Open Democracy: Venezuela: taking the counter- out of revolution

The government engages in the usual US-baiting rhetoric, laced with attacks on local fascists and some turgid chunks of Gramsci. The hard left consumes ideas such as those of the German Marxist Heinz Dieterich, who chides the government for its “fear of using state forces firmly and rapidly from the start to dismantle violent groups”. The opposition’s extremes are no better, refusing to recognise any merits in 15 years of chavistagovernment and finding their convictions richly fulfilled by the riot police who greet protesters in Caracas or Táchira. One implacable statement of hostility, the Mérida Manifesto by a group of students, refers to how “the Castro-communist regime with its paramilitary groups and the National Guard have killed, tortured and harassed comrades”.

The informal paramilitarism we are seeing on both sides is the product of a society besieged by criminal violence for two decades. The Guatemalan ethnographer Tani Adams argues that long-term exposure to chronic violence causes each citizen to assimilate a quota of fear into normal life, as “many people face both the challenge of multiple traumatic experiences in the past as well as the likelihood of continued traumatic experiences in the future”. One result is the severing of social bonds beyond immediate family and friends, as well as the corrosion of empathy “when people are constantly spurred by survivalist motives”.

The pathologies of the Venezuelan psyche under the influence of criminal violence help explain the fanatical tensions that have surfaced between neighbouring communities. And no doubt pro-government militias and community self-defence groups recruit locals used to handling firearms for other purposes. Through this admixture of political and criminal violence, the road to civil war in Venezuela lies.

Supporting moderation

Avoiding that outcome is not made any easier by the tendency inside and outside Venezuela to see the crisis through the filters of self-interest and prejudice borrowed from the era of high Chávez. The left-leaning governments of Latin America are intent on preventing any precedent of presidential overthrow—hence the paralysis of the Organization of American States. Cuba and the Caribbean dread a stoppage of cheap oil. Washington would be happy to rid itself of an irritant, while the liberal press and the digital spirits egg on the cause of middle-class revolution.

Arguments can be twisted into unusual shapes by the tangles of received wisdom. Noam Chomsky denounces any use of repressive state power while his followers applaud a crackdown in Caracas. Opponents of Maduro wail over the militarisation of their cities, even though for many this would be their preferred solution to violent crime. And according to reliable sources the Green Party MEP and hero of May 1968, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, has dissented from his own party’s pro-chavista instincts, insisting he would never fail to support a student revolt.

Partial truths and worsening polarisation will do little to pull the country out of its confrontational logic. Nothing is more important than for foreign governments and organisations to provide moderates on both sides with support and reassurance. Just as Capriles has preached against violent protest, parts of Maduro’s government have proved themselves sensitive to criticism: the attorney general, Luisa Ortega, has said 60 investigations of police officers for alleged human-rights violations are under way.
A common ground of dialogue could be found, were Latin American states, the European Union and neutral bodies to support it, on economic stabilisation and security reform. Talk of sanctions against government figures would have to be shelved and political prisoners released, with all parties accepting the schedule of forthcoming elections.

The self-righteous on any side would not be satisfied. But no one seems to have a clue as to the road ahead for Venezuela were its president to totter.