AFP PHOTO/Miguel ROJO (Photo credit should read MIGUEL ROJO/AFP/Getty Images)
There was a time when the map of Latin America was painted red: Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, Brazil. Uruguay under Tabaré Vásquez and José Mujica, as well as Ecuador under Rafael Correa, also joined this trend. However, this has changed like a pendulum; some have left, only to return, while others are just beginning new governments of different political leanings, as seen in Ecuador, Argentina, and currently Bolivia.
None of those governing experiences, which labeled themselves as “expressions of the left and socialist revolutions,” have delivered on their promises of a more humane and just revolution. They have failed to implement consistent social policies for historically excluded sectors, who have merely been treated as “maneuvering masses” through a system of handouts that do not address the prevailing inequality. The result has been the dismantling of what little remained of the Welfare State, as these countries have faced a deterioration that the left, when in power—mostly through the establishment of authoritarian regimes—has brought, rather than progress and the promised happiness.
This is the case for Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, whose leadership proclaims a supposed revolutionary, socialist, deeply humane, and just condition, yet their authoritarian drift positions them as retrograde dictatorships, guilty of human rights violations, which have solidified a new economically dominant elite that has amassed considerable wealth through corruption.
The revolutionary changes experienced by each of these nations once sparked great admiration and prestige; I refer to the early days of the Cuban revolution, which marked a before-and-after in Latin America, the Sandinista revolution that militarily defeated the Somoza dictatorship, and the so-called Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution.”
Today, reality is demanding accountability for the havoc wrought in these nations, which has dragged all their reputations through the foulest mud, as they are branded with crimes against humanity, corruption, and in the case of Venezuela, additional accusations of narco-terrorism, gold trafficking, and ecological crimes (destroying the so-called mining arc and the entire Guiana ecosystem). They lack criminal awareness and therefore react with irritation when sectors of research, environmental organizations, and universities openly denounce these crimes.
The regime’s response is to attack and persecute sectors from organized civil society, academia, and research institutions, even those once sympathetic to the “Bolivarian revolution,” who have become disillusioned with the Chávez project and are now labeled as enemies of the regime. Today, the regime is targeting a significant number of social scientists, particularly sociologists.
Interestingly, the initial support from some intellectual circles for the Chávez process always struck me as noteworthy.
It was astonishing to witness the drastic political shift we Venezuelans experienced with the advent of Chávez. Along with it, old narratives, categories, concepts, and notions of the left from the sixties, which had been surpassed by the socio-political reality in this part of the world, re-emerged: the “revolution” replaced democracy, the concept of “social class” substituted “social actor,” “people” replaced “citizen,” and the State overshadowed civil society.
The left of the Southern Cone, in its arduous political and human quest for survival in the midst of bloody dictatorships, conducted a profound review of the old leftist framework from the sixties, concluding that the outdated concepts employed until then served as barriers preventing the return of politics and democracy. Breaking with the Marxist paradigm, they settled accounts with the concepts of “revolution,” “social class,” and “State,” and built a new paradigmatic matrix I refer to above.
In our instance, the left-wing intellectuals working in academic centers, despite the crisis in our political system and an enormous economic crisis by the mid-eighties, experienced a democracy that maintained a certain appreciation for social disciplines, which had never been stigmatized by the state as they were in Southern Cone dictatorships.
However, without any critical examination, this intellectual sector, which had engaged in fruitful academic and research activities, was seduced by the Chávez narrative that resurrected old categories reaffirming a state-centric understanding of politics.
It was a narrative more reminiscent of the old slogans proposed by the left in the sixties than of the new theoretical and paradigm shifts that interpreted the Venezuelan social and political reality more accurately.
It should be noted that, in our case, this is a sector of intellectuals with excellent training. For example, to mention just two who have produced substantial intellectual work and are highly valued, I would say, by all sociologists in the country: Margarita López Maya and Edgardo Lander.
Without a doubt, after 26 years of destruction in the country, this sector, which constantly reads the current reality, has ended its support for the regime. As Sebastián de la Nuez states in his comment in La Gran Aldea (The leftists from CENDES facing inquisition for thinking and worrying): “They have had enough lesson in daily reality.”
Until now, the regime has ignored them, probably because in Chávez’s regime, no one reads, beyond keeping an eye on their bank balances in tax havens. But in their desperation and loneliness, the regime has launched a media crusade against sociologists (they’ve already done so against economists and historians) who “distanced themselves from Chávez and criticized government policies.” The sociologists in question are: Alexandra Martínez, Emiliano Terán Mantovani, Edgardo Lander, Francisco Javier Velasco, and Santiago Arconada. The regime accuses them of “operating under an academic and environmental facade to act as instruments of political interference and international coordination against the Venezuelan State.” It’s the same old story; when the case reaches Tarek William Saab, the script is already written—they will be accused, without a doubt, of “treason against the homeland.”
To continue supporting the regime, one must be very foolish, and these sociologists are not or they have grown tired of being foolish.
And they are right, just like the whole country, now disillusioned and hopeless, yet once voted for them and mourned Chávez’s death.
What is incredible is that some intellectuals still claim there are differences between Chávez, who was something else and even good, and Maduro, who is a perverse dictator.
What can we say to these sectors that refuse to recognize the damage done by the “good” (Chávez), the “bad” (Maduro), and the “ugly” (Diosdado)? All I can say is that Chávez, is dead! He is as responsible, if not more, than Maduro and Cabello for the current disaster that plagues the country. Obviously, like Chávez, Maduro, and Diosdado will also die; we all are heading that way. And both the “good” and the “bad,” along with the “ugly,” will rot as they deserve. It’s well known that the decay of flesh does not discriminate between the good, the bad, nor the ugly.
@enderarenas