From the independent newspaper: El LIbertario

Different types of power present in Venezuelan society have intentionally created two supposedly antagonistic social factions, which have reached their moment of maximum tension after the call for the so-called "national civic strike" last December 2. One of the sides portrays the conflict as "constitutionality versus golpismo"; the other as "freedom versus dictatorship", in coarse simplifications aimed at minimizing reflective thought and criticism and in favour of the status quo of the representatives of both sides. The inhabitants and ordinary people of this land called Venezuela, face a false dilemma and intentional mass media polarization that hides the essence of the

conflict: the concentration and dispute over pieces of power.

We can briefly describe what is happening as a dispute between two ways of organising and understanding society, the centralised State versus order under the laws of the Market, and it is no less certain that they come from the same cultural mould. For this reason they equally share the style of how to activate the ins and outs of politics and the transformation of society. For this reason, the behaviour of the two sectors, only differed by rhetorical shades, is exactly same. Both possess media aligned with their interests, which only transmit the versions and information that ratify their statements. Both need massive mobilizations of citizens to legitimate the decisions, made behind closed doors, of their leaders. One and the another are elitist projects that have been insufficient in other latitudes to reach the objectives of social justice and freedom.

Facing the series of events that have happened in the country, we believe it pertinent to make the following considerations, which help to understand the nature of the events, to establish viewpoints and postures distanced from the sectors in crisis and to suggest strategies of action for the present and the future.

1) The government of Hugo Chávez is a victim of the institutions that it has not wanted to change during its legislative period. Their revolution of words is contradicted by the facts that have allowed the continuity of diverse public bodies which operate with the methods of the past: perverse bureaucracies whose officials were inclined to the regime. The Supreme Court of Justice, PDVSA (state-owned oil company) and the National Electoral Council are clear examples of this.

2) The belligerency granted to the armed forces continues to give them a leading role in the political life of the country. Although the callers of the strike have not broken away from a military solution, the Bolivarian regime presents its executive and political control of the Army as the greatest guarantee of stability. The road to legitimising coups has been established by the current government, mysticalising its own origins (February 4th 1992), diversely defending this event and decreeing the date as a national celebration. In this headstrong way they have promoting military superiority over civilian society.

3) The callers of the Strike have shown a strategy of dark, unclear and contradictory opposition. They have indistinctly requested the President's resignation, a referendum, immediate elections, the application of the OAS (American Organization of States) Interamerican Democratic Charter, and an uprising of part of the armed forces. The definition of their strategies are made behind the backs of the people who go to all of their demonstrations.

4) The dissatisfaction with the regime is legitimate because the regime has not

fulfilled any of its electoral campaign promises (decrease of poverty, fight against corruption, a real change of the institutions, increase of the standard of living, political opening for the participation of all citizens...), it has tamed and channelled the revolutionary fervour of society and its has repeatedly shown its incompetence to solve the problems of the country. This unhappiness is being capitalized by a sector of the society as elitist as the previous one and representative of the political forces that impoverished Venezuela during four decades.

5) The relationships of Venezuela with its main trade partner, the United States, has been normalized during the last months, even being qualified as "cordial" by the government's spokesmen. An example has been the punctual payment of the country's foreign debt and the establishment of a mechanism of double taxation, broadly favourable to foreign investments. The supposed confrontation with the United States is an intentional version of the left-wing sector of the government and only present in rhetoric, because in practice it follows a program based on capitalist and neo-liberal economics.

6) The informative practices of state and official media are indistinctly slanted and manipulative. The minimal autonomy of the alternative and community media that have arisen in the last three years has placed them clearly with one of the factions, injuring their own independence and credibility.

7) The Army, the National Guard and all the policemen carry out the monopoly of

power employed by the State. The transformation of their repressive nature or winning over their members for a revolutionary process necessarily implies breaking them up.

8) Impunity hangs over the deaths that occurred in Plaza de Altamira (in Caracas). Ignoring the petition of a prompt and impartial verification of the events, the bodies have been used, without any type of reliable tests, as an argument against the opposition. Such a practice reveals the political integrity of the competitors, the irresponsibility of the media and prepare the path for the non-clarification of the crimes. Both the government and the opposition have sabotaged the setting up of a "Commission of the Truth" to reveal those responsible for the murders that took place from April 11th to 13th, and they don't give any sample of a desire to change.

9) The spokespersons of both the government and the opposition have repeatedly

transmitted messages of violence, intolerance and confrontation whose aftermaths

are born out by the rank-and-file members of both tendencies and not by their leaders. The above-mentioned demonstrates the authoritarian and elitist crafts of both sides and the manipulation of their followers to their convenience.

10) A revolutionary solution to the current situation would imply the rejection, on the part of a wide social movement, of the factors that are limiting a real change. This starts with Hugo Chávez and the new bureaucracy embedded in government, as well as with the supposedly representative opposition of the big time businessmen in Fedecámaras, the union bureaucrats of the CTV and the clever politicians of the Coordinadora Democrática, in addition to the confinement of the armed forces in their barracks. Although elections would be an immediate solution, on their own they do not change the systemic and structural origins of the crisis and would turn into a new reorganization of the bureaucratic control of power by its current main characters.

11) The growing deception of the citizens with the representatives of both tendencies should be changed into a leading desire to build a different and antagonistic alternative to both sides.

12) Any long-term process of change, that takes into account the risks of "immediatism" and seeks to have a solid politically-aware social base, should take advantage of the spaces opened by current grassroots participation and the experiences of the civic mobilizations lived over the last few years. Autonomy and self-management, understood in all their dimensions and implications, will be two concepts with a starring role in the future.

13) Libertarian Venezuelans, individually and collectively, are participating in diverse initiatives that try to outline a different and real reference to the current spokesmen of State and Market capitalism. We have joined our particularities to non-Chavist left-wing groups, student and human rights organizations, environmentalist communities, indigenous sectors and communities that have found little echo in the private and state means of communication when not belonging to either of the two factions, but whose horizontal grassroots actions, as well as their style of relating to one another other, represent one of the so many hopes for the future of Venezuela.



Rafael Uzcátegui / (December 19, 2002)

(Translated by Chris, Red Libertaria de Apoyo Mutuo)