Army of the people

by Walden Bello
...
Chavez is many things: a charismatic figure; a great orator; a man who plays local, regional and global politics with skill and verve. He is also a man of the Army, one who reveres the military as the institution that, under Simon Bolivar, liberated Venezuela and much of Latin America from Spain. He has acted on the belief that the military is destined to play a decisive role in Venezuela's social transformation.

Chavez, according to his own account, joined the military because he thought that it would be a springboard to professional baseball. However, he came into the Army at a time of great institutional flux. The Army in the 1970s was engaged in counter-guerilla operations at the same time that many of its officers were exposed to progressive ideas through the Andres Bello programme at universities and were recruited by leftists into discreet discussion groups.

Instead of becoming a baseball star, Chavez became a popular lecturer in history at Venezuela's War College, and steadily moved up the chain of command. When not performing his official duties, he engaged himself in building a clandestine grouping of young, like-minded, idealistic officers, called the "Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement". Disillusioned with what they perceived to be a dysfunctional democratic system dominated by corrupt political parties - Accion Democratica and Copei - that alternated in power, these "Young Turks" evolved from a study circle into a conspiracy that hatched ideas for a coup that would inaugurate a period of national renewal.

As Richard Gott writes in his authoritative book Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution, Chavez's preparations were overtaken by the "Caracazo" of 1989, a social cataclysm triggered by a sharp rise in transportation prices resulting from pressure from the International Monetary Fund. For about three days, thousands of urban poor from the ranchos or shantytowns on the mountainsides surrounding Caracas descended on the city centre and affluent neighbourhoods to loot and riot in what was ill-disguised class warfare. The Caracazo seared itself in the minds of many young officers. Not only did it reveal to them how the vast majority of the population had become thoroughly disenchanted with the liberal democratic system, but it also made many bitter that they were placed in a position of having to give orders to shoot hundreds of poor people to defend that system.

When Chavez was given command of a parachute regiment nearly three years later, he and his co-conspirators felt that the moment was ripe for their long-planned coup. The attempt failed, but it catapulted Chavez to fame in the eyes of many Venezuelans and to notoriety in the eyes of the elite. Chavez appeared on national television to ask units that participated in the coup to lay down their arms, and, according to Gott, that "one minute of air time, at a moment of personal disaster, converted him into someone perceived as the country's potential saviour." Chavez took full responsibility for the failure of the coup but electrified the nation when he declared that "new possibilities will arise again".

Chavez was imprisoned, but began campaigning for the presidency almost immediately after his release. What he could not achieve with a coup, he was now determined to pursue by constitutional means. He was no longer in the military; he nevertheless kept in close touch with his fellow officers and with enlisted men, among whom he was tremendously popular. When he finally won the presidency in 1998, and by a large margin, it was not surprising that he recruited brother officers to head or staff key government agencies. More important, Chavez gradually brought in the military to serve as a key institutional instrument for the change he was bringing to the country. The disaster brought about by torrential rains in 1999 provided an opportunity for Chavez to deploy the military in its new role; army units were mobilised to set up and man soup kitchens and build housing for thousands of refugees on army land. Then, military civic action and engineering units were deployed in the new government's programme to set up "sustainable agro-industrial settlements" in different parts of the country. The services of military hospitals were also made available to the poor.
...