[Marxism] Hugo Chavez on Venezuelan process and world politics

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This is a fascinating interview with Hugo Chavez, president of
Venezuela and central leader of the national revolution taking place
in that country. It comes at a time when I have a sense -- maybe from
being too immersed in Socialist Workers Party-related stuff for the
last couple weeks, but I think there is more too it -- when Chavez and
the revolutionary process in Venezuela are coming in for more
criticism from left intellectuals and groups.  I think the interview
gives a very good sense of the revolutiolnary and popular thrust of
Chavez's thinking and political course.
Fred Feldman


Exclusive
Interview with President Chavez  Sunday, November 23
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1060>*

Saturday, Nov 15, 2003  Print format

By: Ralph Niemeyer and Lucila Gallino

This interview was conducted in the Miraflores Presidential palace on
October 9, 2003. It is the first of two parts. Ralph Niemeyer is a
German independent journalist and Lucila Gallino is an Argentinian
independent journalist.

Mr. President, we see that in your country the most important thing is
to solve the problems in Latin America, and the main objective is to
fight poverty.  We have seen the actions carried out in Mission
Robinson and Mission Sucre.  Your country has implemented a series of
missions, many things have been changed in the country, how far can
you go?

It can be said to the first world, above all the so-called ?developed?
world, that the problem of poverty is not only that of Latin America,
it is a problem of the whole planet, it is also a problem of the
developed world.  There are more dangerous poverties than the material
type, there is moral poverty, spiritual poverty, the poverty of
principles, we could say that material poverty is the consequence of
moral poverty.

Here in Venezuela we are in a tremendous struggle against integral
poverty. Leaving aside spiritual poverty, material poverty.

Of course, as Christ said to the Satan:  man does not live by bread
alone, but without bread man cannot live.  We are not following the
way of developmentalism, we do not want to appear to follow the mode
of European life, the ?American way of life?, that is not our goal.
Rather a country that looks in the direction where there is the
greatest sum of happiness possible, integral happiness, not only from
money and physical happiness, but also that points to the development
of the human being. And we aspire to reach 2021 when all Venezuelans
will celebrate 200 years of our independence from Spanish domination.
Here there was no national project, and here a change has been made
from night to day, from less to more, leaving moral and spiritual
poverty behind.

When you mention other continents and other countries that are in
crisis, would you compare this with the crisis of 1929?  Would you
call the globalization of today a new type of imperialism?

1929 was an economic crisis, the great depression, I believe that
crisis did not reach the depths that we are living now.  As Franz
Kafka says:  We have reached the crucial point, a mutation has
occurred at the world level, the paradigms that have existed for 200
years are falling.  For a long time, it was believed that the matter
had become a constant.

If you had to make a change in the economic system, make a profound
change, who would be your partners in this project?  Would they be
Lula, Kirchner?  Would it be Castro?

I believe that there are many in the world.  Not only Latin America.
Lula with Kirchner.  Beyond Presidents, there are sectors, small and
medium companies that have a national and regional vision of the
economic problem, that principally do not share the neoliberal thesis
which for us is a mortal threat.  We have many allies in the world:
China, which is also in an interesting process.  They are moving now
toward a socialism of the market.  They are coming from communism to
socialism at an intermediate point.  We, I believe, are going in an
opposite direction.  Nevertheless, we are going to coincide with
fundamental lines of what Bolivar called the point of equilibrium
between the extremes.  And that is valid for the political, economic
and social areas.

Our model is based on the search of equilibrium. Malaysia, for
example, is a great ally and we understand one another perfectly.  The
countries that make up the OPEC.  Algeria, Libya.  They are great
allies.  Libya of Muammar el Qaddafi. With Nigeria, we have similar
elements in our focus.  The same thing with certain sectors in the
U.S., Canada.  But these allies shouldn?´t be seen only from the
political but also from the economic point of view.

Every day the position that we defend draws more supporters in the
world.  This is for example what happened in Cancun, in the summit of
the WTO.  Years ago, for example, we were alone in those meetings.
Now it results that the position which Venezuela defends is being
defended by Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, China, Libya, Egypt.  Every day
there are more of us who defend the thesis of the need to transform
economic models. It is necessary to sustain economies that serve to
achieve justice, equality and human development.

What do you think about the rapprochement between President Lula of
Brazil and President Kirchner of Argentina in respect to the IMF?  How
do you see the perspective of these presidents?

One has to respect the manner in which each President studies and
decides to treat the extremely serious problems that we have.  Lula in
Brazil and Kirchner in Argentina.  I know in depth only my problem.
What I believe without a doubt is that a President has arrived in
Brazil with whom I have had a friendship for quite some time.

I have known Kirchner only from the time that he took office last
April.  But look how it has been decided to formulate the need for an
Argentinian national project.  The same thing I proposed here.
Priority given to local integration.  First our integration, the
brothers of the South.  Both Lula and Kirchner are conscious of this.
We have to look at what is close at hand. The FTAA is another of the
great risks that we face.  We received that.  FTAA is a great threat.
The best thing is for us to join together to achieve equilibrium.

How far has the Agrarian Reform, which forms part of the convulsed
package of the 49 laws that you launched in 2001, gone? These reforms,
above all, the agrarian reform, could not advance in other countries.
As in the case of Brazil, where it is a dead point.  It does not
advance.  How far can you go without serious problems?

What we have called the Agrarian Revolution is aimed at going to the
bottom.  We have delivered 1,500,000 hectares to peasant families in
cooperative models.  That is only a first step.  Where do we want to
end up?  To the day of fully meeting the Constitution.

Here we have to reach the day when in Venezuela there is no
latifundio.  For that reason it is necessary to continue to go deeper.
There is still latifundio in all parts.  We need a judicial branch
that goes to the bottom of things, that enforces the Constitution.
For example, many times it happens that the owner of the latifundio
buys the court, and the court ends by deciding against Justice.  That
has happened to us a lot this year.  But we follow the principle of
Bolivar:  ?Patience and more patience to have a fatherland?.  Because
what we want is a true structural change in agricultural relations in
the rural areas.

More than a year-and-a-half ago ? in April 2002 ? there was a military
coup, and in December and January an economic coup.  Can there be
anything else?

It is always necessary to be attentive because it results that here in
Venezuela that small privileged sector does not have respect for the
country, it does not have any kind of Venezuelan pride, it has no
sense of nationality, no respect for the Constitution and the laws.
They are historically accustomed to impose their laws, to have
presidents subordinated to their interests, to their pressures, to
have subordinated congresses that made laws to their convenience.  A
judicial branch subordinated to them ? the Creole oligarchy.  Those
same sectors have even fallen into fascism.  Some have a terrorist
mentality.  They seek to burn the prairie again.

In Venezuela we have to accustom ourselves to living over time in the
middle of a low-intensity conflict and from time to time that
intensity is going to have peaks.  But we are ready to face any
intensity before us.  As Bolivar said:  ?to hesitate is to lose?.  We
will continue with our convictions, applying the Law, using state
intelligence and security agencies to protect ourselves form those
intentions.  We are ready to be free.  It must not be forgotten that
in this country there is a great force that has become aware of
things.





/The verbal capacity is inherent in the culture of this people and the
power of the word has reached a point of warfare through the media.
The
credibility of the word in this country would appear to be in crisis.
Perhaps this is a failure of the capacity  of the Government to
transmit
the process?/

I believe that this reflection can be applied to the whole world that
is
subject to the advance of telecommunications, to the force of the
voice
that has nothing to do with the reality that is so often disconnected
from reality.  Many times there are perverse voices that deceive
millions.  A little like what the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano
says:  ?³Never have so few deceived so many.?²

Here in Venezuela part of the battle has been in the media.
Inevitably.  But this is not new.  For already more than a decade we
have been subjected to an intensive communications bombardment,
debilitating for any movement.  You say that credibility has been
reduced.  This depends on how you see it, from the sectors of the
upper
classes I do not have much hope in their believing in me because they
are poisoned.  Many suffer from a psychotic disassociation, that is,
dissociation from reality, according to the psychologists.  What does
concern us is that the serious part of the country, the objective part
believes us.

Of course, the level of credibility in the word of the government is
important. A short time ago, on a Sunday we called together all the
high
school graduates who had never found a place in the universities.  We
had estimated 200,000 persons in the act.  Nevertheless, we had an
avalanche of 500,000 persons up to 80 and 90 years of age who answered
our call to learn to read and write.

/The Spanish writer, Antonio Gala, said once that the problem of man
is
not the flesh, or hell or the devil, but the banks.  Is it because of
this that Venezuelans cannot end up by taking charge of their own
problems?  To what point do you break with globalization?/

The banks ?. Someone said that the bankers have no heart.  Above all
in
this world that is in the neoliberal phase of capitalism.  The banks
block development with all these mechanisms of speculative bubbles
that
they have generated.

Here there was a crisis of the banks in 96 when thousands of
Venezuelans
lost their lifelong savings.  Thousands and millions of dollars were
taken from the country.  Now the blame not only belongs to the banks,
it
also belongs to the governments, it is the lack of political will,
lack
of national consciousness, so that each one occupies his space, we
have
been reviewing that in our constitution, a new law of banks was
approved, new instruments for the supervision of banks are being
developed, nevertheless, we are far from having a bank sector that is
conscious of the needs of the country.  But that is part of the
battle.

Here there was an attempt from some banks to join a destabilizing
movement.  I gave them an ultimatum.  ?³If you do not open the banks
and
pay the people, I am going to intervene the banks.?²  Here they imposed
a
forced savings plan during the coup d?´etat and sabotage.  And the
people
standing on line and they wouldn?´t open the doors for them and the
money
was there, but they wouldn?´t open the doors of the banks, or they
didn?´t
deliver money.  But by their decision.  That did not meet an economic
but rather a political rationale.  The attempt was to remove Chavez
from
the government, I gave them a period and told them:  they began to
open
and pay the people what they had to pay ?  And here they are?

/It has been said that you have to be tamed.  Even after strong shocks
that your government has received and comments such as those of former
President Carlos Andr?és P?érez who has said that he would call for a
civic military action to take power.  Moreover, it is said that in one
of the richest regions of Venezuela there would be movements to
conform
a separate Republic to divide the country.  How do you foresee the new
move of the opposition to remove you from power?/

Look, we are speaking about the topic of scenarios. You have prepared
quotes and references very well.  I do not speak about the dead,
rather
I want to speak about realities.   I refer to the political dead, to
the
moral dead, to unburied, putrefying bodies.

I prefer to quote Aristotle.  And I am beginning to read a good book
by
Noam Chomsky that is called ?³The Common Good.?² Chomsky begins by
speaking of Aristotle and his formula.  I am thinking and pondering
over
it, and comparing it with our time and our space.  Aristotle said that
the problem of an enriched minority and an impoverished majority is
contrary to and denies democracy, that if one wants a true democracy
it
would be necessary to solve the problem by formulating two solutions;
either reduce poverty or reduce democracy.  In our case we have chosen
to reduce poverty and increase democracy.

But here another problem is generated that Aristotle did not foresee
in
his time and it is the reaction of the privileged elite that is
seeking
a Pinochet, any tyrant to attack the rights of those majorities.

Here in Venezuela we have that:  a privileged minority that is opposed
to a full project, a full participatory democracy where they also
participated because that wealthy class participated in this debate,
but
they do not accept the democratic game, then later they invented the
matter of the coup d?´etat, because they are trying to cause
institutional shocks.

/What happens with those intellectuals in Latin America, as is the
case
with Gabriel Garc?ía M?árquez, who some years earlier supported you and
now seem to have changed their opinion.  What is the contribution that
these Latin American intellectuals are making to your process?/

You would have to ask Garc?ía M?árquez.  I have a commitment with the
Hugo
Ch?ávez that I am.  My commitment is to life.  There are all kinds of
Latin American intellectuals.  There are many good writers who are
illiterate; there is the case of a Peruvian called Vargas Llosa.  I
learned to know and love his writing, his art;  I will never forget
when
I was a boy, 14 years old, and I read ?³La ciudad y los perros?².
Later,
I did a little research on him.  I also read other books.   ?³La fiesta
del Chivo?² on the life of the Dominican dictator, Rafael Leonidas
Trujillo.    Without a doubt, he is an eminent writer, but he is an
illiterate, in that he is unable to read the reality of his people, he
even changed his Peruvian nationality for the Spanish nationality.  I
was reading a few minutes ago that there was a meeting in Madrid led
by
him, where he created a foundation against Ch?ávez and against Lula.
The
Spanish foreign ministry attended the ceremony.  This indicates a
little
how things are going in Madrid ?.

There are all types of intellectuals.  There is a group that was even
part of the left, but that could not understand the world.  In respect
to the right to think and say what one thinks.  But I follow Bol?ívar
who
said:  ?³Before the claims of those who believe that they are wise, I
prefer the advice of the people.?²  The people indeed are wise.

/When does this passion for history, this enthusiasm for reading that
you take as a sport arise?/

Reading has always been a constant in my life. Through culture, study,
we began to see the truth.  Study and above all reading freed us from
darkness.  This is the thesis of Pablo Freire: ?³The importance of the
act of reading?², it is an act of self-improvement.  Yes, you obtain
the
edge of the freeing sword through reading.

I discovered the truth of the history of Bol?ívar one night when I was
on
duty as a soldier.  We were never told that Bol?ívar was thrown out of
Venezuela.  I remember that I read a letter from Bol?ívar that says
something like:  ?³I am waiting for a moment of despair to finish with
this life that is my disgrace?².  Then I began to ask.  Who treated him
here so badly?  Is it that those who opposed him wanted to take away
properties, empty him spiritually?  I asked:  ?³But why the liberator??²
Who expelled him?  Were they the Spaniards?  Hadn?´t they already gone?
It was General P?áez.  I admired P?áez for a long time, and I continue
to
admire his persona and his value as an almost invincible warrior.
Later
he defeated the people.  At the end he lost his moral posture and what
Mao Tse Tung said came about:  ?³At the end the war terminates in the
favor of the side that has a moral position?².  In that period, they
were
against Bolivar eliminating slavery, distributing land, giving
education
to blacks.  Starting from my studies of Bolivar, I began to become
free
and become a rebel.  ?³I rebel and then I exist?², as Camus says.

For this reason in our plan of Government a liberating process comes
in
this last stage, in this most recent period, which we call Misi?ón
Robinson.  This is a program to read and write based on one carried
out
in Cuba that produced excellent results and is for those who did not
have the possibility to become literate.

We realized that we had a debt to the people and that is how the
library
also arose and now we are publishing several million books more.  We
have libraries in the classrooms.  The most important is Misi?ón
Robinson, I believe that many are sharpening the sword of light.

/What is your relationship with President Fidel Castro.  Is he
something
like a brother, a friend? What role does Fidel have in your life?/

Fidel has always been an example.  I was a soldier and always read
him,
about his life, his speeches.  I remember that one night I was on duty
with other cadets and we looked for a channel to hear music and
suddenly
from Havana I hear Castro?´s speech.   This was the period of the coup
against Allende.  I?´ll never forget a phrase of Fidel:  ?³If each
worker,
if each laborer, would have had a rifle in his hands, the fascist
Chilean coup against Allende would not have taken place?².

For years, Fidel was  a reference, above all moral.  In ideological
matters, it could be said that I am partly, even though I am not
communist, I am a follower of Mart?í and above all of Bol?ívar.  And I
believe that Fidel has always been a bolivarian.  And if you study
Jos?é
Mart?í, you find Bol?ívar.

A little while ago I answered a letter to Fidel, because he sent me a
long letter, a kind of treatise on morality, politics, history,
reflections. Then I write to him after having read one of those
manuscript pages. And in one of the sentences that I wrote, my soul
poured out and I wrote at the end:  From now on I don?´t know whether
to
call you brother or father?².

/In this ?³Matrix?², are you the chosen person?/

No, I don?´t like the sound of that. I was elected, yes.  I am one of
those elected by the people, I am not a chosen person.  I do not want
to
give it that connotation.

/How do you consider yourself as a leader?  You are not the typical
president, a traditional westerner who has studied in Harvard
University, you are not a blond-haired person who conducts himself as
a
formal President, according to your own functionaries you are
considered
as ?³the other President?²./

You know, I am not President.  I am a citizen but I believe myself to
be
a soldier citizen, of flesh and bone, nerve and spirit.  Now that I
have
a jacket, a band that they placed on me, this is something else.  I am
Ch?ávez.  Will I be the other president?  I prefer to say that I feel
like the first President of a wave of Presidents. I reached this
position through the people, I did not arrive to betray that people.
In
that sense I am Hugo, Hugo Ch?ávez, the citizen, the soldier and, well,
a
President.

But not ?³The Other President.?² I hope that those who come after me,
come
with a commitment, a line of thinking, and above all, what is
important
is to remove the poor, the needy from the situation in which they have
lived for such a long time.

/When you wake up in the morning, are you afraid for how long your
government may last?/

Do I think about that?  No, I don?´t.  This is going to last a long
time.

/Apparently, the Manual on the Perfect Coup D?´Etat is being perfected
?
I don?´t know if they are going to achieve it or if it is a strong
desire ?/

[laughter]  No, here they are not going to achieve it.  Here they
couldn?´t even apply the method that they applied to Allende.  They
wanted to apply methods of destabilizers to remove a President,
obligating him to resign.  Recently there was an African country with
a
similar situation.  Here they tried to apply new formulas.  Our
formula
is not perfect, but it has great strength.

Here there is a conscious people, a mass of people, every day
stronger,
a military mass joined with the people, there is a government that
works
a lot that does not rest during the day  or at night and there is a
project in which we deeply believe.

Every day I feel greater strength in this project.  I see that new
leaders are arising.  And the day will come when they will not see me
any longer because I am not indispensable.  There are those who say
that
if I disappear, this whole project would crumble.  But that is not
true.

I returned with such emotion because hundreds of thousands of people
had
surrounded Miraflores Palace.  Then little by little one begins to
realize, above all in the last stage, when male and female leaders
arise, and these beautiful flowers bud and full of hope (he indicates
the red roses in front of him).  This process is an avalanche of the
people.




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