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Foreword
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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Foreword A Saudi-like oligarchy that created a corrupt, exclusionary, and deeply flawed democracy in which poverty reigned despite the nation’s immense oil riches. A charismatic army o≈cer who gave voice to the anger and the hopes of the poor, who was able to gain power through fair and free elections, and who, once in government, launched an ambitious plan to correct decades of inequities and injustice. A bickering, incompetent opposition run and funded by the displaced elite, which was bent on recovering its historical privileges and willing to resort to any means, including a coup d’état, to oust a democratically elected president. These, in bold strokes, are the main elements of the common wisdom about Venezuela which informed international public opinion, expert commentary, and the responses of other governments to that country’s recurring crises since the late 1990s. Common wisdom, as we know, is made of unassailable truths mixed with gross simplifications and, sometimes, obsolete facts. This book will help dispel some of the myths that have clouded our collective understanding about Venezuela’s surprising developments over the past decade. Venezuela’s dizzying recent evolution and its tragic current predicament cannot be comprehended without understanding what happened during the forty years between the demise of the Marcos Pérez Jiménez dictatorship in 1958 and the collapse of the party system that formed the backbone of Venezuela ’s democracy until the mid-1990s. This period is the first focus of the chapters in The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela. The four and a half decades analyzed in this book are as interesting for what failed to happen in Venezuela as for what did happen. Venezuela, for example, did not su√er from major armed conflicts or the miserable economic performance so common among developing countries. While its neighbors were ravaged by wars, economic instability, and political turmoil, Venezuela was a functioning democracy in which fair and competitive elections took place x Foreword every five years and in which opposition candidates won five of the eight elections held in that period. Venezuela was also a country that between 1920 and 1980 posted the world’s highest yearly rate of economic growth and the planet’s lowest inflation. Ironically, since the early 1990s, as other Latin American countries seemed to gain a more solid political and economic footing, Venezuela spiraled out of control in a self-destructive cycle that shows no signs of abating. Thus, Venezuela entered the twenty-first century under dramatically different conditions, but conditions still as exceptional as they were during the second half of the twentieth century; now, however, instead of being exceptionally good, these conditions were—and still are— exceptionally bad. But is Venezuela’s situation a relic of the past or a harbinger of things to come in Latin America and perhaps even elsewhere in the developing world? This volume addresses this question, as well, as it analyzes the rise of the Bolivarian Revolution and the nature of the political regime that replaced the Punto Fijo regime. As for its role as a model for the region, there is no doubt that the politics of rage, race, and revenge so deftly utilized by Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez to mobilize a wide base of supporters are echoed by new political movements sprouting throughout the region. Argentina’s piqueteros, Brazil’s sin terras, Bolivia’s cocaleros, and Mexico’s zapatistas are just some of the most notorious examples of new political actors that share agendas, modes of operation, and international supporters with Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution. Some of these groups are marginal and will either disappear or be co-opted by mainstream political actors. Others are bound to increase their power and influence. In all cases, however, their grievances have become part of the national political discourse. Their grievances all stem from their countries’ poor economic performance , the chronic inability of the governments to deploy more e√ective social policies, and an intense democratization process that has enabled the emergence of new political actors capable of challenging the traditional political parties. Even during the spells of economic bonanza which all Latin American countries seem to enjoy at one time or another when the winds of the international economy blow in their favor, governments fail to use their windfalls to make a substantial dent on poverty. When such failures are combined with the popular perception that these countries are ‘‘rich’’ in minerals, agricultural land, or other valuable...