Hugo! (71 page)

Chávez said that from "a long time ago the socialist thesis had
always attracted my attention. I've always been a good student of different
currents. I have always believed that it's a perfectly valid alternative,
even after the fall of the Soviet Union."

Still, he noted, his military movement in the 1980s never adopted
the banner of socialism, even though he met with revolutionaries such
as Douglas Bravo and Alfredo Maneiro. His group's focus at the time was
on nationalism and Bolivarianism. Socialism was not a widely accepted
model.

"In those days even the left hid the socialist banner," Chávez said.
"Almost no movement on the left in the Americas, with the exception of
Cuba, lifted this banner. The big parties of the left distanced themselves
from the socialist project and the word itself disappeared from the political
lexicon." Leftists started talking about things like the
Tercer Camino
or Third Way, the name of Bravo's new group in the 1980s and 1990s.

He denied that he was planning to install a socialist government
when he was elected president in December 1998. He noted that not one
member of his Patriotic Pole was talking about that prospect, and that "not
even the Communist Party here was proposing the socialist thesis. . . . You
won't find in any speech of mine in the 1998 campaign or in the constitutional
proposal" references to socialism. The new constitution, adopted in
1999, "has elements of socialism, but it does not go so far as to propose in
an open and clear manner the thesis of socialism."

Chávez said that as president, little by little, he began to embrace the
idea of socialism as a result of "political and ideological maturation" and
a "deepening analysis." But what pushed him over the edge in particular,
he said, was the April 2002 coup in which he was almost killed. "I came
to the conclusion above all after the coup . . . that any attempt to reach an
agreement with the forces of the old regime here, the old order, would be
in vain."

The coup, he said, "accelerated many things. I entered into a very
deep process of reflection. For several years I had been moving amid a
dilemma . . . of conciliating between the most retrograde forces and the
advanced forces. It was like a bridge, at both the internal and international
level. But then I realized it was impossible. I realized the Bible
was profoundly correct when it says you can't be okay with God and
with the devil at the same time. Maybe before I was trying to be okay
with God and throw an olive branch to the devil. It's impossible. The
devil will stab you."

Around the same time, he added, amid indications the United
States endorsed and perhaps even played an active role in the coup,
he decided to declare the
"anti-imperialist" character of his revolution.
The US had long argued that "through free trade the big and good
father was going to permit us to live better," Chávez said. "But the world
has come to realize that imperialism continues to be the same bloody
imperialism as always, more ferocious now than before."

When I asked if he thought, back in 1998, that he could become a
radical as president and take his government hard to the left, he responded
by saying: "I've always been a radical and I continue to be one."

But how, exactly, did he define twenty-first-century socialism, a
proposal which still seemed vague to many people and alarming to his
opponents? He offered some of the measures announced earlier in the
day as partial examples of what he had in mind — the new minimum
wage, the pensions for housewives, the
six-hour work day. He noted that
he had been working on the six-hour proposal for two years, and that
not everyone in his government supported it. "But I'm not going to wait
until everyone is in agreement," he said. "The leader is the leader."

Chávez said his socialist project aimed to promote equality, liberty,
fraternity, and the fulfillment of basic necessities such as food, education,
housing, health, and jobs — in sum, the search for the reign of
God, but "here on earth." He referred to a phrase from Bolívar, saying
his project aimed to create the greatest amount of happiness possible for
the largest number of people. He said it would not exclude private property,
although it would seek to promote social property, social production,
and social distribution.

Above all, he insisted, he wished to transfer power to the people
through mechanisms such as the community councils. "I do not conceive
of socialism as anything but a profoundly democratic system,
although not the democracy of the elites." Still, he added, "I know I will
die and we will not have attained the goal of socialism. . . . Reaching
100 percent? I don't think it is possible."

By now it was several minutes before midnight. Chávez interrupted
the conversation to turn his attention to the television and the events
in Anzoátegui state, where Venezuela was about to take control of the
oil installations. He spoke to pdvsa president
Rafael Ramírez for a
firsthand account of what was happening, and instructed Ramírez to
address the nation.

Ten minutes or so later, with the situation in Anzoátegui under control,
Chávez muted the television and returned to the interview. I wanted
to ask more about Douglas Bravo: Had the legendary guerrilla leader
really played an important role in Chávez's formation, or were he and
his colleagues exaggerating their influence? Chávez said, "It would be
terribly unjust of me to not recognize the importance that a group of
persons had during one stage of my life." He said he had spoken with
Bravo by telephone recently, and hoped to see him, although he knew
the former guerrilla was extremely critical of his government, which he
called "neo-liberal."

"He is very critical but I respect him profoundly because he is an
upright man, an integral revolutionary," Chávez said. "Douglas helped
me a lot. I learned a lot from him."

We were now on the topic of civilians who assisted him in his conspiracy,
and I knew it was time to launch the most delicate question I
had — his relationship with Herma Marksman. To my knowledge he
had never publicly acknowledged the relationship.

I told him that several of the comandantes I had interviewed —
Francisco Arias Cárdenas, Raúl Baduel, Jesús Urdaneta — had mentioned
Marksman as an important civilian figure in the conspiracy.
They didn't do it to embarrass the president, it seemed, or from any
prompting from me, but simply as a point of fact in reconstructing the
history of the movement. None spoke of her as a mistress, but rather as
a respectable history professor who was loyal to their movement and to
Chávez. Anticipating an angry outburst, I asked the president if she had
really played an important role.

Chávez reacted calmly and seemed a little surprised by the question.
"Everyone had their importance," he said quietly. "I don't want to
minimize anyone's role." He continued: "Herma Marksman. A fighter.
I was very fond of her," he said, using the Spanish verb
querer
, which
could also be translated as "love" but is not as strong as the verb
amar,
which means a much deeper love.

I was a bit taken aback by his frankness, since I was half-expecting him
to be more evasive or to even deny the relationship. He didn't, although
he also didn't seem anxious to post the news on billboards. I asked if it
was valid to compare their relationship to the one Simón Bolívar enjoyed
with Manuela Saenz. Chávez laughed and dismissed the notion. "I'm
Bolívar?" he said. "It would never be comparable. Bolívar is the giant."

He added, "Manuela Saenz accompanied Bolívar in war, in battle,
in the campaign. She accompanied him in his final days, until his
death. She was loyal until death."

Marksman clearly was not being loyal to Chávez until death. She
was a harsh critic of his government, and actively took part in opposition
activities. Chávez later commented that he thought she had been
"poisoned" by the opposition. "Herma," he said with a sense of melancholy,
"should be with us."

As long as we were on the terrain of quite personal matters, I
thought I should ask the president about the assertion in the biography
Hugo Chávez Sin Uniforme
(published in the US as
Hugo Chávez
) that
he and his mother had not spoken for two years — even ignoring each
other on the streets when they passed.

Chávez said that was false. He added that the effect of one cause of
the alleged falling out — his marriage to his first wife, Nancy Colmenares
— was being exaggerated. While relations between the two women initially
were not good, he said, eventually they visited him in jail together
and even worked together at a children's foundation in Barinas.

I also wondered about an account in the book that depicted the old
Communist leader in Barinas, José Esteban Ruíz Guevara, indoctrinating
Chávez in Marxism and communism when he was a teenager.
Chávez scoffed at the assertion. He also denied that he entered the military
academy in 1971 carrying the diary of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and
said it was ridiculous to think he was already planning a coup as a cadet.
"It's something totally irrational."

We turned to talking about one of the main "houses of conspiracy," the
one owned by Elizabeth Sanchez in Caracas. I asked if it really was a
primary meeting place. Chávez said it was one of the main houses they
met at, but that for security reasons it was not good to meet repeatedly
at any of the locations. Sanchez's house also had a serious defect: It was
located in a cul de sac on a dead-end street. You had to come and go
through the same spot, and had no avenue of escape.

Chávez noted that he met in the house not only with Douglas Bravo
but with military officers including Luis Reyes Reyes. He also recalled
that Marksman lived there, and that that was where they met. Since the
topic of Marksman came up again, I decided to ask about something
she had told me in an interview — that she had become pregnant at one
point with their child, but miscarried. Chávez said simply, "She at one
time had the desire to have a child. We were never in agreement."

He went on to speak about the five congresses the Bolivarian Group
held, recalling the first one at the beach outside Caracas, and the others
in Maracay, San Cristobal, and elsewhere. He said that if someone
wanted to enter the clandestine organization, the group studied the
person carefully — and if just one member objected, the candidate
was rejected. By the time of the two coups in 1992, the movement was
the largest of its kind in Venezuela's history, Chávez said, incorporating
hundreds of officers and soldiers. "I don't know how they didn't discover
us," he said.

He recalled how
Kleber Ramírez — a close ally of Douglas Bravo —
helped edit some of the
decrees they prepared for the February 4 coup,
and said he still occasionally reviews them. They include some of the
ideas he is trying to implement today, including the community councils
and the concept of popular power. He thought back to Ramírez and
others: "All of them I have here inside of me, with great affection."

It was 1:30 in the morning, and Chávez said he had to go. We had
spoken alone for nearly two and a half hours, on top of the time spent
together the night before. Chávez still had work to do. Later he would fly
east to mark the takeover of the oil projects with a May Day speech. Before
his day ended he had to study reports laying out details of the operation.

We walked toward the small elevator. Chávez commented that
he was following the
2008 US presidential race, and that he hoped
someone like
Barack Obama would win. "Someone we can at least talk
to," he said, in an obvious reference to the breakdown in communications
with George W. Bush and his administration.

I entered the elevator, and El Comandante stood at the end of the
hall waving good-bye. I waved back, and when I got downstairs his chief
of staff was huddled with aides, still working. The revolution that never
rests was marching on, to a destiny yet to be determined.

Seven months after I interviewed Chávez, he suffered the political defeat
of his life. Voters narrowly rejected a national referendum aimed mainly
at pushing forward his "21st Century Socialism" project and abolishing
limits on him running for re-election. It was a political earthquake in
Venezuela and turned things upside down. Chávez had suddenly lost
his aura of invincibility — for the first time he lost a major election. It
appeared he would now have to leave office by 2013.

Chávez fancied himself an expert military and political strategist,
but he had made the strategic error of his life by forging ahead with the
vote on December 2, 2007, to reform Venezuela's constitution. After
annihilating the opposition a year earlier in the presidential election,
taking a crushing 63 percent of the vote — his highest percentage yet
— Chávez lost the referendum with about 49 percent of the vote. It was
a stunning turnaround, given he had won just a year earlier with a 25
percentage point spread.

Opposition members took to the streets to party until dawn after
their remarkable victory, dancing in the Plaza Altamira and swigging
bottles of rum. A glum Chávez appeared on national television from
Miraflores Presidential Palace, acknowledging he had lost the race.

Chávez's constitutional reform package was a hodgepodge of sixty-nine
measures that dealt with everything from social security for the
self-employed, including taxi drivers and street vendors, to creating a
new "geometry of power" that would in part redraw the political map.
Some of the measures were undoubtedly positive steps that many
Venezuelans could support. One would ban discrimination against
homosexuals. Another required gender parity among political parties
in selecting candidates. A third aimed at protecting Afro-Venezuelan
culture. Others reduced the legal work week from 44 to 36 hours and
lowered the voting age from 18 to 16.

One of the key proposals was to strengthen the community
councils that were starting to take root across the country and were
a pillar of Chávez's plan to install participative and direct democracy
in Venezuela. The reform would institutionalize the councils, whose
numbers were expanding to about 50,000 by the end of 2007. Chávez
envisioned thousands more across the country, imbued with powers
to govern their local communities. In 2008, the government hoped
to pump some $3 billion to $4 billion into the organizations, which
could decide what to do with the money — bring electricity to their
neighborhood, install water systems, fix potholes.

Chávez saw the councils as a tool to give greater power to the
people. It made up what some described as an "hourglass" structure of
power emerging in the country. At the top of the hourglass was Chávez,
with billions of dollars in oil profits to dispense. The skinny middle part
was the state and local governments, which Chávez hoped to sidestep to
avoid the corruption and inefficiency which often plagued them. The
fat bottom part of the hourglass was the masses of poor people who
would receive funding directly from the government via the community
councils. Chávez saw the setup as a direct and crucial initiative to
install a "real" democracy in Venezuela as opposed to the phony one he
believed had reigned for decades to benefit the elite ruling class. Critics
contended it would merely strengthen his grip over the country, since
he would control the purse strings to the councils and could reward
supporters and punish opponents.

While his proposed constitutional reform contained some positive
and intriguing elements, it was also fatally flawed by measures that set
off alarm bells for many Venezuelans — even some of his most ardent
supporters. The media focused on the most obvious one — abolishing
limits on running for re-election as president. Under the current system,
Chávez was limited to the single re-election he had already won and
would have to leave office when his term ended. Under the proposed
reform, he could run as often as he wanted.

His opponents screamed that the move was intended to allow
Chávez to install himself as a "president for life" or a "dictator for life." At
a minimum, the move underscored one of the central weaknesses of the
Bolivarian Revolution: its one-man-show aspect and overdependence
on Chávez as its central leader. There was still a sense that if Chávez
left the scene tomorrow, the whole Bolivarian project might collapse.

Chávez's supporters argued that the United States had elected
Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the White House four times, and that
other nations including France had no limits on re-electing their
leaders. They also pointed out that approving the reform would not
automatically make Chávez "president for life." He would have to run
for re-election each time, and could be removed from office at any time
halfway through his term through the recall referendum mechanism
— something the
Chavistas
themselves had installed in the 1999
Constitution and which was unique in the Western Hemisphere and
perhaps the world.

Beyond that debate, the most contentious aspect of the proposed
reform was Chávez's central thrust to bring 21st Century Socialism to
the country. The reform would officially declare Venezuela a socialist
nation. It included measures such as creating various forms of property
including social and communal. Private property was not outlawed, but
it would not be the only type allowed. The reform also reduced the
Central Bank's autonomy, and would allow Chávez to create special
federal districts where he could appoint vice presidents to help govern
— a move critics contended would deepen Chávez's control over the
country. It also gave the federal government the power to censor the
media during states of emergency.

After winning his landslide victory in December 2006, Chávez had
stepped up his rhetoric and actions to install 21st Century Socialism.
He took more and more to citing Ernesto "Che" Guevara as an icon,
even adopting Che's famous saying, "Homeland, Socialism or Death!
We will triumph!" He insisted members of the armed forces repeat the
phrase as well.

But in pushing for a 21st century version of Che's vision of socialist
utopia, Chávez was badly misreading much of the public sentiment.
Many Venezuelans, including even some of his supporters, wanted
nothing to do with socialism or Che Guevara or Fidel Castro's Cuba.
They wanted social justice, but they didn't want a Cuba-style system or
anything that remotely reminded them of it.

When the day of the vote came, Chávez managed to get only 4.4
million votes — compared to 7.3 million he had hauled in a year earlier.
The opposition vote, meanwhile, stood steady at about 4.5 million. It
appeared many of Chávez's supporters simply stayed home and did
not vote for his reforms. The outcome shocked him and his allies —
they actually lost in barrios in Caracas such as Petare, La Vega and
Caricuao, which were undisputed Chávez territory. For the first few
weeks after the vote, Chávez and his top aides were in a state of shock
and struggled to assimilate the fact they had lost. They had thought
they had the referendum in the bag, and would easily win by a margin
as wide as 60-40 just like previous votes.

Chávez had committed a fundamental error. From the start of his
presidency and even his clandestine conspiracy in the military, he had
couched his movement in terms of Simon Bolívar. As Chávez himself
had noted in the early 1980s when he formed his secret cell, most
Venezuelans could accept a movement carried out under the banner of
The Liberator, but not one inspired by Che Guevara or other guerrillas
like Douglas Bravo. While the IMF-inspired neo-liberal "Washington
Consensus" had not worked, most Venezuelans also did not want to
substitute it with a pure socialist model. Chávez had to find something
else — again, a third way.

He had been going in a successful direction earlier in his
presidency with his focus on the social missions in the name of Bolívar
and redirecting the oil wealth to health and education programs aimed
at benefiting the majority poor. Even the opposition conceded they
would keep many of the programs in place if they took power. But now
Chávez's new direction was troubling even to many of his supporters.
It was clear he was overreaching, moving too far, too fast in a direction
many were not sure they wanted to pursue.

The dilemma was that some of his hard-core supporters and
advisers, such as his brother Adán, whose roots on the left reached back
to the late 1970s and his participation in Bravo's group, clearly wanted
to push ahead with a socialist society. Chávez was caught between the
two currents, just as he was throughout his clandestine conspiracy in
the military.

Beyond the overarching scope of his proposal, Chávez committed
other tactical errors which led to his defeat. He didn't consult the
Venezuelan people on his proposal — rather he drafted it with a
small team of close confidants, and then presented it to the National
Assembly for approval. His project was not something the majority of
Venezuelans were clamoring for, and they told him so at the polls. It
was not a grassroots project that rose up from the masses. Rather, it was
imposed from the top down.

Chávez also never clearly explained the proposal to the public.
There was widespread confusion about some of the items such as the
"geometry of power". Of course, the opposition took advantage of the
doubts, pushing a slick, misleading propaganda campaign that terrified
millions of people by telling them the government would be able to take
their children and homes away from them if the reform passed. Many
people believed it.

The defeat nonetheless raised a central question about Chávez: as
he grew in power and fame, was he becoming too isolated from the
people, too all-knowing and powerful? For a man who was famous
for his ability to read the pulse of the country at the street level, he
had badly misread the sentiment on this one. Some observers believed
he had surrounded himself with "yes men" who failed to give him
an unvarnished account of how people were reacting to his proposal
and led him to believe he enjoyed massive support. For years the well-heeled
opposition had lived in a bubble and failed to comprehend what
was happening in the impoverished barrios. But now it seemed possible
Chávez was creating his own bubble.

Perhaps the Bolivarian Revolution itself was becoming too insulated
— becoming a process where healthy internal debate even among
supporters failed to exist and where anyone who questioned anything
about the government was condemned as "counter-revolutionary." The
Cuban Revolution had suffered the same problem, and now it seemed
the Bolivarians were in danger of repeating it. Before the vote, Chávez
had called anyone who said they supported him but would vote against
the reform a "traitor." That didn't seem to leave much space for healthy
but loyal criticism.

He suffered a major setback when General Raul Isaías Baudel,
one of the four founders of the MBR-200 in 1982 and the man who
engineered the counter-coup that brought Chávez back to power during
the April 2002 putsch, defected. Baduel denounced Chávez's proposed
constitutional reform as a "coup," and campaigned against it.

Adding strength to the opposition movement was a new actor in the
resistance to his government — university students. Tens of thousands,
many of them from Venezuela's moneyed-classes, took to the streets to
protest against the reform. They presented a fresh image for an opposition
movement that for years had been dogged by many of the same old
tired faces of Venezuela's discredited traditional political parties. The
students pumped new life into the opposition movement, giving it hope
for the first time in years that it could defeat Chávez and create a more
balanced political equation in a nation where El Comandante had won
increasing power. Many other students, of course, supported Chávez
but they did not receive the same media coverage.

Even though he lost the referendum vote, Chávez initially came out
of it looking good. Despite years of the international and Venezuelan
media, along with the Bush administration, charging that Chávez
was a dictator or a dictator-in-the-making, the president accepted his
loss. It went a long way in bolstering Chávez's democratic credentials.
The country had conducted a free and fair vote, Chávez narrowly lost,
and he accepted the results. That is not the type of thing dictators do.
The vote also disproved the widespread allegation that the National
Electoral Council was controlled by Chávez and rigged elections in his
favor. Obviously that was nonsense.

But Chávez quickly proceeded to throw away much of the goodwill
he earned from his gracious acceptance of defeat, illustrating the
paradox of a man who could be both brilliant and obtuse in the same
day, the same hour, the same sentence.

After taking the moral high ground, Chávez started to denigrate
the opposition's triumph. At a press conference a few days after his loss
he called it "
una victoria de mierda"
— a "shit victory." He said the word
"shit" four times during the conference.

He also gave clear signs the battle over the reforms — and even provisions
allowing him to run again — was not over, even though the people had
voted. In his concession speech the night of his defeat, he stated that he
and his allies had lost "for now" — repeating his famous phrase from the
failed 1992 coup. He also proclaimed that he was "not withdrawing a single
comma of this proposal . . . This proposal is still alive."

In subsequent days he spelled out what he meant. He began to
insist that the proposals could be put up to a vote again, even though
the 1999 Constitution appeared to state that was not permitted during
the same presidential term. Chávez insisted that certain proposals could
be voted on again in a referendum called either by citizens signing
petitions or by the National Assembly itself. In some cases such as the
social security plan, he indicated, the measures could be implemented
directly by presidential decree.