My favourite article on Venezuela (so far).
Excerpts (an individual or institutional subscription is required to read the full piece)
"Beset by five-digit inflation, food shortages and rising poverty and unemployment, the economy contracted by more than a third between 2013 and 2018, and has slid even further since. This has wiped out the real gains made by most of the population between the mid-2000s and the time roughly when Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez as president in April 2013.
There is no doubting, either, that Maduro has failed to address this crisis. Hampered by the razor-thin margin by which he won his mandate in 2013 – 1.5 per cent – he has governed with a combination of bluster and repression. He stuck to a disastrous exchange-rate policy even though it was visibly making things worse for most of the population.
The effects of this were made even worse by the US sanctions that started under Obama, who in March 2015 declared Venezuela an ‘extraordinary threat’ to US national security; under Trump, they have been extended several times.
But Maduro’s intransigence has been more than matched by that of the opposition. Its leaders are fervently committed to overturning chavismo, driven by a visceral loathing that often comes with a strong dose of racism. The first direct challenges to Maduro’s rule came in early 2014, with a series of protests, the guarimbas, led mainly by the middle class and students.
Venezuela’s opposition is a fractious alliance of different tendencies but for the past few years it has been dominated by its most vociferously right-wing components... Even ‘moderates’ such as the former minister of planning Ricardo Hausmann have recently begun openly calling for a US military intervention.
Guaidó’s claim to power rests on the idea that, since this vote was invalid, not only is Maduro not the legitimate president but, according to a Transition Law the opposition released on 8 January, there is no president. Constitutionally, this is shaky ground. Article 233 of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution specifies the circumstances under which a president can be replaced: death, resignation, removal by the supreme court, physical or mental incapacity, abandonment of post. The National Assembly has a supervisory role to play in each of these scenarios, but nowhere does the constitution say that the legislature can claim executive power for itself.
[T]he opposition’s programme for governing Venezuela although the outlines are clear: the ‘centralised model of economic control will be replaced by a model of freedom and markets’; the chavistasocial programmes will be replaced by direct (i.e. monetary) subsidies; ‘public enterprises will undergo a process of restructuring … including public-private agreements’ (i.e. privatisations). What’s being promised is a return to the conventional neoliberal wisdom of the 1990s – precisely the set of policies that produced misery in Venezuela, and which propelled Chávez to power in the first place.
It’s no accident that this comes at a moment when the right is flexing its muscles across Latin America; the eagerness with which forces outside Venezuela are seeking to put paid to chavismo is all too apparent.
It was the Trump administration, however, that really accelerated the pace of events. Regime change in Venezuela has been on Washington’s agenda since the early 2000s, but the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, and the boost he got through successive electoral victories and high oil prices, made it impracticable for several years.
As if to signal US intentions, on 25 January Trump appointed as his special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams, the man who ran the Reagan administration’s dirty wars in Central America, and who worked in the Bush White House during the last US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002.
Whatever this crisis is about, it isn’t about restoring democracy and prosperity to Venezuela. To read the Western press, you would think the country’s people were at last about to be set free from the tyranny under which they have been groaning for years, in a Caribbean rerun of the Arab Spring. But we’ve been here many times before. In Latin America alone, the long and disastrous record of US-led interventions is enough to cause alarm about the possible outcomes of this crisis."
—Tony Wood, London Review of Books
One should add the EU stance in supported a self-appointed president should be seen in the context of siding with a hegemon. The core capitalists states of the EU are subodinate to the US in major international issues. They put disagreements and rivalry aside, especially when it comes to fighting anything that smells "left"
The Battle for Venezuela
Excerpts (an individual or institutional subscription is required to read the full piece)
"Beset by five-digit inflation, food shortages and rising poverty and unemployment, the economy contracted by more than a third between 2013 and 2018, and has slid even further since. This has wiped out the real gains made by most of the population between the mid-2000s and the time roughly when Maduro succeeded Hugo Chávez as president in April 2013.
There is no doubting, either, that Maduro has failed to address this crisis. Hampered by the razor-thin margin by which he won his mandate in 2013 – 1.5 per cent – he has governed with a combination of bluster and repression. He stuck to a disastrous exchange-rate policy even though it was visibly making things worse for most of the population.
The effects of this were made even worse by the US sanctions that started under Obama, who in March 2015 declared Venezuela an ‘extraordinary threat’ to US national security; under Trump, they have been extended several times.
But Maduro’s intransigence has been more than matched by that of the opposition. Its leaders are fervently committed to overturning chavismo, driven by a visceral loathing that often comes with a strong dose of racism. The first direct challenges to Maduro’s rule came in early 2014, with a series of protests, the guarimbas, led mainly by the middle class and students.
Venezuela’s opposition is a fractious alliance of different tendencies but for the past few years it has been dominated by its most vociferously right-wing components... Even ‘moderates’ such as the former minister of planning Ricardo Hausmann have recently begun openly calling for a US military intervention.
Guaidó’s claim to power rests on the idea that, since this vote was invalid, not only is Maduro not the legitimate president but, according to a Transition Law the opposition released on 8 January, there is no president. Constitutionally, this is shaky ground. Article 233 of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution specifies the circumstances under which a president can be replaced: death, resignation, removal by the supreme court, physical or mental incapacity, abandonment of post. The National Assembly has a supervisory role to play in each of these scenarios, but nowhere does the constitution say that the legislature can claim executive power for itself.
[T]he opposition’s programme for governing Venezuela although the outlines are clear: the ‘centralised model of economic control will be replaced by a model of freedom and markets’; the chavistasocial programmes will be replaced by direct (i.e. monetary) subsidies; ‘public enterprises will undergo a process of restructuring … including public-private agreements’ (i.e. privatisations). What’s being promised is a return to the conventional neoliberal wisdom of the 1990s – precisely the set of policies that produced misery in Venezuela, and which propelled Chávez to power in the first place.
It’s no accident that this comes at a moment when the right is flexing its muscles across Latin America; the eagerness with which forces outside Venezuela are seeking to put paid to chavismo is all too apparent.
It was the Trump administration, however, that really accelerated the pace of events. Regime change in Venezuela has been on Washington’s agenda since the early 2000s, but the failed coup against Chávez in 2002, and the boost he got through successive electoral victories and high oil prices, made it impracticable for several years.
As if to signal US intentions, on 25 January Trump appointed as his special envoy to Venezuela Elliott Abrams, the man who ran the Reagan administration’s dirty wars in Central America, and who worked in the Bush White House during the last US-backed coup attempt in Venezuela in 2002.
Whatever this crisis is about, it isn’t about restoring democracy and prosperity to Venezuela. To read the Western press, you would think the country’s people were at last about to be set free from the tyranny under which they have been groaning for years, in a Caribbean rerun of the Arab Spring. But we’ve been here many times before. In Latin America alone, the long and disastrous record of US-led interventions is enough to cause alarm about the possible outcomes of this crisis."
—Tony Wood, London Review of Books
One should add the EU stance in supported a self-appointed president should be seen in the context of siding with a hegemon. The core capitalists states of the EU are subodinate to the US in major international issues. They put disagreements and rivalry aside, especially when it comes to fighting anything that smells "left"
The Battle for Venezuela
Comments