By Clodovaldo Hernández – Dec 15, 2024
A quarter of a century has passed since the historic day when the people of Venezuela voted to approve their new national Constitution.
Since that very day, which is also the anniversary of the Vargas Tragedy, the Constitution has lived dangerously, always threatened by the dark forces that have tried to repeal it and trample it.
Conceived by the creative powers of the people
Poet Gustavo Pereira, the constituent author of the preamble of the fundamental text, paraphrased the Credo of Aquiles Nazoa in its first line when mentioning the creative powers of the people. It was not mere literary license. Rather, the 1999 constituent process was an expression of that collective capacity to make dreams come true.
The National Constituent Assembly to refound the Republic was the basic promise of Hugo Chávez in his 1998 presidential campaign. In that sense, he has a record: it was the most quickly-fulfilled promise by any president in Venezuela’s history. Chávez had only been in office for a few minutes when he issued the decree to call on the people to decide whether they wanted a constituent process. Despite the legalistic objections, this was carried out in an exemplary democratic manner. In April 1999, the consultative referendum was held, and the majority supported the initiative. In July, the constituents were elected, and in December, the project was submitted to a new popular consultation.
A painful birth
That December 15 was a day of national birth. The people turned out to give the project their approval, an unprecedented event in Venezuela’s turbulent constitutional history. The birth was a painful process for reasons unrelated to the new Constitution. The most terrible tragedy fell upon La Guaira state (at that time called Vargas) and some towns in Miranda state. Landslides and flooding caused thousands of deaths and enormous material losses. Such a context prevented people from celebrating in the way the occasion deserved.
The first vaccines
The baby, despite everything, took its first steps in 2000. The father (Hugo Chávez, who can doubt it?) decided that the most responsible thing to do was vaccinate it against evils in the air. The main vaccine took the form of a complete relegitimization of powers through the “mega-elections.”
Despite certain technical difficulties, this process was carried out in July 2000. From it emerged a widely supported Chávez, the brand new unicameral National Assembly, the state governors, and the members of the Legislative Councils. Before reaching its first year, the National Bolivarian Constitution (CNB) managed to rejuvenate the country’s institutional landscape and put five public powers into operation, including the new Electoral and Citizen powers.
The attempted infanticide: “Kill it”
Once the constitutional readjustment stage was over, Chávez began his government work with special intensity in the second half of 2000 and throughout 2001. The dark forces (the national bourgeoisie, imperialism, the old displaced parties, and a portion of the middle class terrified by far-reaching media campaigns) increasingly disliked the actions of the charismatic president.
The demons were already on the loose at the end of 2001 when the Venezuelan Federation of Chambers of Commerce (the largest business union) attempted a first national strike. The conspiracy grew in 2002 with the participation of traitorous military officers, oil managers who called themselves “meritocrats,” and the most seemingly intractable coalition of media known until then. On April 12th, the blow against the Constitution was made. A cabal of rich people, corrupt unionists, and widowers of the old two-party system known as Puntofijismo beheaded the Bolivarian child with imperial blessing.
At that moment, defeated by such a swift maneuver, many revolutionaries thought that it had all been a brief, beautiful dream. We suffered some of the unspeakable pain of fathers and mothers who see a child die. Incredulous at what had happened, we witnessed the feast of the infanticides, and we wondered how something that cost so much effort and sacrifice, that was done with such adherence to democratic principles, could be crushed so quickly without mercy.
Fortunately, the resurrection was also instantaneous. After the initial stupor, the masses took to the streets to defend their Popol Vuh, as Chávez called the Constitution on that epic dawn.
To say that it was an “attempted infanticide” does not do justice to the plot since the Constitution was, in fact, clinically dead for a few hours after the vulgar emperor Pedro Carmona murdered it by means of an infamous decree.
However, the child returned from the other world, once again, on the shoulders of a people. It is enough to remember President Hugo Chávez, back in Miraflores, brandishing first a crucifix and then a miniature copy of his masterpiece.
Traumas of growing up
When the text was seven years old, it was considered necessary to make adjustments to meet the challenges of the road to socialism. The child went to the operating room for another referendum. The currents against the reform achieved a narrow victory, and the text remained as it was.
The father (Chávez, of course) was not one to give up. So, in 2009, he insisted on making a change, not as profoundly as in 2007, but restricted to the issue of the re-election of the positions of popular vote. In the fourth referendum of the process, the still-infant Constitution received its first amendment.
The death of the father
Perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to the CNB (even worse than its brief and irritating repeal in 2002) was the death of its main architect, Commander Chávez, in March 2013. Like a good part of the people, this young child, who was then 13 years old, was left orphaned.
The father’s absence has undermined the dissemination and permanent discussion of the content of the Constitution, something that Chávez did with his natural and prodigious pedagogical virtue. President Nicolás Maduro and the other heirs of the Commander have made the best effort to keep popular deliberation on the Constitution high. Still, it is redundant to say that no one has the capacity Chávez had to encourage debates at all levels of society, even among adversaries.
Crisis in adolescence
The most dangerous episode in the child’s life, who was already 16 years old, was the correlation of forces in the National Assembly, elected in December 2015. The first threats from the opposition leadership anticipated that they would try to dismantle the legal framework of the Bolivarian Republic, starting with the Constitution.
Relying on their parliamentary majority, the opposition forces tried to approve openly unconstitutional laws, which generated conflicts with the president. Several legal instruments with these characteristics ended up in the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), an organ that, according to the Constitution, must resolve this kind of conflict. The effort to put these laws into effect was so recurrent that the TSJ opted to declare the National Assembly in a situation of contempt.
The destructive branch of the opposition took the violent route in 2017 (as it had done in 2014) to try to nullify the legal order. In 2018, they attempted assassination. In 2019, they set up an interim government without any constitutional basis. This monstrosity approved a so-called Transitional Statute by which it was intended to repeal, de facto, the 1999 Constitution.
A youth always under threat
The murderous efforts against the Constitution have not ceased. At the end of 2024, they continue, and the first maneuvers for 2025 are already in sight. A robust and rebellious youth is not daunted. The Bolivarian National Constitution, born from the 1999 constituent process and approved in a popular referendum a quarter of a century ago today, has always lived dangerously. Bravo to it!
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/BR/SF
Clodovaldo Hernández
Venezuelan journalist and writer. He writes regularly for La IguanaTV, Supuesto Negado, and Mision Verdad.
