Venezuela's Bolivarian Democracy: Participation, Politics, and Culture under Chávez

4. Catia Sees You: Community Television, Clientelism, and the State in the Ch

C h A P t e r F o u r Catia Sees You Community Television, Clientelism, and the State in the Chávez Era Naomi Schiller In the sociologist Javier Auyero’s critique of the paradigm of clientelism, he argues that “‘political clientelism’ has been one of the strongest and most recurrent images in the study of political practices of the poor—urban and rural alike—in Latin America, almost to the point of becoming a sort of ‘metonymic prison’ for this part of the Americas” (1999, 297). As Auyero notes, scholars typically define political clientelism as the hierarchical relationships through which impoverished “clients” exchange their political loyalty for political, economic , or cultural resources from elite “patrons” who are usually politicians. My aim in this chapter is a prison-break of sorts. I examine how leaders from Catia TVe, Caracas’s most prominent community media outlet, responded to an attack on one of their producers in order to reflect critically on the usefulness of the analytic category of clientelism. The privately owned commercial media, scholars, and commentators often portray state-funded media organizations, like Catia TVe and other nascent barrio-based media outlets, as clients of President Chávez who produce positive representations of the government in exchange for resources. I highlight instead what the theoretical model of clientelism makes impossible to identify and assess: the political practice of state making that takes place among grassroots media activists every day. Conventional theories of clientelism are contingent on a reified state-society boundary, which limits our ability to assess changing and competing notions of the state in Venezuela and the shifting relationships between barrio activists and the government. Moreover, such theoretical approaches to clientelism, which assert distinct boundaries between state and society, prohibit an analysis of how activists use assumptions about the state and society for their own benefit. The state is granted meaning on an CAtIA SeeS you 105 everyday basis through debates over issues of autonomy and exchanges between grassroots media makers and government actors. Activists at times strategically position themselves outside the state, even while in their everyday practice they traverse and challenge this boundary. Attention to the shifting notions of what the state means in daily life is crucial to understand how barrio-based political activists negotiate contradictions , engage government actors, and make gains for their political projects. Since 2000, community media outlets in Caracas have expanded from informal groups of activists documenting everyday life in their impoverished neighborhoods to licensed broadcasters who use state funds to train and equip their neighbors to be radio and television producers. (Sujatha Fernandes also explores this theme in chapter 5, “Radio Bemba in an Age of Electronic Media.”) In the 1990s, Catia TVe’s founders considered their media productions the “voice of the voiceless” against the elite-controlled commercial media and the ruling parties of the government. More recently, Catia TVe and other community media producers have found themselves in a different position. As of 2007, Catia TVe received the bulk of its funding from the government by broadcasting segments several times daily about the supposed advancements of Chávez’s self-proclaimed Revolution. The debate over how to respond to the attack by a commercial journalist on one of their producers revealed Catia TVe’s efforts (1) to negotiate the distinct demands and agendas of their diverse interlocutors (other community media makers, their imagined viewing audience, and various government institutions ) and (2) to broker power in a way that advanced the station’s agenda. Catia TVe’s response provides insight into how community producers understand the impacts of their own media organization and their use of social networks and competing notions of the appropriate relationship between their organization and the government. This chapter draws on thirteen months of ethnographic field research among community media producers in Caracas over a period of four years, between 2003 and 2007. As an observant participant, I accompanied staff and volunteers into the field where they filmed meetings, marches, press conferences, and folk performances. Additionally, I attended workshops, conferences, and meetings in poor neighborhoods and state institutions alongside Catia TVe producers.1 Perspectives on Clientelism The central question animating the vast scholarship on clientelism concerns how power is leveraged through relationships of exchange between two groups 106 SChIller or individuals that have unequal access to resources (Gellner 1977). Much contemporary scholarship in political science and sociology focuses on the role of...