6 March 2013 , By Arvind Sivaramakrishnan, The Hindu

In this October 9, 2012 photo, backdropped by a portrait of
independence hero Simon Bolivar, Venezuela‘s President Hugo Chavez
talks during a press conference at the Miraflores palace in Caracas.
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias, President of Venezuela, who died on March 5,
2013 at the age of 58, was a defining figure in Latin American
politics for fifteen years, becoming almost synonymous with the
popular tide that has elected and reelected left and centre-left
governments across the continent in that time.
Mr. Chávez combined courage with immense conviction. Born to
schoolteacher parents in Sabaneta in 1954, he qualified in military
arts and sciences at the National Military Academy, became an officer
in a paratrooper unit, and started his political career in the early
1980s by founding a secret organisation, the Revolutionary Bolivarian
Movement, which took its name from the Latin American independence
leader Simón Bolivar. His first big move was an attempted military
coup in 1992, for which he was imprisoned for two years before being
pardoned.
Yet ordinary people’s suffering under austerity measures led Mr.
Chávez’s fellow officers to try again, in November 1992; they failed.
Mr. Chávez, however, renamed his group the Movement of the Fifth
Republic, which later merged with other groups to form the United
Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and won the 1998 presidential
election on a socialist manifesto, promising millions relief from a
system which had put oil wealth into luxurious lives for the rich and
profits for the oil corporations.
Mr. Chávez removed corrupt military officers and started a national
reform programme. Venezuela, according to the United States Department
of Energy and a former CIA oil expert, has the world’s largest oil
reserves at 1.36 trillion barrels, and the new president promptly
nationalised the main oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA),
putting the profits into very effective social programmes. Carles
Mutaner, Joan Benach, and Maria Paez Victor note in CounterPunch that
between 2000 and 2010 social spending increased by 61 per cent or $772
billion; the country has the region’s lowest level of inequality, with
a reduction in its Gini coefficient of 54 per cent. Poverty is down
from 71 per cent in 1996 to 21 now, and extreme poverty is down from
40 per cent to 7.3. The programmes, or Misiones, have reached 20
million people, and 2.1 million have received senior citizens’
pensions, a sevenfold increase under Mr. Chávez.
The country has also cut food imports from 90 per cent to 30 per cent
of its consumption, and has reduced child malnutrition from 7.7 per
cent in 1990 to 5 today; infant mortality has declined from 25/1000 to
13 in the same period, and the country now has 58 doctors per 10,000
people (as against 18 in 1996). As many as 96 per cent of the
population now have access to clean water, and with school attendance
at 85 per cent, one in three Venezuelans is enrolled in free education
up to and including university.
Oil royalties help. A 2001 law cut foreign companies’ share of the
sale price from 84 to 70 per cent, and they now pay royalties of 16.6
per cent on Orinoco basin heavy crude; they used to pay 1 per cent.
Exxon and Conoco Philips rejected these terms, as Deepak Bhojwani says
in the Economic and Political Weekly (December 22, 2012), and were
expelled, but Chevron stayed.
Mr. Chávez of course infuriated the mainly white elites, some of whom
talked of him in racist terms, as well as the United States government
and press, both of which have consistently vilified him in language
bordering on the delusional. The State Department greeted the 2002
coup against Mr. Chávez by expressing solidarity with the Venezuelan
people and looking forward to “working with all democratic forces in
Venezuela.” The statement also said Mr. Chávez had dismissed the
Vice—President and Cabinet. In fact it was the coup figurehead, Pedro
Carmona Estanga, who, according to the Notable Names Database NNDB,
dissolved the national assembly, disbanded the supreme court, closed
the attorney—general’s and comptroller’s offices, and repealed 48
redistributive laws meant to help the poor.
Yet huge public support for Mr. Chávez meant the regime collapsed
within days. The President was reinstated, but the then U.S. National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice hectored him to “respect the
constitution”, and Greg Palast points out in The Progressive that in
2006 the Bush administration’s National Security Strategy called him a
demagogue out to undermine democracy and destabilise Venezuela.
The U.S. press dutifully played its part. In September 2012, the
WorldNet columnist Drew Zahn called Mr. Chávez a “socialist dictator”,
when the President was about to win a fourth successive election. All
those elections were of far greater probity than the respective U.S.
presidential elections of 2000 and 2004; this time Mr. Chávez won by
11 percentage points on a turnout of 80 per cent. Other U.S. media
bodies have spread partial truths about the Caracas government, saying
it bloats the public sector and lets the budget deficit spiral. In
fact, as Mark Weisbrot notes in the Guardian, 18.4 per cent of
Venezuela’s work force is in the public sector, in contrast to
Norway’s 29 per cent, and its 2012 budget deficit, projected at 51.3
per cent of GDP, is lower than the European Union average of 82.5 per
cent; inflation has declined too, from 27 per cent in 2010 to 19 per
cent now. Weisbrot also points out that the New York Times — which
welcomed the coup — has taken 14 years, longer even than other
American media outfits, to publish any arguments for Mr. Chávez.
Carles Mutaner and colleagues comment that U.S. analysts ask what
Venezuela will do when the oil runs out, but do not ask that about
other oil exporters like Saudi Arabia and Canada; neither do critics
note that the country’s interest payments are only about 3 per cent of
export earnings.
One of Washington’s problems is that, as Greg Palast recognises, Mr.
Chávez kept oil revenues within Latin America; unlike Saudi Arabia,
which buys U.S. treasury bills and other assets, Venezuela at one
point withdrew $20 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve, and since
2007 has aided other Latin American countries with $36 billion, most
of which has been repaid back. In effect, this supplants the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and possibly also its neoliberal
fellow—crusader the World Bank. Even more unpalatably for Washington,
Chávismo is now a clear political programme towards a Bolivarian
Revolution, which Palast calls a close replica of Franklin Roosevelt’s
New Deal, with progressive income tax, public works, social security,
and cheap electricity. For Bolivarians, such things are rights; they
are even reminiscent of T.H. Marshall’s view that they are integral to
substantive citizenship. Worst of all for U.S. regional hegemony, Mr.
Chávez himself said Venezuela is no longer an oil colony, that it has
regained its oil sovereignty, and that he wanted to replace the IMF
with an International Humanitarian Bank based on cooperation; Uruguay
already pays for Venezuelan oil with cows. Mr. Chávez wished the IMF
and the World Bank would “disappear”, and his passionate concern for
Latin American countries’ sovereignty made him a decisive figure in
the 2011 creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States (Celac).
Mr. Chávez could be ruthless; in 2010 a military court sentenced his
former key ally Raúl Isaias Baduel to just under eight years for
embezzlement after a long—delayed trial, and Baduel is now banned from
future political office, almost certainly because he criticised
constitutional reforms which would allow a president more than two
terms. Mr. Chávez was, however, no doctrinaire leader. Although a
Christian, he criticised clerical collusion with the ancien régime,
and did not accept the Church’s authority in politics. He also thought
seriously about political economy. Bhojwani notes that he favoured a
form of 21st century socialism partly derived from the work of Heinz
Dieterich Steffan. For Mr. Chávez, ethics, morality, cooperativism,
and associationism make for strong public economic activity and in
turn protects the equality which is essential to liberty; it even
includes a respect for private property.
The Venezuelan electorate have repeatedly endorsed this; in the
December 2012 gubernatorial elections — the first ones in 14 years in
which Mr. Chávez himself did not campaign — Mr. Chávez allies won 20
out of 23 states. After the President’s win in October, Argentina’s
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner had sent him a message
saying, “Your victory is also ours.” Billions, and not only poor
people, around the world would agree: Tu victoria es también la
nuestra.