Opinión: Venezuela after Chávez (English)

[Nota previa del autor: el texto a  continuación se escribió con el propósito de presentar una opinión personal desde una perspectiva libertaria y antiautoritaria sobre la situación en Venezuela. Esto, a petición de un articulista de la página web Krapuul.nl. Se encuentra escrito al inglés a modo de facilitar su traducción a cualquier otro idioma, dado a que originalmente el artículo sería traducido y publicado en neerlandés. Con esta consideración, tomo el momento para disculparme por cualquier error gramático o semántico que pueda contener.]

Javier Bastardo

Cumaná, Sucre, September 13th 2016

It is undeniable what, for some, the cultural phenomenon of the “Socialism of the XXI Century” meant when it arrived by the incisive hindsight and sharp tongue of the charismatic late president, Hugo Chávez Frias.

The victory of Chávez meant for the leftist political parties an opportunity that they couldn't have even dreamed before, as after 40 years of democracy on the country, and a failed venture in guerrilla warfare, not one candidate of the traditional left ever came close to winning a presidential election.

Hugo Chávez’s presidential campaign was vastly supported by most of the left-leaning political organizations and movements of the time, with a few exceptions. After winning, a number of changes were discussed and formed into a new constitution for the country, one presented as social equity and justice. The year was 1998 to 1999 and shortly after that, and the turmoil generated by a successful but reverted coup in 2002 that ended with the government taking control on the national petroleum enterprise, the country entered in the most prosperous economic period it has ever seen.

But let’s fast-forward to some of the problems the people on Venezuela are facing today on a daily basis:

·         Instituted public healthcare facilities are suffering from low resources of medical equipment and supplies as people die because of the rampant lack of medicines.

·         A lack of proper planning and maintenance of the power plants has brought national blackouts, even coming to the point of instating state-regulated “planned” power blackouts and buying old thermoelectric plants to maintain a steady, if not really that faithful, electrical service.

·         Food shortages have been responded by state-regulated selling points of what can be described as “bags of food” (called CLAP), which contain a random number and variation of first-necessity food products (cheese, flour, coffee, meat, etc.) and hygiene products (dishwasher soap, toothpaste, deodorant, etc.). This “bags” which are given to Communal representatives of a populated area are then sold in a spot normally under the custody of military government forces. Although each product has it regulated price marked down, that price of the bag, and its content, may vary from one selling-spot to the other, and people have complained of the varying changes in prices as well as the regularity and quantity of the bags, which they say is not enough.

·         Given that the CLAP is not enough, and not all the people are getting it, those who can spare the time tend to queue in long lines for hours under the Sun in order to obtain certain items who markets and stores get to sell from time to time in regulated prices. 8 hours for a can of powder milk, one bottle of tomato sauce and one pack of rice. Over 10 hours for a couple of medium sized chickens, and so on. How much they will stay on the line is only regulated by their health, resilience and quantity of the product. For a time, people tended to queue in lines as early as 2AM in the morning, hoping to obtain a good spot and buy whatever the market was potentially selling that day. The government declared this early lines illegal and punishable by prison. Some people still risk it.

·         Shortages of products has brought forward a unique kind of commercial trade. Called “Bachaqueros”, these are people who often queue in long lines all day long, buying any quantity of regulated products they can in order to later re-sell them for even five-times the actual price of product itself, or more. Milk, soap, tires, meat, chicken, toothpaste, eggs, and any other product that is rarely seen on the markets gets sold on the streets by everyday people. The government has tried to bring this trade down, without any luck.

·         Insecurity has been gradually increasing in an exponential rate over the years. Kidnappings, assassinations, charging from protection, among other thing, are being taken to action by a vast network of individuals organized and controlled from inside prisons as well as members of the State security forces, leading to public confrontations between State and Municipal police forces, for example.

What happened? Are the United States and the efforts of the international right-wing, working together with the opposition movement in the country, the ones to blame for everything that has happened since the death of former president Hugo Chávez in 2013 and the rise of his successor, Nicolas Maduro? Many would like to believe that, and some do, as it is what the government keeps telling the country on some sort of disastrous double speech. One hand they deny, or alright mock, the suffering the people since they consider some of the pleas to come from protests and preparations cooked up by the opposition and the CIA in an effort to get the international community to support them. On the other hand, they do recognize, hardly, some of the daily problems that we Venezuelans go through, but they choose to blame it to the private sector, natural phenomena, international intervention, the opposition, among other, but hardly doing any effort of autocriticism.

It’s been 17 years since Chávez and his administration came to power. Despite having state controlled factories, farms, industries, market chains, banks, universities and being the only providers of almost all of the principal services in the country (electrical, water, gas), with an all-time high popularity among voters and the highest prices on oil, the government of Venezuela failed take advantage of the income, and positively turning it into an economic base for the future growth of the country. Many of the mistakes of the past are rampant today, even in a greater extend. Corruption has spread and infected almost all levels of public and private administration with no control or regulation, as well as the judicial system. We are still a mostly mono-productive country where our main income comes from the fluctuating prices of petroleum while a push for agricultural advance was put on a second or third position.

The state uses the ideals of the “left” to present itself as “change” and “progress”, working and fighting for a revolution that never existed in the first place, something that can be seen by the recent events on Brazil and Argentina. The State’s power in South America has remained the same, regardless of it being left populist or right-wing regimes. Military regimes, social-democracy, neoliberalism, left-leaning charismatic individuals and now the center to right-wing political forces are all variants of the same power of the region. They’re all the same thing, the only difference is the language they use to justify their actions.

Those who would rather have this failed “left” administration and those who resent it but still believe in the “Bolivarian” project, fall into the error of not recognizing that what Nicolas Maduro is doing is simply a continuation of the project that Hugo Chávez was bringing in the longer term. The perfect example of that is the ecocide of the AMO (Arco Minero del Oricono), a mega open air mining project in collaboration with over 150 transnational corporations proposed by the government which looks to exploit mineral resources along a great area of the Orinoco river in order to compensate for the lowering oil prices. A project this big will not only endanger the fresh water resources of the Orinoco and Caroni rivers but will also be a threat to the indigenous population, and they are doing all of this in the name of “ecosocialism”. It should not be a surprise, this is the same government that hasn't stopped at all the exploitation of coal in the Sierra de Perijá, but what they are doing with the AMO is both baffling and ridiculously dangerous.

The popularity of the government has fallen to an all-time low these days, and that can be felt on the air and everyday actions. People are understanding the actual role and capacity the state had to solve some of the issues with better planning. Day after day, more and more communities join into public acts of rejection against the government, through protests that led up to mass arrests and an excess of force by the state forces of control. Militarization of towns, cities and many urban areas for long periods of time have been instituted. There have been many arrests of reporters, as well as their smartphones and equipment being taken from them against their rights, when they are present on some of this protests.

Those of us who believe in the principles of freedom, we work and push for the collective to finally realize that our future is in our hands and not on some dogmatic ideology or some charismatic “messiah”. We thrive for the abolition of the places and figures of power instead of reaching or managing it, and this will happen through a redefinition of objectives for the future of Venezuela from its people. The government, and its opposition grouped in the MUD (Mesa de la Unidad Democrática), are nothing more than the two heads of the same monster. There are many factors looking for power, and that is the thing, they are looking for it, they want it, they want to govern, they want to rule, and will do it against the will and individual liberties of many.

[Tomado de http://www.krapuul.nl/overig/blog/2600857/venezuela-na-chavez/]