Re: Venezuela
Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2019 5:11 pm
Venezuela. A brief history of infamy
Jean Baptiste Thomas
There are comments that would smile if the situation was not so serious. Without even mentioning Donald Trump's war-time statements, relayed on twitter, in French in the text, by Emmanuel Macron, according to some media, all acquired, or almost, to the cause of Juan Guaidó, the corruption, authoritarianism, nepotism, political violence, extreme poverty and dependence on oil would be an invention of Hugo Chávez that Nicolás Maduro would inherit. Having a short memory is one thing, but it sometimes sounds like a lot of slander in due form.
Credit. Francisco Solórzano. Photo taken during the repression of Caracazo, early March 1989
It is enough to look at the history of Venezuela in the twentieth century to understand that the realities of the Maduro regime, as well as certain mechanisms that Chavismo has cultivated are, in fact, deeply embedded in the world. identity of the country, shaped or, rather, deformed, by the US imperialism and a rentier bourgeoisie which made, during the 20th century, infamy, a mode of governance. This same infamy that Jorge Luis Borges describes, in one of his most famous collections, published in 1935, as a succession of scams, robberies, concealment and murders, made up more or less skilfully.
Black gold and the beginning of the end
The history of contemporary Venezuela, or "useful Venezuela," one could say, officially begins on July 31, 1914, near the town of Baralt, near the Gulf of Maracaibo, in the west of the country. Until then, Venezuela had never been more than a distant Captain-General of the Spanish Crown, during the time of the Empire, especially important for its strategic location, advanced point of Madrid in the Caribbean, vis-a-vis the Viceroyalty of the Brazil, controlled by the Portuguese, and against Dutch, British and French interests, attached to the sugar islands of the small and large Antilles. After independence, and since the Liberator's dreams of unity, Simón Bolívar, had stranded on the petty narrowness of the interests of the creole, white and latifundist bourgeoisies, supported by Great Britain, Venezuela separates from Greater Colombia, becoming a small, poor country. Poor, for the descendants of slaves and the little people. Rich, on the other hand, for the planters. In 1914, however, the situation changed dramatically and made the country from an absolutely peripheral zone to global capitalism as a pivotal region for the entire system.
Almost concomitantly with what is happening in the Caspian Sea, off Baku, and in San Luis Potosí, as early as 1904, then in the East Coast regions of Mexico, it is therefore in Baralt and its surroundings in the area of the Gulf of Maracaibo that emerge the first derricks that will pump the Venezuelan black gold. This is the beginning of a huge economic boom that, far from making the country's fortunes, will make the fortunes of a few, especially on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico, in the tall buildings of New York where you will find the seats of companies that will grab the jackpot. The United States, until then, had been relatively quiet in Venezuela. We forget too often, indeed, that Latin America is, at least until the First World War - or even until the 1930s for the Southern Cone - the hunt for the British Crown. It is indeed the Europeans who control Venezuela until the beginning of the 20th century. They arrogated even the right, faced with a default of payment of Caracas, in 1902, to send a squadron prusso-britannico-Italian to bombard Puerto Cabello and to assert their banking interests. On their knees, the government will eventually pay and the last installment will not happen until the 1930s. to send a Prusso-British-Italian squadron to bomb Puerto Cabello and assert their banking interests. On their knees, the government will eventually pay and the last installment will not happen until the 1930s. to send a Prusso-British-Italian squadron to bomb Puerto Cabello and assert their banking interests. On their knees, the government will eventually pay and the last installment will not happen until the 1930s.
The United States, they, are dedicated to investment, especially in this new sector that looks to be juicy and the Europeans will need after the war: oil. This is the best way to move their competitors from across the Atlantic. Washington maintains excellent relations with the dictator in place, Juan Vicente Gómez. First a great landowner before becoming a general, holding more of a soldier than a brilliant strategist, he came to power with the support of the British in 1908 and stayed there, with the blessing of the Americans, until 1935 Archetype of the Latin-American dictator at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, both brutal and liberal, the one who serves as a model for Gabriel García Márquez in The Autumn of the Patriarchis never anything but the aide-de-camp of the American Majors, those companies that will make their fortune in the black gold.
If at the origin of any accumulation, there is a theft, it is called the absence of accounting books, for Venezuela, between 1914 and 1938. Throughout the period, there is no tax record of the quantity of oil pumped, barreled and exported from the Gulf of Maracaibo to the United States or Europe. In 1922, American jurists drafted the first petroleum law in Venezuela. If the crude represents, in 1920, a little less than 2% of the country's exports, this figure rises to 91% in 1935. The dependence on oil is therefore not new. What has changed over the decades, based on the relationship between the governments in place and the big northern neighbor, is the ownership of the oil industry.
Anticommunism, Cold War and dictatorship
After the Second World War, Washington ended up securing a full hold over most of Latin America. In Venezuela, this will be done through a much more modern and directly pro-American dictatorship, in a Cold War regime, where Juan Vicente Gómez had, a few decades earlier, sometimes managed to play British interests against the United States. Americans, and vice versa. General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, meanwhile, is the Washington man. And Washington does it well.
He dominated Venezuela's political life from 1950 and, when two years later, it was the opposition that was about to win the elections, the military was named "interim president", the National Constituent Assembly on proclaiming the President in December 1952. Under the Constitution, it goes without saying. The dictatorship of Pérez Jiménez, which is inaugurated by the prohibition of the great left-wing Social Democratic Party, Democratic Action (AD), and the Communist Party of Venezuela, could be summed up in three key moments, quite paradigmatic. Caracas, the capital, is transformed from top to bottom and the oil money is used to destroy the old historic center to replace it with concrete buildings, steel and glass, pale copy of the city of New York. Special legislation is passed in such a way as to reduce to a minimum the royalties that Majors are expected to pay to the government. It is estimated that in the 1950s half of the profits earned by Standard Oil came from its Venezuelan subsidiary. This embezzlement of funds in due form gives an idea of the largesse of the dictatorship with respect to its petroleum tutors. Finally, they make it good since Pérez Jiménez is given the"Legion of Merit" , in 1954, one of the highest decorations in the United States, generally rewarding, almost exclusively, a North American serviceman for services rendered to the homeland. This is how Washington had to see Pérez Jiménez.
Fraudulent alternation, false democracy and real corruption
A fraction of the army, however, as well as a portion of the bourgeoisie, do not agree to be kept on the margins of the lucrative contracts that Pérez Jiménez and his relatives spend, and kept on the sidelines from a political point of view. Many, moreover, who believe that such a dictatorship, politically and economically excluante, is a real threat to the established order because generating unsustainable contradictions in the long term. The overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator friend of the United States, by the BarbudosCuban, early 1959, will show how right they were. It was therefore in 1958 that, in favor of a military coup, the parties of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, the Democratic Republican Union, the Christian Democrats of COPEI and the Social Democrats of AD agreed to put in place a new system of electoral alternation with very democratic appearances, but excluding, in fact, the PC. Similarly, this regime, resulting from the "Pact of Punto Fijo", should allow to renegotiate the conditions of subordination vis-à-vis the United States, without ever, to question the latter. The money from the oil rent is supposed, in the last instance, to oil all these mechanisms, each party reinforcing its trade union power over the workers in the energy sector. We change everything so that nothing changes. It is,"Pacto de Punto Fijo" , bold enough to generate, sometimes, conflicts and friction with Washington without ever, however, that Venezuela is emerging from Western orbit.
The system is, in reality, extremely corrupt, perfectly clientelist and practices fluency and nepotism. With its democratic screen, however, it only holds as long as crude prices hold. And they will hold for nearly three decades. From an economic point of view, the oil question is central to attempts to reform the development model. We go as far as to nationalize, partially, the sector, with the creation of PDVSA, in 1976. Nevertheless, the extreme dependence on the prices of the crude, whether they are in good condition or at the lowest, causes, mechanically and cyclical, phases of hyperinflation. The first, moreover, goes back precisely to the oil boom of 1974-1978. Over the decades, however, the country is caught up by the mechanisms of dependence, aggravated by a heavy burden of external debt. If Venezuela does not apply, like the rest of the Latin American countries, the neoliberal recipes advocated by the IMF in the first half of the 1980s, the contradictions accumulated are no less great. They will explode in broad daylight in 1989.
Caracazo. The big collapse
In a context marked by strong political uncertainties, Carlos Andrés Pérez was largely re-elected in 1988. Man of left, the leader of AD had been, between 1974 and 1979, the "president of the Venezuelan miracle" . He came to power in 1988 with his anti-IMF rhetoric, promising a "big turn," and Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega were invited to the inauguration ceremony. The turnaround, just weeks after his election, is even more dizzying. Under the pretext of getting a loan of $ 4.5 billion, the new government says it is forced to apply, zealously, the shock therapy of the Monetary Fund. Carlos Andrés Pérez has confidence in his ability to persuade and channel, in the name of his "glorious presidency"of the 1970s, the popular grumbling that could be expressed.
It is nonetheless more than the grumbling, which breaks out, and Carlos Andrés Pérez will have to do with his beautiful speeches. The detonator is the increase in the price of gasoline, a paradox in a country that is one of the main producers. In the province of Miranda, in Guarenas, clashes erupted on January 26, 1989 in minibus depots between employees, going to work and not wanting to pay the rise, and drivers. On the 27th, the wind of anger spreads to Caricuao, La Guaira, Maracay, Valencia, Merida, Maracaibo and, of course, Caracas. On the 28th, in the face of what is increasingly resembling a mass popular uprising, the "leftist" government proclaimed a state of emergency and reinstated the "Plan Ávila", the anti-insurgency program that had was used against rural guerrillas in the 1960s.
The IMF program applied in a bloodbath
The result is without appeal. The movement is crushed in blood and ends on March 8, 1989, but the repression probably causes more than 3000 deaths for the city of Caracas alone. In the "barrios" of the capital, the soldiers retrieve the bodies and throw them into mass graves. The IMF program is applied to the letter, but the political caste in Venezuela since 1958 is perfectly discredited, morally and politically. Poverty reaches almost 80% of the population. In the army, which has brutally repressed, dissenting voices are rising. Among them, that of a lieutenant-colonel of paratroopers of 38 years, named Hugo Chávez.
It is therefore against a backdrop of popular reflux and through mechanisms of expression of the still latent anger that Chávez attempts a first failed coup in 1992. He will then be triumphantly elected in 1998. invested with the mission to put an end to this "Pact of Punto Fijo" responsible for so much misery, violence and suffering. The 1998 election is, precisely, a reaction to this corrupt, clientelist regime which, after three decades of redistributionist policies of the oil windfall, was watering everywhere as soon as its financial room for maneuver was reduced. But with the coming into power of Chávez, supported by a strong support that will be transformed, between 2002 and 2006, into a much more active mobilization of the popular sectors,
The history of Venezuela is therefore the story of a great swindle, a large-scale theft, which continues today. The perpetrators have sometimes changed their name and costume. The scams, they have always been Venezuelans. Being poor in a country sitting on the richest oil reserves in the world: this is a paradox that has been, periodically, an extremely powerful fuel of revolt, controlled, channeled or repressed by governments in place, often responding directly to North American interests. but also European Majors. This is what has structured Venezuelan contemporary history. All these elements, purely secondary, no doubt, that journalists, politicians and heads of state forget when making the black legend of Maduro and Chavismo and support, with more or less finesse,
https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Ven ... -l-infamie
Google Translator
Jean Baptiste Thomas
There are comments that would smile if the situation was not so serious. Without even mentioning Donald Trump's war-time statements, relayed on twitter, in French in the text, by Emmanuel Macron, according to some media, all acquired, or almost, to the cause of Juan Guaidó, the corruption, authoritarianism, nepotism, political violence, extreme poverty and dependence on oil would be an invention of Hugo Chávez that Nicolás Maduro would inherit. Having a short memory is one thing, but it sometimes sounds like a lot of slander in due form.
Credit. Francisco Solórzano. Photo taken during the repression of Caracazo, early March 1989
It is enough to look at the history of Venezuela in the twentieth century to understand that the realities of the Maduro regime, as well as certain mechanisms that Chavismo has cultivated are, in fact, deeply embedded in the world. identity of the country, shaped or, rather, deformed, by the US imperialism and a rentier bourgeoisie which made, during the 20th century, infamy, a mode of governance. This same infamy that Jorge Luis Borges describes, in one of his most famous collections, published in 1935, as a succession of scams, robberies, concealment and murders, made up more or less skilfully.
Black gold and the beginning of the end
The history of contemporary Venezuela, or "useful Venezuela," one could say, officially begins on July 31, 1914, near the town of Baralt, near the Gulf of Maracaibo, in the west of the country. Until then, Venezuela had never been more than a distant Captain-General of the Spanish Crown, during the time of the Empire, especially important for its strategic location, advanced point of Madrid in the Caribbean, vis-a-vis the Viceroyalty of the Brazil, controlled by the Portuguese, and against Dutch, British and French interests, attached to the sugar islands of the small and large Antilles. After independence, and since the Liberator's dreams of unity, Simón Bolívar, had stranded on the petty narrowness of the interests of the creole, white and latifundist bourgeoisies, supported by Great Britain, Venezuela separates from Greater Colombia, becoming a small, poor country. Poor, for the descendants of slaves and the little people. Rich, on the other hand, for the planters. In 1914, however, the situation changed dramatically and made the country from an absolutely peripheral zone to global capitalism as a pivotal region for the entire system.
Almost concomitantly with what is happening in the Caspian Sea, off Baku, and in San Luis Potosí, as early as 1904, then in the East Coast regions of Mexico, it is therefore in Baralt and its surroundings in the area of the Gulf of Maracaibo that emerge the first derricks that will pump the Venezuelan black gold. This is the beginning of a huge economic boom that, far from making the country's fortunes, will make the fortunes of a few, especially on the other side of the Gulf of Mexico, in the tall buildings of New York where you will find the seats of companies that will grab the jackpot. The United States, until then, had been relatively quiet in Venezuela. We forget too often, indeed, that Latin America is, at least until the First World War - or even until the 1930s for the Southern Cone - the hunt for the British Crown. It is indeed the Europeans who control Venezuela until the beginning of the 20th century. They arrogated even the right, faced with a default of payment of Caracas, in 1902, to send a squadron prusso-britannico-Italian to bombard Puerto Cabello and to assert their banking interests. On their knees, the government will eventually pay and the last installment will not happen until the 1930s. to send a Prusso-British-Italian squadron to bomb Puerto Cabello and assert their banking interests. On their knees, the government will eventually pay and the last installment will not happen until the 1930s. to send a Prusso-British-Italian squadron to bomb Puerto Cabello and assert their banking interests. On their knees, the government will eventually pay and the last installment will not happen until the 1930s.
The United States, they, are dedicated to investment, especially in this new sector that looks to be juicy and the Europeans will need after the war: oil. This is the best way to move their competitors from across the Atlantic. Washington maintains excellent relations with the dictator in place, Juan Vicente Gómez. First a great landowner before becoming a general, holding more of a soldier than a brilliant strategist, he came to power with the support of the British in 1908 and stayed there, with the blessing of the Americans, until 1935 Archetype of the Latin-American dictator at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century, both brutal and liberal, the one who serves as a model for Gabriel García Márquez in The Autumn of the Patriarchis never anything but the aide-de-camp of the American Majors, those companies that will make their fortune in the black gold.
If at the origin of any accumulation, there is a theft, it is called the absence of accounting books, for Venezuela, between 1914 and 1938. Throughout the period, there is no tax record of the quantity of oil pumped, barreled and exported from the Gulf of Maracaibo to the United States or Europe. In 1922, American jurists drafted the first petroleum law in Venezuela. If the crude represents, in 1920, a little less than 2% of the country's exports, this figure rises to 91% in 1935. The dependence on oil is therefore not new. What has changed over the decades, based on the relationship between the governments in place and the big northern neighbor, is the ownership of the oil industry.
Anticommunism, Cold War and dictatorship
After the Second World War, Washington ended up securing a full hold over most of Latin America. In Venezuela, this will be done through a much more modern and directly pro-American dictatorship, in a Cold War regime, where Juan Vicente Gómez had, a few decades earlier, sometimes managed to play British interests against the United States. Americans, and vice versa. General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, meanwhile, is the Washington man. And Washington does it well.
He dominated Venezuela's political life from 1950 and, when two years later, it was the opposition that was about to win the elections, the military was named "interim president", the National Constituent Assembly on proclaiming the President in December 1952. Under the Constitution, it goes without saying. The dictatorship of Pérez Jiménez, which is inaugurated by the prohibition of the great left-wing Social Democratic Party, Democratic Action (AD), and the Communist Party of Venezuela, could be summed up in three key moments, quite paradigmatic. Caracas, the capital, is transformed from top to bottom and the oil money is used to destroy the old historic center to replace it with concrete buildings, steel and glass, pale copy of the city of New York. Special legislation is passed in such a way as to reduce to a minimum the royalties that Majors are expected to pay to the government. It is estimated that in the 1950s half of the profits earned by Standard Oil came from its Venezuelan subsidiary. This embezzlement of funds in due form gives an idea of the largesse of the dictatorship with respect to its petroleum tutors. Finally, they make it good since Pérez Jiménez is given the"Legion of Merit" , in 1954, one of the highest decorations in the United States, generally rewarding, almost exclusively, a North American serviceman for services rendered to the homeland. This is how Washington had to see Pérez Jiménez.
Fraudulent alternation, false democracy and real corruption
A fraction of the army, however, as well as a portion of the bourgeoisie, do not agree to be kept on the margins of the lucrative contracts that Pérez Jiménez and his relatives spend, and kept on the sidelines from a political point of view. Many, moreover, who believe that such a dictatorship, politically and economically excluante, is a real threat to the established order because generating unsustainable contradictions in the long term. The overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator friend of the United States, by the BarbudosCuban, early 1959, will show how right they were. It was therefore in 1958 that, in favor of a military coup, the parties of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, the Democratic Republican Union, the Christian Democrats of COPEI and the Social Democrats of AD agreed to put in place a new system of electoral alternation with very democratic appearances, but excluding, in fact, the PC. Similarly, this regime, resulting from the "Pact of Punto Fijo", should allow to renegotiate the conditions of subordination vis-à-vis the United States, without ever, to question the latter. The money from the oil rent is supposed, in the last instance, to oil all these mechanisms, each party reinforcing its trade union power over the workers in the energy sector. We change everything so that nothing changes. It is,"Pacto de Punto Fijo" , bold enough to generate, sometimes, conflicts and friction with Washington without ever, however, that Venezuela is emerging from Western orbit.
The system is, in reality, extremely corrupt, perfectly clientelist and practices fluency and nepotism. With its democratic screen, however, it only holds as long as crude prices hold. And they will hold for nearly three decades. From an economic point of view, the oil question is central to attempts to reform the development model. We go as far as to nationalize, partially, the sector, with the creation of PDVSA, in 1976. Nevertheless, the extreme dependence on the prices of the crude, whether they are in good condition or at the lowest, causes, mechanically and cyclical, phases of hyperinflation. The first, moreover, goes back precisely to the oil boom of 1974-1978. Over the decades, however, the country is caught up by the mechanisms of dependence, aggravated by a heavy burden of external debt. If Venezuela does not apply, like the rest of the Latin American countries, the neoliberal recipes advocated by the IMF in the first half of the 1980s, the contradictions accumulated are no less great. They will explode in broad daylight in 1989.
Caracazo. The big collapse
In a context marked by strong political uncertainties, Carlos Andrés Pérez was largely re-elected in 1988. Man of left, the leader of AD had been, between 1974 and 1979, the "president of the Venezuelan miracle" . He came to power in 1988 with his anti-IMF rhetoric, promising a "big turn," and Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega were invited to the inauguration ceremony. The turnaround, just weeks after his election, is even more dizzying. Under the pretext of getting a loan of $ 4.5 billion, the new government says it is forced to apply, zealously, the shock therapy of the Monetary Fund. Carlos Andrés Pérez has confidence in his ability to persuade and channel, in the name of his "glorious presidency"of the 1970s, the popular grumbling that could be expressed.
It is nonetheless more than the grumbling, which breaks out, and Carlos Andrés Pérez will have to do with his beautiful speeches. The detonator is the increase in the price of gasoline, a paradox in a country that is one of the main producers. In the province of Miranda, in Guarenas, clashes erupted on January 26, 1989 in minibus depots between employees, going to work and not wanting to pay the rise, and drivers. On the 27th, the wind of anger spreads to Caricuao, La Guaira, Maracay, Valencia, Merida, Maracaibo and, of course, Caracas. On the 28th, in the face of what is increasingly resembling a mass popular uprising, the "leftist" government proclaimed a state of emergency and reinstated the "Plan Ávila", the anti-insurgency program that had was used against rural guerrillas in the 1960s.
The IMF program applied in a bloodbath
The result is without appeal. The movement is crushed in blood and ends on March 8, 1989, but the repression probably causes more than 3000 deaths for the city of Caracas alone. In the "barrios" of the capital, the soldiers retrieve the bodies and throw them into mass graves. The IMF program is applied to the letter, but the political caste in Venezuela since 1958 is perfectly discredited, morally and politically. Poverty reaches almost 80% of the population. In the army, which has brutally repressed, dissenting voices are rising. Among them, that of a lieutenant-colonel of paratroopers of 38 years, named Hugo Chávez.
It is therefore against a backdrop of popular reflux and through mechanisms of expression of the still latent anger that Chávez attempts a first failed coup in 1992. He will then be triumphantly elected in 1998. invested with the mission to put an end to this "Pact of Punto Fijo" responsible for so much misery, violence and suffering. The 1998 election is, precisely, a reaction to this corrupt, clientelist regime which, after three decades of redistributionist policies of the oil windfall, was watering everywhere as soon as its financial room for maneuver was reduced. But with the coming into power of Chávez, supported by a strong support that will be transformed, between 2002 and 2006, into a much more active mobilization of the popular sectors,
The history of Venezuela is therefore the story of a great swindle, a large-scale theft, which continues today. The perpetrators have sometimes changed their name and costume. The scams, they have always been Venezuelans. Being poor in a country sitting on the richest oil reserves in the world: this is a paradox that has been, periodically, an extremely powerful fuel of revolt, controlled, channeled or repressed by governments in place, often responding directly to North American interests. but also European Majors. This is what has structured Venezuelan contemporary history. All these elements, purely secondary, no doubt, that journalists, politicians and heads of state forget when making the black legend of Maduro and Chavismo and support, with more or less finesse,
https://www.revolutionpermanente.fr/Ven ... -l-infamie
Google Translator