assassination plots against Fidel Castro

and Patrice Lumumba are discussed by the Church Committee. With reference to

Patrice Lumumba, the Committee’s work was inconclusive on U.S. involvement in

the eventual murder of Lumumba. The Committee did find that CIA Chief Allen

Dulles signed a cable to the Leopoldville (Kinshasa) Station Officer stating: “We

conclude that his [Lumumba’s] removal must be an urgent and prime objective and

that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert

action.”402 The Dulles cable also authorized the expenditure in Congo of $100,000

without additional or prior consultation with Headquarters.

However, it was the U.S. State Department Historian that published

unequivocal U.S. actions involving Lumumba’s murder that the U.S. Government had

sought to deny. The operation of the U.S. Deep State with regard to the Lumumba

400. Department of State Office of The Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964 – 1968, Volume XXIII Congo, 1960-‐1968, p. 1, http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-‐68v23. 401. Church Committee Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents/church/ contents_church_reports_ir.htm. 402. Church Committee Interim Report, p. 15, http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/ church /reports/ir/html/ChurchIR_0015a.htm.

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assassination finally was revealed. Moreover, after a two-‐decade delay, the

Department of State Office of The Historian released the Foreign Relations of the

United States 1964-‐1968 just before Christmas in December 2013 after beginning its

review in 1994. This important and delayed volume addressed the formerly omitted

Eisenhower authorization to assassinate Patrice Lumumba. The Historian wrote: “At

the same time, based on authorization from President Eisenhower's statements at

an NSC meeting on August 18, 1960, discussions began to develop highly sensitive,

tightly-‐ held plans to assassinate Lumumba.”403

403. U.S. Department of State Office of The Historian, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XXIII Congo, 1960–1968, p. 1, http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-‐68v23.

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Appendix E: Legacy of Covert Action Faced by Chávez

A significant question in assessing the leadership and struggles of Hugo

Chávez surrounds the extent to which intentional subversion supported by the

United States took place. This appendix describes several public and/or declassified

documents that substantiate this subversion.

i) CANVAS/STRATFOR

No one denies that the organization the Serbian-‐based Center for Non Violent

Action and Strategies (CANVAS) undertook analysis –if not more—aimed at

searching for the weak spots in the Chávez Bolivarian regime. The draft assessment

prepared by CANVAS is discussed at venezuelanalysis.com404 and by Eva

Golinger.405

Interestingly, however, the draft report online –and there is no “final report”

that has been uploaded in the five years since its preparation –is not addressed to

any specific audience, despite its thoroughness and the high likelihood that

preparing it came at significant costs. Instead, the document awkwardly and vaguely

explains that its “goal is to provide basis for more detailed planning potentially

performed by interested performers and CANVAS.”

Who might these “performers” be?

Not long after the CANVAS draft report was prepared, critical journalism took

its analysis beyond what is possible for this dissertation.406 Several such reports

404. See http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5139. 405. See http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/02/colored-‐revolutions-‐new-‐form-‐of-‐regime.html. 406. See my Preface and comments about the use of WikiLeaks as data in the fourth chapter.

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suggest that CANVAS colluded with a Stratfor, a “private” research firm in the United

States, to probe the vulnerabilities of Chávez and his government, including on how

to stir up and organize opposition in hopes of regime change.407

The example in this appendix not only supports this but indicates the rich

and vital political analysis awaiting scholarship who are able to, or willing to take

the risks of using restricted government documents as a data source for

understanding United States interventions in the domestic politics of regimes it does

not approve of.

ii) Family Jewels

The “Family Jewels” were a set of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

documents, released by the CIA in June 2007 and that confirmed the Agency ‘s

violation of its Charter, including illegal domestic activities, warrantless

wiretapping, and assassination. These documents were released after journalist

Seymour Hersh broke the story that the CIA was operating domestically in violation

of its Charter.408 The documents long preceded the accession to power of Hugo

Chávez yet are interesting because of the unhesitant use they reveal of subterfuge

against foreign leaders whose approaches were not seen as favorable to the United

407. See the Pravda’s online report, “WikiLeaks Evidence that the U.S. Planned to Overthrow President Chavez,” Pravda.ru, trans. Lisa Karpova, February 26, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/26-‐02-‐2013/123897 usa_overthrow_chavez-‐0/. 408. Seymour M. Hersh. “Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Anti-‐War Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years,” New York Times, December 22, 1974. http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1974/12/22/432151792.html?pageNumber=1.

250

States. These included Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba. The complete document

is available for download.409

iii) Operation Condor

Operation Condor was a massive and covert operation developed by right-‐

wing Latin American dictatorships with the full knowledge and, often, support of the

United States. Conducted from 1974 to, 1990s, this also preceded Hugo Chávez’s rise

to power and so pertained mostly to such nations as Argentina, Brazil Chile, and

Paraguay.

Formally portrayed as an initiative of those nations, not the United States, in

fact the record shows deep even directive involvement of the U.S. Secretary of State

at the time, Henry Kissinger: in an exemplary instance he is recorded as conveying

through an aide to Argentinian generals, “If there are things that have to be done,

you should do them quickly.”410 Again, however, understanding Operation Condor

helps to reveal the extent to which the United States was willing to go to support

repression by its client dictators and, of course, the U.S.-‐based multinationals who

409. Links to the full report and searchable full text can be found on: National Security Archive, “The CIA’s Family Jewels,” June 21, 2007, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/. 410. Operation Condor telecom notes of Kissinger to Latin American aide Henry Schlaudeman, June 30, 1976, reproduced in Marianne Schlotterbeck “Operation Condor Declassified: A Case Study in International Terrorism,” PowerPoint presentation, Pier Summer Institute, July 2009, https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yale.edu%2Fmacmillan%2Flais%2Fresources%2FSchlotterbeckPIEROperationCondor.ppt&ei=g-‐pLVe65EqqxsASZ8YHQBA&usg=AFQjCNGq_k1bEEHZE5k-‐lSzdBcVCkv4Ytw&bvm=bv.92765956,d.cWc.

251

operated collaboratively within such dictatorships.411 In the words of one scholar

who has extensively examined Operation Condor, “The Condor apparatus was a

secret component of a larger U.S.-‐led counterinsurgency strategy to preempt or

reverse social movements demanding political or socioeconomic change.”412

411. National Security Archive, “OPERATION CONDOR: National Security Archive Presents Trove of Declassified Documentation in Historic Trial in Argentina,” http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB514/. 412. J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (Lanham, MD: Rowland & Littlefield, 2005), 1.

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Appendix F: Permissions and Exemptions (for Main Body of Dissertation)

The following is a list of images used in the main body of this dissertation indicating copyright status/permissions on subsequent pages.

Page in Text

Item Status Pg. in Appendix

ii Photo of mourners at Chávez funeral Permission of photographer 254 ii Photo of graffiti Photo by author 47 Fig. 2.1 Photos of Luzia skull

reconstruction Permission of Richard Neaves 255

186 Fig. 5.1 Photo of Aristóbulo Istúriz Creative Commons Attribution-‐NonCommercial-‐ShareAlike 2.0 Licence.

256

186 Fig. 5.2 Photo of Jaua & Putin Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

257

253

PERMISSION FOR PHOTO BY LEO RAMIREZ

(PER EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE WITH EDITOR, N. DALE)

254

Permission and Photos from Professor Richard Neaves – per correspondence with editor, N. Dale

255

RE FIGURE 5.1 ARISTOBULO ISTURIZ – PER FLICKR

Photograph is from Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lubrio/2375776015/ in/photolist-‐5Exrre-‐9rFBMB-‐4BWtrr-‐7xPj41) Taken by Luigini Bracci on March 29, 2008.

Photo was cropped for use here primarily to exclude placard name for the adjacent delegate which could be confusing in text. Rights reserved description linked to this page is as follows:

256

RE Figure 5.2. Chávez’s Vice-‐President, Elias Jaua/ Russia’s President Vladimir Putin

This image is from the website of the Russian Government (http://archive.government.ru/eng/docs/17334/) accompanied by the title “Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meets with Vice President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Elías Jaua Milano”.

Use of the website is designated as follows:

257

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