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From Venezuela and made by Venezuelan Chavistas
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro during an event commemorating a 2004 speech by the late President Hugo Chavez, which is considered a key anti-imperialist moment by his supporters in the history of his Bolivarian Revolution, in Caracas, Venezuela, Feb 29, 2024. Photo: Ariana Cubillos/AP.
By Steve Ellner – Mar 7, 2024
It is no secret that the Washington establishment is as enamored with Venezuela’s presidential candidate María Corina Machado as she is with the United States. In one example, the day after the Biden administration partially lifted sanctions against Venezuela last October 17, Antony Blinken warned that the measure would be revoked if by November 30 President Maduro did not lift a government ruling prohibiting Machado from running for president. The threat was averted by an eleventh-hour announcement that Machado could appeal the prohibition to the nation’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice. A few days later, Machado turned down the offer but subsequently reversed her decision.
Venezuela’s presidential elections are slated for the second half of 2024, and Maduro, who has governed since 2013, is expected to run for reelection. Machado, for her part, who calls Maduro a narco-dictator and says she prefers him alive to be able to send him to jail, was elected as the presidential candidate for the opposition. In primaries held last October, she secured an alleged 92 percent of the vote, though that figure was questioned by the runner-up candidate Carlos Prosperi. Machado’s candidacy, combined with the ruling against her running for office, spells trouble for a nation beset by political violence over the last 20 years.
The mainstream media and pro-establishment pundits limit their electoral predictions to two scenarios: Maduro loses, or he engages in electoral fraud. For some, regardless of the outcome, cheating is a forgone conclusion. Speaking to The New York Times, Geoff Ramsey of the Atlantic Council commented: “I don’t think the international community is under any illusion that this election is going to be perfectly free and fair.”
This either-or forecast belies multiple factors that work to the opposition’s disadvantage. The governing party, the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), is well organized and disciplined, unlike Machado’s makeshift Vente Venezuela party. More important, the divisions and mutual animosity within the opposition, and the distrust of Venezuelans toward politicians in general, may translate into widespread electoral abstention. Finally, Machado’s own supporters and Venezuelans in general oppose much of what Machado stands for, particularly her embrace of shock-treatment-style neoliberalism.
Luis Vicente León, a leading pro-opposition pollster, reported the day following the opposition’s primaries that about 70 percent of those who voted for Machado oppose her refusal to negotiate with the government and her backing of U.S. sanctions. Support for her, he added, is more “emotional” than anything else.
María Corina Machado, the neoliberal “outsider”
In December 2021, Machado’s Vente Venezuela broke with Juan Guaidó, Venezuela’s self-proclaimed president. “It’s time for the opposition to constitute a new direction,” she declared. Machado asserted that Guaidó’s parallel government’s “lack of transparency and disconnect with the people and with the United States” had produced “indignation.”
With these harsh words, many Machado followers and some pundits began to paint her as a maverick. El País called her “an isolated politician” and added that she is “fiercely against the moderate sector of the opposition, whom she has long accused of playing into the hands of the regime.”
Yet Machado is hardly an outsider. Ever since her claims of electoral fraud in the 2004 recall election against President Hugo Chávez, Machado has avidly supported all the opposition’s regime-change attempts that have ended in fiascos. In an unlikely encounter for an outsider, Machado, representing the National Endowment for Democracy-funded NGO Súmate, met with President George W. Bush in the White House in 2005. In 2014, Machado was on the podium next to the right-wing firebrand Leopoldo López when he initiated the abortive four-month protests known as the guarimba with insurrectional aims. Most telling, 10 days before the opposition’s October primaries, López’s Voluntad Popular withdrew its candidate and threw its support behind Machado.
Machado is far from being an “isolated politician.” She is in the same radical right camp as Voluntad Popular, which is also the party of Guaidó, who is now a virtual pariah.
Machado’s branding as an anti-politics politician makes sense. The polling firm Datincorp reported that 63 percent of those surveyed affirmed that “a new president unrelated to Chavismo and the current opposition should emerge from the 2024 presidential elections.” Along the same lines, pollster Oscar Schemel pointed out that “an outsider is the greatest danger for Chavismo.”
Machado’s right-wing candidacy follows a political trend throughout the region. In the 1990s, neoliberal candidates such as Alberto Fujimori, knowing that neoliberalism doesn’t win elections, hid their intentions and followed a “bait and switch” strategy. But over the last decade, with the acute polarization of Latin American politics, rightist pro-U.S. leaders have edged out centrist ones to face progressive governments. Now right-wing candidates are more open about their plans for a radical shakeup of the welfare state. Even so, many far-rightists put forward some populist proposals designed to divert attention from the unpopular measures they advocate. Rafael Uzcátegui, general coordinator of the NGO PROVEA, pointed to such a strategy, telling Venezuela’s El Tiempo that Machado’s role as a national consensus candidate involves a process of “invention and construction.”
Nevertheless, Machado is an extremist in many ways. She and her advisors see massive privatization as a vehicle for economic recovery. Her proposal to create an Agency of Energy and Oil represents a throwback to the early years of the petroleum industry in the 1920s. Her system of school vouchers and elimination of equality for the social security system forms part of what she calls “popular capitalism,” a term used by Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet. Her main education advisor pledges to make all Venezuelans bilingual in English.
Even more extreme is Machado’s strategy for reaching power through confrontation. The 25-year history of Chavista rule is spotted with the calls for civil disobedience aimed at regime-change, resulting in confrontations and violence. Machado’s insistence that popular mobilization coupled with pressure from foreign powers will convince Maduro to back down and allow her to run for president appears to be a recipe for violence.
In an illustrative example of this outlook, the Vente Venezuela leader and former mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma declared last year that the only way to register Machado as a candidate would be through “civil disobedience.” He also called for talking to military officers, which he claimed was “normal” and not conspiratorial. In doing so, Ledezma invoked the constitution’s Article 350, which had previously been interpreted by guarimba organizers as justifying the right of rebellion.
Henry Ramos Allup, the secretary general of the nation’s historically largest party, Acción Democrática, called Ledezma’s statement “ridiculous.”
The strategy of reaching power through confrontation and disruption promises to set the stage for right-wing repression that often accompanies the implementation of the unpopular, radical brand of neoliberalism that Machado advocates (remember Pinochet). The same dynamic was at play in the coup that briefly overthrew Chávez in April 2002, as the then editor of NACLA Fred Rosen and I noted at the time. We wrote in the July/August 2002 NACLA Report that coup leader Pedro Carmona and his allies attempted to achieve “a clean break with the populist past… They were rebelling… not on behalf of ‘democracy,’ a claim that could credibly be made by some of the populist anti-Chavistas, but on behalf of their class interests.”
The political side of Maduro’s strategy
The presidential elections will be about Venezuela’s economic adversities, but also about the opposition’s weaknesses, which Maduro has done much to deepen.
The opposition has attempted to oust Maduro by diverse means, as it did with Chávez in his early years in office. After each regime-change attempt—such as in 2015, when the opposition gained control of the National Assembly—opposition leaders announced Maduro’s imminent removal. Now Machado, Guaidó, and other anti-Chavistas recognize their (in Guaidó’s words) “ingenuousness” and the president’s staying power. They attribute Maduro’s survival to his ruthlessness and anti-democratic behavior.
In contrast, some on the left praise Maduro’s skill in withstanding all the destabilization schemes. Veteran leftist Eligio Damas, author of over 3,000 articles on the critical leftist website Aporrea, told me: “Maduro’s leftist critics fail to consider that compared to him, Chávez had it easy, both politically and economically. Maduro is politically astute, otherwise he wouldn’t have lasted in power.”
Indeed, Maduro has proved to be a formidable strategist. He has made several major moves that set off controversy as to their constitutionality but turned out to be masterstrokes. In 2017, Maduro called elections for a Constituent Assembly, which the opposition claimed needed to be ratified first in a national referendum. Maduro refused, but the call was a resounding success. It abruptly ended the four-month bloody guarimba street protests, whose singular aim was to oust Maduro. In a matter of days, the Assembly scheduled gubernatorial elections, and the opposition parties opted to participate, rather than continue the guarimba.
There were solid legal arguments for and against Maduro’s 2017 Constituent Assembly call. A second maneuver, however, was less convincing from a constitutional viewpoint, but equally effective in combating an insurgent opposition intent on regime change by any means possible. In 2020, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) recognized dissident leaders of Acción Democrática, Primero Justicia, and Voluntad Popular as the legitimate representatives of their respective parties. With the support of the Chavista deputies, who in return refrained from demanding any leading positions, the new leadership of these parties mustered the 84 votes needed to replace Guaidó as president of the National Assembly. Guaidó’s supporters then formed what became a parallel internet-based national assembly, but his claim to being the provisional president of Venezuela—which rested on his being president of the National Assembly—lost all credibility.
Undeniably, the TSJ’s ruling flouted the constitution. The Academy of Political Science denounced the TSJ’s “illegalization and intervention in the principal parties of the opposition” as violating the legal rights of political parties.
A third equally controversial move, which from the outset divided the opposition, was the ruling by the pro-Chavista National Controller Elvis Amoroso last June that deemed Machado ineligible to run for office, citing her support for U.S. sanctions. Amoroso told me, “Machado, with her support for a U.S. invasion, committed treason, but the controllership as an administrative body could only refer to that indirectly.” He added that the treason accusation will have to wait until her case goes to court.
Venezuelans Overwhelmingly Support Chavismo in Upcoming Presidential Elections: Hinterlaces Poll
The two largest opposition parties, Acción Democrática and Primero Justicia, among others, reacted to the controller’s ruling by proposing a strategy of playing by the rules of the game, as defined by the government, and avoiding divisive positions in order to unite the opposition, a policy that was a resounding success in the 2015 National Assembly elections. Machado, however, snubbed the proposed strategy by refusing to abandon her presidential aspirations and her polemical positions.
The government’s official recognition of the dissident-led Acción Democrática, Primero Justicia, and Voluntad Popular in 2020 also set the opposition against one another. The mainstream leaders accused the dissidents of accepting government bribes and called them “scorpions” (alacranes), a stigma that continued to sour relations and impeded agreements between the two blocs.
Luis Parra, the Primero Justicia dissident who became president of the National Assembly in 2020, pointed out three years later “time has proven us correct.” During that time span, most opposition leaders ended up abandoning positions that the dissidents had criticized, particularly electoral abstention and support for the Washington-imposed sanctions.
The positions of the dissident opposition parties are as far, if not farther, from Machado’s policies as they are from Maduro’s. The dissident Acción Democrática, which is running its own presidential candidate against Machado, is headed by long-time political leader Bernabé Gutiérrez, who has called Machado’s party “ultra-rightist.” He claims that most of the leaders of the radical right “are operating from the comfort of their self-imposed golden exile.” Gutíerrez adds that Machado and other members of the radical right promote abstentionism, which leads to “total chaos,” in the process giving Maduro a free pass by providing him with an excuse for his failed policies. In 2020 Washington imposed sanctions on Gutiérrez, along with the other main dissident opposition leaders, for having “undermined democracy in Venezuela.”
On the economic front
Maduro’s economic reforms favoring the private sector have gone hand in hand with the political strategy of neutralizing and dividing sectors of the opposition. Francisco Rodríguez, the principal advisor of Maduro’s main rival in the 2018 presidential elections, told me in Washington that after the 2018 elections, “Maduro began to abandon his misguided policy of alienating businesspeople, and that helped win over some in the opposition to the idea of dialogue.”
A major argument for abandoning the policy of ongoing government-decreed wage increases, which were rapidly eaten up by inflation, was put forward by Maduro’s top economic advisor and national deputy, Jesús Faría. “To increase salaries,” Faría advised, “it is necessary to increase productive capacity,” which largely rests on lifting the U.S.-imposed sanctions on Venezuelan oil. The Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV)—of which, ironically, Faría’s father was a historic leader, in addition to being a labor leader—denounces the policy as amounting to the “pulverization of salaries.”
As part of its economic strategy, the Maduro government has opened up the nation to much-needed capital from abroad, particularly in designated “Special Economic Zones” (SEZs), in which legal requirements are lifted to attract investments. The Communist Party and others on the left claim that the government has taken a neoliberal turn. But Maduro and his advisors make clear that the bulk of the investments for the SEZ’s will come not from the United States but from China and other BRICS nations.
For Machado, the idea of the SEZs is taken from the “totalitarian Chinese model.” Speaking to EFE news agency, former national deputy and member of Machado’s Vente Venezuela Luis Barragán added that the SEZs are a “rudimentary mechanism for the exploitation of the nation’s remaining strategic resources by criminal mafiosos.”
On his trip to China last September, Maduro toured one of China’s famous SEZs and signed an agreement establishing ties between the SEZs of both nations. At the same time, he appealed to the Chinese government to back Venezuela’s request for membership in BRICS, which he hailed for “accelerating the de-dollarization of the world.” During Maduro’s stay, the Chinese granted Venezuela the privileged status of “All Weather Strategic Partnership,” the first Latin American nation to receive it. Referring to the post-Mao reforms in China that some on the left view as backtracking from socialism, Maduro stated: “The experiences of China over these 40 years… have served as an inspiration for us.”
Others close to Maduro are also inspired by the success of China’s economic model. Before joining the Chávez camp in the 1990s, Maduro belonged to the pro-Chinese Liga Socialista party. The party disbanded after Chávez came to power, but its leaders came to occupy a disproportionate number of positions at different levels of the Chavista movement. The Liga’s last secretary general and former guerrilla Fernando Soto Rojas, who Maduro highly reveres, views Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping all favorably in spite of the glaring differences between them. He also denies that China can be labeled capitalist. Perhaps the maximum expression of the current Chinese model is the use of the term “revolutionary bourgeoisie” by Minister of Agriculture Wilmar Castro Soteldo, a participant in the Chávez-led 1992 abortive coup.
Maduro’s friendly relations with private capital have neutralized former foes. The business association Fedecámaras, which spearheaded two regime-change attempts in 2002-2003, now lashes out at the U.S. sanctions, claiming that 17.5 percent of their harsh impact has been felt by businesspeople. Former Fedecámaras president Ricardo Cusanno has complained that businesspeople face difficulties in opening a bank account abroad, “for the mere fact of being Venezuelan.”
The downsides
Maduro’s economic strategy of concessions to the private sector, as with his political strategy designed to achieve stability and weaken the “disloyal” opposition, has had mixed results. The hyperinflation of 2,300 percent in 2020 has calmed, but inflation still increased 234 percent in 2022 and 190 percent in 2023. On the other hand, the long lines at supermarkets and scarcities of many staples are now something of the past, while the percentage of violent deaths in 2023 was its lowest since 2001, according to the NGO the Venezuelan Violence Observatory.
The government’s anti-corruption campaign is also a mixed story. A crackdown against corruption in the state oil company PDVSA in March 2023, led by the Chavista Prosecutor General Tarek William Saab, included arrest orders against 61 supervisors, businesspeople, and government officials and the impounding of assets. The two kingpins of the corruption rings were Rafael Ramírez and Tareck El Aissami. Ramírez, known as “PDVSA’s tsar,” consolidated his control of the company and micromanaged it by allying himself with ex-members of the pro-establishment Acción Democrática and COPEI parties. Ramírez belonged to Chávez’s inner circle and El Aissami to that of Maduro and both were long-time leftists born into leftist families. Thus, the corruption cannot be written off as the work of an opposition’s fifth column. These episodes beg for discussion and self-criticism.
The root of the problem of PDVSA, like that elsewhere in the public administration, was the lack of institutional checks. This shortcoming was best illustrated by the fact that, for 10 years, Ramírez simultaneously occupied the presidency of PDVSA and headed the Ministry of Petroleum, whose function is to oversee the company. The current PDVSA head Pedro Rafael Tellechea is also petroleum minister.
Another minus for the Maduro government is that its same tactic to divide the opposition is now being used against the Communist Party, the nation’s oldest party. Last year, the TSJ turned over the official leadership of the Communist Party to seven government allies, but only two of them had actually been party members. The government’s justification was the party leadership’s failure to hold internal elections.
Referring to the TSJ’s ruling, political analysis Luigino Bracci, a critical supporter of Maduro, told the Orinoco Tribune that the Chavistas don’t want “leftist votes to be fragmented or dispersed into several small parties in the upcoming 2024 presidential elections.”
Another minus for the government that will also influence votes in the upcoming election is the erosion of longstanding labor conquests, especially the system of severance payment and collective bargaining. Rodolfo Magallanes, who teaches political science at the Central University in Caracas, told me that “once these benefits are wiped off the table they’re going to be hard to restore.” The same can be said of the partial dollarization of the economy. Prices of goods are now posted in dollars, thus undermining general acceptance of the bolívar.
US intervention: Where does it lead?
Whatever way you look at it, U.S. intervention has undermined Venezuelan democracy.
The governor of the state of Anzoátegui Luis Marcano told me that there’s no way the 2024 presidential elections can be democratic. “The voter is going to feel a gun pointed at their head. Vote for Maduro and the sanctions remain. And vice versa,” he said.
Washington’s Venezuelan policy has hurt its own professed or real goals in other ways. Since the early days of Chávez, Washington has favored not so much the opposition as a whole, but its radical right wing. The United States has gone from López to Guaidó and now to Machado. The first two are discredited. All polls indicate that Machado is popular with the opposition’s rank and file, but her program for Venezuela, her confrontational approach, and her pro-U.S. discourse are not.
Opposition pollster Luis Vicente León points out that the $15 million bounty offered by the United States for Maduro’s capture makes it unlikely that he will easily give up power. Added to that is Machado’s rhetoric that “if Maduro loses, he, his wife, his son, and those surrounding him will go to prison.” Under those circumstances, León asks, “Would you go into the ring to compete in fair elections?” León adds that the only way to resolve this predicament is through negotiations, an option that Machado flatly rejects.
Elections are supposed to resolve conflicts, albeit temporarily. The upcoming ones in Venezuela are unlikely to do even that.
NACLA published in the Spring 2024 issue
SE/OT
Steve Ellner is currently an Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives. He is a retired professor from the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela where he taught economic history and political science from 1977 to 2003. Among his more than a dozen books on Latin American politics and history is his soon-to-be released edited Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings (Rowman & Littlefield). He has published on the op-ed pages of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
