“We won’t let them turn us back,” said José Landines, a truck driver from the January 23 neighborhood of Caracas, referring to the pro-imperialist opposition coalition, Coordinadora Democrática, which has spearheaded the referendum scheduled for August 15. Speaking to the Militant by phone the day of the action, Landines said he and thousands of his neighbors took part in the demonstration to defend the elected government. He and others interviewed by the Militant said this was the largest of a number of similar protests that have taken place since June, when the National Electoral Council (CNE) set the date for the recall ballot.

In a sign of the faltering momentum of the opposition campaign, international capital in the oil industry has become more and more favorable to the stability they hope would come from a strong win by the Chávez administration, an article in the August 9 Financial Times reported.

There have been improvements in the economy during the first half of this year, largely fueled by higher oil prices on the world market. State revenues have been boosted. Unemployment has fallen and food prices have stabilized. Advances in government-sponsored social programs—from literacy campaigns to public works—are also a factor in the loss of steam for the pro-imperialist opposition.

As the vote approached, larger sections of the middle classes and some groups until recently allied with the opposition appeared to be joining the vote “no” campaign. The day before the march, officials of Venezuela’s Evangelical church, which claims a few million members, called for a “no” vote in the referendum. “This is new,” said Wikénferd Oliver, director of international relations of the Youth of the Fifth Republic Movement, the governing party, in an August 9 phone interview. “Until now, no major religious group had done that.”

“I saw many more professionals at the Sunday rally than previous demonstrations,” said Ebesis García, a saleswoman for a food distribution company, referring to the August 8 mobilization. Her observation was confirmed in other interviews and press accounts of the action.

The same day, a few thousand people turned out for a car caravan and an all-day rock concert in Chacao, a wealthy neighborhood of Venezuela’s capital, according to the Miami Herald and interviews by the Militant. Coordinadora Democrática, which is led by figures in Fedecámaras, the country’s main business association, had organized the musical event to promote its campaign to unseat the government.

Weighty sections of Venezuela’s capitalist class with U.S. government backing organized the recall vote in an increasingly desperate attempt to oust the elected government. Two previous tries did not succeed, and have in fact led to the weakening of the opposition.

The first, a U.S.-backed military coup in April 2002, failed within three days in face of massive street mobilizations by working people throughout the country that divided the military.

The second, a bosses’ “strike” in December 2002 and January 2003, crippled production for more than two months in the oil industry, the country’s main economic resource. But as millions of workers defied the employers’ sabotage of the economy, taking over refineries and other plants and restarting production, the lockout crumbled. One of the fruits of the workers’ victory in that class confrontation was a completely new management for PDVSA, the state-owned oil company.

Leading up to the lockout, the Chávez administration had angered most of Venezuela’s wealthy ruling families and their allies in Washington by doubling the royalties that investors have to pay for oil exploration contracts and taking other measures to strengthen state control of the country’s natural resources.

Other measures passed by the government in the fall of 2001 that drew the ire of the majority of Venezuela’s bourgeoisie included an agrarian reform law, a bill protecting small fishermen from overfishing by large commercial companies, and the allocation of state funds for affordable housing and other social programs.

The government’s normalization of trade and diplomatic relations with Cuba, and the work in Venezuela of some 16,000 doctors, literacy teachers, and other volunteers from Cuba over the last two years, have also stoked the fury of many Venezuelan capitalists and landlords and their backers in the United States.  
 
Opposition campaign losing steam
One of the many indications that the pro-imperialist opposition has been running out of steam was the August 9 Financial Times article. Titled “Oil industry seeks decisive Chávez poll win,” the article begun: “A decisive victory for Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez in next Sunday’s recall referendum on his leadership could help pave the way for billions of dollars of fresh international investment in the country’s oil and gas sector.”

Venezuela is the fifth-largest oil producer in the world and PDVSA provides some 80 percent of the country’s export revenue. More than 50 percent of its oil exports go to the United States and Canada.

“Industry analysts say that international companies, short of opportunities elsewhere, would welcome an end to the extreme political instability that has plagued the last two years in particular of the radical leader’s six years in office,” said the London daily.

The article quoted Fareed Mohamedi, chief economist of the Washington-based PFC Energy, saying, “The companies are a lot more sanguine about the political situation and they have become convinced that Mr. Chávez is a man they can do business with.”

“Two months ago, following a protracted campaign,” the article said, “opposition groups forced Mr. Chávez to hold a recall referendum. With the economy recovering strongly, however, the president expects to see off the challenge and avoid calling elections before those scheduled for 2006…. International companies have also begun to realize that in spite of his hostility towards Venezuela’s traditional business elites, Mr. Chávez is anxious to maintain good relations with international companies, particularly in the oil sector.”

Even an article in the August 6 Wall Street Journal by Mary Anastasia O’Grady, notorious for her columns that rant against Cuba and Venezuela, had to acknowledge these facts. “In recent weeks, the chattering classes have begun to suggest that [Chávez] can win fair and square,” she said. “The Chávez government is a leading proponent of this line and is now claiming that all polls show it has a clear advantage of 15 to 25 points. More impartial parties also opine now that he could win, albeit in a tight race.”

Most of those interviewed by the Militant said an all-out effort by the “vote no” campaign over the last six weeks has made a difference. Wikénferd Oliver said that more than 1.2 million volunteers have been organized around the country, most of them young, to visit registered voters house-to-house and convince them to vote against the recall. The volunteers are organized in teams of 10 people, each of whom is responsible for visiting and getting to know 10 other people. The teams belong to Electoral Battle Units (UBE) that have been created in most neighborhoods across the country.

At the same time, recent improvements in the economy and steady advances in a number of social programs the government has launched have worked against the opposition campaign, Oliver and others said.  
 
Economic improvements
“Unemployment is now down to about 12 percent, according to the government,” said Antonio Aguillón, a unionist in Caracas, in an August 9 phone interview. The official jobless rate hovered between 18 and 20 percent last year.

In a number of interviews, a range of workers gave examples of new jobs they’ve been able to get since this spring. Ebesis García said she found her job at a privately owned food distribution company two months ago.

Carlos Enrique Rángel was a truck driver in Caracas who worked until 2002 for Industrial de Perfumes, a cosmetics company the bosses shut down. He had been unemployed for more than a year, surviving on seasonal work in construction, when a relative told him about hundreds of new jobs at the Deltana natural gas project in the eastern state of Anzoátegui, where ChevronTexaco recently began drilling on two concessions it negotiated with the government. “It’s a little far from home,” he said, “but it’s the first chance for stability, to have security that I can feed the family.”

Car sales in the country were double in July compared to a year ago, according to a news item posted by just-auto.com on August 9.

The country’s gross domestic product grew nearly 30 percent the first quarter of this year, Venezuela’s Central Bank reported, after dropping by a similar figure the first quarter of 2003.

Public works, including new projects to repair roads, bridges, and other parts of the country’s infrastructure, have added new jobs, Aguillón and other workers said.

In May the government raised the minimum wage to 300,000 bolivars (about $150) per month, a 50 percent increase, Aguillón noted.

Luis Casadiego said another positive development for working people is “the spreading and vast improvement of the Mercals,” the government supermarkets.

Casadiego, who organizes a community center housing a neighborhood clinic operated by Cuban doctors in the Montepiedad section of the January 23 neighborhood in Caracas, said the Mercals are now open three hours more per day, until 9:00 p.m., “and you can find almost everything you need for cooking on their shelves.”

Until early this year, the stock of the Mercals was scant, and people could buy only up to a certain quantity of food per month. “Now rationing exists in very few items, and more and more people are abandoning shopping at the private food stores,” Casadiego said. His observations were confirmed in many other interviews with workers, farmers, and students in Valencia, San Carlos, and Barcelona.

The prices at these stores are about half of what food costs on average in the private markets. “I just bought two kilos [4.5 lbs] of chicken for 4,000 bolivars [$2] at the Mercal around the corner,” said Ebesis García. “It costs 8,000 at most of the private stores.”

García and others said that although the official inflation rate remains high, about 13 percent annually, the greatly reduced food prices at the Mercals, which the majority of the population now has access to, is making a difference in working peoples’ ability to survive.

Literacy campaigns that have involved some 4 million people over the last year, organized with the help and volunteer trainers from Cuba, have further undermined the pro-imperialist opposition campaign. Many of the volunteers for the house-to-house visits of the “vote no” campaign have been organized out of the literacy classes, Wikénferd Oliver said. His group, the Youth of the Fifth Republic Movement, is coordinating this effort nationally, he said.

Improved health care for many working people is also weighing against the opposition. “For the first time, a growing number of young Venezuelan doctors have joined the more than 10,000 volunteer doctors from Cuba in the Barrio Adentro program,” said Karen Freites, a medical student at the University of Carabobo in Valencia, the country’s third-largest city. “There are now 1,200 Venezuelan doctors enrolled in the program, with 130 here in Valencia alone.”

Barrio Adentro, which translates roughly as “Into the heart of the neighborhood,” is the name of a government-sponsored program that has brought Cuban doctors operating free, competent neighborhood clinics in working-class neighborhoods and rural areas across the country where workers and farmers have had little or no access to medical care.  
 
Class confrontation
While the main figures in Coordinadora Democrática insist they have a good chance of winning the August 15 vote, frustration and even plans for resorting to violent means to try to topple the government are not uncommon among sections of the opposition.

A large quantity of C-4 explosives was recently stolen from a military base in Carabobo, said Freites and others. Miguel Salazar, a journalist in Valencia, has recently publicized claims by some unnamed admirals and other high military officers in that state who say they would stage a coup if the opposition is declared the loser on August 15. A large arms cache recently seized by the police in Brazil was likely destined for counter-revolutionary groups in Venezuela, said an August 7 article by the pro-government news web site Venezuelanalysis.com.

Carlos Andrés Pérez, a wealthy businessman who was previously the president of Venezuela and leader of Acción Democrática—now one of the two main opposition parties—recently stated from his luxurious quarters in south Florida, “Violence will allow us to remove him,” referring to Chávez. “That’s the only way we have.” Pérez said Venezuela’s president “must die like a dog, because he deserves it.”

In response, the Venezuelan government has organized tighter security for polling stations, oil installations, and other production facilities around the referendum. On August 1, a court ordered the arrest of 59 former military officers on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the elected government and instigating insurrection. The officers had taken over a square in Caracas in October 2002 as a platform for resistance to government authority, and some had been involved in the failed military coup six months earlier.

In mid-May, the government arrested more than 100 Colombian rightist troops, disguises as “paramilitaries,” and three Venezuelan military officers. They were all accused of a plot to bring down the Chávez administration organized by sections of the U.S.-backed opposition.

“There is no way the opposition could win the vote in the countryside,” said Angel Sarmiento, a peasant in San Carlos, Cojedes state. He pointed to further advances by peasants in their struggles for land.

In the first half of this year, the number of peasant families that have received land titles, taking advantage of the 2001 agrarian reform law, has surpassed 115,000, he said—40,000 more than since the end of 2003. In the San Carlos area, Sarmiento said, nearly 2,000 peasants obtained new land titles and credits on 15,000 acres of land the last three months.

“I don’t think they would win in Caracas either,” he said. To succeed the opposition must receive a majority in the election, and garner more than the 3.76 million votes cast for Chávez in the last elections among the country’s 14 million registered voters. “We all know that a victory for them at the ballot box or in any other way would be a return to the dark days, the days of unabashed murder of peasants, blatant exploitation, and loss of hope for the poor. We won’t let them turn back the clock of history.”

Amagalys Heredia, another peasant who farms land as part of the Los Cañizos farm cooperative in the state of Yaracuy, agreed with Sarmiento’s assessment, but pointed to the class contradictions that will remain intact even if the government wins the referendum. “We need to win the August 15 vote to gain more time for the real battle.”

The biggest challenge workers and farmers face, she said, are the capitalists within the “pro-Chávez” camp. “Many of these businessmen speak pretty words, but they are doing everything to prevent us from implementing the agrarian reform law and are turning a blind eye when the private goons of big landlords murder militant peasants taking over land, like they did two weeks ago in the state of Zulia. We will deal with them.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home