The dramatic events in Venezuela last month-widespread public protest, leading to the apparent resignation of strongman president Hugo Chávez, followed by his return to power less than twenty-four hours later-will provide armchair analysts of Latin American politics with plenty of material to chew on for years to come. Already hairs are being split over distinctions, many of which are irrelevant-whether Chávez signed the resignation document willingly or was compelled to do so; whether the decision of the military to depose him was or was not a coup d'état; whether his departure was a violation of the democratic rules of the game; whether the provisional government that temporarily replaced him was an authoritarian regime in embryo; whether Chávez's return is a victory for "democracy" in the region; and finally (this, inspired largely by partisan considerations), whether the Bush administration is or is not guilty of promoting a coup to depose an unfriendly Latin American leader.

The one thing that can be said for certain is that the economic, political, and social context that led to these events has not changed, and in many ways indeed has become more problematic. Before entering into that analysis, however, let it be said plainly here: Chávez was deposed because the high command of the military refused to countenance violence unleashed by his followers, many of them equipped with automatic weapons. His return was due to a sudden shift in the same high command, fearful of chavista mobs converging on the presidential palace and unhappy with the first decisions of a provisional civilian successor regime, not to mention the prospect of sanctions by the hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil world of the Rio Group of Latin American nations, the Organization of American States, and the international "rights community."

Meanwhile, all the practices that produced a widespread popular movement against Chávez are still in place. The difference now is that the president, who has never shown much interest in listening to opinions other than his own, and in the best of times could be described as emotionally troubled, has no doubt convinced himself after the recent events that he rules by divine mandate. The combination is not a recipe for social peace or political stability. Venezuela is still on the edge and, as long as Chávez is on the scene, is likely to remain so.

Chávez's "Revolution"

Since his emergence a decade ago-first, in the guise of a failed coup-maker in his own right-Hugo Chávez has defied classification into any of the traditional ideological categories. A friend of Fidel Castro, a "strategic ally" (his own words) of virtually every terrorist regime in the Middle East, a Maoist in China and-for all we can know-a worshipper of Shinto in Japan and fire in Bora-Bora, he sees himself as paladin of the anti-globalization movement. (This he champions in a country that depends almost entirely on the export of a single product!) The truth is that Chávez's head is a garbage can filled with all the rotting, failed ideologies of the twentieth century-communism, fascism, extreme nationalism, authoritarian personalism, military messianism, and so forth. In practice, in fact, he is something considerably less imposing-a typical Latin American strongman, perhaps more confused than most. His only real interest is power. He is driven by a lust for it, and by resentment of the rich, the well-born, the capable (and, in the case of Venezuela, the "white"). It is this sentiment, rather than any particular ideology, that appeals to many of his country's poor. Even so, one cannot eat resentment. Nor can one reconstruct an entire society based on rejection of the status quo alone.

The curious fact about Chávez's "revolution" is how very unrevolutionary it is. Since taking power he has not expropriated a single company, indeed he has privatized some state enterprises and welcomed foreign investment (except in the crucial area of oil). For the most part his economic policies have been surprisingly conventional. His rejection of "neoliberalism" is reserved for speeches. He has threatened the press and the electronic media, but he has not closed any outlets. He has packed the courts and the bureaucracy with his followers, but that is no departure, regrettably, from traditional Venezuelan (and Latin American) practice. He has not even bothered to found a political party of his own.[1]

The real fruits of chavismo have been incompetence, corruption, incivility, incendiary rhetoric, violation of traditional norms separating the military from the political establishment, and the creation of an informal network of bully-boys (the so-called "Bolivarian circles") to intimidate the government's critics. It is not the actual fact of dictatorship so much as its prospect that has alarmed many Venezuelans and led a significant majority-perhaps as much as 70 percent-to reject the president and his vision for the future, although presumably not all of these endorsed his immediate removal.

At the same time, many Venezuelans have been deeply troubled by the presence of so many Cubans in their midst. In exchange for shipments of oil, Fidel Castro has been sending doctors, teachers, sports trainers, and intelligence agents. The financial details of these transactions would be enough to turn any accountant's hair white. Venezuela will never be able to collect, at least in conventional terms, on the debt Castro's Cuba is thus accumulating. But this is the least of it, as far as many Venezuelans are concerned. Unlike Cubans in 1959, they already know the end of the movie; they do not want to wait around for it in their own country.

It may be that the political concerns raised by the Cuban presence in Venezuela are somewhat overdrawn; except for intelligence agents, most Cubans there are probably delighted to be somewhere that, with all its problems, has food in the grocery stores. (Indeed, had the provisional government succeeded in consolidating itself, it is reasonable to assume that many of these Cubans would have begged for political asylum; as it is, some 700 have been abruptly summoned home, ostensibly for reasons of physical security.) As for Castro himself, it is more than likely that he has not the slightest interest in a revolution in Venezuela. All he wants is oil at fire-sale prices; if anything he probably has been counseling Chávez to moderation, since anything else endangers his access to cheap energy supplies. (This concern is not without foundation; for the first few hours after Chávez's departure, the new provisional head of the state petroleum company had announced on television that "not another barrel" of Venezuelan oil would be shipped to Cuba.)

Even so, the creation of organizations loyal to the president-organized into paramilitary formations and provided with heavy caliber weapons-is enough to raise serious questions about Chávez's ultimate purposes. During the brief hours between the president's departure and his return, television viewers were treated to film footage of a few of the arsenals captured by the insurgents; it is a sight they are unlikely to forget for a long time to come.

Nor has Chávez shown much respect for the rights of his opponents. As long as he was wildly popular with Venezuelans, he was perfectly happy to base his legitimacy on plebiscites and elections. Thus he was able to dismantle the congress elected before he took office; to write a new constitution according to his own lights; to elect a unicameral legislature loyal to him; even to extend his term by running a second time (under the new charter). When his appeal began to wear off, however, he suddenly seemed less interested in public opinion-attacking not merely his critics among the middle class and the media, but even the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church (calling the head of the episcopal conference and his associates "devils in skirts"). In recent months the National Assembly has begun to turn against him, even many members elected on chavista tickets; just a few days before the events last month even its left-wing, led by Chávez's former interior minister Luis Miquelena, had joined the opposition benches. As a result, the president had begun to rule by decree, arrogating to himself the right to impose forty-nine different laws by fiat. When it came to the trade union elections last year, he was unable to persuade the workers to vote for his list of candidates. Instead, they remained loyal to their traditional leadership, drawn from the country's (otherwise discredited) social democratic party, Acción Democrática. Chávez's response was to deny the legitimacy of the elections and insist that his own slate had won.

Even more troubling was the president's predilection for tampering with the state oil company-the cornucopia from which all blessings flow. Known by its initials PDVSA, for many years this agency has been the best-run publicly owned oil company in Latin America, thanks to rigorous criteria in hiring and promotion, complete freedom from political interference, and orthodox double-entry bookkeeping. Almost from the beginning of his presidency, Chávez has moved away from these practices. First, he drastically reduced the role of foreign investment in exploration and product development; then he began to raid the company's treasury for resources formerly devoted to maintenance of existing plant; and then-the final straw-a few weeks ago he replaced the top management with political hacks and ideologues loyal to him. The result was a massive strike joined by other sectors of Venezuelan society, including organized labor. Almost overnight a revolutionary mood gripped Caracas, and when the military deposed Chávez on the night of April 11-12, it came as no surprise to anyone.

The Broader Picture

Venezuelans are a restless, discontented people-and have been for a very long time. Oil futures dipped in 1981, after nearly a decade of sky-high prices, and remained low for nearly twenty years. As a result, the country's per capita income, which had been the highest in Latin America, experienced a precipitous drop. By the mid-1990s, oil prices in real terms were lower than they had been before the first oil shock in 1972 (when gasoline cost about 25 cents a gallon at the U.S. pump). Worse still for Venezuela, huge debts mindlessly acquired during the boom days of the 1970s became more expensive to service. Meanwhile a political class whose major talent (one might even say, its only talent) was for distributing resources ran out of its stock in trade-and of popular support. When President Carlos Andrés Pérez forced the Venezuelans to swallow drastic economic reforms in 1992, he was almost overthrown and murdered by a group of young officers, led by Chávez, then a young lieutenant colonel hitherto unknown to the Venezuelan public.

For his efforts Chávez was sentenced to a long prison term while the politicians scuttled to save their skins by impeaching Pérez. The latter's eventual successor, Rafael Caldera, was elected by promising Venezuelans that "neoliberalism" was the culprit and that there was nothing wrong with boom-and-spend populism that more of it could not cure. Alas for Caldera, oil prices did not rise to finance his promises. Meanwhile, in an act of supreme self-infatuation, Caldera decided he could afford to pardon Chávez, releasing him to become the country's most popular politician. As if to underscore the ascent of the ex-colonel's star, almost the morning after his first election in 1998[2] oil prices suddenly began to turn upward, at one point reaching $30 a barrel.

Chávez cannot escape the very same dilemma that dogged his predecessors-all Venezuelan presidents find their popularity mortgaged to the world price of oil. Its sudden downward slide after September 11, 2001, combined with mismanagement and corruption have created a situation inexplicable to most Venezuelans-in spite of three years of relatively high oil prices, 80 percent of them continue to live in poverty. During these years of lost opportunity, the new president spent much of his time traveling around the world making speeches. For this purpose he even acquired-at state expense, to be sure-a replica of Air Force One to accommodate him and his entourage.

On one level, then, it is simply Chávez's turn to be the scapegoat for Venezuela's inability to force oil prices upward. On another, however, he has raised the stakes in Venezuelan politics to new dangerous levels by introducing an implicit theme of class and racial war. As of now he is back in the saddle, thanks to the loyalty of some key regiments, the missteps of those civilians who would have replaced him, and the willingness of mobs from the shantytowns in hills above Caracas to lay down their lives for him.

However, to repeat, none of the elements that led to his temporary downfall have changed. He is still opposed by all the key elements of civil society-the private sector, the labor movement, the church, the middle class, and the media. His support among the poor is now reduced to a hard core of twenty percent. His hold on the military appears to be firm at present, but most observers believe that, in spite of the opportunity that Chávez now has to identify and purge those officers disloyal to him, the armed forces will ultimately act in accordance with their own institutional interests. As one respected Venezuelan analyst puts it, there is still a serious division within the armed forces: "There is a sector of the military which Chávez controls thanks to favors and promotions, but the balance between pro- and anti-Chávez officers was broken [the night of his overthrow] and continues to be fragile."[3] If the caudillo cannot deliver, and popular unrest reaches the boiling point, the military will find itself under increasing pressure to facilitate his early departure.

The Threat Ahead

Today Venezuela languishes in a dangerous institutional and political void. None of the country's traditional political parties has recovered the credibility they have lost over the last two decades, and in any case they are largely absent from the scene. Civil society, though vigorous and well-organized, can effectively oppose Chávez through strikes and demonstrations, but it cannot govern. Moreover, while in all likelihood most Venezuelans who voted for Chávez would not do so again, no other politician on the scene is capable of capturing their loyalties. Finally, whatever his problems with the population at large, Chávez still has some supporters fanatically devoted to him; they tend to come from those sectors of the population that have little to lose.

A polarized society, an economic crisis, a simmering social upheaval, a weak and discredited political class, a potentially divided military-these are, alas, the classic ingredients for a civil war. Such a conflict would produce enormous losses of life and property, seriously interrupt the flow of oil to the United States and elsewhere, and resolve none of the outstanding issues in Venezuela. Indeed, even if the anti-Chávez forces won such a war-the most likely outcome-they would face serious diplomatic isolation. Unfortunately, too, once such a conflict was decided upon, the United States would be powerless to prevent it, and-regardless of the actual facts-hard pressed afterward to convince its own media, Latin America, and the world that it had not indeed triggered it.

The night he returned to power, Chávez publicly acknowledged his mistakes and promised to learn from them. One can only hope he means what he says.

Notes

1. In this regard Chávez resembles another Caribbean fraud, formerly much beloved of the "rights community," Haiti's President Jean-Baptiste Aristide. As the former head of that country's Communist party once explained to me, "Aristide doesn't want a one party state. He doesn't like parties. He doesn't even want one of his own." When I asked "Well, then what does he want?" the gentleman replied, "A mob swirling perpetually about his person."

2. Chávez has already been elected twice, first in 1998, and then again in 2000 under a new constitution of his own inspiration.

3. El Nuevo Herald (Miami), April 15, 2002.

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.