Venezuela's Global Agenda: Six
More Years
by Bernardo Alvarez, Venezuelanalysis
www.zmag.org, April 10, 2007
Up until President Hugo Chavez was elected
in 1998, Venezuela wasn't a country that attracted much attention.
It was considered the "exceptional case" in Latin America.
Outsiders saw Venezuela as a stable and consolidated democracy,
a U.S. ally and an obedient adherent of the Washington Consensus
recipe of neo-liberal economic reforms. But starting with civil
disturbances in 1989 and a pair of military rebellions in 1992,
Venezuela was exposed as a country mired in poverty, a country
whose people were profoundly excluded from their own political
system and whose government had surrendered the capacity to address
pressing social and economic concerns. President Hugo Chavez's
election was a democratic revolution - by overwhelmingly casting
their votes in his favor, the Venezuelan people signaled their
desire for a new path, for a new government in which they could
more actively participate and which would marshal the resources
to fight for social justice. This democratic revolution has taken
place against the will of an old political elite that united against
our project and refused to accept the democratic changes mandated
by the Venezuelan electorate. At the same time, this democratic
revolution has re-defined relations between the state, the market
and the people, while spawning an active foreign policy aimed
at strengthening Venezuela's position in the international system
and promoting a redefinition and re-conceptualization of this
system as it was conceived after World War II. Just as national
development models of the past excluded important sectors of society
in the promotion of liberal democratic states in Latin America,
the international system has also excluded important sectors of
the world's nations and peoples from the structures that manage
the international system of nations. Exclusion has taken place
not only nationally, but also internationally.
Venezuela's democratic revolution was
profoundly tied to evolution of the international system and the
state of the post-Cold War world. After the Soviet Union fell,
policymakers and pundits assumed that any remaining ideological
battles were thus over - Francis Fukuyama called this moment the
"end of history," while Charles Krauthammer celebrated
the U.S.'s "uni-polar moment." Representative democracy
and free markets were assumed to have won "the war,"
and U.S. policy went about promoting them as if they had. The
countries of Latin America that met at the 1994 Summit of the
Americas united behind the mantra of the "Washington Consensus"
- free trade, limited government, open markets and private capital.
Just by its name - "consensus" - policymakers insinuated
that no alternative existed and no debate was necessary. The truth
of the matter is that no consensus existed. Instead, it was an
agreement between elites that sought to benefit from the proposed
policies. Recognizing this difference is essential to understanding
the changes that have taken place in Venezuela and other countries
of the hemisphere. The politics opposing the hegemony of neoliberalism
became the flagship of alternative movements whose influence has
grown in the politics of the region over the past two decades.
The proposals put forward by these movements are an important
component for any redefinition of the alternative development
models being proposed in the region and that will emerge in the
future.
The so-called "consensus" missed
a growing restlessness throughout the region, one that was plainly
on display in Venezuela. When neo-liberal economic reforms were
imposed in Venezuela in 1989, massive street demonstrations and
disturbances followed, and thousands were killed when the army
was called to the streets to restore order. The reforms also had
the pernicious effect of increasing the number of Venezuelans
living in extreme poverty from 43.9 percent to 66.5 percent over
one year. It turned out that Venezuela was not the "exception"
scholars in the Western world thought it to be. Despite its oil
wealth, it had much more in common with its neighbors than previously
thought. Suddenly, Venezuela's apparent stability was called into
question; the idea of a "consensus" fell apart. This
wasn't surprising. As I have already mentioned, the consensus
only really existed between Washington and elites in Venezuela.
And as new leaders and social movements started flexing their
muscles throughout the region, it became apparent that few in
Latin America were happy with the consensus. To them, the debate
wasn't over and no consensus existed.
And so today we find a number of progressive
governments in Latin America leading their countries down a new
path. No longer are free trade and private capital the only terms
of discussion; that discussion now includes poverty, social exclusion,
regional integration, and sovereignty and South-South cooperation.
And more than just expanding a discussion, these governments have
started re-defining the role of the state in development, the
role of the people in decision-making and the role of their countries
in the regional and global contexts.
In Venezuela, this process began with
the writing and public endorsement of a new constitution through
a national referendum. The Constitution of 1999 re-defines Venezuela's
political system by endorsing participatory democracy over the
traditional system of representative democracy; expanding protected
rights by recognizing the vital importance of economic, social
and cultural rights in democratic society; returning control of
the country's national resources to the state and establishing
achieving social justice as a constitutional mandate. The 1999
Constitution seeks as much representative democracy as is needed
and as much participatory democracy as is possible. It similarly
re-defines the country's economic system by promoting a development
model that puts ownership of natural resources back in the hands
of the Venezuelan people, more equitably distributes the country's
oil rents, fosters cooperatives for the national production of
goods, re-distributes fallow lands for public use and balances
the needs of private capital with the needs of Venezuela's people.
Internationally, Venezuela's new constitution and direction put
additional emphasis on working towards a multi-polar world, the
right to sovereignty and self-determination, South-South cooperation
and the political unity of South America.
What is remarkable and a sign of the political
maturity of the Venezuelan people is that all these changes have
taken place over the course of seven elections and referenda,
all in peace and democracy, despite repeated efforts by internal
and external forces to destabilize the inevitable process of change
under way in Venezuela. These efforts have included a military
coup supported by Washington against President Chavez, the sabotage
of the oil industry which cost the country over $10 billion in
60 days, and an economic stoppage led by some industrialists and
business owners that sought to break the back of the Venezuelan
economy. I cannot think of any other country in the region that
could have resisted, or any other government that could have survived
such hostility. But the Venezuelan people and their democratically
elected government survived and became stronger. Venezuelans risked
their lives to rescue the President from imprisonment during the
coup and brought him back to power; rescued the oil industry from
the hands of the saboteurs and withstood the hardships brought
about by the economic stoppage without jeopardizing the democratic
order. Even more remarkable is that through all of these crises,
the government led by President Chavez neither declared a state
of emergency nor sought to suspend constitutional guarantees.
In practice, Venezuela's new vision for
democracy and development has yielded a number of positive results.
In terms of the country's political arrangement, citizens are
more engaged than ever before, participating at various levels
of government and exercising more control over their own affairs.
In a historic change, Venezuelans can now employ the referendum
to cut short the terms of elected officials or vote down laws.
According to a region-wide survey by independent polling firm
Latinobarometro, Venezuelans are second most likely in the region
to call their country "totally democratic," and 57 percent
are satisfied with their democratic system - the highest number
in recent history. The economy has continued to grow - 9.6 percent
in 2006, one of the highest rates in the world - and diversify,
and 59 percent of Venezuelans ranked their economy as better than
12 months ago. The number of economic cooperatives has grown from
800 in 1998 to 181,000 in 2006, and more than 2 million hectares
of land have been distributed to 10,000 families. Social programs
have put 20,000 doctors in Venezuela's poorest neighborhoods thanks
to the invaluable help from the people and government of the Republic
of Cuba. Moreover, social programs have offered access to free
education, subsidized foods and job training, while poverty has
fallen from 40 percent in 2005 to 30 percent in 2006, according
to the World Bank. Put together, polling firm Consultores 30.11
found that 68 percent of Venezuelans feel positive about the state
of the country.
Internationally, Venezuela has promoted
- by constitutional mandate - the political integration of Latin
America, creating a number of regional oil initiatives (PetroCaribe,
for example, offers special financing for oil purchases to the
countries of the Caribbean) while participating in the creation
of a Bank of the South and a regional television broadcaster,
Telesur, which will soon begin broadcasting in Europe. We are
also promoting the broadcast of Telesur to the Spanish speaking
community in the U.S. Venezuela has also offered aid to various
countries and pushed the creation of a regional development fund.
Similarly, Venezuela has expanded its ties with the Global South,
increasing the number of embassies in Africa from 8 in 2005 to
18 for 2007 and cementing political, economic and social exchanges
with India, China and the countries of the Middle East. Venezuela's
active foreign policy has also included a close relationship with
the people of the U.S. In 2006-2007, Venezuela delivered discounted
heating oil to close to 500,000 families in 16 states and in 173
Native American tribes, while sending an additional shipment of
2.5 million barrels of gasoline after the disaster of Hurricane
Katrina. The horrific aftermath of Katrina shows that the problem
of poverty and exclusion is a problem that affects us all.
Generally speaking, the administration
of President George W. Bush has looked upon Venezuela's new direction
with disdain, skepticism and concern. Why? Because these goals
have clashed with Washington's insistence on free trade as the
only means to development, representative and elite-based democracy
as the only viable political organization of society and the use
of preventive war and transformational diplomacy as its main diplomatic
tools. Also, the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001 brought
back many of the policies and personalities of the Cold War, harking
the return of a hegemonic and paternalistic pattern of interacting
with the hemisphere that dates back to the Monroe Doctrine of
1823. This has brought a loss of confidence and a deterioration
of the image of the U.S. in the region. The U.S. continued attempts
to dictate to other countries the actions they should take, the
path of development they should follow and its mantra that you
are "either with us or against us" has put it at odds
with countries in the region and around the world. For example,
initiatives for the "promotion of democracy" seem to
be a component of its preventive war and transformational diplomacy
strategy that assumes a universal definition of democracy. In
Venezuela, these initiatives have often benefited organizations
of civil society that have taken anti-democratic actions against
the government of President Chavez.
Washington's support for the coup that
overthrew President Chavez from power in April 2002, along with
its policies in the Middle East, has made many in Latin America
skeptical about the true intentions of the U.S. It was only recently
that President Bush started speaking of the importance of achieving
social justice in the hemisphere, and even then it was seen more
as a means to isolate Venezuela than a true recognition of a new
and different Latin America. Venezuela would like to believe that
this new proposal for change in U.S. vision and policies for the
region are indeed sincere. However, the proposal to designate
barely $1.67 billion for assistance to the region next year makes
us skeptical. After all, this is approximately the amount the
U.S. currently spends weekly in the war in Iraq. Moreover, there
is skepticism about the double discourse and dual morality with
which the U.S. administration deals with sensitive topics such
as terrorism. The United States continues to ignore its legal
obligation to extradite the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to
Venezuela for 73 counts of first degree murder in relation to
the downing of the Cubana de Aviación passenger plane in
1973. Venezuela asked for his extradition in May of 2005. Rather
than extradite or prosecute him, the United States may soon release
him. He had a bail hearing in El Paso, Texas yesterday, 3 April
2007, where he is being tried not for murder or terrorism-but
for lying to the Immigration Service. Venezuela believes terrorists
ought to be prosecuted, not protected. The U.S. war on terrorism
cannot be premised on a double standard. Meanwhile, the U.S. has
placed unilateral sanctions on Venezuela for what it considers
to be my country's lack of cooperation in the fight against terrorism,
accusing Venezuela of providing safe heaven to the FARC of Colombia.
This despite repeated statements from Bogota that praise Venezuela's
efforts in that country's fight against terror and my country's
effort to support the peace process in Colombia. For Washington,
standards on such sensitive matters seem to change depending of
whether you are a friend of the administration or not._Venezuela's
new direction is not a threat to the interests of the U.S., but
it is a challenge to its hegemonic vision of the world and the
hemisphere.
The presidential election of December
3, 2006 marked another step in Venezuela's democratic revolution.
With 75 percent turnout, some 63 percent of the Venezuelan people
re-elected Hugo Chavez as their president. After seven years in
power, President Chavez achieved what can be considered a remarkable
political victory anywhere in the world: he obtained 1.7 million
more votes than he did when he was first elected in 1998. With
a renewed mandate from the Venezuelan people, President Chavez
and his government are deepening and expanding a model of democracy
and development that places emphasis on social justice, participatory
democracy, regional integration and multi-polarity. Other countries
are similarly pursuing such paths according to their means, the
wishes of their people and their particular historical circumstances.
What these new governments represent is a renewed debate over
how democracy and development are to occur, what role the state
and the people are to play, what role natural resources should
play in the development of their nations, and how those processes
will shape the international system, particularly relations among
nations in our hemisphere. All nations of this hemisphere, and
the structures that were created after World War II to manage
the Inter-American system, face the challenge of adapting to these
new realities. We, in Venezuela, are committed to the promotion
of social justice and to addressing the historical frustration
that have afflicted so many of our people that were historically
excluded from the development processes. We are also committed
to promoting a hemisphere where relations among nations are based
on mutual respect, cooperation, solidarity and integration. In
Venezuela, we are not proposing anything against the U.S. What
we propose is in favor of the countries in Latin America. This
must be understood as such. For Venezuela, our time is surely
not the "end of history". It's only the beginning.
Bernardo Alvarez is Venezuela's Ambassador
to the United States. This article is a speech by him at the Center
for Latin American Studies at Brown University in Provedence,
USA.
Venezuela page
Home Page