In Venezuela, few moments are remembered with such accuracy. 4:25 pm on March 5, 2013 is one of them.
The then Vice-President Nicolás Maduro announced on a national television channel that Hugo Chávez had died at that precise moment after a two-year battle with cancer, about which detailed information was never given.
Filled with fear and uncertainty with the death of the person who had been President for more than 13 years, the country changed course.
He came to power in 1999 after winning the elections with 56.5% of the vote, he was one of the most important Latin American politicians of the 21st century, he put Venezuela on the world map, he changed the way politics is done, how People He got involved, including those who didn’t have a voice before, and giving them welfare to make them feel like he was counting on them.
But it also fostered the country’s intense polarization, confronted the private sector, shut down the media, was labeled authoritarian by its rivals, and bolstered the fundamentals of an economy that sank shortly after his death, which has left the country in an unprecedented crisis for the sake of it still on.
In his lengthy television speeches, he dismissed ministers, expropriated companies, advised and handed over houses. At his last appearance in December 2012, after announcing that he had to have an operation because he was suffering from cancer again, he pushed through his last political will.
He said that if anything happened to him, in a scenario of new presidential elections, his “firm, full, like the full moon” opinion was that Nicolás Maduro would be elected President of the Republic.
From the start, Maduro was a man loyal to Chávez. Under his mantle he was a voter, member of parliament, chancellor and finally vice president. “Chavez prepared him, he chose him,” says historian Margarita López Maya.
Ten years after Chávez’s death, Maduro continues to lead a country still suffering from an economic and political crisis, with seven million citizens having fled their territory and under investigation by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes committed by It hurt humanity,
At BBC Mundo we analyze what remains of Chávez’s legacy.
Venezuela met Chávez on February 4, 1992, when the media, for the first time after a failed coup, put a microphone, lights and camera on him and he spoke to the country.
Six years later, more than half of Venezuelans voted for him, fed up with traditional politics, corruption, the financial, economic and social crisis that had plagued the country since the 1980s, and social exclusion. They saw him “as one of them.”
The other half didn’t miss the punch and eyed him suspiciously.
From 1999, the year of his election, to 2003 were troubled years. In April 2002, several military and business sectors launched a coup that kept him out of power for 48 hours, followed by a strike in the oil sector, the country’s main economic engine.
Faced with his questionable popularity and the near possibility of a recall referendum that would remove him from power through the ballot box, in 2003 he approved the first Mission: Barrio Adentro, a social program to achieve primary health care thanks to an agreement with the neighborhood Cuba that it implied exchanging Venezuelan oil barrels for integrative doctors from the island.
From there, and with the help of the high price of a barrel of oil, he made the missions his trademark of government. Between 2003 and 2012, with peaks during the election period, a total of 31 initiatives were launched, ranging from health, education and literacy to housing.
Many consisted of bonuses, direct financial aid. In other cases care or education.
“Chávez gave me…” or “Thanks to Chávez, I have…” were some of the phrases I heard most often in the popular neighborhoods of Caracas, where I lived for more than ten years. It was rare that someone had not benefited from a mission.
To the critics, they were a populist tool of social control and will and vote buying that sparked spending without control or oversight and failed to solve the country’s structural problems.
The unusual rise in the world price of a barrel of oil in an economy dependent on that product helped propel them forward. And to push Chávez politically.
“The economy improved and we started inventing more missions. And we started rising in the polls, and the polls don’t fail. There is no magic here, it is political,” Chávez said.
Maduro continued with the stakes. But as Luis Vicente León, President of Datanálisis, states, there is “no comparison between the two, neither in their execution nor in their use of communication”.
Also the availability of resources is not the same. And it shows in their transformation and how they reach people.
For example, the Food Mission, established in 2003 to provide “food security” to the population, was one of the most important and one that was undergoing drastic change.
It distributed groceries and basic necessities at government-regulated prices through a network of supermarkets, markets and warehouses across the country. Access was like any other business: you enter, you choose, you pay and you go home.
But after the oil boom’s abundance party, the hangover came and it was time to foot the bill with the drop in barrel prices.
From 2014 the economy went into recession, the foreign exchange shortage worsened, the private sector declined, bottlenecks, panic buying and speculation began on the markets. That was the economic side.
The hardest part, the social, was seeing people drastically decrease in weight, swapping flour for powdered milk, standing in long lines to get basic necessities in a new rationing modality where you ration by ID number with the premise of “only 2 per person”. bought or made pilgrimages for days in search of medicines.
In this context, in 2016 the Food Mission initiated the staple food combination, popularly known as the “CLAP-Box” (Local Supply and Production Committee), which is delivered bi-weekly to previously registered households.
Although it has been an aid to the poorest sectors, it is not without its criticisms: irregular or non-existent distribution, use for extortion and political control, complaints of poor food quality and related large-scale cases of corruption.
“It’s a direct transfer, very useful in terms of popularity and social control. The fear of losing him is generated. Whoever distributes it to you knows how you behave when you go to protests or demonstrations. “, says Luis Vicente Lowe.
Already today, 40% of households receive the clap box, according to the latest report from the Center for Agri-Food Studies. An indispensable tool in a country where life is becoming more expensive every day and purchasing power is decreasing.
“Dispossess yourself!”
Chávez repeated it ad nauseam, fulfilling it and pairing it with a harsh speech against businessmen, especially after the 2002 coup.
He and Maduro accused the businessmen of hoarding and hiding food and “waging an economic war against the people” through price speculation.
An emblematic example was the attacks on tycoon Lorenzo Mendoza, the visible face of Empresas Polar, responsible for much of the country’s food production and over which fears of expropriation hung from time to time.
This resulted in two main economic measures. The first, currency control, something created in the 1980s but which Chávez is taking back “to stay”. The second was price controls to curb inflation and complete the “transition to socialism”.
“The economic model before (until 2003) did not stimulate foreign investment and promoted the outflow of capital, which led to basically manageable control with high oil prices,” says Tamara Herrera, economist and director of Síntesis Financiera.
The cocktail of expropriation, threats and controls brought about the demise of the private sector with fewer and fewer incentives.
In practice, at least, little remains of these measures to “conquer the vices of capitalism,” as Chávez put it.
“Exchange controls became unsustainable and were dismantled in 2018,” notes Herrera.
Maduro has also changed his relationship with businessmen in recent years, suspending price controls, and today the “criminal dollar,” as the president described it, roams freely in a de facto dollarized economy.
The rupture of the national economic fabric was joined by the sanctions imposed by the United States from 2017, which prohibit Venezuela from incurring debt or doing business with the state oil company PDVSA.
Washington does not consider Maduro a legitimate president because a large part of the opposition did not participate in the 2018 elections due to a lack of election guarantees.
“The need to make businesses work was recognized because the economy was underground,” says Herrera.
Luis Vicente León explains that the lack of economic strength or the ability to produce or buy goods to supply the national market forced the Maduro government to look for private sector supply alternatives, adjust economic policies and allow some leeway.
When I couldn’t find flour, milk, and sugar in 2015, I remember seeing all three foods on the same shelf in June 2019 for the first time in years. Of course at unusual prices and more expensive than in other countries without a crisis.
I was also surprised at the time by the ease with which people handled dollars on the street and for every transaction, whereas in 2010, when I arrived in the country, dollars were anxiously traded on the black market.
That means no more bonanza.
According to data from ECLAC (Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, a United Nations agency), Chávez managed to reduce poverty by more than half and narrow the inequality gap.
Today, according to Living Conditions Survey (Encovi) data, that trend has reversed and it is the most unequal country in Latin America.
Although there has been some economic opening and growth, the damage to the economy is great and, according to Tamara Herrera, it will remain vulnerable unless sweeping changes are made.
According to the UN, more than 7.1 million Venezuelans have left the country as a result of the economic and social crisis.
“(De Chávez) The most important and enduring thing is trying to empower an important part of the population so that the most oppressed are aware of their political potential,” the American history professor and researcher told BBC Mundo, the director of Elcano Royal Institute , Carlos Malamud.
Of humble origin and with a very Creole physiognomy, he contrasted with previous politicians. And it blew it up. He bonded with the populace who had never found themselves in their rulers and encouraged them to participate in the country’s politics from which they had previously been excluded.
Massive campaigns to get an ID card or a bank account for those who never had one or the other, or participation in organizational units where they submitted their applications to the government were some examples. And that generated support and votes, something Maduro has tried to maintain over the years thanks to the high level of organization of Chavismo hard core.
“It’s very weak participation, more fictional than real, but the underlying discourse is social attention. And politics in Venezuela, even the opposition, must now connect with this base of the population in order to be successful,” explains León.
And behind the scenes, everyone agrees that Chávez put Venezuela on the map.
His personal and charismatic character, interest in alliances in the region as a support wall for the “Yankee empire”, “fulfilling Simón Bolívar’s dream” of the unification of Latin America and oil donations all interfered.
His push was key to the creation of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of America) as opposed to ALCA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) as well as Unasur and CELAC.
It was called “petrodollar diplomacy”.
“He became a hemisphere and regional leader. He was the first to go to the (Caribbean) region when there was a disaster and he gave money,” says historian Margarita López Maya.
“This leadership was made possible by the association with Fidel Castro and the tremendous availability of funds. Without PetroCaribe (Caribbean countries’ oil alliance with Venezuela) and other cooperation entities, it is very difficult to imagine that she would have played this role,” Malamud notes.
However, the panorama is no longer the same. If Chávez traveled kilometers and formed alliances in the world, a good part of it was lost with the Maduro government.
Not only because of the decline in purchasing power, political changes in the region or the comparison with Chávez.
With the 2019 slump of Juan Guaidó, who proclaimed himself Venezuela’s interim president after arguing after the 2018 election that the government was illegitimate for failing to respect democratic dictates, Maduro lost the recognition of more than 60 countries.
It still holds on to old alliances, such as with China, Russia, Belarus and Turkey, and has rediscovered others, such as Colombia, with the change of political stance with Gustavo Petro.
But according to Malamud, Venezuela “has become a problem for many Latin American countries because of human rights violations, and politicians and even left-wing leaders like Gabriel Boric (Chile) openly condemn it”.
The Maduro government is currently facing an investigation before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Although he has recently regained his breath on the international stage with the arrival of Petro in Colombia and the return of Lula in Brazil, and with some relaxation in Washington, the President rarely leaves his country and is focused on winning the 2024 elections, where this is the case The world will look to Venezuela again.
This weekend Chávez was honored by the government for the ten years since his death.
Although he is still very much loved and coveted by part of the population, others blame him for the origin of the crisis that the country has been suffering for years.
Meanwhile, the posters with the commander’s face on the walls of Caracas are fading. The years have passed, the country has changed and so has its heritage.
Although, as Margarita López Maya says, “Chávez’s greatest legacy is the government of Nicolás Maduro”.
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