Manuel Caballero
Special for El Universal

1. There is a white minority against a dark majority who supports president Chávez in Venezuela.

False: Venezuela is one of the few countries in the world where there is no racial or religious hate. This has long been confirmed by international organizations such as UNESCO. It is not that we Venezuelans are better than other peoples, but there is a historical reason: the independence war (1810-1821) and the endless civil wars (1830-1903) physically killed the whites. Venezuela today, unlike many European countries, is not a multicultural, political project, but a mixed-race country. As it is often said, in Venezuela we people are like a coffee with milk. And so have been our presidents, with virtually no exceptions.

2. There is a conflict between poor and rich in Venezuela.

False: It would be stupid to say that in Venezuela, like everywhere else, there are no classes opposing and struggling. But today the boundary is not between upper and lower classes but between the personalist authoritarism of Mr. Chávez’s government and the democratic collectivism of the opposition. We do not deny that there are individuals from the far right within the spheres of the opposition, but they are also present within the Chavismo’s more militarist and radical wing.

It is false too that the rejection of Chávez stems from the oligarchy not standing the fact that the top office is held by a poor boy from the small town of Sabaneta. From 1830 to date, and perhaps with some brief exception in 1859 and with Guzmán Blanco in 1870, all Venezuelan presidents have shared the same origin. About president José Antonio Páez it was commonly said that he had gone from washing the feet of zambo Manuelote (foreman in the ranch where he worked as a farmhand) to being President of Venezuela. One of the very few presidents with a wealthy origin, Antonio Guzmán Blanco, threatened in 1870 to annihilate his peers in the conservative oligarchy even as a social nucleus.

3. The popular classes are the support pillar for Hugo Chávez.

This is a half-truth: Chávez effectively got the majority of his votes in the big cities’ poorest sectors, mainly thanks to a frantic demagoguery. However, the answer to this propaganda assertion needs further elaboration.

First, the support from these sectors of society to a caudillo does not make him a democrat or a revolutionary. Otherwise, where did Le Pen’s greatest constituency come from in France? Has it been forgotten that the formerly solid communist constituency turned en bloc to give him its support? And it is not that it was the reformist unionism, but also the foremost leaders of the more radical labor movement.

Finally, it is clear that in the poorest sectors, among the declassed, the support for Chavez is also dwindling. The proof of that is his inability to muster them in the streets, as before. While the opposition concentrates millions of people in the biggest demonstrations ever in the Latin American history, the government merely manages to put small groups of heavily armed bully-boys in the streets, sort of fasci de combatimento protected by the Armed Forces.

4. The opposition to Chávez is putschist and fascist.

False: Denying this is not enough –it is certainly the biggest and at the same time the most shameless lie told by a government. It must not be forgotten that lieutenant-colonel Hugo Chávez Frías came to light politically in 1992 after having led two bloody military coups: if there is someone to be properly called putschist it would be him (who, by the way, took good care not to risk his neck).

And as if that was not good enough, once in power Chávez tried to elevate the day of one of the military coups he led into a country’s holiday, that is to say, to rise the coup d’état to the same category of national celebrations. As for the term fascist, it was Hugo Chávez Frías who proposed the creation of a National Constituent Assembly with four legislative corporative chambers according to the Mussolinian model –chambers of workers, employers, students and (of course!) the military. On the other hand, for years his acknowledged intellectual mentor was the Argentinean adventurer Norberto Ceresole, ideologist of the destruction of the democratic institutions in favor of the triad Caudillo-Army-People. The author of this pastiche from the Führer is a self-confessed and proud enemy of Jews (he has pointed out several times: “I am not anti-Semitic nor anti-Israeli. I am anti-Jew”) who, for the first time in 500 years of Venezuelan history, allowed himself to make anti-Semitic propaganda.

Faced to this realities, the putschist opposition has brought its million of supporters to the streets. On April 11, 2002, Chávez was overthrown after firing bullyboys armed by the government broke up the biggest demonstration in our history. The military High Command demanded his resignation from Chávez, which he accepted, but with the condition of being allowed to go into exile and –as it was said without him or none of his followers having ever denied it – in exchange for seven million dollars. The proof that no military coup occurred is that not even the government-controlled Supreme Court dared consider it as such and, above all, that after being reinstated, Chávez designated as Defense Secretary the same general who had demanded his resignation! Chávez is the main witness that the opposition is not fascist and scorns it for not having a leader (a Duce, a Führer o a Caudillo by God’s grace) to counter him. The opposition’s Coordinadora Democrática embraces leaders from the worker and corporate confederations, old and new political organizations –some to the center-right like Primero Justicia, some to center-left like MAS and Unión, and those to the far left like Causa Radical and Bandera Roja– and a myriad of NGOs.

Coordinadora Democrática is often criticized for being slow to take decisions. But it is so precisely because these stem from intense discussions among so many and diverse factors and opinions. Finally, does it not seem weird for a fascist opposition to be relentlessly demanding elections and for a democratic government to be refusing to hold them?

5. Chávez’s government is civilian, legitimate, legal and stemming from popular sovereignty.

Another half-truth: Or, at this point, less (a lot) then that. Chávez was elected with the popular vote –nobody intends to deny that– the same way Hitler, Mussolini and Fujimori were. But the process of his delegitimization started at the beginning of his mandate: he had the rules of the game changed so that his term, originally a non-extendible five year period, would be lengthen to six years with an immediate re-election, and which everyday he threatens to stretch until 2021.

On the other hand, Chávez was elected to preside over a civilian government. However, not only has he concentrated all powers in his hands but has also filled the public administration from top to bottom with active duty military officers. His is thus, stricto sensu, a military government; even worse, it is a militarist one –for the first time since its abolition in 1830, it has re-established the military immunity.

Chávez’s is no longer a legal government due to what president Francois Mitterand once dubbed a permanent coup d’état. Not only has he ordered the Armed Forces to ignore judicial decisions when these might not be favorable, but, in a infringement of the Constitution and with disregard for the division of powers, has ignored the Municipal Power by taking over the Metropolitan Police of Caracas to shamelessly prevent it from protecting citizens from the outrages of his paramilitary apparatus (the so-called Círculos Bolivarianos).

Finally, Chávez installed himself in power invoking the sovereign people’s will all the time. But today not only refuses he to ask the people’s opinion, but also has publicly said that, if it were the case that in an advisory referendum 90 per cent asked him to resign, he would not do so.

6. Chávez fights against corruption.

False: Chávez’s is one of the most corrupt governments Venezuela has had in its republican history. This is no unfounded accusation. Regardless the figures publicly known to Venezuelan opinion, this is a fact easily verifiable. No government in the world is free –some more, some less– from the scourge of corruption. The only way to hold it back is by setting up institutional and social controls. Well, the Chavista idiosyncrasy has removed all controls, especially over the Armed Forces expenditures.

7. There is freedom of speech in Venezuela.

Another half truth: In Chávez’s Venezuela, thanks to a long tradition dating from 1936, there is freedom to express one’s opinion, and I attest this. But there is no freedom to inform –no other Venezuelan regime has witnessed so many outrages against media, ranging from attacks on media headquarters to aggressions against reporters in the street. These have been so numerous that they have become a source of concern for the United Nations. Reporters receive the attacks of the Chavista bullyboys and the Armed Forces so consistently, that in today’s Venezuela, bulletproof vests are part of the journalistic outfit, as essential as the notepad, the pencil or the tape recorder.

8. Chavez’s is a nationalist government.

False: Like all fascisms, the Chavista regime exploits, ad nauseam, a blatant patriotism, focused on the idolatry of Liberator Simón Bolívar, whom it cites pell-mell to the same extent tyrant Juan Vicente Gómez used to in his day. But in fact, no one has strived more to give away Venezuelan interests to foreign capitals. It is not enough for them to destroy our main industry –the oil company they are now intending to put in the hands of technicians from Algeria, Libya and Cuba–, but also to grant gas extraction to alien companies under conditions not seen since Juan Vicente Gómez’s death.

These are, then, eight lies told by the Chavismo –though there are others. One of the features of this apprentice to caudillo is that of being a compulsive liar.

The author is Full Professor of Contemporary History with the Central University of Venezuela and was Director of its History Department. He received the National Journalism Award and the National History Award, as well as the Biennial Simón Bolívar Award for his academic achievements. He has written more than 50 books published in several editions both in Venezuela and abroad and was the first Venezuelan author ever to be published by Cambridge University Press. He went to prison and into exile during the military dictatorship, was an active member of communism for 18 years and a founding member of political party Movimiento al Socialismo in 1970. Today he is independent.

Translation: Mario Bulfone

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