There are two oppositions in Venezuela: an elite that wants power, and popular protestors who don’t have enough to eat. After two decades of the Chavist experiment, is this the end of the road?

A pedestrian walks across the Simon Bolivar Bridge from Colombia into San Antonio Del Táchira, Venezuela Carlos Becerra · Bloomberg · Getty

Smartphone footage that went viral in Venezuela last month shows two huge, intimidating figures approaching a man in a red baseball cap. He tries to talk, but they don’t respond, pushing him around and threatening him. Suddenly a fourth man appears, takes out a gun, and fires. The crowd shouts as the man in the baseball cap goes down.

In May, President Nicolás Maduro decreed the election of a National Constituent Assembly (NCA) to replace the National Assembly, the only institution controlled by the opposition since the 2015 legislative elections. Tensions have risen, and more than 100 people, including Maduro supporters (maduristas), have died in clashes between the authorities and demonstrators, a fact overlooked by the media.

On 4 August an activist in Venezuela uploaded the video to a discussion forum: ‘Look how these opposition sons of bitches assassinate young chavistas!’ (1). Commenters were outraged: ‘They went to the home of a Socialist Youth leader who’d gone into hiding because the rightwing militia had threatened him. And because his friend wouldn’t grass him up, they killed him.’

‘Hey, the opposition are sharing this video too,’ another commenter pointed out, suggesting that Maduro’s enemies were using the same footage as an example of the authorities’ violence; the images could be rightwing manipulation, or they might be a case of mistaken identity because the baseball cap was red (the chavistas’ colour). Eagerness to share the video turned to a hunt for its source: it came from an open-air theatre performance in Puerto Rico, and had no connection with Venezuela.

Chaos and manipulation

Political and economic chaos in Venezuela (2) has led to crude manipulation from both sides, and in the international media, which often take the opposition’s side. On 16 July the opposition organised a ‘popular consultation’ (unofficial referendum), and one of its questions — ‘Do you demand that the National Armed Forces ... defend the constitution of 1999 and support the decisions of the National Assembly?’ — was a thinly veiled call for a military rebellion. But according to the organisers, around seven million Venezuelans turned out, and most rejected the Maduro government and its NCA project (3). The New York Times wrote: ‘More than 98% of voters sided with the opposition’ (4). True, but the Times failed to add that only around 35% of the electorate voted.

The crisis in Venezuela has left many confused. As in all situations where power is contested, it can be interpreted two ways. One is dispassionate and intellectual, exploring past failures, future possibilities and what is desirable. The other is engaged, and focuses on specific policies and their frustrations: political struggle means taking sides, however uncomfortable. It has winners and losers.

Outside Venezuela, those who were interested in the ‘Bolivarian experiment’ when it was a source of hope debate how much of the responsibility for the current crisis lies with the (chavista) authorities, and how much with an opposition rarely troubled by democratic process (5).

It is uncontroversial that Maduro is a pale shadow of his mentor Chávez, but there is also a suggestion that the fault lines within Chavism run deeper. Besides the personality of Chávez, his years in power covered an explosion in the oil price, which has collapsed since Maduro’s election in 2013; political acumen and plenty contrast with ineptitude and scarcity. Those are the ideal conditions for the left to look like its adversaries’ caricatures.

Hence the second rupture between chavismo and madurismo. Most Venezuelans associate Chávez with less inequality and greater democracy; Maduro is now linked to the return of poverty, made worse by tougher policies and harsher policing.

American researcher Greg Grandin has written: ‘Analyses [of the left’s failures] usually focus on the inability of the new to be born, but downplay the violent ideological and institutional resurgence of the old’ (6). This is the response of those who mock ‘leftwing’ critiques, condemning them as naïve and claiming it is obvious that the US is manoeuvring to replace Maduro with a puppet more amenable to its interests, because Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and the US wants to control the planet’s energy resources.

US interventionism

The influence of US interventionism in its backyard is hard to overestimate. Former minister Pasqualina Curcio has tried to show (7) that Venezuela is seeing an operation similar to the one that led to the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. But it is hard to compare Allende’s situation two years after his election with Maduro’s after 20 years of Chavism. Since Venezuela controls almost all currency movements, it may not be as vulnerable as Chile was to private sector manoeuvres. These things have been debated all summer, with some emphasising the connection between Maduro and Chávez, and others insisting on the need to save Chávez’s heritage from Maduro drifting off course.

On 11 August, President Donald Trump intervened: ‘We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.’ His reaction embarrassed even the region’s most rightwing governments, including Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, which had just condemned the ‘breakdown of democratic order’ in Venezuela (8) and now found themselves having to condemn old-fashioned interventionist threats. In the progressive camp, there was a truce, since the left, though plagued by internal disputes, still knows how to identify its worst enemies. Saving Chávez from Maduro could wait. The priority was saving Maduro from Trump, and Venezuela from the US army.

Saving Chávez from Maduro could wait. The priority was saving Maduro from Trump, and Venezuela from the US army

Trump’s show of strength could be seen as providential support for Maduro, since it could make him look like an international defender against US arrogance, and muzzle domestic protest. International observers’ positions aligned with those of Venezuela’s leftwing activists, who knew that a progressive force capable of defending a different concept of the Chavist legacy could not just be wished into existence. A different interpretative framework had to be adopted.

A small part of the progressive faction has approached the opposition (which is often violent, racist — Maduro supporters tend to have darker skins — and vengeful, as well as neoliberal) (9), including the ‘critical Chavist’ Nicmer Evans. Others have realised no one on the left today except Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) can mobilise people, and have put their efforts into the struggle with the opposition, though they regret having to rally to a side that inspires so little enthusiasm.

Venezuela has been closer to civil war than liberal democracy for some years, so trying to decide whether the Chavist camp has lurched towards dictatorship, or to assess the opposition’s democratic credentials, amounts to no more than an academic exercise.

When the opposition gained control of the National Assembly in the 2015 legislative election, its first decision was to undertake to get rid of Maduro ‘within six months’. The government’s response, on a pretext of suspicions of vote-buying in the state of Amazonas, was to declare the Assembly’s decisions null and void. There was a chain reaction. Rather than letting justice take its course and working with its considerable majority (109 seats out of 167), the coalition of anti-Maduro parties accused him of violating the constitution.

This was a calculated struggle for power, rather than a battle over democracy or socialism. Those enamoured of peaceful cohabitation may regret it, but political struggle in its acute phases can only end with one side’s defeat, or worse in a country whose leaders are legitimately afraid of reprisals after their enemies’ definitive victory. In Brazil, the right’s highly dubious accession to power has led to a judicial witch-hunt, and that must worry Venezuela.

Hope replaced by fear

Chavism once had the power to mobilise because it inspired hope. The horizon seems to have narrowed for its heirs, who are hostage to a deadly partisan struggle.

Historian Arno Mayer, writing of the French and Russian revolutions, analyses the revolutionaries’ habit of confusing distinct adversaries: ‘[The] composite and organised counter-revolution from the top and the spontaneous and irregular anti-revolution from the ground up. ... The mindset and reason of the counter-revolution from above being elitist, it failed to connect with the popular anti-revolution from below, with the result that counter-revolutionary fortunes became heavily contingent on foreign aid and military intervention’ (10). In Venezuela there is an elite opposition, ideology- and class-based, and a popular one, overwhelmed by the privations now associated with Maduro.

Neither has policies: the elite wants power, the popular opposition wants enough to eat. The Chavists would waste their time trying to win over the elite, since they effectively created it, but the anti-revolution is different, and is partly consolidated by Chavism’s economic failures. These, together with serious errors of leadership, explain Brazilian journalist Breno Altman’s comment that in a democratic regime, ‘governments depend on the goodwill of the bosses’ to implement their programme (11).

Venezuela’s private sector has not been accommodating, and that explains some of the appeal of the NCA. Its advocates claim the NCA will remain within the old democratic framework (though the electoral system swelled the share of Maduro supporters), but maintain that it will enable a radicalisation of the Chavist project, eliminating institutions that stand in the way, and leading to socialism.

Can Maduro’s party, plagued by careerism and cronyism, offer the necessary recompense for peaceful renunciation of the rituals, however superficial, of liberal democracy? And the PSUV’s constraints on the development of ‘communal’ power, the foundation of Venezuelan socialism, would weaken local Chavist potentates if it took off. But unless it does, the opposition — however unappealing — might end up looking more seductive than what is left of chavismo.