NOTES
N O T E S Chapter . The Unlikely Election of an Anti-neoliberal . This estimate includes left-of-center presidents who criticize but do not reject neoliberalism outright (Ellner ; Panizza , ). In , experts classified nine (or percent) of the governing parties in fifteen Central and South American countries as left or left-of-center (González and Queirolo ). Since then, two additional countries classified in as governed by the Right (El Salvador and Nicaragua) have elected presidents classified as belonging to the Left. Surveys also suggest that between and , Latin Americans shifted their ideological orientations leftward (Seligson , ). . In the weeks prior to the election, Acción Democrática switched its endorsement from that original candidate, Luis Alfaro Ucero, to the more promising candidacy of political independent Henrique Salas Römer. . The first poll showing that Chávez had pulled ahead of the early front-runner (Irene Sáez) was conducted in March (Buxton , ). It revealed that percent of Venezuelans intended to vote for Chávez and only percent intended to vote for Sáez. . A study of business leaders confirmed this so-called Chávez effect (Olivares ). It revealed that percent of business leaders thought the recent electoral developments (coyuntura electoral) had affected the investment climate negatively, while only percent thought of it as having a positive effect. This study of company presidents and highlevel managers was conducted in February . Of these individuals, percent were Venezuelan and percent were foreigners operating in Venezuela. They represented a range of sectors, with the highest concentrations being the percent in the financial sector , the percent in the petroleum sector, and the percent in manufacturing. . Cuban intellectual Marta Harnecker, for example, argued that the Left would make political progress only if it were to set aside anti-imperialist goals in favor of more realistic goals, such as countering neoliberalism (Harnecker ). . Castañeda’s plea for a left-center political strategy rested in part on his assessment that the Left was hampered by its lack of an economic project that would be an alternative to the neoliberal economic paradigm. Latin America’s Left had championed socialist revolutions and more broadly “the role of the state in economic and social policy” (Castañeda , ) and was guilty by its association with Cuba’s model of state control over the economy (Ellner , ). But the Sandinista loss and the fall of the Soviet Union made the call for socialist revolution less tenable. Both burst the assumption that once won, socialist revolutions would not be reversed voluntarily by the people. The latter, in particular, undermined the Left’s claim that there was a coherent alternative economic model, albeit one that would always need to be adapted to particular contexts. Furthermore , the state-led development that had dominated Latin America for several decades and with which the Left was routinely associated appeared to have failed to produce sustained economic growth for the region. Thus, Castañeda concluded, the Left was able to advocate only a nuanced version of the existing neoliberal economic project, one that sought more social spending and debt relief, a greater role for the state in the economy, and less privatization and trade opening (Castañeda , ). This position, he argued, would garner insufficient support unless the Left built an alliance with the region’s political Center (Castañeda , ; ). He argued that a center-left coalition would permit the Left to win elections and thereby temper the neoliberal economic project (Castañeda ). . In essence, then, he advocated an approach adopted by the communists during the s and s in their popular-front strategy (Ellner , –). . The founding father of AD, Rómulo Betancourt, shared the communist movement’s appreciation for the working class. In his plan for a multiclass party, he asserted his appreciation for the historical role that the working class might play in achieving the plan’s development and social justice goals (Ellner , ). Not surprisingly, then, the communists joined him in forming his own party, the Partido Democrático Nacional (PDN, or National Democratic Party) in . . Scholars contend that AD party leaders doubted the PCV’s commitment to democratic principles (Alexander ) and feared that including the PCV would undermine their chances of securing U.S. approval (Myers , ). . Feeling that the AD had betrayed their earlier commitment to a long-term progressive transformation of Venezuela’s economy and social structure, many on the Left instigated an armed insurgency against Venezuela’s fledgling democracy (Alexander , ; Martz , –). These leftists included members of the PCV as well as the leftist wings of the...
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