This is the last part of a series consisting of 5 publications on the history of Venezuela. Currently this country is experiencing the worst crisis that Western society has known, hyperinflation, shortage of basic supplies, humanitarian crisis, violation of human rights, systematic violation of the rule of law, the highest rates of violent crime, crime, systematic corruption within institutions, indebtedness, unemployment, protests, repression, concentration of power, social division, the return of diseases that had been eradicated, malnutrition, high rates of infant mortality, cultural degradation, massive migration, in short, Venezuela suffers , in a high degree, of all social ills.
Index
1-Dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, Start of the Oil Industry and Cradle of Marxism
2-Rómulo Betancourt vs Marcos Pérez Jiménez
3-Puntofijismo: Rise and Fall of the 4th Republic
4-Hugo Chávez and the Socialist Revolution of the 21st Century
5-Government of Nicolás Maduro
Government of Nicolás Maduro
As those who read the Fourth Part will know, Venezuela is politically polarized, the State had multiplied its income exponentially because the barrel of oil reached the price of up to 140 dollars, that's when Chávez's popularity increases, the opposition ends up committing many errors, which makes Chávez take over all the institutions of the State. During that period, Chávez implemented a series of social programs focused on helping the poorest people, expropriated the land from the big "capitalists", expropriated various companies, and several others were bought by the State, all with the objective of ensure the power by the state and consolidate the Socialist Revolution, however, people reject the constitutional reform that Chávez proposed, but the latter would not stay with arms crossed and would call for an amendment to allow indefinite re-election. All this happened while the national economy was dying in secret, because government subsidies, massive importation of products, and expropriations, were destroying the business and productive fabric of the nation, nested to that, corruption in the delivery of dollars Preferential imports were killing industries that did not have such special contracts, in addition to allowing an immense flight of capital.
The following graph will show that the price of oil did not remain so high infinitely, because it fell, so that the government could not continue to maintain this bubble for long. The oil industry became less productive every year, the number of workers increased, as did operating costs, however, production fell, and the lack of maintenance and supervision also caused multiple accidents in industrial plants.
At this point, we passed the year 2013, Hugo Chavez, who suffered from cancer, dies after he was intervened in Havana. The financial reserves available to the new president, Nicolás Maduro, were lower every day, maintaining the financial and economic system created by Chavez requires too much money, and the oil industry every day is in a worse state.
In 2014, one of the opposition leaders, Leopoldo López, calls on people to go out to protest, and despite the fact that he manages to mobilize a significant number of people, mostly young people belonging to the middle class, the protests they end up in violent incidents and repression, the opposition led by López blames Nicolás Maduro, and Maduro blames López. The protests conclude when Leopoldo López is detained and locked up in the Ramo Verde prison.
In December 2015, the opposition obtained an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections, which would give it political power to confront the government for the first time in many years, however, the government holds a special session in Parliament, with the objective of appointing to the Magistrates of the Supreme Court of Justice, and thus prevent the new opposition parliament, which had not yet been sworn in, from changing them. In the same way, the Supreme Court of Justice ends up challenging 4 deputies, 3 of them belonging to the opposition, in order to diminish the capacity of the new Parliament by making it lose its absolute majority.
When the new Parliament assumes power, its actions are annulled by the Supreme Court of Justice, which arbitrarily and unconstitutionally, will remove responsibilities to Parliament, such as all the power to audit public institutions, such as the Central Bank or the Oil industry. This is when the opposition decides to call a consultative referendum, similar to that convened in 2004, with the aim of revoking Maduro's mandate, but despite the fact that the opposition obtained the necessary signatures, the National Electoral Council qualified the process as invalid, due to alleged errors found in the process, for that reason ended up canceling the process.
Capriles Radonski, an opposition politician who led the recall process and the collection of signatures, calls for a march in the capital, with the aim of demanding that the National Electoral Council approve the recall process. The call has a resounding success, people from all over the country travel to the capital, people from the remotest places cross the country walked for days, this is because many were hoping that the march would be diverted to the Palace of Miraflores, and would take power just as Mussolini did in Italy with the march on Rome, however, the opposition leader does not end up doing that and dissipates the march, being branded as a coward by the opposition population, which accuses him of not having "balls".
At the beginning of 2017, the Supreme Court of Justice, unconstitutionally, dissolved the Parliament and granted all its powers, which triggered an escalation of strong protests that were repressed by the government. Day after day young and different people died in the country attending the protests.
In Venezuela, history repeated itself, what happened in the eighties and early nineties, it happened again, the same economic problem, protests and repression, however, there would be no other coup d'état.
The protests culminate when Nicolás Maduro calls a National Constituent Assembly without prior consultation with the people, which is unconstitutional, when the Assembly begins to hold sessions, the protests culminate and the opposition politicians are labeled as incompetent by all the opposition groups, since they did not prevent that from happening.
At present, the Constituent Assembly continues to hold illegitimate meetings and for an indefinite period of time, the Parliament legitimately constituted in elections, does not exercise any power, the military is surrendered at the feet of the government, institutions are corrupt, the economic crisis It is becoming more acute every day, and there are no signs that this situation will improve, not in the short term, and not as long as the government is maintained.
To make matters worse, all the political opposition is represented or by the old socialist and social democratic parties that governed during the 4th republic, as discussed in the Third Part, as well as by the new socialist and progressive parties, such is the case, that the Communist Party of Venezuela is currently against Maduro's party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. As you can see, the entire Venezuelan political class, like all parties, and therefore democracy, is completely in the hands of socialists, both those who govern, and those who are opposed. However, the government insists on saying that the opposition is the neoliberal right, the worst thing is that many people with little political and economic knowledge really believe that opposition politicians are from the right.
In Venezuela, since the existence of "democracy" the party system has been extremely corrupt, since the parties are financed with funds illegitimately acquired through government contracts. Practically when the government wishes to carry out a work, it gives the contract of the work to a company created by one of the contributors of the party, in such a way, that when carrying out the work, it charges excessively to the State, then they can invest large part of that illegitimate gain in political parties. It is a whole vicious circle with no way out, which has been maintained for a long time, and of which all the political parties live.
In Venezuela, politicians of the socialist left dominate politics, because once they removed Pérez Jiménez from power in 1958, they were responsible for eliminating the opposition, in many cases disappearing and murdering people, in such a way that in Venezuela, generation after generation, they were shaping the collective mentality through institutions, such as schools and the media, to convert society into a socialist one.
For this reason, and despite the fact that many of my compatriots criticize me for that, I see a threat to the Venezuelan migration that is taking place now, because many of the Venezuelans, intrinsically carry in their personality, the socialist gene, and yes someday they have the power to vote in a foreign nation, which is most likely, because that is why many socialist politicians are in favor of receiving Venezuelans, and it is precisely to win those votes.
Here I will leave three videos that I have seen, and that are in English, that explain the situation and the problem, and that I can support as a Venezuelan.
During this period oil prices plummeted and with it the whole system built by Chávez, instead of reforming the system, Maduro, Chávez's successor, decided to continue with the same model, making the country even more indebted. The opposition exhaust their letters trying to remove Maduro from power, but everything they try is useless, which ends up eroding their political capital. The popular discontent is exhibited on different occasions, through marches and protests that are repressed by the government. At this point, the government has lost all legality, and has become a de facto dictatorship, tries to pretend to be a democracy, but is not, takes unconstitutional actions, withdraws the Parliament elected by popular vote, suspends elections, calls to a Constituent Assembly without prior consultation and in an unconstitutional manner. Price and currency control, as well as strong public spending, unproductiveness and dependence on oil, generate scarcity of basic products and poverty. Despite all the ills described, the government does not rectify any of its mistakes, since there are strong internal pressures to maintain the corrupt system that benefits the black market. The worst of all is that in Venezuela, as in the 1990s, there is no political alternative that does not represent socialist or communist ideals.
With this delivery culminated this series of five publications on the political history of Venezuela, the whole course from its independence to these days. Bolivar and his army liberated the nation, and today more than nearly 200 years after that event, the nation has adopted its name "Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela", however, we could not be further from the liberal, conservative and strongly republican principles that they tried to implement at that time for him, as for the rest of the founding fathers. Since those times, men fell into the vice of power, those who read the entire series, have read the word "coup d'état" excessively, since it seems that the rulers, are not removed from power with votes They need a push. Sadly in Venezuela it was never possible to implement a republican mentality and with moral strength, those who tried it, always faced great challenges and obstacles that prevented it, however, it was possible to implement a socialist mentality and with little moral strength. for this reason, is that I see Venezuela badly in the near future, almost all the inhabitants carry the gene of socialism, although they are not socialist ideologically, because they do not know the theory, they would support the socialist discourse, because they see the world in that way.
My recommendation to get out of the crisis would be the following: the government must withdraw, so that it can begin to generate trust in the institutions, there must be a replacement of the political class, by a non-socialist political class and a nationalist. The indoctrination they maintain in schools must be eliminated, as well as allowing the freedom of expression of all media. For the economic aspect, control of exchange and price control must be eliminated, subsidies must end, and the entire oil industry must be restructured so that it serves economic and not political interests. In the same way, the debt money must be replaced, the money must be sustained in the productive growth of the nation, and it must be an instrument to facilitate negotiations between peers, money should not govern the economy in itself. Finally, it must cleanse all the institutions of the State, beginning with the Armed Forces.
As you can see, according to my perception, the work that needs to be done so that Venezuela can prosper again, is too much, although I am also very ambitious, perhaps most people would settle for simply returning to be the most prosperous country of the region, which is very easy for Venezuela because of the wealth that exists in the territory, it just takes a bit of laissez faire to achieve that.