In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C h A P t e r S I x “We Are Still Rebels” The Challenge of Popular History in Bolivarian Venezuela Alejandro Velasco On April 2, 2005, voters in the 23 de Enero neighborhood in downtown Caracas took to the polls to participate in a historic election. Over two dozen candidates representing a wide variety of local groups, but linked nevertheless in shared support of President Hugo Chávez, sought to consolidate a single slate of pro-government forces ahead of nationwide neighborhood elections scheduled for August. At first glance these local level primaries, unprecedented in Venezuela, highlighted the gains of grassroots activism under Chávez.1 Indeed since first taking office in 1999, Chávez’s calls to consolidate poder popular— popular power—by promoting grassroots participation in the democratic process had remained a common discursive thread. But beyond a dynamic electoral agenda including six nationwide referenda in six years, concrete signs of how “participatory democracy” might in fact be consolidated on the ground remained scarce. In this context, promoting organic community leadership through local-level primary elections lent credibility to what had largely remained an unfulfilled promise. Yet a closer look reveals more about the limits than the possibilities of popular power under Chávez. Indeed primaries in the 23 de Enero reflected longsimmering tensions between national Chavista parties and “Electoral Battle Units” (uBes), which emerged in June 2004 after anti-Chavistas mounted a successful signature drive demanding a recall referendum against the president (Izarra 2004). That the referendum took place at all reflected the failure of Chavista parties to convince enough voters to refrain from signing petitions calling for the vote. Ironically Chávez himself secured their defeat, long railing against bureaucracy and elitism in political parties of old, but in the process undermining the credibility of political parties at large, including his own. 158 VelASCo By contrast, the uBes functioned as five- to ten-person committees designed to mobilize voters at the most local level by bypassing party bureaucracy.2 By August, uBes and their grassroots get-out-the-vote campaign helped score a referendum victory for Chávez. In October, they would secure another victory, helping Chávez-backed candidates sweep regional elections. These various successes pitted locally based uBes against national Chavista parties as competitors for the role of legitimate interlocutors of popular power. Unsurprisingly, that contest came to a head in the run-up to local elections in 2005. Along the way uBe members alleged they were barred from state media, denied electoral resources, and prohibited from running as official Chavista candidates. In response, uBes and other neighborhood groups in 23 de Enero formed “electoral committees” to conduct independent primaries (CSB 2004). Once held, the winning candidates created United Popular Front 23 de Enero (Frente Unitario Popular 23 de enero—FuP23) as an electoral vehicle to run in the August elections, eventually finishing third in the neighborhood behind the officially sanctioned Chavista party and the Communist Party, both with national reach. Days later, FuP23 candidates staged a protest at the doors of the National Electoral Council (Cne) to denounce the pressures to which they had been subject throughout the campaign process. This chapter examines the genesis of political dissent among urban popular sectors otherwise identified with Chavismo. Indeed, as a grassroots challenge to a political project that claims grassroots participation, the primaries were certainly remarkable; that they took place in the 23 de Enero was even more striking. An amalgam of 1950s-era superblocks and densely packed squatter settlements, el 23—as the neighborhood is widely known—has long been considered one of the staunchest bases of urban popular support for Chávez, the kind of place that journalists use words like bastion, stronghold, and hard core to describe (Parenti 2005; Relea 2005; Rohter 2000). It is here that Chávez comes to cast his own ballot, amid enthusiastic crowds. Several of the programs that would become highly popular misiones were piloted in el 23.3 And election returns from nationwide contests consistently locate el 23 as one of the three major areas of electoral support in Caracas for Chávez and pro-government candidates.4 But as the primaries reflect, alongside these expressions of support also arise direct challenges to the hegemony of Chavismo. In October 2004, when the newly elected Chavista mayor of Caracas announced his choice for jefe civil (the highest, parish-level civilian authority), local groups staged an insurrection and installed their own appointee. Earlier, armed groups disenchanted...

Share