Hugo Chávez’s greatest legacies are not in the presidential palace, but in the streets, factories and neighborhoods of Venezuela, among the activists, workers and neighbors who have built the Bolivarian Revolution from the bottom up.
“Chávez was one of us”, say the poor from the barrios in Caracas, the people throughout Latin America, and Bronx residents together with probably two million poor people in the US, who now have free heating thanks to the Chávez government. Sean Penn said on Chávez: “Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion.” These are sad days.
For members of Venezuela’s grassroots movements, Chávez meant the hope of a better life, and the means to organize to accomplish it. “Chávez is like a guide. Chávez is a door—the door for the struggles that we want to carry out,” said Iraida Morocoima, of Venezuela’s Urban Land Committees in 2009, “But on the other side of that door are the people.”
After months of rumors in opposition circles of a forthcoming devaluation, and denials of the rumor by Bolivarian government officials, the Venezuelan bolívar was finally devalued by 47% on February 8th . Even though devaluation has become a fairly regular event, especially since currency controls were put in place in 2003, this devaluation has a potentially far greater significance for the future of the Bolivarian Revolution than the previous economic measures and an undeniably greater immediate impact on the base of support for the Bolivarian government.
The model the commoners strive for is, to the extent possible, horizontal and collectivist, breaking the division between those who plan and those who execute the community work. “The network is very important,” said one of the facilitators, “there are no leaders, and it’s important that everyone shares the information.”
While the voting trends described above do not show a sudden surge in support for the PSUV beyond previous levels, it would certainly be fair to say that the PSUV managed to hold up their vote well across the country in an election marked by lower levels of participation, and in particular managed to increase their absolute vote in key “swing” states to make gains from the opposition.
Whatever the internal contradictions of the Bolivarian process, the electoral victory of Chávez was the necessary starting point for addressing them, salvaging the social gains that have been introduced, and radically extending the breadth and depth of a radical conceptualization of democracy in the country and the region – that is to say initiating a transition to socialism.
Hugo Chavez has won the Venezuelan presidential election with 54.42% of the vote against 44.97% for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. A spontaneous street party immediately kicked off in the centre of the Andean city of Merida, and a massive crowd of Chavez supporters began celebrating in front of the presidential palace, Miraflores, in Caracas.
Venezuelan elections are administered by the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) in accordance with the 1999 constitution. The system is electronic, standardized throughout the country and perhaps the most modern and secure in the world. “As a matter of fact, of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world,” former President Jimmy Carter said last month at The Carter Center.
In an extraordinary paper released last week, former US Ambassador to Venezuela, Patrick Duddy, outlined a range of military, financial, and diplomatic measures that the US should be prepared to take against the Chavez government after the coming elections on October 7th.
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