What to do about Venezuela

Evolution of an Aggressive Dictatorship

Morphing Bolivar. The revolutionary dictatorship of Venezuela set down its roots in 1999 after, an army mutineer who had led a bloody failed coup in 1992 against the democratically-elected government, was elected president on a populist platform.Venezuela’s political and economic systems were so corrupt that its major parties had lost public confidence, creating the opportunity for a demagogue to promise to clean house and redistribute wealth to the poor.

Renaming the country the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” the new president introduced a new ideology, “Bolivarianism,” as a political construct and legitimizing belief, combining forms of Maoist and Castro-style Marxism-Leninism with a nationalist populism.  The latter was centered around a severely distorted caricature of Simon Bolivar, the 19^th century liberator who delivered South America from Spanish domination, combined with a bias and cultural appeal to take advantage of the plight of indigenous peoples.

Four main phases toward dictatorship.  Since becoming president in 1999, the mutineer has moved the country through four principal phases:

• First, he invalidated the existing constitution (in force since 1961) using illegal and pseudo-legal means and had his supporters write a new constitution (1999).
• Second, under the new constitution, he made himself eligible to be president for two six-year terms and abolished one house of the congress, giving himself predominant federal powers.
• Third, he began his “social revolution” in 2001 by using presidential decrees to begin confiscating private property and taking full control of the education of Venezuela’s youth along rigid ideological lines.
• The fourth phase has included covert meddling in the internal affairs of other South American countries, political repression, use of torture against opponents, and the use of all government agencies and budgets to serve the revolution. Indeed, the Venezuelan president has repeatedly said that his only goal is to assure the indefinite continuation in power of his “Bolivarian Revolution.”

Nasser/Ba’athist redux. The evolving Venezuelan dictatorship is unlike the ones to which the region has long been accustomed. In a manner reminiscent of the Nasserite-Ba’athist United Arab Republic (UAR) of Egypt and Syria (1958-61), the Venezuelan regime is in a state of permanent revolution. Every key institution in government and in civil society (and it is important to remember that Venezuela was the first and most stable democracy in the Spanish-speaking world) has been replaced by a revolutionary institution fulfilling a similar function. Every element—the country’s judicial framework, military establishment, educational system, labor unions, government departments, currency boards, police forces, banking structures—has been revolutionized. Only the Catholic Church remains outside of the government’s control.