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The truth about Venezuela: a revolt of the well-off, not a 'terror campaign' The truth about Venezuela: a revolt of the well-off, not a 'terror campaign'
(5 months later)
Images forge reality, granting a Images forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. I thought that I, too, was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in Caracas this month: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.
power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep Major media outlets have already reported that Venezuela’s poor have not joined the right-wing opposition protests, but that is an understatement: it’s not just the poor who are abstaining – in Caracas, it’s almost everyone outside of a few rich areas like Altamira, where small groups of protesters engage in nightly battles with security forces, throwing rocks and firebombs and running from tear gas.
into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. I thought that I, too, was immune to the Walking from the working-class neighborhood of Sabana Grande to the city center, there was no sign that Venezuela is in the grip of a “crisis” that requires intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS), no matter what John Kerry tells you. The metro also ran very well, although I couldn’t get off at Alta Mira station, where the rebels had set up their base of operations until their eviction this week.
repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a I got my first glimpse of the barricades in Los Palos Grandes, an upper-income area where the protesters do have popular support, and neighbors will yell at anyone trying to remove the barricades – which is a risky thing to attempt (at least four people have apparently been shot dead for doing so). But even here at the barricades, life was pretty much normal, save for some snarled traffic. On the weekend, the Parque del Este was full of families and runners sweating in the 90-degree heat – before Chávez, you had to pay to get in, and the residents here, I was told, were disappointed when the less well-to-do were allowed to enter for free. The restaurants are still crowded at night.
popular rebellion. But I wasn’t Travel provides little more than a reality check, of course, and I visited Caracas mainly to gather data on the economy. But I came away skeptical of the narrative, reported daily in the media, that increasing shortages of basic foods and consumer goods are a serious motivation for the protests. The people who are most inconvenienced by those shortages are, of course, the poor and working classes. But the residents of Los Palos Grandes and Altamira, where I saw real protests happening – they have servants to stand in line for what they need, and they have the income and storage space to accumulate some inventory.
prepared for what I saw in Caracas this These people are not hurting – they’re doing very well. Their income has grown at a healthy pace since the Chávez government got control of the oil industry a decade ago. They even get an expensive handout from the government: anyone with a credit card (which excludes the poor and millions of working people) is entitled to $3,000 per year at a subsidized exchange rate. They can then sell the dollars for 6 times what they paid in what amounts to a multi-billion dollar annual subsidy for the privileged – yet it is they who are supplying the base and the troops of the rebellion.
month: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, The class nature of this fight has always been stark and inescapable, now more than ever. Walking past the crowd that showed up for the March 5 ceremonies to mark the anniversary of Chávez’s death, it was a sea of working-class Venezuelans, tens of thousands of them. There were no expensive clothing or $300 shoes. What a contrast to the disgruntled masses of Los Palos Grandes, with $40,000 Grand Cherokee Jeeps bearing the slogan of the moment: SOS VENEZUELA.
the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been When it comes to Venezuela, John Kerry knows which side of the class war he is on. Last week, just as I was leaving town, the US Secretary of State doubled down in his fusillade of rhetoric against the government, accusing President Nicolás Maduro of waging a “terror campaign against his own people”. Kerry also threatened to invoke the Inter-American Democratic Charter of the OAS against Venezuela, as well as implementing sanctions.
taken in by media imagery. Brandishing the Democratic Charter against Venezuela is a bit like threatening Vladimir Putin with a UN-sponsored vote on secession in Crimea. Perhaps Kerry didn’t notice, but just a few days before his threats, the OAS took a resolution that Washington brought against Venezuela and turned it inside-out, declaring the regional body’s “solidarity” with the Maduro government. Twenty-nine countries approved it, with only the right-wing governments of Panama and Canada siding with the US against it.
Major media outlets have already reported that Venezuela’s poor have not joined the right-wing opposition Article 21 of the OAS’s Democratic Charter applies to the “unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order of a member state” (like the 2009 military coup in Honduras that Washington helped to legitimize, or the 2002 military coup in Venezuela, aided even more by the US government). Given its recent vote, the OAS would be more likely to invoke the Democratic Charter against the US government for its drone killings of US citizens without trial, than it would be to do so against Venezuela.
protests, but that is an understatement: it’s not just the poor who are Kerry’s “terror campaign” rhetoric is equally divorced from reality, and predictably provoked an equivalent response from Venezuela’s foreign minister, who called Kerry a “murderer”. Here’s the truth about those charges from Kerry: since the protests in Venezuela began, it appears that more people have died at the hands of protesters than security forces. According to deaths reported by CEPR in the last month, in addition to those killed for trying to remove protesters’ barricades, about seven have apparently been killed by protesters’ obstructions – including a motorcyclist beheaded by a wire stretched across the road – and five National Guard officers have been killed.
abstaining – in Caracas, it’s almost everyone outside of a few rich areas like As for violence from law enforcement, at least threepeople appear to have been killed by the National Guard or other security forces – including two protesters and a pro-government activist. Some people blame the government for an additional three killings by armed civilians; in a country with an average of more than 65 homicides per day, it is entirely possible these people acted on their own.
Altamira, where small groups of protesters engage in nightly battles with A full 21 members of the security forces are under arrest for alleged abuses, including some of the killings. This is no “terror campaign”.
security forces, throwing rocks and firebombs and running from tear gas. At the same time, it is difficult to find any serious denunciation of opposition violence from major opposition leaders. Polling data finds the protests to be deeply unpopular in Venezuela, although they do much better abroad when they are promoted as “peaceful protests” by people like Kerry. The data also suggest that a majority of Venezuelans see these disturbances for what they are: an attempt to remove the elected government from power.
Walking from the working-class The domestic politics of Kerry’s posturing are pretty simple. On the one hand, you have the right-wing Florida Cuban-American lobby and their neo-conservative allies screaming for overthrow. To the left of the far right there is, well, nothing. This White House cares very little about Latin America, and there are no electoral consequences for making most of the governments in the hemisphere more disgusted with Washington.
neighborhood of Sabana Grande to the city center, there was no sign that Venezuela is in the grip of a “crisis” that Perhaps Kerry thinks the Venezuelan economy is going to collapse and that will bring some of the non-rich Venezuelans into the streets against the government. But the economic situation is actually stabilizing – monthly inflation fell in February, and the black-market dollar has fallen sharply on the news that the government is introducing a new, market-based exchange rate. Venezuela’s sovereign bonds returned 11.5% from 11 February (the day before the protests began) to 13 March, the highest returns in the Bloomberg dollar emerging market bond index. Shortages will most likely ease in the coming weeks and months.
requires intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS), no matter Of course, that is exactly the opposition’s main problem: the next election is a year-and-a-half away, and by that time, it’s likely that the economic shortages and inflation that have so increased over the past 15 months will have abated. The opposition will then probably lose the parliamentary elections, as they have lost every election over the past 15 years. But their current insurrectionary strategy isn’t helping their own cause: it seems to have divided the opposition and united the Chavistas.
what John Kerry tells you. The metro also ran very well, although I couldn’t get off at Alta Mira station, The only place where the opposition seems to be garnering broad support is Washington.
where the rebels had set up their base of operations until their eviction this
week.
I got my first glimpse of the barricades
in Los Palos Grandes, an upper-income area where the protesters do have popular
support, and neighbors will yell at anyone trying to remove the barricades –
which is a risky thing to attempt (at least four people have apparently
been shot dead for doing so). But even here at the barricades, life was pretty much normal, save for some
snarled traffic. On the weekend, the Parque del Este was full of families and runners sweating in the 90-degree heat – before
Chávez, you had to pay to get in, and the residents here, I was told, were disappointed when the less
well-to-do were allowed to enter for free. The restaurants are still crowded at night.
Travel
provides little more than a
reality check, of course, and I visited Caracas mainly to gather data
on the economy. But I came away skeptical of the narrative, reported
daily in
the media, that increasing shortages of basic foods and consumer goods
are a
serious motivation for the protests. The
people who are most inconvenienced by those
shortages are, of course, the
poor and working classes. But the
residents of Los Palos Grandes and Altamira, where I saw real protests
happening – they have servants to stand in line for what they need, and
they
have the income and storage space to accumulate some inventory.
These people are not hurting – they’re
doing very well. Their income has grown at a healthy pace since the Chávez
government got control of the oil industry a decade ago. They even get an
expensive handout from the government: anyone with a credit card (which
excludes the poor and millions of working people) is entitled to $3,000 per
year at a subsidized exchange rate. They can then sell the dollars for 6 times what they paid in what amounts to a multi-billion
dollar annual subsidy for the privileged – yet it is they
who are supplying the base and the troops of the rebellion.
The
class nature of this fight has always been stark and inescapable, now
more than ever. Walking past the crowd that showed up for the March 5
ceremonies to mark the anniversary
of Chávez’s death, it was a sea of working-class Venezuelans, tens of
thousands of them. There
were no expensive clothing or $300 shoes. What a contrast to the
disgruntled
masses of Los Palos Grandes, with $40,000 Grand Cherokee Jeeps bearing
the
slogan of the moment: SOS
VENEZUELA.
When it
comes to Venezuela, John
Kerry knows
which side of the class war he is on. Last week, just as I was leaving
town, the US Secretary of State doubled down in his fusillade of
rhetoric against the government, accusing President Nicolás Maduro of
waging a “terror campaign against his own people”. Kerry also threatened to invoke the Inter-American Democratic
Charter of the OAS against Venezuela, as well as implementing sanctions.
Brandishing the Democratic Charter
against Venezuela is a bit like threatening Vladimir Putin with a UN-sponsored
vote on secession in Crimea. Perhaps Kerry didn’t notice, but just a few days
before his threats, the OAS took a resolution that Washington brought against
Venezuela and turned it inside-out, declaring the regional body’s “solidarity” with the Maduro government. Twenty-nine countries approved
it, with only the right-wing governments of Panama and Canada siding with the
US against it.
Article 21 of the OAS’s Democratic Charter applies to the “unconstitutional interruption of the
democratic order of a member state” (like the 2009 military coup in Honduras that Washington helped to legitimize, or the 2002 military coup in Venezuela, aided even more by the US government). Given its recent vote, the OAS would
be more likely to invoke the Democratic Charter against the US government for
its drone killings of US citizens without trial, than it would be to do so
against Venezuela.
Kerry’s “terror campaign”
rhetoric is equally divorced from reality, and predictably provoked an
equivalent response from Venezuela’s foreign minister, who called Kerry a “murderer”. Here’s the truth about those charges from Kerry: since the protests in Venezuela began, it appears that more people have died at the hands of protesters than security forces. According to deaths reported by CEPR in the last month, in
addition to those killed for trying to remove protesters’ barricades, about
seven have apparently been killed by protesters’ obstructions – including a motorcyclist beheaded by a
wire stretched across the road –
and five National Guard officers have been killed.
As for violence from law
enforcement, at least three people appear to have been killed by the National Guard or
other security forces – including two protesters and a pro-government activist. Some
people blame the government for an
additional three killings by armed civilians; in a country with an average of more than 65
homicides per day, it is entirely possible these people acted on their own.
A full 21 members of the
security forces are under arrest for alleged abuses,
including some of the killings.
This is no “terror campaign”.
At the same time, it is difficult to
find any serious denunciation of opposition violence from major opposition leaders. Polling data finds the protests to be deeply unpopular in Venezuela,
although they do much better abroad when they are promoted as “peaceful
protests” by people like Kerry. The data also suggest that a majority of
Venezuelans see these disturbances for what they are: an attempt to remove the
elected government from power.
The domestic politics of Kerry’s
posturing are pretty simple. On the one hand, you have the right-wing Florida
Cuban-American lobby and their neo-conservative allies screaming for overthrow.
To the left of the far right there is, well, nothing. This White House cares very
little about Latin America, and there are no electoral consequences
for
making most of the governments in the hemisphere more disgusted with
Washington.
Perhaps Kerry thinks the Venezuelan economy is going to collapse and that will
bring some of the non-rich Venezuelans into the streets against the government.
But the economic situation is actually stabilizing – monthly inflation fell in
February, and the black-market dollar has fallen sharply on the news that the
government is introducing a new, market-based exchange rate. Venezuela’s
sovereign bonds returned 11.5% from 11 February (the day before the protests
began) to 13 March, the highest returns in the Bloomberg dollar emerging market
bond index. Shortages will most likely ease in the coming weeks and months.
Of course, that is exactly the
opposition’s main problem: the next election is a year-and-a-half away, and by
that time, it’s likely that the economic shortages and inflation that have so
increased over the past 15 months will have abated. The opposition will then
probably lose the parliamentary elections, as they have lost every election
over the past 15 years. But their current insurrectionary strategy isn’t
helping their own cause: it seems to have divided the opposition and
united the Chavistas.
The
only place where the
opposition seems to be garnering broad support is Washington.