Questions:
The End of the Bolivarian Dream?
AFP
Down, but not out: Chávez is a man who rarely takes “no” for
an answer.
Andres
Oppenheimer Interviewed
by Foreign Policy
In nine years, Hugo Chávez has never lost at the polls.
Until Sunday, that is, when voters narrowly rejected his referendum
to amend the Venezuelan constitution and rid himself of term
limits. Noted Latin America expert and author Andrés Oppenheimer
explains why Chávez lost, what it means for the region,
and where Venezuela—and the United States—ought to
go from here.
Foreign
Policy: Why do you think Venezuelans rejected Hugo Chávez’s
proposed changes to the constitution?
Andres
Oppenheimer: Conflict fatigue. About 40 percent of the Venezuelan
population
was opposing Chávez to begin with,
and many of the others who supported Chávez were tired of
his habit of picking fights—daily—with anybody who
came across him. If it wasn’t the Catholic Church, it was
the businesspeople; if it wasn’t the businesspeople, it was
the students; if it wasn’t the students, it was the United
States; if it wasn’t the United States, it was the king of
Spain; if it wasn’t the king of Spain, it was the president
of Colombia. And the Chávez supporters just got fed up with
this polarization.
FP: How much of a factor was his failure to make good on his promises
to cut poverty?
AO:
There’s no question that many Venezuelans thought it
a bit of a contradiction for Chávez to be talking about
creating a socialist state when there were shortages of basics
foodstuffs such as milk in Venezuelan stores. And there was also
a lot of resentment among Chávez supporters for him to be
spending billions of dollars helping what he calls “alternative
Bolivarian movements” throughout Latin America. A lot of
people sent him a message saying, “Why don’t you focus
on your own country?”
FP:
In your book, Saving the Americas: The Dangerous Decline of Latin
America
. . . and What the U.S. Must Do, you describe how
and why Latin America, including Venezuela, has been so unsuccessful
at fighting poverty. What was Chávez’s response to
your argument?
AO:
I wrote the book to find out why poverty has been reduced by
half across
the world during the past 25 years and why this
phenomenon has happened almost everywhere but Latin America. That’s
why I went to China, to India, to Ireland, to the Czech Republic,
to Poland, among other places. One of the main things I discovered
is that [economic development] doesn’t have anything to do
with ideology. The real difference between countries today is not
how Chávez would like us to believe that there are “Right” countries
and “Left” countries, but rather between countries
that are drawing investments and countries that are scaring investments
away. And the country that is attracting the most investment in
the developing world is a communist country, China. That drove
[Chavistas] crazy. That’s why Chávez spent one of
his speeches lashing out against me.
In
Beijing, they are putting out a red carpet for foreign investors,
whereas
in Latin America, many presidents are going out to the
balcony and yelling against foreign investors. [In my book], I
tell the story of when I arrived in China, and the first thing
I read in the [local] paper was that the entire Chinese government
was celebrating the arrival of the board of directors of McDonald’s,
who were there to announce the opening of 400 restaurants in China.
I had just come from Venezuela, where the Chávez government
had just suspended McDonald’s restaurants for three days
for some phony tax investigation and the government was taking
pride in “teaching foreign capitalists a lesson.”
FP: Do you think this rejection at the polls will harm his reputation
and popularity in the region?
AO: Chávez’s reputation in the region has never been
very high. In the region when he’s polled, he scores at the
very bottom of the list, alongside President Bush, and only second-to-last
before Fidel Castro. He has strong support among very vocal, radical,
leftist support groups, but his base is not widespread. I think
it will embolden opposition forces in Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia
who will now feel that there’s nothing irreversible about
radical leftist leaders who win democratic elections and try to
erode democracy from within.
Chávez
is down, but not out by any means. He still controls the presidency,
Congress, the military, 20 of 22 governorships,
and much of the media. If this is a boxing match, he lost the round
but by no means did he lose the match itself.
FP:
You’ve spent a good deal of time comparing Latin America
to the rest of the world. One easy comparison I see is between
Chávez and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both are semiauthoritarians
who are ruling petrostates; both are hostile to the United States.
Yet on the same day, they had very different electoral results.
What do you make of this?
AO:
Well Chávez’s concession was not a trial of his
democratic instincts, although one has to be happy that he conceded.
He delayed the announcement for about seven hours in Venezuela,
and according to a government-sanctioned monitoring group, the
opposition victory was larger than officially reported. Venezuelan
press reports today are talking about the fact the military high
command told Chávez to accept his defeat. So we shouldn’t
rush to celebrate Chávez’s sudden conversion into
a Jeffersonian democrat.
In
Putin’s case, he uses the same methods Chávez uses
in Venezuela: massive uses of public resources; control of much of
the media. There’s not such a huge difference. [But] Putin
may be focusing more on Russia and the Russian people than Chávez
is focusing on the Venezuelan people. A lot of Chávez supporters
resented the fact that he spends most of his time in Saudi Arabia
and Iran, talking about the world revolution when they want bread
and butter. FP:
You’ve written about the much-discussed wave of neopopulism
in Latin America and said it is misunderstood. What do you think
an election result like this says about this so-called populist
wave, if anything?
AO:
Well, that’s the key question. Of course I’m worried
about Chávez, and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Bolivia’s
Evo Morales, and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa scaring away investments
and making the countries poor, but that’s not the key issue
in Latin America; because if you put all these countries together—Venezuela,
Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua—they barely amount
to 8 or 9 percent of Latin America’s GDP. U.S. officials
and we in the press love to write about Chávez because
he screams and yells and is colorful and insults everybody and
he
makes great copy. But the real story of Latin America is being
written elsewhere: in Mexico; in Brazil; in Colombia; in Chile.
What
really worries me about Latin America’s future is that
we’re falling behind in education, science, technology, and
research and development. If you look at all the international
standardized tests for kids, Latin America has among the lowest
scores in the world. When you look at the London Times’s
ranking of the world’s 200 best universities, this year only
three Latin American universities are among the world’s [top]
200 and they’re all between 195 and 200. This is scandalous.
And it’s because, when the rest of the developing world is
moving rapidly to create more skilled workforces, Latin America
is talking ideology. Look at Chávez. He speaks to the nation
every day in front of a huge painting of Simón Bolívar.
He changed the country to name it after Simón Bolívar.
In every speech, he cites Bolívar as inspiration for every
single measure he takes. The trouble is that Bolívar died
in 1830—four years before the invention of the telephone
and 150 years before the invention of the Internet.
FP:
Do you think then that a lot of people who are agitating for
democratic
ideals would be better off if they channeled all of
their anger and resentment toward Chávez and people like
him into issues like education?
AO:
When it comes to his opponents in the United States, I think
Washington
should bypass Chávez. Instead of focusing on
Chávez and responding to him, Washington should build bridges
with Brazil, with Mexico, with Colombia, with Chile, with Peru
and simply ignore Chávez. If Washington is really serious
and really worried about Chávez, the thing it should do
is be serious about reducing America’s dependence on imported
oil. The United States is financing Chávez. We buy $34 billion
a year worth of Venezuelan oil. That’s what keeps Chávez
alive. Ironically, the United States is financing Chávez’s
Bolivarian revolution.
Andrés
Oppenheimer is the author of “The Oppenheimer
Report,” a prize-winning column on Latin American affairs
in the Miami Herald, and Saving the Americas: The Dangerous Decline
of Latin America . . . and What the U.S. Must Do (New York: Random
House, 2007). Petroleumworld
not necessarily share these views.
Editor's note: This
commentary was originally published by Foreign
Policy,
on
December 2007. Petroleumworld
reprint this article in the interest of our readers. Petroleumworld
reprint this article in the interest of our readers.
