The Winner of Venezuela’s Election to Succeed Hugo Chávez Is Hugo Chávez [The Nation]

[flamingdem]

http://www.thenation.com/article/173871/winner-venezuelas-election-succeed-hugo-chavez-hugo-chavez#

There are many interesting things to be said about this election, one being that it really wasn’t a fight over ideology. Maduro, who had been directly named by Chávez as his preferred replacement, ran as the Chavista candidate. But in a way so did Capriles, who pledged to be a better administrator of the society Chávez left behind.

Already during his previous campaign, Capriles drew sharp criticism from Venezuela’s oligarch irreconcilables for basically running as a third-world socialist. He repeatedly compared himself to Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, saying that he would keep in place all of Chávez’s social missions, which deliver health care, education, housing, childcare and other services to the urban and rural poor. Capriles, who in 2002 supported the failed US-backed coup against Chávez, even announced that he was a “Bolivarian,” an act that just a few years earlier would have been as unthinkable as Dick Cheney declaring himself a member of Code Pink.

During this election, Capriles went even further. He named his campaign team after Simón Bolívar and said he would not only defend the misiones but create new ones. He promised to dramatically increase salaries and pensions and began to work phrases associated with Chávez into his speeches, even copying symbols of the Bolivarian Revolution into his campaign paraphernalia. In other words, the close results of the election can’t be interpreted as a rejection of Chavismo, since Capriles ran promising to consolidate the gains of Chavismo, saying that he, and not Maduro, was be a better executor of Chávez’s legacy.

Had he won, Capriles undoubtedly would have quickly reverted to his earlier coup-supporting incarnation and began the dismantling—or at least try to. But the genie let loose by the Bolivarian Revolution won’t be easily put back in the bottle. Over the course of the last fourteen years, Chávez presided over both a radical expansion of the public debate—including redefining democracy to mean social democracy—and a radical expansion of who has access to that debate. He helped set in motion a process by which millions of people who had been formally excluded from political decision-making today think of themselves as protagonists, including thousands, perhaps upward of a million, of Colombian migrants, many of them domestic workers and laborers, who were brought out of the shadows by an immigration reform that the US would do well to imitate. That Capriles’ only ticket into Venezuela’s political arena was to accept this new reality suggests that, whatever the future may hold, the winner of last week’s election was Chávez himself.

More than this, the fact that so many Venezuelans seemingly made a conscious, considered decision to switch their votes confirms what supporters of Venezuelan democracy have been saying for years: people voted for Chávez because they wanted to vote for Chávez, not because they were gulled, duped, bribed or intimidated into doing so.

[Demeter]

1. Trying to create confusion

Capriles can fool some of the people, but the minute he took off the sheepskin, he would be a marked man.

I am grateful for the Venezuelan determination to keep their revolution alive. And delighted that enough people were not fooled by the fraudulent marketing that Capriles engaged in. Once a 1%er, always a 1%er.

[flamingdem]

2. Exactly, he became a Madison Ave. marketer but his ads didn't

add up! For sure he would have wrecked the social safety net given half a chance, that's what they do.

[joshcryer]

3. Fairly OK article except for the "began the dismantling" bit.

He has no evidence for that and basically glosses over that section. It would've been nice if he could've substantiated it with perhaps evidence of Capriles' dismantling in his decade of public service in the past. Otherwise he's one of the few writers who admits Capriles' campaign was socialistic which I have said it was.

Also, the "race privilege" comment strikes me as starkly ignorant about Venezuela since the majority of Venezuelans are Mestizo and the other half are "white" and Venezuelans, by and large, are not racially divided.

Both Maduro and Capriles have Jewish ancestry (ironically). Capriles has a "bit more white in him" but he's related to Simón Bolívar himself, who was a "white" European and who Venezuelans celebrate to this day. The racial stuff is a relatively recent invention by the chavistas in the past decade, much like the Hutu and Tutsi divide in Rwanda was mostly a colonial invention based on certain "qualities." (In the chavista case, wearing red / loyalty to the party.) When you look at the opposition rallies and the chavista rallies, the racial breakdown is unambiguously equal.

Venezuela's census doesn't even have a race or ethnicity designation from what I can tell.

[flamingdem]

4. Sorry, race matters in Venezuela as in the rest of Latin America nt

[joshcryer]

5. Sorry, I didn't say it didn't matter.

I said there was no real racial divide, which is what race privilege alludes to.

[flamingdem]

6. I've never been there but if it's like other countries in Latin America

then at least in the past one has seen those with Spanish blood at the top of the pyramid.

If it's not that they should trumpet the news since it would be so unusual.

[Catherina]

7. To quote el Presidente

“The media myth that our political project would fall apart without Chávez was a fundamental misreading of Venezuela's revolution. Chávez has left a solid edifice, its foundation a broad, united movement that supports the process of transformation. We've lost our extraordinary leader, but his project – built collectively by workers, farmers, women, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants and the young – is more alive than ever.” - Nicolas Maduro

[ocpagu]

8. Nice article, flamingdem, thank you.

I'd like to highlight this paragraph:

"More than this, the fact that so many Venezuelans seemingly made a conscious, considered decision to switch their votes confirms what supporters of Venezuelan democracy have been saying for years: people voted for Chávez because they wanted to vote for Chávez, not because they were gulled, duped, bribed or intimidated into doing so."

With time, Maduro is probably going to show to many of the former supporters of Chávez who apparently were skeptical of electing him that he's genuine and able to lead. I wish he had a bigger vote, but this was also important to show how healthy democracy is in Venezuela and how the autonomy of the voters remains intact after 14 years of chavismo. Even if, at some point, the opposition manages to come back to power, the left-wing will return (as will happen in Chile soon). It's the natural path for Latin America.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Great to read something from Greg Grandin regarding the election,

and its aftermath.

Loved this paragraph:

Already during his previous campaign, Capriles drew sharp criticism from Venezuela’s oligarch irreconcilables for basically running as a third-world socialist. He repeatedly compared himself to Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, saying that he would keep in place all of Chávez’s social missions, which deliver health care, education, housing, childcare and other services to the urban and rural poor. Capriles, who in 2002 supported the failed US-backed coup against Chávez, even announced that he was a “Bolivarian,” an act that just a few years earlier would have been as unthinkable as Dick Cheney declaring himself a member of Code Pink.

All righty! Woohoooo! So enjoyable.

Who in his right mind would have ever been as uninformed to believe Capriles' lies? I imagine the major part of the opposition's effort prior to the campaign was spent on savaging Nicolas Maduro relentlessly, mocking him, attacking his lack of formal education, just as they've done in Bolivia regarding Evo Morales, "####ing Indian" is a big one there, showing every bit as much hostility against him as they did Hugo Chavez (before they started calling him "charismatic" after death, of course) and implying he is too incompetent to run the country. It's very possible some people decided that if Capriles, at least, promised to respect their progress under Chavez, they wouldn't lose everything, as they might under the leadership of a man the opposition was going to destroy.

Sorta like blackmail, isn't it? Hateful bastards, congenital criminals.

So glad you've shared this Grandin material, flamingdem. Thanks.

[flamingdem]

10. Good points Judy and this was my favorite line too!

as unthinkable as Dick Cheney declaring himself a member of Code Pink.