The Chavez Revolution

Jul

y 28 was Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias' 45th birthday, and for some 5,000 well-wishers jammed into the capital's downtown Plaza Caracas, it was definitely time to party with abandon. There were fireworks, gyrating salsa dancers and an actor who played the ghost of Chavez's hero, the continent's Liberator, Simon Bolivar. Then the cheering crowd parted for a mock funeral procession, complete with undertaker and crying widow. The coffin at the head of the line of mourners contained the figurative remains of Venezuela's two long-reigning political parties, Accion Democratica and Copei, the Social Christian Party. Chavez crushed both of them during his landslide Dec. 6, 1998, election, then dug their grave deeper in a July 25 ballot to choose members for a new constitutional convention. Chavez candidates won 121 out of 128 seats. Now all the trappings of Venezuela's 44-year-old democracy were being swept aside to make way for the next phase of the President's political revolution.

No one else has held such a concentration of power in Venezuela since the ouster of dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez in 1958. And the similarities may not stop there. Wielding a potent blend of populism and nationalism, Chavez is acting swiftly to replace civilian power with social action directed by the armed forces. He seems to be leading one of Latin America's richest and most corruption-riddled countries back toward the kind of strongman rule that was common in the region during the 1940s and '50s, and most dramatically practiced by Argentina's Juan Domingo Peron. After Chavez's constitutional sweep, both houses of the opposition-led Congress meekly declared that they had "suspended" their sessions--were in effect going out of business. A similar fate probably awaits the Supreme Court, which has questioned Chavez's authority to sweep aside the old order in such a cavalier way.

The new Constitutional Assembly, which this week begins deliberations on the 26th constitution in Venezuelan history, is dominated by loyal followers. Among them are the President's second wife, Marisabel; his brother Adan; 19 retired military officers and a few aged leftist guerrillas, lawyers, journalists, folk singers and a racetrack announcer. They are expected to do exactly what Chavez, known popularly as El Comandante, says. "We're seeing the personalization of power," says Anibal Romero, a political scientist at Simon Bolivar University in the capital. "We now have a government of one man--not of laws or parties."

Chavez is far from an ordinary man. A onetime army lieutenant colonel who staged a bloody coup against civilian rule in 1992 and served two years in prison for his deeds, he clearly showed his displeasure with the niceties of old-style electoral politics during the constitutional campaign. Among other things, he broke rules barring public officials from campaigning. This drew a $7,500 fine, speedily paid by his supporters. His domestic policies show the same impulsive impatience with anything that smacks of the old order. Chavez's advisers include Luis Miquilena, an octogenarian Marxist philosopher who served as Interior Minister and Justice Minister earlier this year and seems to be Chavez's favorite for president of the Constitutional Assembly. Miquilena is pushing Chavez to review all contracts signed by the previous government. So far, his administration has canceled orders for Frameca, a French company, to expand the Caracas subway, even though the government faces a $20 million penalty for breaking the contract. Complains Venezuelan Credit Bank president Oscar Garcia Mendoza: "His Cabinet is full of old guerrillas and extreme leftists. There's nobody who's had any experience in business."

When it comes to foreign policy, Chavez is showing a similar soft spot for rebels and pariahs. He has announced plans to invest in Cuba's decrepit oil refineries, befriended Libya's Muammar Gaddafi and invited Saddam Hussein to a petroleum-producers summit in Venezuela. Almost as soon as Chavez took office, he struck up a controversial correspondence with the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich ("the Jackal") Ramirez Sanchez, who is serving a life term for murder in a French prison. The new President cocked a snook at Washington by refusing to let U.S. antidrug planes fly through Venezuelan airspace. Chavez has enraged neighboring Colombians by militarizing their common border, ostensibly to contain illegal immigration, and by offering to meet with Manuel Marulanda, leader of the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Laments a Colombian official in Bogota: "Relations with Venezuela are at their lowest--ever."