| Long piece at the New Statesman that suggests that Hugo could be in trouble. Might be over-stated, but we'll see. You have to feel for Cindy Sheehan: Saddam's gone, Fidel's ill and Hugo might fall. Heh. Just the first few paragraphs here: |
On 5 July, Venezuelans celebrated the 197th anniversary of their Declaration of Independence from Spain. On that day in 1811, a group of rebel criollos (those born in the Spanish colonies but of Iberian descent), gathered in the Santa Rosa Lima Chapel in Caracas to found a new Republic, the American Confederation of Venezuela. It would take another decade of bloody warfare war before the republican rebels, famously led by Francisco Miranda and Simón BolÃvar, could declare victory over their Royalist foes.
Almost two centuries on, another kind of rebel is in charge in Venezuela, a mestizo (a person of mixed race) this time round, inspired as much by his criollo ancestors’ determination to rid themselves of foreign domination, through another, more recent ideal, also partly of European “descent”: Socialism.
However, victory for Chávez’ Bolivarian Project is by no means guaranteed. If anything, it is in more danger of being derailed, both from internal rifts and external pressures, than at any other time in its ten year existence.
Later this year, on 23 November, Venezuela will hold regional and municipal elections to elect state governors in 22 of its 23 federal states, 219 members of regional parliaments, 332 mayors, 2 city mayors, and 13 city councillors. These elections will be the most decisive since Chávez came to power in 1999. In Venezuela, regional elections always carry great weight reflecting the extensive powers of state governors. In fact, what here is called “the old geometry of power” – the territorial divisions of a decentralised system of public administration going back to colonial times – is a core axis of political and economic clientelism. This is preoccupied with the capture of shares of Venezuela’s huge oil rent for regionally and locally based family clans.