Venezuela: Not What You Think
by Robin Hahnel
December 05, 2007
In the case of Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution, the mainstream media and politicians in the United States have elevated their game of demonizing all who oppose US foreign policy and business interests to a higher level of absurdity than usual. According to the mainstream media, the only newsworthy stories in Venezuela are one sided diatribes lifted from the discredited, opposition-owned media in Venezuela. For example, we read about Chavez shutting down opposition TV stations. We hear that Chavez is rewriting the Venezuelan Constitution so he can be President for life. Chavez is a dictator, QED.
All the badly outgunned, alternative media in the US can do is try its best to rebut the bias in the storylines defined by the mainstream media. The tiny fraction of Americans who visit the alternative media discover that Chavez has submitted a proposal to change the Venezuelan Constitution in a number of ways, one of which is to eliminate term limits on the office of President. All changes will first have to be approved by the democratically elected Venezuelan National Assembly, and then also approved in a popular referendum before they become law. Only Americans who search out the alternative media discover that Hugo Chavez was elected President by a comfortable margin in 1998, survived an opposition-sponsored recall in 2004, and most recently was re-elected in December 2006 with more than 60% of the vote. International observers certified all three elections as fair and square. George Bush, on the other hand, was selected President by a partisan Supreme Court after losing the popular vote in 2000, and won re-election only because enough black voters in Ohio were disenfranchised by a partisan Republican official to keep the Buckeye State in the Republican column in 2004. Few observers believe Bush could survive a recall election today, but of course this basic element of democratic rule is not permitted by the US Constitution. Nonetheless, the only storyline ninety-nine percent of Americans hear remains: Hugo Chavez is a dictator and George Bush is the democratically elected leader of the free world.
Similarly, only the small fraction of Americans who access the alternative media learn that RCTV was not shut down because it campaigns openly against the government—which it has for nine years. Instead, when its license came up for renewal, its application was denied because it had violated 200 conditions of its licensing agreement—many violations having to do with its role in helping to organize a military coup that nearly toppled the duly elected President of the country. Moreover, the station continues to broadcast on a cable network, and the opposition in Venezuela still broadcasts on more major TV channels than there are channels sympathetic to the government. In stark contrast, the alternative media in the US cannot be viewed on any major channel. Consequently the vast majority of Americans receive all their news from a mainstream media which never questions whether the US has any right to dominate other nations, but only debates the wisdom of alternative strategies for doing so, and would never dream of questioning the desirability of an economic system dominated by their corporate owners. Nevertheless the storyline most Americans hear remains: Freedom of the press is dead in totalitarian Venezuela, but alive and well in the democratic United States.
It is important to distinguish between whether mainstream coverage of issues like amendments to the constitution and the TV license is biased, whether there are grounds for reproaching the Venezuelan government, and whether the policies are wise. Clearly the mainstream media has failed to report relevant facts and their coverage has been grossly unfair. From what I know, the procedure that led to non-renewal of the TV license was unobjectionable, and the proposed constitutional amendment will be decided by a thoroughly democratic process. So while there are ample grounds for reproaching mainstream media coverage in the US, as far as I can see there are no grounds for reproaching the Venezuelan government in either case. However, this does not mean the policies are necessarily wise. Those in Venezuela who argue that the revolutionary government would be hammered by the imperial press in any case are surely correct. On the other hand, that does not mean either initiative is good policy, independent of the news coverage it receives. Moreover, giving one’s enemies an easy chance to focus on a negative storyline seems unwise—unless the policy has important benefits.
Unfortunately, the fact that only a tiny fraction of the American public are ever exposed to balanced coverage of the Venezuelan stories defined by our mainstream media is only one problem. A larger problem is that practically nobody in the United States ever hears anything about truly newsworthy stories in Venezuela. Stories about exciting new political and economic initiatives that are dramatically reducing poverty and challenging popular myths about the abilities of ordinary people to make good political and economic decisions for themselves go virtually uncovered in the United States.1
I speak fluent Spanish, have lived and worked in Latin America on two occasions, and have traveled extensively in Latin America for over forty years. One of the few Latin American countries I had never visited before a year ago was Venezuela. I have now made two trips to Venezuela in the past nine months at the invitation of the Centro Internacional Miranda. I was in Caracas for one week in October 2006—before the December 2006 presidential elections that provided Chavez with a popular mandate to pursue a more aggressive socialist agenda. During that visit I met with officials in the Planning Ministry and faculty and students in the Planning Ministry school. I had long discussions with people at the Miranda Center working on projects in critical pedagogy, participatory budgeting, new models of production, human development through popular participation, new forms of political participation, and new models of socialism for the twenty-first century. I also visited health clinics, subsidized food distribution centers, community radio stations, and adult education centers in poor neighborhoods in Caracas. During a two-week visit in July 2007 I visited the rural state of Lara as well as Caracas. In Caracas I participated in numerous seminars and meetings at the Miranda Center, attended an adult education class at the new Bolivarian University, met again with officials in the Planning Ministry and students in the Planning Ministry school, met with officials in the new Ministry for the Communal Economy, and visited with workers in a “recuperated” factory and activists in a “nucleus of endogenous development.” In Lara I attended meetings of three rural communal councils, a meeting of spokespersons from ten other rural communal councils, a meeting of spokespersons from all the communal councils in the town of Carora, and talked with citizen directors of a communal bank. I also met with the mayors of Carora (state of Lara) and Libertador (state of Carabobo) who pioneered participatory budgeting initiatives in their municipalities. What follows is an account of some stories I believe many Americans would find truly newsworthy.
Economic Progress
Like most Latin American economies, the Venezuelan economy deteriorated during the 1980s and most of the 1990s. From 1998 to 2003 real per capita GDP continued to stagnate while the Chavez government survived two general strikes by the largest Venezuelan business association, a military coup, and finally a devastating two month strike by the state owned oil company. However, after Chavez survived the opposition sponsored recall election, annual economic growth was 18.3% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005, and 10.3% in 2006, and the unemployment rate fell from 18.4 % in June 2003 to 8.3% in June 2007. Moreover, most of the growth was in the non-oil sectors of the economy, as the oil sector barely grew during 2005 and 2006. While this impressive growth would not have been possible without the rise in international oil prices, it also would not have been possible had the Chavez government not ignored the warnings of neoliberal critics and pursued aggressive expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.
At the height of the oil strike the poverty rate rose to 55.1% of households and a startling 62.1% of the population. However, by the end of 2006 the poverty rate had declined dramatically to 30.6% of households and 36.3% of the population, which compares favorably with a pre-Chavez rate of poverty in 1997 for households of 55.6% and for individuals of 60.9%. While much of this decrease in poverty was due to strong economic growth, it was also due to a dramatic increase in social spending by the Chavez government. Social spending per person by the central government increased by an average of 19% per year from 1998 to 2007. However, this does not include social spending by the state-owned oil company. If social spending by PDVSA is included, there was an increase of 35% per person per year since 1998. The most dramatic increase in social spending was in the area of health care. In 1998 there were over 14,000 Venezuelans for each primary healthcare physician, and few physicians worked in rural or poor urban areas. By 2007 there was one primary healthcare physician for every 1,300 Venezuelans, and many of the new physicians were working in clinics in rural areas and poor barrios that had never had physicians before.2 There are also now 16,000 stores in poor areas throughout the country selling staples at a 30% discount on average.
Building the Social Economy
Reforms First: For eight years the Chavez governmen
