INTRODUCTION

Reyes 5

THE CONTINUOUS STRUGGLE FOR REPRESENTATION IN THE VENEZUELAN STATE

Gabriel Reyes

THIS WORK IS DEDICATED TO MY PARENTS,

ROY AND LUZ REYES

THE CONTINUOUS STRUGGLE FOR REPRESENTATION IN THE VENEZUELAN STATE

Gabriel Reyes has completed the requirements for Honors in Latin American Studies.

Professor Ben Fallaw, Advisor _________________________________________

Professor Ariel Armony, Reader_________________________________________

Department of Latin American Studies

Colby College

May 2005

6ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

7LIST OF GRAPHS AND TABLES

8ABBREVIATIONS

9SUMMARY

9ARGUMENT AND STRUCTURE

11CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

11FROM STRONGMAN RULE TO POPULISM AND THE CALL FOR SOCIAL INTEGRATION

12THE TURN AWAY FROM POPULISM: THE BUILDING OF A CONSOCIATIONALIST DEMOCRACY

16THE APPEAL TO DECENTRALIZATION

18THE PERSISTING CITIZEN PARTICIPATION DEFICIT

19CHAVISMO

23BUILDING A NEW VENEZUELAN STATE

25A MODEL PROGRAM

28CHAPTER TWO: POLITICAL HISTORY

28VENEZUELA’S FORMATIVE PERIOD (1500s -1936)

33RISE OF MIDDLE CLASS COUNTERELITES (1920s)

34GÓMEZ’S PASSING, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MODERNIZING ESTABLISHMENT (1936-1945)

37NEW POLITICAL PARTIES (1946)

38FROM A REFORM DEMOCRACY TO MILITARY INTERVENTION (1945-1948)

40PUNTO FIJO (1958)

41THE CREATION OF A PARTY DEMOCRACY (1958-1988)

44VENEZUELA IN THE BOOM (1970s)

46VENEZUELA BUSTED (1980s)

47THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR PUNTO FIJO (1989)

50DECENTRALIZATION: THE UNEXPECTED OUTCOME OF THE 1989 RIOTS

54THE RISE OF HUGO CHÁVEZ

59APRIL 11TH AND THE “SIEGE ON DEMOCRACY”

61ONE MORE CHANCE, A WHOLE NEW GAME

62CONCLUSION

65CHAPTER THREE: CREATING AN OPPORTUNITY FOR REPRESENTATION

66A BROKEN SYSTEM

69FIXING A BROKEN SYSTEM

70A HALT ON DECENTRALIZATION:

70THE LEGAL RECONSTRUCTION OF VENEZUELA’S HEALTH SYSTEM

72THE TRUE STATE OF REFORM

74REACHING OUT TO “THE PEOPLE”

76THE FOUNDING OF BARRIO ADENTRO

78THE UNCALCULATED COSTS OF BARRIO ADENTRO

80THE FORMAL OPPOSITION OF BARRIO ADENTRO

82CLAIMS OF THE INFORMAL OPPOSITION TO BARRIO ADENTRO

83INFORMAL OPPOSITION CLAIM #1: UNDERMINING COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE

85INFORMAL OPPOSITION CLAIM #2: THE COSTS OF THE PROGRAM

87OBSERVATIONS ON THE GROUND: MISIÓN BARRIO ADENTRO

91THE IMPORTANCE OF NURSES

93WHERE ARE THE NURSES?

99STATE V. SOCIETY: THE STRUGGLE FOR REPRESENTATION OF INTERESTS

99JANUARY 15, 2005

102JANUARY 22, 2005

108CONCLUSION

112WORKS CITED

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the Latin American Studies of Colby College and especially Professor Ben Fallaw for allowing me the opportunity to write this thesis on political representation in Venezuela. Thanks to a Latin American Studies Walker Grant, I was able to conduct primary research for this study in Caracas, Venezuela throughout January 2005. Professor Fallaw, showing much patience throughout the research and writing process, allowed me to continue in this endeavor past the period of time when even I questioned whether I could achieve my goal. Thank you.

While I was in Venezuela the help of former Colby College student Norma Rivero de Biermeyer proved invaluable. She and her family (Herbert, Sonia and Verena) took a special interest in making sure that I had a safe and productive time while in their country. Upon my departure, Mrs. Biermeyer presented me with a gift: a whistle that she has long used in political rallies and demonstrations. I left the country with a bit of its political spirit. Separately, I thank University of California Law Student Peter Mayburduk for the article and comments he provided me on his own research on the program of Barrio Adentro.

Here at Colby, I would like to give special thanks to Professor Armony who agreed to serve as a second reader for this thesis. Also, I thank my love Andra Ofosu and my roommates Pawel Brodalka, Joseph Okeyo, Nicholas T. Von Mertens and Tsering Wangdi for the moral support that they have provided me as I labored throughout this academic year. Additionally, I thank the host of friends who took time to hear the numerous complaints I had of my workload and direction of my project at crucial junctures: Mark Chapman, Justin Dubois, Kevin Selby, Osman Haneef, Brandy Lipton, Nels Leader, Ly Tran, Hugo Caraballo, Jui Shrestha among others. They allowed me time to vent before directing me back to work, often with wise advice.

LIST OF GRAPHS AND TABLES

Fiscal Revenue of Venezuelan Governments, 1917-1978

46

1995 Study on Venezuelans’ Values

63

Venezuela’s Domestic Growth Product, 1995-2004

67

Health Care Spending as a Percentage of 2002 GDP

72

General Statistics on Barrio Adentro, as of January 2004

75

Graph of Venezuela’s Popular, Private and Public Health Care Systems

77

OPEC Basket Prices, January 2, 2001

80

ABBREVIATIONS

AGV

Asociación de Gobernadores Venezolanos/

Venezuelan Governor’s Association

AD

Acción Democrática/ Democratic Action

CN

Convergencia Nacional/ National Convergence

COPEI

Comisión para Organización Política y Elecciones/

Commission Organized for Politics and Elections

COPREComisión Presidencial para la Reforma del Estado/

Presidential Commission for Reform of the State

CTV

Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela/

Confederation of Venezuelan Workers

FCV

Federación Campesina de Vecinos/ Federation of Venezuelan Peasants

FVE

Federación Venezolana de Estudiantes/Federation of Venezuelan Students

IVSS

Instituto Venezolano de Seguro Social/

Venezuelan Institute for Social Security

PDN

Partido Demócrata Nacional/National Democratic Party

MAS

Movimiento al Socialismo/ Movement towards Socialism

MBR-200Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario—200/

Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement—200

MEP

Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo/ People’s Electoral Movement

MIR

Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria/ Revolutionary Left Movement

MVR

Movimiento Quinta Republica/ Fifth Republic Movement

MSDS

Ministerio de Salud y Desarrollo Social/

Ministry of Health and Social Development

PRV

Partido de la Revolución/ Party of the Revolution

UCV

Universidad Central de Venezuela/ Central University of Venezuela

UNE

Unión Nacional Estudiantes/ National Students Union

UPM

Unión Patriótica Militar/ Patriotic Military Union

URD

Unión Republicana Democrática/ Democratic Republican Union

SUMMARY

ARGUMENT AND STRUCTURE

One definition of democratic participation is a process whereby citizens influence or control those who make major decisions affecting them. Throughout Venezuela’s history, citizens have suffered under governments that aimed to limit their participation in the state. This research argues that the current Chávez regime, though seeking to concentrate power for itself in the executive branch, has also forged a space for democratic participation through its Barrio Adentro program.

In its introductory chapter, this paper examines Venezuela’s political development through a comparative lens and aims to situate Barrio Adentro within the country’s unique history. First, it shows how the political models in Venezuela throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries compared to the generally prevailing governing strategies and movements in Latin America. Later, it explains how Barrio Adentro fits within the current regime that aims to strengthen executive dominance and democratic participation.

This research’s second chapter provides a more nuanced and isolated study of Venezuela’s history, culminating with Hugo Chávez’s rise to power. It demonstrates that the designs of the country’s political systems over time, crafted to limit citizen participation, caused a legitimacy crisis in the Venezuelan state. Ultimately, the breakdown of these political arrangements created the seemingly paradoxical conditions where a non-democratically inspired leader has created a system that emphasizes citizen participation.

In its third chapter, a close examination of Barrio Adentro provides an example of how the ideas of executive dominance and democratic participation are reshaping Venezuela. The program under case study, Barrio Adentro, brings Cuban doctors into Venezuela’s most marginalized communities and relies on community support to operate. Started at the national level as a presidential initiative, it attempts to replace the country’s collapsed health system with a flexible structure more finely attuned to citizens’ needs. In pursuit of this goal, however, it has displaced the traditional bureaucracy. It has also had to contend with citizen demands that are working to reshape the administration’s original blueprint.

The conclusion of this study highlights the parallels between Chávez’s “participatory democracy”, as seen through the program of Barrio Adentro, and past Venezuelan governments. It concedes that citizens opposed to Chávez may have little recourse for participation in his administration. But it also shows that Venezuelans assumed to be docile supporters of Chávez have influence over his administration. This provides some proof that within the executively-centered state there also exists a space for democratic participation.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

FROM STRONGMAN RULE TO POPULISM AND THE CALL FOR SOCIAL INTEGRATION

Michael Coniff explains the rise of populism in Latin America as a response to “those forces hindering popular representation, social mobility, and rising standards of living for the masses”; issues that came to the fore with the breakdown of the social order that prevailed in the region’s cities during its colonial period. During the region’s colonial period, urban centers rooted themselves in legal traditions that imposed public authority over private matters and in notions of social solidarity that guaranteed everyone a set place in society. It was the clearly defined obligation of the church and wealthy in society to provide charity to the poor. The rise of capitalism, with its emphasis on private property rights, ended this preexisting social order. Inequality flourished, and unlike before, the rich did not tend to society’s poorest sectors. Concurrently, the physical layout of cities came to imitate those of Europe: fashioned for social control. These factors provided an excellent combination for the rise of figures such as Venezuela’s Juan Vicente Gómez, dictators who under the guise of modernity could easily protect the interests of a select few citizens with repression. These factors also sowed the seeds of discontent that would ultimately give rise to populist movements.

At the turn of the 20th century, Juan Vicente Gómez came to dominate over all other regional caudillos in Venezuela. Himself a strongman, Gómez’s greatest contribution to the modern Venezuela was to do away with the multiplicity of individuals who imposed their will on the state through violence. As such, he fashioned the modern Venezuelan state. While his new state did not provide for citizen participation, it at least was a crude mechanism to serve the diverse interests of a select few within the state. Ultimately, larger social movements would form. These movements sought to gain inclusion and reap benefits from Gómez’s newly formed state.

Around Gómez’s death in 1935, Venezuela’s middle-class counterelites and modernizing establishment competed to implement their diametrically opposed visions to further state development. The modernizing establishment sought to achieve social and economic development without mass citizen representation. The middle-class counterelites saw mass participation as the only path to achieve social and economic development. Gathering in the 1930s under Partido Democrata Nacional (PDN), which ultimately became Acción Democratica (AD), the middleclass counterelites would ultimately join with the military to take power in a 1945 coup. A coup against their government in 1948 would revoke their power, and return Venezuela to a dictatorship that lasted until 1958. Around this time on the world stage, with the onset of the Cold War, socialism, populism, and ideologies that advocated allocating power to a country’s masses became less fashionable. Curtailed citizen participation or dictatorship became the only viable governance options in Venezuela. Ultimately, this dichotomy would help the modernizing establishment’s vision prevail as the only sustainable compromise to push the country forward.

THE TURN AWAY FROM POPULISM: THE BUILDING OF A CONSOCIATIONALIST DEMOCRACY

While AD’s initial unwillingness to compromise cut short its stay in power and many citizens’ hopes for increased participation in the Venezuelan state, its later willingness to forego mass citizen participation perhaps saved Venezuela from repressive military rule. When it joined forces with the military to wrest power in 1945, AD saw its support of the coup as a necessary means to an end. Soon after the coup, the party did seek to expand the ruling coalition’s base. AD insisted on a program of social reform through mass participation. But its desire to create a Mexican PRI-styled hegemonic party and its inability to work with the nation’s other political parties (Comisión para Organización Política y Elecciones, COPEI, and Unión Republicana Democrática, URD) created the conditions for its overthrow in 1948. The military’s intervention in that year initiated a prolonged cessation to Venezuela’s populist experiment. After AD and a ten-year military dictatorship, Venezuela’s parties opted less for idealism and more for regime stability. The result was a shunning of populism and the adoption of a government model that valued societal interests but limited citizen participation in the state.

Movements like AD, which adopted populism, aimed to respond to problems of social integration, economic inequality, and uneven political representation. Clearly, populist movements were forward looking and reformists. But they also sought to reclaim lost values, put society into some idealistic preexisting order. So they were backward looking. Their main principle was to “ameliorate some of the harshest aspects of the metropolitan revolution—elitist government, abandonment of the poverty—stricken, maldistribution of wealth, and rapacious capitalism.” Social integration, the notion of revaluing and giving use to all of a society’s members, was as much a stepping-stone as the answer to the problems these populist movements addressed. As scholar Michael Coniff explains, social integration

simultaneously satisfied the desire for organic society, addressed the social question, promised citizen participation in government, and provided a winning strategy for reform-minded groups to come to power peaceably.

While populist parties such as AD perhaps envisioned and reserved themselves a role in steering mass movements, achieving their end goal of developing and reforming their states depended on an enlivened citizenry to provide a driving force.

Throughout Latin America, populist movements were most evident between 1920 and 1965, their rise paralleling the population booms in the region’s urban cities. The large influx of people into these cities overburdened whatever mechanisms autocrats relied upon to keep the social order. Between 1936 and 1970, Venezuela’s urban centers went from housing 28.9% to 70% of the country’s total population. Populist parties drew on this migratory process to bolster and organize their base.

In addition to the importance of the urban setting, the multi class, electoral, expansive, “popular” nature, and charismatic leadership of populist movements in Latin America made them unique. Having a base in the socially troubled major Latin American cities of the early 20th century, the movements easily became multi-class because they drew from all sectors affected in these microcosmic societies. They embraced the democratic vote as a means towards their ends of social reform, and thus encouraged citizen participation in the political process. They were expansive because they drew energy from ever-increasing alliances. These alliances helped the parties appeal and remain relevant to their base, mostly by increasing the possibilities for more reform. True to the backward looking aspect of populism, these movements took great interest in the “popular” history of their countries. They revalued native folklore, art, and customs. As an example, in Mexico, appreciation for the country’s native cuisine and “indigenous” art coincided with the rise in populist figures shortly after that country’s revolution. Finally, all across Latin America, charismatic leaders who were “perceived to have special personal qualities” headed populist movements. These men (woman in the case of Argentina’s Evita Perón), provided decisive leadership in a time of crises. Although somewhat predisposing these movements to the personalization of rule, these movements’ leaders did not necessarily disallow the institutionalization and the genuine democratic representation of their followers interests.

If a benign form of populism that valued inclusion did not on its own pose a significant threat, it certainly did when taken into account with other factors. One such factor was the new reality created by the rumblings of the Cuban revolution in the 1950s. Fidel Castro’s power grab scared the political right and tended to radicalize the political left. Within five years, the rise of the military-led, bureaucratic-authoritarian regime in Brazil marked the beginning of a darker era on the Latin American continent. Militaries bent on modernizing their countries around technocratic principles that barred and eliminated the perceived dangers of citizen participation swept into power across Latin America. Soon after Brazil, the populist movements of Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina would die under the overwhelming might of those countries’ militaries.

Against this regional backdrop, AD’s early abandonment of populism and the Venezuelan political establishment’s shift towards a politics of compromise that preserved civilian rule seems pragmatic and a politically expedient solution. to avoid a larger crisis. The political establishment’s Pacto de punto fijo (Pact of a Fixed Point) memorialized the chosen course in 1958. It forced a variant of democracy identified in political science literature as consociationalism. This democratic form has four characteristics. As scholar Richard S. Hillman explains, these are,

(1) a coalition that includes the leaders of all significant societal groups; (2) a veto vote for each societal group on policy issues vital to it; (3) representation in political and governmental office proportionate to each group’s strength; and (4) autonomy for each group in its internal affairs.”

Venezuela’s 1961 constitution formalized parts of this arrangement; other parts would remain an informal understanding among the pact’s participants. El pacto de punto fijo and its model of limited citizen representation would endure until 1993.

The pact’s goal was to force unity among political parties and the most important social groups. Limited representation for those citizens non-aligned with these groups was the pact’s collateral damage. Promises to share the state’s largess, symbolized by its larger oil reserves, was the compensation that citizens received for their stake in the political process. Inevitably, the pact’s success would come to depend on high oil prices and the ability of its participants to buyout opposition. In the 1980s, when the prices of this commodity tumbled, the Venezuelan parties found themselves overextended in protection of their stability model. Consociationalism proved unsustainable under these circumstances.

THE APPEAL TO DECENTRALIZATION

To preserve the system of consociationalism, the dominant parties of the late 1980s agreed to a limited program of fiscal and administrative decentralization. If the central parties had followed through with these promises of reform, perhaps they could have reaped rewards from this decision. However, their desire to cede control to lower levels of government was not genuine and at best negligible.

Decentralization describes the process whereby the central government transfers power to sub-national levels of government. These transfers can occur in economic, administrative, and political areas. The economic area encompasses primarily fiscal policies. Administrative, reflects how government structures itself to respond to the questions such as: At what level are certain government functions best administered or “What is the proper level for intermediate decisions? How is control and co-ordination to be maintained? How is efficiency of services to be increased?” Political decentralization implies the level of representation in the decision-making process. The literature on decentralization dating back to the 1950s has stressed the process’ value as “a policy option with political and economic benefits”. This is because it brings power to local governments where 1) it is closer to the people, promoting representation and participation 2) citizen’s preferences are better understood and 3) there is better potential for sound economic policy formulation.

Venezuela’s governing societal groups, fixed in place by the 1958 pact, were in desperate need of reconnecting with their citizenry; yet they refused to commit to decentralization. They gambled on a limited and largely illusory decentralization effort. To illustrate, consider the parties’ approval for the direct election of governors in 1989. Though Venezuelans went to the polls for these officials in December 1989, the central government delayed the transfer of fiscal and administrative responsibilities to these governments well into the 1990s. Ultimately, the attempt at limited decentralization failed to preserve the governing parties’ position within the weakening system, promote efficiency in governance, and create the sentiment that citizens mattered in Venezuela.

THE PERSISTING CITIZEN PARTICIPATION DEFICIT

By the early 1990s, the deteriorating economic context and staggering decentralization effort awakened Venezuelans to their helplessness in the country’s political system. If democratic participation describes a link between the actions of citizens and the reactions of their governments, then Venezuelans were not participants in their democratic system. This growing disconnect created the optimal conditions for extra-legal solutions to recapture their position in the stagnating democratic model.

Citizens pressed for the creation of a new model that could reconfigure the pieces of the long broken state, but did not look to major parties for this task. They blamed those parties for the country’s downfall. Instead, citizens turned to figures that denounced the party establishment. In 1992, this atmosphere allowed Colonel Hugo Chávez to take a defiant stand against Venezuela’s government. He launched a coup against the republic’s president. While Chávez did not succeed in toppling the president, he did land a deathblow to Venezuela’s party based democracy.

Democracy, outside the defunct Pacto de punto fijo, returned to Venezuela with Rafael Caldera’s election to the presidency in 1994. A minority party coalition elected him in 1994. Caldera was an establishment politician, but had abandoned his party to run in that year’s presidential election. One electoral cycle later, in 1998, Venezuelans would take a more daring step. They elected Chávez, the defiant colonel, to the presidency.

Chávez won on a platform that promised to reorganize the state and give Venezuelans influence in the democratic process. He derided the Venezuelan democracy constructed in the 1961 constitution, characterizing it as a “farse that they call democracy but which in reality was a dictatorship”. From the outset, Chávez made clear that he was something different from anything in Venezuela’s past and that he aspired to reshape the state.

CHAVISMO

Under Chávez, Venezuela has acquired a new political regime: Chavismo. It revisits the populist experiment ended with AD’s overthrow in 1948. Freddy Bernal, the current mayor of Caracas and fierce ally of President Chávez, describes this as a movement that,

…inspired by those ideals [of Latin American revolutionary Simón Bolívar] sweeps the dust from history, removes the nationalist spirit, hoists the flags of liberty and democracy, makes a call to retake the principles and values of our nationality, regains the valor of a brave people and instigates it to stand up over its disgrace, over its oppression, its stomped upon dreams, its frustrated desires, its battered honor and makes it feel again like in other times, a people, life, blood and hope…

Like the earlier Latin American populist movements, Chavismo identifies with a forgotten past and defines itself in contraposition to the prevailing political experience. Chavismo is a reaction to a deficient democratic form of government. Unlike earlier populist movements, it is not an heir to caudillismo. Despite the fiery rhetoric, it offers not an alternative to repression, but a purer form of democracy. Though it has sprouted on the tail’s end of another resurgence in populism, labeled neo-populism in the literature, it differs from that movement because Chavismo favors socialism over capitalism. Chavismo aims for a much deeper impact than the old styled populism, and so it is a radical and mold breaking construct.

Chavismo’s emphasis on improving the condition of the country’s underprivileged majority makes it like the radical populist regimes of the 1930s and 1940s found in Latin America. During that period, leaders such as Argentina’s Juan Perón and Venezuela’s own Rómulo Betancourt (AD) embraced antiestablishment rhetoric and worked to include underprivileged sectors into the fabric of the state. But in both instances, and much unlike Chavismo, the radical populist movements stopped short of “structural changes that would have threatened powerful economic interests”.

Scholar Steven Ellner makes the claim that Chavismo differs from the radical populist movements in its appeal to the masses, electoral base, ideology, hegemonic quality, and embrace of the political left. He notes that Chávez’s original attempt at coming to power in a 1992 coup did not include an appeal to the Venezuelan masses; he has failed to capture the electoral support of the middle class; his political party (Movimiento Quito Republica, MVR) lacks both organization and an ideological vision; his regime does not face an organized opposition, instead enjoying the military’s support; and that Chávez has avoided anticommunist rhetoric and includes leftist in his government and party. But Ellner highlights only four points that make Chavismo different than the radical populism of the 1930s and 1940s, because the movement does appeal to the support of Venezuela’s masses. In his survey on the Latin American populism of this earlier period, Coniff makes clear that “movements rarely began with the allegiance of “all of the people” for whom they spoke, and hence they continually strove for universal representation”. Although Chávez appeared during a military backed coup in 1992, he ascended to office in 1998 via democratic elections. At that time, he won with the support of 56% of all Venezuelans. It would be misleading to say that standing in this contest was not an appeal to Venezuela’s masses. It is more accurate to say that Chavismo differs from the past populist movements in four ways, and that each of these differences provides it a greater potential to restructure the Venezuelan state.

Chavismo does not have a definite electoral base or well-defined ideology. It relies on the support of the country’s underclass, outside of an organized party structure. MVR, Chávez’s party, differs from the vertically structured, labor-associated parties of the earlier populist period. It has deep roots in the leftist guerilla movements that fought against the Venezuelan state throughout the 1960s. When it joined the electoral process in the mid 1990s, it drew in its leftist guerilla members, and attracted less militant but equally “disenchanted and marginalized members of the main establishment parties.” Unlike traditional populist parties, it lacks internal organization and cannot claim any from outside its organization. It relies on the support of workers in the informal economy, not organized labor unions. The party receives support more in opposition to the Venezuelan establishment than for any ideological vision that it offers, or consistency in its electoral base. This base is not “politically controlled” and “at any given moment…may express support for the government, just as [it] may serve to undermine its authority”. So long as Chavismo continues to market itself as an opposition movement, it will retain its base—one uninterested in association with establishment parties. Ultimately, this opposition stance hinders an independent programmatic vision.

Chavismo embraces socialism and faces neither a credible opposition nor military threat to dissuade it from radical leftist tendencies. Chávez has openly declared his opposition to capitalism as a developmental tool and has built a close rapport with Fidel Castro in Cuba. This opens the possibility for deeper socioeconomic changes than even the most forward-looking populist of earlier years envisioned. In addition, Chávez, a military man, has support from Venezuela’s armed forces. This strong grip of the state apparatus, combined with its equally tenuous hold on its base, makes Chavismo a more radical experiment than populism—old or new.

As Chávez bid for power, Latin America also experienced a resurge in populism—albeit in a new form. The literature identifies it as delegative democracy in scholar Guillermo O’Donnell’s vernacular, or more generally as neo-populism. In the delegative democracy model, presidents are charismatic leaders, rely strongly on rule by executive decree, use referendums to legitimize their authority, employ antiparty rhetoric, and speak a messianic message. The operating assumption of these regimes is that the democratic power of the people is fully vested in the person of one leader. This is just a shade short of a socially approved dictatorship. Neo-populists share the same qualities, but appeal to cross cutting sectors of the population. They usually do so by “holding the political elites responsible for the nation’s pressing problems.” In the contemporary occurrences of these populist models (Alberto Fujimori, Peru; Menem, Argentina), presidents have used the capital accrued through their popularity to implement neo-liberal reforms.

Chávez’s regime shares similarities with the two nearly identical models of delegative democracy and neo-populism. President Chávez is a charismatic leader, even if he does not have an appeal beyond Venezuela’s underclass. His administration used the referendum to validate the 1999 constitution. And it has theoretically extended the practice to the selection of judges and legislative and constitutional initiatives. The new constitution has also strengthened the power of the executive branch. As an example, it reserves the executive branch the right to declare an economic emergency and assume extra-constitutional powers. Finally, the presidential administration frequently shows contempt for the Venezuelan “party democracy” and blames it for the country’s decay.

The key factor that differentiates the Venezuelan government from the delegative democracy and neo-populist forms of populism is that it has not used its popularity to implement draconian economic austerity measures, or impose neo liberalism. Initially, it did take steps towards fiscal responsibility. These included not deviating from the 1999 budget despite higher than anticipated oil prices, accumulating international reserves, keeping inflation down to 20% in that year and keeping interest rates low. Recently, however, it has increasingly engaged in social spending, deepening its position in the natural resource (petroleum principally), health and education sectors. This is antithetical to the delegative democracies and neo-populist regimes of the 1990s. Those regimes-types “embraced neoliberalism, which was unconcerned about social inequality, and thus they stopped short of redistributive policies.” Chavismo is all about structural reform, and as such seems to extend beyond mere populism.

BUILDING A NEW VENEZUELAN STATE

President Chávez labels the Venezuelan state he strives to create a democracia participativa. He often speaks of its “democratic protagonist” character, where the opinions of citizens are validated throughout the governing process. In 1999, a constituent assembly granted him a constitution founded on this concept. The new constitution places a heavy emphasis on citizen power, the expanded use of the referendum and the “democratic protagonist” character of the reformed state. It defines Venezuelan democracy as “participatory, elective, decentralized, responsible to the people, pluralist, based on term limits for elected officials and with revocable mandates.” This definition significantly differs from that set forth in the previous, 1961, constitution: “representative, responsible to the people and guaranteeing the rotation of elected public officials.” Critics of the Venezuelan government fear that the new emphasis on majority rule may actually be tearing whatever fabric of the democratic state remains. Of most concern are the constitutional provisions that shift previously held legislative and judicial powers to popular referendum and a constituent assembly.

Scholar Angel Alvarez views with apprehension the government’s use of popular referendums (now applicable for the recall of elected officials), public opinion polls, legislative, constitutional and constituent initiatives, and municipal councils. While Alvarez concurs with Giovanni Sartori’s famed proposition that polls and referendum are compatible with representative democracy, he believes that the intention of the Venezuelan government is to build upon the protagonist notion of this process. What this means is to make the country’s citizenry the check and balance of the government, displacing self-executing counterweights within the three branches of government (executive, legislative and judicial). Whatever the Chávez government’s intention may be, reality differs from the theory of an all-powerful citizenry.

Constituent assemblies provide an example of how the executive has a potentially greater power in reforming the state than its general citizenry. Calling a constituent assembly into existence requires 15% approval of registered voters, a 2/3 majority in the National Assembly, a 2/3 voting majority in municipal councils or an executive order. For this reason, Alvarez views with doubt the prerogative the constituent assembly can take in “transforming the state, creating a new legal order, and drafting a new constitution”. His concern is that while the president can call such an assembly into order through decree, the National Assembly and municipal councils face significantly higher barriers. These, he explains, tilt the power of the constituent assembly in favor of the executive branch.

To Chavismo’s opposition (typically middle and upper class; fragmented and numerous), the movements confluence of executive power and citizen influence seems a paradoxical and unlikely possibility for a new state model. The administration and its supporters think otherwise. As such, they are in the midst of a great effort to prove their opposition wrong.

A MODEL PROGRAM

Since coming to power, President Chávez has introduced Barrio Adentro; a multi-faceted program that brings mostly Cuban doctors into Venezuela’s marginalized urban and rural communities. Facilitated by a cooperation agreement with Cuba, Venezuela exchanges 53,000 barrels of oil per day for the services of medical professionals, teachers, sports trainers, and medicine. Within the communities, health committees composed of local volunteers assist doctors in their functions and act as liaisons to government officials. The administration developed this program outside the existing health system. In so doing, the administration has sent clear signals about the extent to which it will use its executive power to restructure the state and stimulate democratic participation. Supporters of the administration speak of this program as an “expression of what we want to create”. President Chávez claims this program is a prototype of principles set forth in the 1999 constitution regarding the state’s role in the health sector and the rights of citizens to participate in this area of the state. Currently, it is the largest practical example of how the presidential administration intends to give “power to the people.”

Few Venezuelans, if any, would argue that the country’s health system did not fall into a deep state of disrepair throughout the 1990s. As the country’s economy worsened, fewer Venezuelans had jobs, and a greater number did not have private medical insurance. In its gravest instance, the system served as the frontline in medical care, though only having the capacity to serve as a backstop. In 1996, 80% of the population depended upon the public health system, when only 15% of all medical equipment available to public hospitals remained operational. Citizens with the ability to pay for medical services turned to the private sector, but for the great majority of Venezuelans this was simply not an option.

Soon after coming to power, in 1999 the Chávez administration merged the Ministry of Health with the Ministry of Family Services to form the Ministry of Health and Social Development (MSDS). This was a cautions attempt to address the pressing need for better medical care. Broadly, the new ministry governs the health sector, oversees policy design and implementation, and provides financing for activities that promote both health and social development. The Pan American Health Organization reports that since its inception, MSDS has made it a priority to “to transcend the medical focus of health to include social development.” But then surviving a series of opposition led strikes and an attempted coup between the years of 2002-2003, Chávez moved beyond just cautious reform attempts. The political climate required him to both affirm his government’s position and reward its base.

Chávez looked to the Venezuelan health system, a casualty of punto fijo parties’ desperate attempts to retain power in the early 1990s, a symbol of the country’s decay. The sector played a key role in the parties’ late 1980s program of decentralization, as an area in which the central government promised to transfer fiscal and administrative control to sub national governments. By the end of 1990, all but two Venezuelan states had signed agreements with the Ministry of Health that allowed for the transfer of federal funds and human resources to state-level control. Notwithstanding these agreements, as of 1993 states were still waiting for the completed transfer of authority and funds to operate in these areas. Throughout this political wrangling, Venezuela’s health system continued on its path to ruin. Barrio Adentro is Chávez’s innovation to stem the public health crises.

The findings of this research show that while Chávez has used Barrio Adentro to highlight his new Venezuela, citizens have used their affiliation with this program to pressure the administration for benefits and reshape its policy goals. The new program now operates in thousands of communities across the country. It is fast becoming the institution for participation most accessible to the greatest part of the country’s approximately 24 million people. Chávez has created an opportunity for citizens to participate in the Venezuelan state.

CHAPTER TWO: POLITICAL HISTORY

Elected in 1998, Hugo Chávez was the first president unassociated with the major parties in the forty years since the founding of the country’s current democratic period. At that time, he inherited a Venezuelan state incapacitated by years of fiscal mismanagement and framed within a political system lacking legitimacy. It was no longer able to respond to its population’s growing needs. Having pierced the country’s frayed democratic arrangement, Chávez foresaw an opportunity to make a clean break with the country’s long past of elite political management. He claims to be in the process of creating a true, participatory democracy.

VENEZUELA’S FORMATIVE PERIOD (1500s -1936)

Venezuela’s historical development, largely informed by its colonial origins, provides the first context within which to understand the twentieth century’s political leadership forestalling the creation of a wide political space. Spain’s colonialism (especially under the Bourbon monarchs, 1700-1820) promoted the centralization of power and the use of uniform institutions, irrespective of local context. Scholars agree that the influence of the Catholic Church and specifically “Spanish Catholicism, political absolutism, and military ascendancy resulted in a society structured hierarchically by rank.”

In his essay “Institutions”, author Douglass North argues that this organization mirrored the declining power of the Castilian Cortes (parliament) and ascending dominance of the monarchy at the time of Spain’s discovery and exploitation of territories in the new world. This provided Spanish colonies a political experience very much unlike that of their northern, British counterparts. There, the English Crown’s persistent struggle with parliament was reflected in the “general development in the direction of local political control and the growth of assemblies.”

Economically, Spain’s interest differed from that of Britain and consequently contributed towards a distinctive socioeconomic formation. Spain’s economic interaction with its colonies was extractive and not fashioned on the principles of free trade, giving impetus to extra-legal courses of exchange; such as smuggling. North reflects in his study that this helps explain why ‘independence’ in the British colonies led towards institutions able to broker complex interpersonal exchange. In the Spanish colonies, bureaucracies possessed in their sole discretion the power to regulate the economic and political interactions of society. Thus, here the maximization of an individual’s political or economic goals was rewarded by “getting control of, or influence over, the bureaucratic machinery.”

In Venezuela, the successful Wars of Independence fought between 1810 and 1821 were followed by civil wars that did not end until the late 1800s. This reflects that the Wars for Independence were more than a fight against Spanish rule. They represented the explosion of “civil wars between different regions with different economic priorities, conflicts among classes and races, conflicts within elites and important families, and simple confusion caused by Napoleon’s invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.” Throughout this period of time Venezuela lost “40 percent of its population, suffered enormous property damage, and saw almost all vestiges of its previous bureaucratic system destroyed.” The wars ruined the economic fortunes of Venezuela’s pre-war elites, resulting in a weakened state without a clear dominant force. As in most Spanish colonies, this would directly contribute to the failing of the United States’ exported federalist, decentralized, form of governance.

Drafters of the original Venezuelan constitution intended for ‘states’ to serve as administrative divisions. They also envisioned the separation of legislative, judicial and executive powers, as was the case in the United States. However, given the country’s historical context and the dearth in civilian leadership as a result of the Wars for Independence, this governmental structure “ensured that Venezuelans found little consensus on the issues of political legitimacy and presidential succession during most of the nineteenth century.” Between 1821 and 1836 Venezuelans would redraft their constitution 21 times.

Throughout a greater part of the 19th century, military heroes of the Wars for Independence and regional caudillos ruled Venezuela, and vied amongst each other for power. They were strong enough to rule states but too weak to obtain total control. This would delay the forming of a strong state.

General José Antonio Páez served as president between the years of 1831 and 1847. He had the backing of the country’s Conservative Party, composed of military men, Catholic Church leaders and landowners. His rivals, urban professionals and businessmen, coalesced into the Liberal Party in 1840. However, as David E. Blank explains, “the two political parties functioned primarily as convenient labels under which competing, regionally based caudillos vied for national power.”

Páez’s appointed successors, José Tadeo Monaga and his brother José Gregorio, were not loyal to the general’s interests. They imposed liberal reforms, such as debt relief and the abolition of slavery in 1854. However, failing to strengthen the country’s economy, an opposition of liberals, conservatives and regional caudillos fomented against their rule.

This coalition resulted in the 1858 overthrow of the Monaga brothers, and the start of Venezuela’s Federal Wars (1858-1863). This period is best characterized as “a series of corrupt caudillos attempting to provide stability in the midst of anarchy, internecine warfare, and chaos.” Motivated by issues of economic crisis and general discontent, regional groups took arms against the weak central government and fought amongst themselves for greater power. These wars caused great devastation to the nations general population, an estimated 350,000 lives were lost, and the fortunes of the pre-war elites.

Changing socioeconomic conditions would slowly propel the Venezuelan state towards centralization and the consolidation of its government apparatus. Around this time, Latin America entered what is commonly referred to as the Gilded Age of Export Booms. Countries discovered new resources available for exports (i.e. Peru/ Guano, Venezuela/ Oil, and Central America/ Bananas). As these export economies strengthened, they required new laws. Countries started to redraft their legal codes, specifically with the intent of attracting foreign investment. The development of infrastructure, such as railways and communications by telegraph followed.

These conditions invited “centralized bureaucratic control” throughout most of the region by the end of the 19th century. In Venezuela, as Judith Ewell explains,

Much of the story from 1870 to the present is that of an increasing concentration of power and population in Caracas and along the north central coast. Economy, society, politics, and culture all coalesced in the capital city. The states and the state caudillos could not unite to retain local control and autonomy. They could not overcome the centripetal force that drew them to Caracas. The caudillos had to capture the central government in order to ensure attention to local problems.

The increased importance of these urban centers, coupled with the breakdown in the traditional social order and their redesign as centers for administrative control (discussed in the section titled “From Strongman Rule to Populism and the Call for Social Integration”), made this a propitious climate for the rise of dictatorships. In his analysis of Latin American populism, Michael Coniff illustrates this with reference to the “Porfiriato in Mexico, the Generation of 1880 in Argentina…the undemocratic “Republic” in Brazil, and the elitist parliament in Chile,” all occurring around this time. Those who ruled during this period had money, the backing of a privileged internal class and often North American and European capital.

In Venezuela, the confluence of these factors is seen in General Cipriano Castro’s conquering of Caracas in 1899. The Grupo Táchira backed Ciprano in his efforts. As Terry Lynn Karl explains, “these were autocrats from the coffee producing region of the Venezuelan Andes.” Venezuela’s leadership would hail from this region from 1899 through 1945. General Castro’s successor, Juan Vicente Gómez (1908-1935), blessed with the backing of the andino group and Venezuela’s emerging oil wealth would set a quick pace of development and centralization.

Juan Vicente Gómez, a ruthless dictator by all accounts, came to power in 1908. He is widely credited with modernizing the Venezuelan state; despite the repression and the concentration of power in the executive branch that characterized his regime. Oil provided the most reliable and significant contribution to Gómez’s undertaking. The presence of foreign oil companies propelled the development of modern ministerial posts and helped finance the formation of armed forces at the national level. Gómez was able to professionalize the national armed forces and modernize the treasury. He achieved the former by establishing academies for all branches of the military and the latter by assigning the treasury the duties of tax collection and maintaining a balanced budget.

The improved coercive forces of the state helped solidify the state’s order. They eliminated the option of unofficial force, transforming quests for control and influence over the newly created and expanding bureaucracies into political struggles. Simultaneously, oil allowed Gómez a source for “consolidating power in the presidency, maintaining his own rule, and enriching himself and his friends.” Whereas in future years the foundations laid for a strong military would ensure the integration of the Venezuelan state, the repressive attitude Gómez demonstrated towards the Venezuelan citizenry and his ill consideration of them in diffusing the oil wealth of the state would give impetus to the politicization of society.

RISE OF MIDDLE CLASS COUNTERELITES (1920s)

The repression of the Gómez years had politicized groups, such as the Federación Venezolana de Estudiantes (FVE). In 1928 it turned a week of student festivities into a riot against the regime. This resulted in the jailing of more than 200 students, and the exiling of the organizers. The FVE’s actions won the hearts of many Venezuelans and galvanized future political leaders, collectively known as The Generation of ’28. Among these were Raul Leoni (Venezuelan president, 1964-69); Rómulo Betancourt (Venezuelan president 1945-1947 and 1959-1964; founder of Acción Democratica in 1941); Jóvito Villalba (founder of URD and president elect in 1952); and Rómulo Gallegos (president in 1948). These students expressed the sentiment of the urban middle-class, increasingly becoming aware of the need to create political space and promote social equality. The old Conservative and Liberal parties of the republic, most vibrant during the days of Páez (1831-1847), had long vanished. This meant that The Generation of ’28 had to form its “own political party in the late 1930s.” They would get their chance upon Gómez’s death in 1935, building their support “on the basis of mobilization and leadership of politically inexperienced workers and peasants.”

GÓMEZ’S PASSING, THE RISE AND FALL OF THE MODERNIZING ESTABLISHMENT (1936-1945)

Venezuela’s path towards democratization began in 1935 with Gómez’s death. Gómez had built a “political bridge between the caudillo system of the past and the modern bureaucratic state of the future.” However, it relied heavily on the concentration of power in the office of the executive and, by extension, himself. In addition, oil had contributed to “industrialists and an expanding, though small, middle class” seeking an alternative to the “rampant nepotism, corruption and repression” characteristic of the Gómez dictatorship. Gómez’s successors would no longer be able to govern in the style of the old caudillo.

Eleazar López Contreras, Gómez’s Minister of War, came to rule in 1935. He represented the ideals of Venezuela’s Modernizing Establishment. David Eugene Blank describes this movement as

…an amalgamation of new men: entrepreneurs and top professionals (many of whom were the sons of relatively recent immigrants), sons of the Andean followers of Cipriano Castro and Gómez, as well as the traditional landed and urban elites.

They were acutely aware of the country’s need to industrialize, mostly because of the effects of the Great Depression on the country’s export and oil dependent economy. They sought to “sponsor the social and economic development of the country and the limited and constrained extension of political participation.”

López Contreras carried out a series of reforms while in office. These included a 1936 constitution that gave government a central role in the country’s economic development, replacing military men with civilians in the state governorships, and expanding suffrage to about 15% of Venezuela’s population (adult, literate males) in the election of city council members and state assembly representatives—which elected the national congress, which elected the president. He also allowed for the return of the Generation of ’28 members.

In the mid 1930s, Rómulo Betancourt formed the Partido Democrática Nacional (PDN) in opposition to this regime. In 1936 it organized 20,000 petroleum workers and led them in a strike against the government. Soon after, López Contreras dissolved the PDN and banished its leaders from the country.

General Isaías Medina Angarita succeeded López Contreras as president in 1941. Like his predecessor, he sought reconciliation with the Generation of ’28. PDN would return to the Venezuelan political scene in Medina Angarita’s first year of rule as Acción Democrática (AD).—Rómulo Betancourt headed the party. Medina Angarita was progressive. While in office he signed the 1943 Hydrocarbon Act, created an income tax, social security system and “pushed through an agrarian reform law” before he was removed from office by a military coup. His downfall was not a consequence of his policies, but rather AD and the military establishment’s disagreement with his chosen successor.

The 1943 Hydrocarbons Act was the first legislation undertaken that reflects the changing rationale of the Venezuelan state. Increased oil activity had resulted in the spreading belief that the state “existed not merely to regulate social intercourse but also to correct the deficiencies of development through an equitable distribution of oil rents.” The passage of this act was important because it provided the “first significant manifestation of distinctive state interests strong enough to confront the multinationals [foreign oil companies]” and second because it decreed that “companies should not be able to earn a greater net income from the extraction of oil than that which accrued to the state [fifty/fifty].” The state would eventually achieve full nationalization of the industry in 1983.

The president’s intended heir was Diógenes Escalante. At the time, Medina Agarita’s party hardliners wanted to see López Contreras retake the presidential office. AD rejected this notion, but was highly in favor of Escalantes because they thought he would promote universal suffrage. Unfortunately, Escalantes fell too ill to become president. In his place, Medina Angarita chose his Minister of Agriculture. This was an unacceptable choice to AD, and especially to a sector of the military establishment that organized as the Unión Patriótica Militar (UPM). The UPM was steadily opposed to the retention of old Gómez allies in the military, which compromised their chances at a merit-based promotion. They were also sympathetic to the idea of an accelerated pace of development. Finding a political ally in AD, they moved to overthrow the Medina Angarita’s government on October 17, 1945.

NEW POLITICAL PARTIES (1946)

The formation of two important political parties coincided with AD’s military backed rise to power. In 1946 Rafael Caldera founded the Comité para Organización Política y Elecciones Independientes (COPEI). It had its roots in a conservative alternative, Unión Nacional Estudiantes (UNE), to the early 1930s’ FEV movement. UNE’s student founders were “Roman Catholic intellectuals” seeking to draw distance with their “more secular and leftist colleagues in the FEV.” In its earliest day (1946-8) COPEI maintained itself as a solidly Catholic party with a regional base in Venezuela’s Andean region. Following 1958, when Venezuela entered its pacted democracy phase, it would become a more centrist party—as would AD.

Under the direction of Jóvito Villalba, the Unión Republicana Democrática (URD) also formed that year. Villalba was from the Generation of ’28. However he exchanged his radical credentials for modernist ones during the 1930s, ultimately allying himself with Medina Angarita. In the changing political context, URD represented “the urban middle-class interests seeking a government of unity and calmness rather than the tension-producing, partisan orientation of AD.” To its own detriment, the URD would fail to change with the times in years to come. Although it formed part of El Pacto de Punto Fijo in 1958, Villalba would soon withdraw the URD’s commitment; later he would drive its younger leadership from the party causing “new personalistic parties” to proliferate.

FROM A REFORM DEMOCRACY TO MILITARY INTERVENTION (1945-1948)

The period that follows Medina Angarita’s overthrow is referred to as the trienio. Between 1945 and 1948, AD (headed by Betancourt 1945-47, and then Gallegos 1948) made efforts to include human rights laws, further provisions for social legislation and direct elections in the country’s constitution. During this time period the party allied with the Federacíon Campesina de Vecinos (FCV) and helped increase the latter’s membership from 6,000 in 1945 to 43,000 in 1948. It also helped create the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), raising its membership to 300,000. These feats raised concern that “rather than leading the peasant masses in the conquest of the land,” it was merely creating “a clientele with which to guarantee AD’s electoral dominance.” AD chose to delay land-reform. All the while, however, its rhetoric intensified and this served to alienate the “urban middle class, the Catholic Church, and the armed forces faster than it could organize and discipline the labor and peasant unions.”

AD minimized conflict with an expansionist policy. It sought first “to distribute oil rents to cement its political support,” and when nearing the limits of this option, picking “new battles over shares of oil rents with the foreign companies.” Although Betancourt was able to balance the conflicting interests of AD’s multiple constituencies, his successor, Rómulo Gallegos, was far less able.

In 1948 AD, despite winning the elections of that year, ran into serious trouble. First, the UPM harbored suspicions that AD sought to challenge the military’s dominance. As a result, the UPM tried to get COPEI representation within the AD government. It also wanted Gallegos to exile Betancourt. Gallegos refused both requests.

The roots of UPM’s fears may have laid in Gallegos’ 1948 attempt to remove the army chief of staff, Marcos Pérez Jiménez. Shortly after this failure, the military responded by ordering Gallegos to reconstitute his cabinet. AD naively, and to an extent without other recourse, negotiated with the military on this account. As Scholar Steven Ellner explains, these negotiations were “merely a ruse by the military to disarm AD leaders in the crucial days prior to the coup.” With the approval of COPEI and URD, the military reasserted its control of the country in 1948. Power would remain in the hands of the military until 1958. General Marcos Pérez Jiménez first led the military’s governing junta and then secured the presidency between 1952 and 1958.

Throughout Pérez Jiménez’s rule, the Venezuelan state apparatus rotted to its core. Corruption, the personalization of politics, the prohibition of opposition parties (including AD), and expansionist programs aimed at “generating support among groups within the elite and lower classes” tended to increase the domain of the state while simultaneously undercutting its managerial capacities. As Venezuela’s economy began to stagnate in the late 1950s, repression and subsequent opposition to the regime increased. The previously factionalized political interests of the country became more amenable towards cooperation in the joint venture of displacing the dictator.

When Pérez Jiménez tried to withdraw his commitment to elections in the year of 1958, as called for in the constitution his administration drafted in 1952, he set in motion the events that would lead to his demise. Amidst protests and violence, the dictator was forced into exile. The military reassumed power, but also promised to hold elections. Given the instability of the country, and the fragile history of democracy, the major parties in the country (now including AD, COPEI and URD) pledged to rule together irrespective of electoral results. The agreement that would enshrine this commitment into Venezuelan politics over the next three decades is known as El pacto de punto fijo.

PUNTO FIJO (1958)

Punto fijo accorded AD, COPEI and URD veto power in subsequent administrations. At the same time, the pact officially proscribed communist parties and made accommodations for the business community, church and military. As a result, punto fijo would have the effect of “privileging the political parties, their organized constituencies, and those capitalist interests that had the potential capacity to undo the democracy.” In Venezuela, democracy and stability were achieved by a pact that purposely constrained policy choices and, by extension, innovation.

Venezuela’s restored democracy did not supersede the legacies of strong executive power, weak state institutions, vested interests and a generally disenfranchised citizenry. Instead the constitution of 1961 that followed the forming of Punto fijo institutionalized limited consensus and access to the political arena:

Believing that only the state could distribute the fruits of the nation’s patrimony and that

democratic forces needed a mediator who could rise above the kinds of partisan conflicts that had destroyed the trienio, the constitution validated the tradition of highly centralized power and made the president the supreme arbiter.

While, the payoff to the general public for the limited consensus would be a highly expansionist state (paid with oil rent), the democracy at which Venezuela had arrived would prove insufficiently expandable.

THE CREATION OF A PARTY DEMOCRACY (1958-1988)

Punto fijo had unanticipated effects on the party organizations that signed it, and later came to dominate the political scene of the country. It transformed them from grassroots participation driven parties into elite controlled bureaucracies content to perpetuate the status quo. Over this period, the parties (AD and COPEI) became far removed from the Venezuelan society it sought to govern. As the parties assumed increasing control of the political scene, citizens’ influence failed to extend beyond the election of the president. To understand how parties came to dominate the political spectrum, it is important first to understand the structure of the democratic system that they built. As Brian Crisp observes, “consensus building and protection of the democratic regime were often the primary goals taking precedence over incorporating new groups and resolving difficult conflicts.”

The electoral law established in the country’s 1961 constitution is instrumental in this regard. The parties chose a closed-list system. Here parties determined a list of candidates and citizens’ votes counted for parties. This allowed parties to fully control the ballot. Over time these electoral laws contributed towards the construction of a stable democracy. However, it was one with deficits of popular representation. The electoral rules, which bonded parties to the system and produced discipline, also resulted in a rigid structure.

Under these rules, the party leaders of AD and COPEI nominated members to the federal bi-cameral congress, state legislatures and municipal posts. In all these electoral contests, parties would distribute the posts according to the overall percentage of votes they received. The greater the percentage of votes, the more nominees off a parties’ list of candidates were placed in available posts. In the presidential contests, the stakes were higher. The party that obtained this office also appointed governors and the mayor of Caracas.

Rómulo Betancourt (AD) became the first president following the signing of Punto fijo in 1958. His party would win two consecutive elections (five year terms). In 1968 there occurred a division in AD that resulted in the creation of Movimiento Electoral del Pueblo (MEP). This cost AD the election to COPEI (Rafael Caldera won with 29% of the vote). This experience served both to bolster the country’s democratic system and teach Venezuelans a valuable lesson: to not waste their votes on small parties. Despite the reintroduction of small leftist parties in the 1973 presidential election (Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR)), Venezuelans would accord AD and COPEI approximately 80 to 90% of all votes in presidential elections between 1973 and 1988. For most of these elections, AD and COPEI alternated in the presidential post (though AD won consecutively in 1983 and 1988).

While this party structure provided the Venezuelan state with stability, it suffocated the grassroots origins that defined the parties formed by Betancourt (AD, 1941) and Caldera (COPEI, 1946). When describing AD before Punto fijo, John Martz notes:

…Betancourt…believed that party offices and activities should reach the furthermost corners of the republic. If the party were properly attuned to the masses, its activities should be unending, rather than limited merely to periodic exercises in electoral democracy. Discussion of local issues, sports and social activities, printing and distribution of political literature, membership recruitment all were intended to simulate participatory democracy within the party…”

Emulating AD’s successful model, COPEI designed its own party structure and activities similarly to what is described above.

With URD’s withdrawal from Punto fijo AD and COPEI came to dominate in the arranged government. They established relationships with labor organizations that allowed them to outsource the job of keeping in touch with Venezuelans. Their relationships with the Federacíon Campesina de Vecinos (FCV) and the Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), proved instrumental in this regard. Party leaders turned their attention inwards, competing amongst each other for domination of the political posts AD and COPEI shared to keep their hegemony over the system.

In the 1980s, AD and COPEI exhibited signs of fierce intra-party competition. Eduardo Fernández moved into the position of undersecretary for COPEI in 1983, as Caldera made a second but unsuccessful bid at the presidency. In the following election of 1988, the protégé of Caldera ran despite the party leader’s objection. At the same time Carlos Andrés Pérez (AD, president 1973-1978) fought fiercely against the opposition of sitting president Jaime Lusinchi (1983-1988) for the party nomination.

Noticeably, these confrontations did not involve the Venezuelan public. Instead they pivoted around the “sentiment among the party leadership”. As the 1990s approached, the dominant Punto fijo parties had transformed themselves into elitist bureaucracies out of touch and unconcerned with the Venezuelan reality.

VENEZUELA IN THE BOOM (1970s)

In 1973, presidential candidate Carlos Andrés Pérez (AD) campaigned for the presidential election of Venezuela on a populist platform. He promised to increase the country’s economic independence, promote development, social justice and democracy. Andrés Pérez summarized this as La Gran Venezuela. In his vision, government would use its fiscal powers to fight poverty (i.e. price controls) and expand its control on employment and other social service policies. It would reduce the country’s dependence by deepening the process of Import Substituting Industrialization (ISI), the creation of domestic industry. He planned to do this by reinvesting in the country’s petrochemical, aluminum and steel industries while preparing to nationalize the oil industry. Andrés Pérez was aided in his ambition with the increase in world oil prices in the 1970s. Between 1972 and 1975 Venezuela saw a 419% increase in the price of oil per barrel. Terry Lynn Karl observes that the president sustained little opposition to his plans. Largely because he promised to continue upon the path of state-directed development, if not at a greater speed, on which the parties had placed themselves.

Andrés Pérez was a charismatic figure who was elected on exactly those credentials, a bit of an anomaly in the impersonal system Punto fijo sought to impose. Although belonging to AD, and considered a protégé to Betancourt, he drew power to his person. In his election, Andrés Pérez won an impressive 48.7% of the vote. Alongside AD’s ability to capture 51% of Congress, in no small part due to Andrés Pérez, the president was given a mandate that put Punto fijo in peril.

After his election, Venezuela’s boom economy started to overheat. The fiscal revenue of Venezuela in comparison to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rose to 40% in 1976, faster than the government

FISCAL REVENUE OF VENEZUELAN GOVERNMENTS,

1917-1978 (MILLIONS OF BOLIVARES)

Government

Total Income

Average/ Year

Vicente Gómez , 1917-35

476

25

López Contreras, 1936-40

471

94

Medina Angarita, 1941-45

971

194

Acción Democrática, 1946-48

2,337

779

Pérez Jiménez/ Junta, 1949-52

4,963

1,241

Pérez Jiménez, 1953-57

9,615

1,923

Government Junta, 1958

2,713

2,713

Rómulo Betancourt, 1959-63

16,285

3,257

Raúl Leoni, 1964-68

25,573

5,114

Rafael Caldera, 1968-73

36,952

7,390

Carlos Andrés Pérez, 1974-78

100,356

29,728

Total Revenues

228,758

45,752

Source: Banco Central de Venezuela (1987b and 1979); in Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 117.

could think of ways to productively invest. This threatened discord among Punto fijo’s consensual members: organized labor, business and other political parties. Organized labor liked the policies of the administration, which gave its members higher wages among other things. Business, however, was unnerved by the growing threat of inflation and an overheated economy. Political parties worried, and correctly so, that Andrés Pérez was ruling outside of the agreed upon pact.

The legacy of this period would be twofold. First, it would commit government to high expenditures that it could not sustain. Second, it “created new “assignment battles” over the allocation of shares between the public and private sectors and between capital and labor.”

VENEZUELA BUSTED (1980s)

As early as 1979-80, both the Venezuelan public and government officials sensed that the chosen political stability model of resource-based inclusion was off course. The presidential election of 1978 (which brought COPEI candidate Luis Herrera Campíns to power) was dominated by the issue of fiscal conservatism. Paradoxically, however, as Professor Judith Ewell observes:

Fearful of the large and growing debt, the public wanted a semblance of order in the administration. In theory, they wanted the waste, corruption, and mismanagement of funds to be replaced by a sober and judicious government which could plan well and implement well. At the same time, few Venezuelans would condone a high unemployment rate, rising prices of basic consumer items, rising taxes, or heavy exchange controls.

In short, Venezuelans wanted improvement without having to pay its required price. Effective social spending was perceived as a long overdue entitlement, and cutbacks were not viewed as the solution to a worsening condition.

For the dominant political parties, AD and COPEI, the costs of curbing the expansionist state and promoting political decentralization were too high. A reduction of the state’s economic role would have destroyed the illusion of the strong Venezuelan state cultivated by these parties. It also would have exposed weak bureaucracies, awash in corruption. The political solution, of allowing for more political participation, was also daunting. It only promised to multiply demands on the parties and state. A long time had passed since the parties adjusted their machines to deal directly with grassroots pressures. Changes to the current system would only serve to the detriment of the overgrown, status quo parties.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR PUNTO FIJO (1989)

As the 1980s came to a close, a burgeoning external debt and the inflated dependency on oil rendered inadequate the Venezuelan government’s model of political stability. Beyond the limits of further expansion, the state was unable to address the needs of a growing underclass. The political mechanisms with which to create innovative policies were closed off by the pact focused, government-sharing scheme of political elites. The country’s chosen political model, which hitherto had guaranteed stability and the continuation of democracy, had faltered.

The decline of oil prices in the early 1980s brought these issues to the fore in Venezuela. President Jaime Lusinchi (1983-1988) systematically mismanaged Venezuela’s economy during this time. Excessive debt servicing, combined with a subsidized foreign exchange rate that depleted the treasury and deficit spending well above the means of the state during his final months in office, ensured that his successor would inherit a basket case. When he passed on the government, inflation was 100% and the country’s foreign debt stood at $35 billion.

In 1989, Carlos Andres Pérez of AD ran again for president. He won with the votes of Venezuelans who thought he could restore the seemingly golden era of his previous presidency. For Venezuelans, the expected boom would never materialize. Instead they found themselves facing austerity measures and a fast changing political context.

For Venezuelans, El gran viraje was the great surprise of Pérez’s election. In early 1989 he adopted the orthodox Washington Consensus. In compliance with the consensus, his administration ordered an increase in domestic petroleum prices of 100% on February 26, 1989. It tried to shelter the public from the full impact of this decision by allowing bus companies to increase their fares by only 30%. Bus companies ignored the regulations and matched the government increase for the price of oil by increasing fares 100%. On the morning of February 27, 1989, the increase in prices appalled thousands of commuters who maintain employment in the city of Caracas.

Venezuelans soon protested. These protests led to the overturning and burning of buses, “widespread looting and destruction of shops and supermarkets.” Unprepared for such a reaction, Andres Pérez declared an emergency under Title IX of the 1961 constitution and moved to suspend “all civil liberties” and restore order. What followed is generally referred to as the Caracazo. Although the official government tallies of the people killed over the next several days is 372, non-governmental sources calculate that “over one thousand—in Caracas alone” died. This sealed the fate of economic liberalization in Venezuela.

There are a couple reasons why this attempt at liberalization failed. The first was a basic lack of communication. Venezuelans were not given due warning. Second, as scholar Julie Buxton explains, Pérez blatantly ignored the implicit pact between state and society instituted in Punto fijo. This was that “a limited form of democracy was installed with a guarantee of economic distribution to all social classes.” Of course, this covenant had slowly deteriorated. But that she claims is the true reason for the uprising, not a mere reaction to neoliberalism:

…popular reaction has to be placed in a historical context. By 1988, after thirty years of successive Acción Democrática (AD) and Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI) governments, annual inflation was 40.3 percent, general poverty was 38.5 percent, unemployment was reaching double digits, and real salary levels had declined precipitously.

Punto fijo was delegitimized; the political system had reached its breaking point.

DECENTRALIZATION: THE UNEXPECTED OUTCOME OF THE 1989 RIOTS

Scholar Angel Alvarez has described political decentralization as the “principal fruit” of the orthodox neoliberal reforms undertaken in Venezuela. The riots that erupted as a result of these measures forced the ruling parties to reconsider their positions on an issue they had only just begun to broach. During the administration of President Lucinchi (1983-1988), AD had considered the issue of greater inclusion in the political process. In 1984, the president formed the multi-partisan Comisión Presidencial para la Reforma del Estado (COPRE) to study possible reforms to the state. In response to this commission’s recommendations, meant to address growing popular pressure for political accountability, the ruling parties made slight provisions for increased participation. However, the unforeseen riots of 1989 took away the brakes these parties sought to impose on further reform.

COPRE delivered six recommendations to Lucinchi, and by virtue AD. The commission suggested 1) internal reform of the political parties to promote their democratization; 2) reform of the electoral system to encourage a more personal vote; 3) the direct election of governors and mayors to improve political accountability; 4) reforms to make the judicial system autonomous from politics; 5) reform of the civil service; and 6) the transfer of central government administrative responsibilities to regional and local governments. These suggestions were not well received by AD party leaders, specifically those that pointed in the direction of subnational elections. The president of the AD party remarked that the country was not historically prepared for the direct election of governors, and the party’s general secretary is quoted as saying, “We are not Swiss” in response to the proposed reforms. As a result, these proposed reforms were initially voted down on the floor of Ccongress—legislators preferring to “postpone discussions until the country could reach a ‘consensus’ about the viability of the reforms.”

The 1989 election season would provide the needed ‘consensus’ in favor of decentralization. With major parties balking at the idea of creating a more participatory political system, left-leaning parties were basically handed a battle cry. Second, decentralization provided a point of leverage for major party candidates Fernández (COPEI) and Andrés Peréz (AD) against party resistance to their candidacies. Recall that COPEI founder Caldera did not agree with Fernández’s presidential bid and that Andrés Peréz faced resistance for AD’s nomination from Lusinchi and his allies. For strategic reasons, both candidates chose to distance themselves publicly from their party’s positions on decentralization reforms.

This was enough to force the hands of the reluctant AD and COPEI party bosses, or cogollos. In June 1988, the legislature partially approved COPRE’s recommendations. They allowed for the direct elections of mayors, changing the closed-list electoral system to a mixed-list system. They also adopted administrative and fiscal decentralization. In each instance the major parties tried to jockey for advantage, staving off the most meaningful reforms. They did not allow for the direct election of governors, postponed the implementation of changes to the electoral law until the 1994 elections and allowed only municipal governments the right to administrative and fiscal decentralization. Penfold-Becerra notes that COPRE’s decentralization proposals were elitist calculations, a point made painfully obvious by the way major parties implemented its recommendations.

The major parties quickly made recalculations following the riots of February 1989. This event made the political class realize that it “could no longer ignore the connection between increasing abstention in national elections and the widespread and convulsive animus exhibited during the Caracazo.” The political establishment responded with a deepening of the decentralization process. On April 13, 1989 Congress set the first direct elections for governors and mayors to take place the following December.

Suddenly, the dominant parties were embracing the notion of decentralization. However, their interest in the process was self-serving. The process was being carried out de jure, but not de facto. In 1990, Congress passed the Organic Law of Decentralization. This allowed states some regulatory oversight and policy oversight in the areas of health and education. Governors, according to the 1990 law, had to petition the Senate if they sought administrative or fiscal control in areas not specified by statute. The Senate, in turn, would review each petition on a case-by-case basis. This fulfilled the objective of giving the central government “the prerogative to determine the manner in which the decentralization of services such as health care or education would proceed.”

Andrés Pérez sided with the governors. Following their elections in 1989, COPRE set up offices to provide technical assistance to the governors in drafting decentralization proposals that the Congress was likely to approve. His leaning towards governors in the unfolding process of decentralization was rational. Although AD and COPEI were competing successfully on the gubernatorial level (AD’s fortunes soured in 1993, dropping from 55% of governorships in 1989 to slightly below 40%), the winners of these contests did not represent the party’s controlling old guard. Finding himself out of favor with these forces, Andrés Pérez was really pushing for party reform. Notwithstanding the executive’s best efforts, Congress did not approve a single petition between 1990 and 1992 that requested additional administrative responsibilities.

On February 4 and November 27, 1992, Andrés Peréz’s administration survived failed military coups. The officers involved in the first coup, which Chávez orchestrated, noted frustration with serving a state catering to select interests. In disfavor with AD, and cogollos generally for bypassing their clients in favor of technocrats, these events provided the parties a basis upon which to seek his ouster. Congress impeached him on corruption charges in 1993. Andrés Peréz resigned in May of that year.

The legislature chose Ramón Velásquez to serve as interim president. Velásquez was a distinguished member of the senate who served COPRE in the mid 1980s. It is unclear whether his selection to the post was based on his past accomplishments or ideological vision. However, during his time as president (six months) he committed his office to the process of decentralization. He created the Ministry of Decentralization and the Intergovernmental Decentralization Fund (FIDES), the latter for the purposes of funneling governors more funding for projects.

The Ministry of Decentralization organized the Associación de Gobernadores Venezolanos (AGV) in 1993. This organization aimed to press Congress on the transfer of both promised policy areas, such as health and education. Besides informing the public that in its opinion central government was a defeated strategy, it also insisted that,

….only the immediate transfer of budgetary revenue, fiscal authority, and administrative responsibilities to the regions would help solve the serious social, political, and administrative problems that Venezuela’s democratic regime was confronting.

As Venezuela’s major political parties and economy deteriorated, the AGV would claim with greater intensity that it was the best solution for the Venezuelan people.

In the 1994 elections, both AD and COPEI saw their share of votes plummet from the historic highs of 80-90%. That year they accumulated a total of 46.3% presidential votes and 46% legislative votes. Five years earlier, these figures were 92.9% and 78.4%, respectively. However, no other party stepped in to claim a major vote share. The number of parties increasing, Venezuela found itself with a fragmenting political system.

Caldera was reelected president in 1994 by a coalition of small parties, led by MAS and Convergencia Nacional (CN). He won on a platform of anti-party politics and anti-neoliberalism. Once in office he slowed the pace of decentralization. Penfold-Becerra speculates that like neo-liberalism, “decentralization could be interpreted as a dismantling of the central-government apparatus.” Believing in the need of central control for Venezuela’s quickening economic downturn, but without a majority in Congress, Caldera came to rely on decree powers to govern. The fact that Caldera’s election broke the bi-party domination of Venezuelan politics, and that he turned to rule by decree ushered in the start of a new era in Venezuelan politics.

THE RISE OF HUGO CHÁVEZ

As Venezuela’s party system and economy accelerated in its downward spiral, Colonel Hugo Chávez abruptly emerged onto the political scene. This former commander of a parachute battalion did so on February 4, 1992. At the time he provided Venezuelans hope. With the unexpected coup, he seemed to personalize both the need for decisive control of a deteriorating situation and a solution outside of the stagnant political configuration.

The planning for Chávez’s coup began long before 1992. One historian, Alberto Garrido, has argued that the roots of this rebellion are found in Venezuela’s 1960s guerillas. This is a period of time in the country’s history when Cuba-inspired insurgents sought to overthrow the country’s government. Garrido shows that one guerrilla group, Partido de la Revolución Venezolana (PRV), and its leader Douglas Bravo, gained influence with left-wing nationalist and progressive sectors of the military after his movement’s defeat on the bat