“Chavez is a president who’s not governing,” says Miguel Henrique Otero, publisher of the newspaper El Nacional. “He’s suspended. The only thing that’s needed is the coordination of all the factors behind the demand that he resign.”
Here in the capital of Caracas, the contradictions–and Chavez’s refusal to acknowledge the gravity of the crisis facing his government–are everywhere. A general strike, now heading inexorably for its third week, has virtually paralyzed seaports, airports, highways and the country’s vital oil industry, which accounts for three quarters of its export earnings. At times, eastern Caracas has seemed like a ghost town–the only congestion is at bank ATMs or outside gas stations as residents try to withdraw money and long lines of motorists struggle to keep their tanks full against the very real possibility that fuel will run out within days.
But a different picture emerges over at the western end of the city, home to the presidential palace and most government buildings, or after a day spent watching Venezolana de Television–the state-run TV station also known as Channel 8. Unlike the wealthier neighborhoods to the east, the poorer, grimier districts in the west of the capital–the area where the left-leaning president’s support is concentrated–are bustling with activity.
In the east, driving times have been cut in half, with typically clogged avenues and freeways carrying only the light traffic usually found on Christmas or New Year’s Day. The leading opposition forces, from oil company managers to journalists, spend most of their time in this part of town, and it’s easy for them to be oblivious to the superficial ordinariness of life downtown.
Watching Channel 8 can be another “Alice in Wonderland” experience of slipping through the looking glass or down a rabbit hole. A procession of government legislators, ministers and leftist academics troops past the cameras to explain, in tones that vary from the patient to the choleric, that everything is “normal,” except for isolated incidents of “sabotage” in the oil industry and that fuel supplies and petroleum exports will soon be restored. The use of the word “normal” has become so aberrant that wags insist the ultimate authority on the Spanish language–the Real Academia de la Lengua–has set up a committee to discuss changing the dictionary definition.
For Venezuelans, this is a near-identical repeat of all the conditions–bar one–that led to the brief ouster of Chavez back in April. On that occasion, an oil managers’ protest over the appointment of pro-Chavez directors to their company’s board triggered a general strike and a mass march on the presidential palace. After 19 demonstrators were shot dead in the streets near the palace, the armed forces’ high command asked the president to resign. So where are the military this time round? And will they once again intervene to topple their former comrade in arms, Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez (Ret.)? Or will they conspire to keep him gazing straight ahead, oblivious of the void beneath his spinning feet?
“Do you know who’s keeping Chavez in power?” says a source close to the current high command. “It’s a bunch of colonels–forget the generals and admirals.” Indeed, the silence from the generals, aside from the occasional communique insisting that the military are “of one mind” in backing the government, is one of the singular aspects of the current situation. The senior officers who led the bizarre, bloodless coup back in April are, not surprisingly, out of a job. For the past 50 days or so, a large group of them has led an equally strange, 24-hours-a-day protest rally in the Plaza Francia in eastern Caracas.
It was here, on the evening of Dec. 6, that one or more gunmen killed three demonstrators and injured 28. The Plaza Francia generals and other dissident officers have sought to influence their still-active colleagues to withdraw support from a government they say has systematically violated the constitution, politicized the armed forces and is seeking to install a Cuban-style authoritarian regime.
Rear Adm. Alvaro Martin Fossa, a member of the high command until his resignation in October, said in a TV interview last week that the generals and admirals should ask Chavez to resign. “If they don’t act,” he added, “their subordinates will go over their heads. They’re on the point of doing so.” But Martin Fossa, who has stayed away from the plaza, has so far had no more success than the dissidents’ leader, Gen. Enrique Medina, the former military attache to Washington, in persuading the armed forces to oust the president. The general insists that his hardest task has been to hold back the junior officers, the so-called “comacates” (an acronym derived from the ranks between lieutenant and lieutenant colonel), who are itching to overthrow the leftist president.
Medina argues that is wholly legitimate for senior officers to disobey a commander in chief who has openly enlisted the military as an armed branch of what Chavez calls his “Bolivarian revolution”–a reference to Simon Bolivar, the Venezuelan-born liberator of northern South America. So far, however, neither has happened, although government ministers claim a coup attempt was foiled on Dec. 9.
Former foreign minister Simon Alberto Consalvi is one of many among the opposition who believes the government is doing its best to provoke an attempted coup in the hope that it will allow Chavez to declare a state of emergency and decimate his opposition. That, however, is a risky strategy, says Consalvi “If they provoke a coup, the coup will finish [Chavez] off,” he says. Consalvi believes the military would not stage a conventional coup but would ask the president to resign before setting up a provisional government that would likely work in concert with other branches of the state and in consultation with the opposition umbrella group, the Democratic Coordinator. “I think Chavez is making a very serious mistake in relying on the unconditional loyalty of the armed forces,” he adds. “There comes a moment when the armed forces have no alternative but to recognize the need to act.”
Such talk sends shivers down the spines of foreign politicians and officials, especially Cesar Gaviria, secretary-general of the Organization of American States. Gaviria has been unsuccessfully trying to facilitate talks between Chavez and the opposition for the past month. Earlier this week, Gaviria warned that violence could erupt within days if no agreement was reached and that Chavez’s denial of the extent of the crisis was hampering negotiations. History suggests, however, that Chavez–who genuinely believes in his “revolution”–backs down only when faced with superior military force. And if the armed forces do eventually put an end to his midair balancing act, he may still find a way to resurrect himself. Like Tom, the cat at perpetual war with Jerry, or Wile E. Coyote, the onetime paratroop commander has remarkable powers to bounce back after hitting the ground.
