Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias was elected by a landslide in December of 1998, with 56 percent of the votes. In 2000, after a constitutional congress approved a new constitution, Chávez was reelected with 59.8 percent of the votes to serve a new six-year term. Most recently, he was reelected in 2006, receiving 63 percent of the vote.
Campaigning as a political outsider, Chávez pledged to reclaim Venezuela’s oil wealth in the name of the poor and put an end to four decades of corrupt party politics by holding a constitutional assembly to write a new constitution. Supported by the poor and previously excluded majority, Chávez’s election marked a departure from Venezuela’s traditionally elite-dominated politics. Unlike Venezuela’s past presidents, Chávez experienced poverty firsthand during his childhood and early formative years. He was raised by his grandmother in a very poor household, often lacking the most basic necessities. At the age of 17 he joined the Venezuelan military and subsequently attended the University of Simon Bolivar. He eventually attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
Political Background
In February, 1989, following a protracted political and economic crisis, President Carlos Andres Pérez agreed to implement a radical neoliberal adjustment package at the behest of the IMF. Authorities consequently raised the price of fuel, causing bus fares to double overnight. Fed up with the corruption and abuses of the ruling elite, hundreds of thousands around the country began demonstrating and eventually rioting against these harsh economic shock policies. The next day, on February 28, President Pérez declared martial law and sent the military into Venezuela’s slums to put down the revolt by any means necessary. The result was the indiscriminate killing of hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians.
The wave of protests, rioting and subsequent government repression — known as the Caracazo–heightened the political crisis and prompted Chávez, along with several collaborators, to attempt a coup d’etat against the Pérez administration on February 4, 1992. Although the coup failed and Chávez was jailed, it succeeded in catapulting him to national fame. Pérez was subsequently impeached on corruption charges and removed from office by the Supreme Court on May 20, 1993.
Chávez’ growing popularity as a hero who stood up to a corrupt and repressive government led Pérez’s successor, President Rafael Caldera, to issue a presidential decree pardoning him for the attempted coup. After his release in 1994, Chávez harnessed his newfound popularity to organize a political movement to reform Venezuela.
Once in power, Chávez’s first move was to promote a constitutional assembly to write a new constitution. The new constitution was adopted in December, 1999 following a constitutional referendum – the first of its kind in Venezuela – in which the nation’s new charter was approved by 71.78% of voters. During the first four years of his administration, however, Chávez’s efforts to implement modest economic reforms and assert more direct state control over the nation’s prosperous oil sector were met with intense opposition from Venezuela’s moneyed elite, who repeatedly tried to oust him through a series of strikes, a coordinated media campaign and eventually a coup d’etat in February 2002. With key support from the mainstream media and the U.S. government, Venezuela’s business community conspired with elements of the military to overthrow Chávez. The coup plotters installed Pedro Carmona, the head of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, as dictator, who then proceeded to dissolve the National Assembly and the Supreme Court and declared the 1999 constitution void.
The coup regime, however, only managed to hold on to power for 47 hours, as a wave of grassroots protests rose up to call for Chávez’s return and members of the military still loyal to the president managed to return him to power. After surviving the coup attempt, Chávez faced a long and economically disruptive oil strike and then a recall referendum organized by the opposition in 2004, which he easily won with 58 percent of the vote.
Economic Background
Between 1998 and 2003 the Venezuelan economy faced a series of negative shocks, including the aforementioned political instability, that led to a severe recession. However, in 2003 after the end of the oil strike and once the government was able to gain control over the state oil company, PDVSA, Venezuela experienced a dramatic economic expansion. Between 2003 and 2008 Venezuela’s real (adjusted for inflation) gross domestic product (GDP) nearly doubled, growing 13.5 percent annually. At the same time, the government’s total public debt was cut in half, falling from 30.7 to 14.3 percent of GDP. The government’s foreign public debt decreased even more, from 25.6 to 9.8 percent of GDP.
PDVSA’s oil revenues allowed the government to increase social spending dramatically. Between 1998 and 2006, real social spending per person more than tripled. The government set up a number of popular social programs — or “misiones” as they are known in Venezuela — to promote literacy, provide discounted food and free medical attention to the poor, and low-income housing, among other things. These social programs have contributed to a dramatic lowering of Venezuela’s poverty rate by more than half, from 54 percent of households in 2003 to 26 percent in 2008, while extreme poverty fell by an impressive 72 percent. The increased social spending has also helped produce a substantial decrease in inequality, which measured by the Gini index, has dropped from 48.1 in 2003 to 41 in 2008. Throughout this time the government also achieved a large decrease in infant mortality rates and managed to significantly increase school enrollment.
Foreign Policy
Venezuela’s foreign policy over the last decade has sought to promote a Latin American alternative to U.S.-led economic neoliberalism. To this end, it has initiated and supported a wide array of political and economic integration frameworks. The Petrocaribe initiative, which was launched in 2005, provides oil to several countries of the Caribbean and Central America on preferential terms. The Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA, for its Spanish initials) is an organization intended to promote social, political and economic integration based on the principle of social justice and solidarity. ALBA recently took the first steps towards creating a virtual common currency, named the SUCRE. Venezuela has also promoted the creation of the Bank of the South, a Latin American and democratic alternative to the U.S.-controlled World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank.
In broader terms, Venezuela has also promoted anti-imperialism, peace and solidarity throughout the world. It opposed the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and has vocally defended countries’ right to self-determination. In 2007 President Chávez acted as a mediator in Colombia’s conflict, seeking the release of hostages held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and promoting peace talks. Venezuela has also provided millions of dollars of subsidized heating oil to the residents of the Bronx, Washington, D.C., Native American reservations, and other low-income communities in the US.
Resources:
Online:
Venezuela Analysis
Mark Weisbrot’s op-ed’s and columns on Venezuela, Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Books:
Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution
By Bart Jones. Steerforth: 2008.
Venezuela: Hugo Chávez and the Decline of an Exceptional Democracy
Miguel Tinker Salas and Steve Ellner, Editors. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: 2006.
Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots
Carlos Martinez, Michael Fox, and JoJo Farrell, Editors. PM Press: 2010.
