My first life, p.46
My First Life, page 46
Why did you demand that?
Because La Causa R, the MAS and the Communist Party were campaigning as well … And they all wanted to steal our cadres.
They were your rivals on the Left.
Well, I didn’t regard them as enemies. But I always thought the MBR-200 should be a separate movement with its own Bolivarian profile, its own ideology, its own platform, its own projects … And history proved me right, because look what happened along the way. Those so-called left-wing parties – the MAS, La Causa R, the Communist Party, and later on, Podemos [We Can], Patria Para Todos [Patria for All] – didn’t understand a thing. All they had, regrettably, was electoral opportunism. And they were out to demolish me any way they could …
You mean they criticized you so that the MBR cadres would leave you and join them, is that right?
More or less. They said anything and everything. The secretary general of the Communist Party said, when I came out of prison, ‘The presence of “Caudillo Chávez” damages the people’s movement.’ He objected to me joining the marches and demonstrations. On one occasion, May Day, those left-wing parties organized a march, followed by an event in the Parque Central. None of them invited me. I was invited by a workers’ association, however. And I went. I arrived, and sat down – not on the platform with the other leaders, but among the workers. All eyes turned towards me. I tried to listen to the speeches, but could hear a murmur going round the crowd, it got louder and louder. The speaker finished and handed the mic to another. Suddenly an angry shout rose from the crowd: ‘Aren’t you going to salute the presence of Commander Chávez?’ Silence from the party leaders, then eventually they felt obliged: ‘We’d like to welcome …!’ Huge ovation. I wasn’t going to speak, but the pressure from the people was tremendous. Someone went up to the platform, took the mic from the speakers and brought it to me: ‘Commander, salute the workers!’ That was how it was.
And internationally, the political Left boycotted me too. In 1995, during the São Paulo Social Forum, held in San Salvador, they refused to let me speak.10 Quite disgraceful! I was hurt. They didn’t understand a thing. They didn’t see what was coming, what is happening now. The tremendous strength of the social movements: Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador.
Well, you weren’t very complimentary to them yourself, were you?
It was clear to me that with the existing political parties – and I say this with all due respect to their memory, their members and the leaders I’d worked with since 1978, like Alfredo Maneiro, Douglas Bravo, Andrés Velásquez and Pablo Medina – it would have been impossible to bring down the system, whether by armed struggle or peaceful protest. Don’t forget that this was the most difficult period the Left had seen in its one-hundred-year-old history. The Soviet Union had disappeared. The light of utopia had been extinguished, and the rout of the Left had begun. This was chronicled at the time by Jorge Castañeda in his book Utopia Unarmed, on the abdication of the Left and its farewell to arms.11 Fidel alone remained true to his beliefs. He was the bulwark defending socialism! Rafael Caldera, meanwhile, went to the First Summit of the Americas in Miami to support Bill Clinton and deliver up Venezuela to the FTAA.12 And, despite this betrayal, he was backed by the PCV, the MAS, the MEP, and some of the most important leaders of the ‘Left’ like Teodoro Petkoff and Pompeyo Márquez, who were ministers. What kind of Left was that? The people were in despair, confused, without direction or leaders …
How do you explain it?
I think they were trying to transform the system from inside. We opposed that ‘entryism’, because they didn’t have enough internal political structure to resist the seductions and trickery inherent in the system. Our idea was to channel the power of the people towards an anti-system objective: the Constituent Assembly. Some of those left-wing leaders thought that was a dead end. They said, ‘Careful, Chávez, you’ll end up being the Pied Piper of Hamelin leading the people over a cliff.’ And where were they leading the people? To Caldera and the same old system! Into the abyss!
But still, changing things from the inside is what a lot of honourable and honest left-wingers aspired to do – including revolutionaries who came down from the hills, surrendered their guns and formed political parties, and some went as far as to sit in Congress.
And did they manage to change the system?
Of course not [laughter]. They were changed themselves. They were absorbed into the system. They ventured into the swamp and the system engulfed them and transformed them. I remember one good friend, José Rafael Núñez Tenorio, the first serious Venezuelan intellectual to come out in favour of the Bolivarian Movement, author of over thirty books, former guerrilla, former political prisoner … anyway, at one point, when intellectuals were all steering clear of me, he broke the ice and stated, ‘I support the project embodied by Chávez.’ And he explained why, in a very good speech he gave in the Aula Magna of Caracas University.
Unfortunately he died soon afterwards and I, of course, went to his funeral. And there, as we were lowering the coffin, his grown-up son said, ‘Chávez, don’t forget what my father said, “You take power, don’t let power take you.”’ I’ve never forgotten that lesson. That’s why I remained convinced that we had to create our own power base, with the people as its foundation, with our own Bolivarian revolutionary cadres, and our own political analyses.
Apart from the ideas expressed in the Simón Bolívar National Project and ‘How to get out of this labryinth’, what other analyses did you perform?
We had regular weekly workshops where we outlined and discussed our projects. And that’s how we created our Strategic Map.
What was that?
The Strategic Map was a political diagram, the result of a lot of academic research by many compañeros. I can draw it from memory [he draws it]. In the centre is the MBR-200, then come its potential allies. First, among the left-wing parties and groups. Then comes the ‘Ind’, which could have meant ‘Independents’ but actually meant ‘Indescribable’, that is, the military factor we couldn’t mention. Besides these national allies, there were international ones. That’s how we built up the scenario of political actors. It allowed us to navigate the map.
Then we set out the ‘mobilizing projects’, examples of which were the people’s constituent process; defence of the quality of life; defence of national sovereignty; Latin American integration … For each one we designed a range of political strategies or ‘generators’. For example, defence of the quality of life had two ‘generators’, housing and employment. National sovereignty involved border strategies and the Armed Forces. Do you see? For the people’s constituent process, we began to organize pro-constituent committees which spread the idea of a new Constitution all over the country. We began to ‘warm up the generators’ from below, so that the project came from the grass roots, from the people. To explain this all over Venezuela, I took on the role of schoolteacher. I’d hold meetings, ranging from small groups of campesinos to university students and lecturers. Sometimes I’d talk to serving military officers – clandestinely in the early mornings at a ranch, or in somebody’s house – or I’d explain to retired officers where our project was going.
Did you have concrete objectives?
Of course, our Strategic Map had objectives and strategies for attaining them. For example, we’d draw an arrow with ‘transition project’ on it, pointing towards a circle, the Simón Bolívar National Project, say. This was our internal programming framework, and was directly linked to the ‘trigger’ of the transitional process, which was the Constituent Assembly; and the Assembly itself was only a transitional stage. We actually conceived a very dynamic, dialectical model; like permanent revolution, you might say. Still ongoing today, because we’re still building a new political model, a new social model, a new economic model … This hasn’t finished.
Did the social movements appear on your Strategic Map?
No, they didn’t. We only put political parties on it. The fact is the social movements were in disarray, and the unions were fighting among themselves. We were in touch with some of them. I remember the one that contacted us most, and we reciprocated, were the people from La Chispa [The Spark], a Trotskyite weekly. We lost track of them later … There were also student movements. But, I repeat, the Left had been crushed. At one stage, we did appoint a coordinator for social movements, and I attended lots of meetings with left-wing political groups, popular movements, etc. Until one day I exploded: ‘I’m tired of these meetings, I’m off to the streets.’ Interminable discussions leading to zero social action. I decided I’d had enough.
Very sterile?
Yes, too sterile. It was an old custom here, ‘arguing over the sex of angels’ as someone said. It went nowhere. Zero action.
How was the outside world represented on the Strategic Map?
Various arrows linked our Movement to the rest of the world. First priority went to Latin America and the Caribbean. Then, the third world: Africa, the Arab world, Asia, China. Especially countries we thought we could make progressive alliances with.
The Map served as a compass, did it?
Yes, it was our navigational chart, it set each different course of political action. Jorge Giordani guided that ship. And it added up to a fiendishly busy diary for me. Nevertheless I didn’t improvise, I didn’t go round giving random talks just to see what might come of it. No, I went around with that chart in my head, as you said, like a compass. I knew where I wanted to go … And, among other things, I wanted to create a continent-wide structure for our Bolivarian Movement in Latin America. A continental movement with Latin American integration as its goal. And going on to link Latin America with the rest of the world.
With that geostrategic vision in mind, we began to organize our Movement internally. We created all kinds of working groups for different political tasks. We organized tours, activities and events to try and reach the people in different ways, so that we could break the media embargo, which naturally had already started. For example, I would call a press conference, only three or four journalists would come, and hardly any would publish anything. We began looking for political allies for each of our themes, and didn’t find any, of course. The leaders of the different parties were all busy campaigning for their own mayoral candidates, or other political offices. I repeat, it was the total degeneration of proper politics. We realized those parties didn’t have policies to fight for housing, employment, wages, food, education, health. I asked myself, ‘But who’s defending the people? Where are the political parties to defend the people?’ They didn’t exist. We were terribly alone.
Well, you still had allies in the Armed Forces, didn’t you?
Correct. We maintained a permanent dialogue with the ‘Independents’, as we called them, meaning the military factor, organized groups inside the Army, Air Force, Navy and National Guard. Some contacts were with officers of the High Command, others were medium-level officers. It was strenuous work, because it required extreme precautions. For security purposes, I’d go in disguise. Sometimes I dressed up as a hippie, I even wore this wig with a green streak (laughter), or a false moustache that Freddy Bernal got for me.13 They never got wind of a single meeting.
At that stage, were you still wondering whether to choose the political path to power or the military path again?
Yes, as I mentioned, we didn’t discard any form of struggle. But I must say, in all honesty, a lot of people wanted to take up arms again – in the barracks, but especially in the streets. I used to go into very poor neighbourhoods, and to the countryside where there was extreme hardship, and the people would urge us to act. Once, in a mining camp, I remember many workers saying, ‘Chávez, where are the guns? Don’t turn into just another politician. Bring us guns, Chávez, to put an end to this.’
In 1995 there were gubernatorial elections, weren’t there?
Yes, that’s why I said the parties had their eyes fixed on political posts. The PCV was supporting Rafael Caldera, the MEP was in Caldera’s government, so was the MAS. La Causa R was not, but they wanted to put up joint candidates with us for Congress. Governors and mayors, too. It was clear what their aim was, they wanted our MBR-200 cadres. So we fell out with La Causa R. And also, needless to say, with Bandera Roja. With the result that the ‘internal allies’ category on our Strategic Map began to look pretty thin. We only maintained contact with certain individuals. We called for active abstention. Our slogan was ‘For now … for no one. Constituent Assembly now!’ Many left-wing leaders – in particular Andrés Velásquez and Pablo Medina of La Causa R – accused me of hindering the country’s political development with my attitude. But at the same time they were trying to recruit me. I was deluged with offers to stand for governor, in Aragua, Barinas, Lara … Even Caldera’s inner circle put out feelers for me to join the government. They obviously didn’t know me … [laughter].
Did they make you any specific offers?
Sure. They proposed sending me abroad to do a postgraduate degree. They also offered me an embassy or a consulate in Europe. In fact, they let one of my former compañeros, Jesús Urdaneta, choose where he wanted to go. He consulted his brother-in-law, who worked in the Foreign Ministry, and he advised, ‘Our consulate in Vigo is one of the nicest in Europe.’ So off he went. He spent five years as consul in Vigo, in beautiful Galicia. A couple of years later, on a visit to Spain, I went to Vigo to see him, in that lovely bay, those islands, that sea …
Your friend Francisco Arias Cárdenas also agreed to stand for governor of a state, didn’t he?
Yes. And he wasn’t the only one. Because many compañeros left jail with nothing. Most of them didn’t have a house, or a pension. The only soldiers with pensions were those of us who’d served for ten years or more … So I can’t criticize them. More than a few accepted those offers. Hundreds, I’d say. I was the exception, with four or five others. Some took jobs in the Seniat – Customs and Revenue – or went on courses. And others worked in social action programmes, like the PAMI [Mother and Infant Nutrition Programme]. Arias Cárdenas was president of PAMI, for instance.
Finally he, one of the historic commanders of the MBR-200, stood as La Causa R candidate for governor of Zulia state. And he won. When he came out of prison, he had joined La Causa R, which contributed to divisions in our Movement. The leaders of La Causa R applauded his stance: Arias was a true leader, an intelligent man, whereas I was ‘crazy’ and ‘irresponsible’. They said I represented ‘messianic leadership’, and called it ‘political regression prejudicial to the progress of the masses’ [laughter].
You deplored the fact that the Venezuelan Left was supporting Caldera.
Rafael Caldera was a member of Opus Dei, the Catholic Right at its most putrid. And the Venezuelan ‘Left’ supported him, abandoning their historic principles. No one mentioned Marx. No one mentioned the State, they only invoked the Market. As I said, the FTAA was being launched. On 9 to 11 December 1994, Caldera went to Miami and met Bill Clinton during the Summit of the Americas, and he had the cheek to declare, ‘Now we are truly carrying out Bolívar’s dream.’ A few days later, on 13 to 15 December, I happened to be in Havana, on my first trip to Cuba, and from there I shot back, ‘As a counterbalance, we are holding a Summit of Rebels.’ Just Fidel and me, the two of us, alone! Yes, and to cap it all [laughter] I was a mere ex-con. The Venezuelan Left never forgave me for that irreverent attitude.
How do you explain their constant criticism of you?
Various reasons no doubt. Some I’ve already mentioned. Perhaps also because I wasn’t an intellectual on their terms, or because I hadn’t studied in the best universities, like they had, or because I was a soldier. When I realized what their attitude was, I thought, ‘I’m not going to waste my time trying to gain their individual trust. My objective is to make a direct commitment to the people.’ Besides, I sensed the people felt the same way. When I came out of prison and saw that human tide, I understood where my commitment lay. To assume the leadership the people were demanding of me. Those leaders never accepted my leadership, out of jealousy or for whatever reason.
Arias Cárdenas once told me that, while he had an excellent relationship with you, there was something he had not grasped. He had thought you two were like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza – with himself as Don Quixote. Until he finally realized that in fact it was the other way around. You were Don Quixote and he was only Sancho Panza.
Yes, I think many people got it wrong. There was a kind of superiority complex, an arrogance, a vanity. They thought, ‘How can this guy be the leader? He’s barely forty. He’ll have to submit.’ And for a time, I accepted that, with humility I have to say. This is what happened. A few months after I left prison, a pro-Constituent Assembly front was formed. Who were the coordinators? Intellectuals like Manuel Quijada and Luis Miquilena, high-ranking officers like Grüber Odremán and Visconti Osorio – leaders of the 27-N – and myself. But at press conferences and meetings with other politicians, it was always them who took the floor. Since I respected them all very much, I never thought, ‘I’m going to push myself forward.’ No, I said to myself, ‘I’m going to accept it humbly.’
But then what happened? Whenever we organized a public event, the people would begin to shout, ‘Let Chávez speak! Let Chávez speak!’ It was an irresistible force … So the others finally left the group, and I took over, as I had to. It was written. Not in a magic book, but in the consciousness of the people. In truth, the people – and it’s hard for me to say this – sensed that they had found a leader, they felt it. What I’ve been trying to do, since 1999, is to fulfil that commitment. I must try to do it all my life.
Have you always had this singular idea of your leadership? A leader who stands outside all the politicking, in direct contact with the citizens?
