From: Jon Beasley-Murray <jon.beasley-murray@man.ac.uk>
http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html
http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/
-----
"The Revolution Will Not be Televised: Hugo Chavez's Return and the
Venezuelan multitude"
So this is how a modern coup d'etat is overthrown: almost invisibly, at
the margins of the media. Venezuela's return to democracy (and democracy
it is, make no mistake) took place despite a self-imposed media blackout
of astonishing proportions. A huge popular revolt against an illegitimate
regime took place while the country's middle class was watching soap
operas and game shows; television networks took notice only in the very
final moments, and, even then, only once they were absolutely forced to do
so. Thereafter television could do no more than bear mute witness to a
series of events almost without precedent in Latin America--and perhaps
elsewhere--as a repressive regime, result of a pact between the military
and business, was brought down less than forty-eight hours after its
initial triumph. These events resist representation and have yet to be
turned into narrative or analysis (the day after, the newspapers have
simply failed to appear), but they inspire thoughts of new forms of Latin
American political legitimacy, of which this revolt may be just one
(particularly startling) harbinger.
By Friday night, Caracas, Venezuela's capital, seemed to be returning to
normal the day after the coup that had brought down the increasingly
unpopular regime of president Hugo Chavez. In the middle classes'
traditional nightspots, such as the nearby village of El Hatillo, with its
picturesque colonial architecture and shops selling traditional
handicrafts, the many restaurants were full and lively. Those who had
banged on pots and pans over the past few months and marched the previous
day to protest against the government seemed to be breathing a sigh of
relief that the whole process had eventually been resolved so quickly and
apparently so easily. "A Step in the Right Direction" was the banner
headline on the front page of one major newspaper on the Saturday, and the
new president, Pedro Carmona (former head of the Venezuelan chamber of
commerce), was beginning to name the members of his "transitional"
government, while the first new policies were being announced. Control
over the state oil company, PDVSA (the world's largest oil company and
Latin America's largest company of any kind), had been central to the
ongoing crisis that had led to the coup, and its head of production
announced, to much applause, that "not one barrel of oil" would now be
sent to Cuba. Not all was celebration, it is true: the television showed
scenes of mourning for the thirteen who had died in the violent end to
Thursday's protest march, but the stations also eagerly covered live the
police raids (breathless reporters in tow) hunting down the Chavez
supporters who were allegedly responsible for these deaths.
Elsewhere, however, another story was afoot, the news circulating
partially, by word of mouth or mobile phone. Early Saturday afternoon, I
received three phone calls in quick succession: one from somebody due to
come round to the place I was staying, who called on his mobile to say he
was turning back as he had heard there were barricades in the streets and
an uprising in a military base; another from a journalist who also
cancelled an appointment, and who said that a parachute regiment and a
section of the air force had rebelled; a third from a friend who warned
there were fire-fights in the city centre, and that a state of siege might
soon be imposed. My friend added that none of this would appear on the
television. I turned it on: indeed, not a sign. Other friends came by,
full of similar rumours, and with word that people were gathering outside
the national palace. Given the continued lack of news coverage, we
decided to go out and take a look for ourselves.
Approaching the city centre, we saw that indeed crowds were converging.
But as we drove around, we saw almost no sign of any police or army on the
streets. In the centre itself, and at the site of Thursday's
disturbances, some improvised barricades had been put up, constructed with
piles of rubbish or with burning tyres, marking out the territory around
the national palace itself. The demonstration was not large, but it was
growing. We then headed towards the city's opulent East Side, and came
across a procession of people advancing along the road towards us, people
clearly poorer and more racially mixed than the East Side's usual
inhabitants. They were chanting slogans in favour of Chavez, and carrying
portraits of the deposed president. This march was clearly headed towards
the city centre, as were a stream of buses apparently commandeered by
other chavistas. Neighbourhood police were eyeing them carefully, but
letting them pass. If this number of demonstrators were arriving from the
eastern suburbs, then many more must be converging on the palace from the
working class West. We doubled back and tracked the march from parallel
streets, watching as the numbers grew, as passers-by were called to join
in this unexpected protest.
Meanwhile, we were listening to the radio. Some reports were arriving of
the crowds on the streets, but mainly we heard official pronouncements.
First the army chief spoke, and we heard the signs of incipient splits
among the forces behind the ruling junta: the army would continue to
support interim president Carmona only if he reinstated Congress as well
as the other democratically elected regional governors favourable to the
previous regime who had been (unconstitutionally) deposed the previous
day. But if Congress were reinstated then, according to the constitution,
and in the absence of the previous president and vice-president, the head
of Congress should rightfully be next in line as head of state. Then
Carmona himself was interviewed, by CNN. He declared that the situation
in the city was absolutely calm and under his control, denied that he had
been forced to take refuge in any army base (clearly CNN knew something we
did not), downplayed any insubordination among other sectors of the armed
forces, and announced that his next step might be to fire some of the
military high command. Finally, the head of the national guard then
pronounced that respect and recognition needed to be shown to those who
had supported--and continued to support--the deposed president, Chavez.
The pact between military and commerce was beginning to unravel. We
decided to head home.
We turned on the television. Every Venezuelan commercial station was
continuing with normal programming (and the state-owned channel had been
off the air since Thursday's coup). However, as we had access to cable,
from BBC World and CNN "en espanol" we started to receive reports of
disturbances in various parts of Caracas that morning, and some details
about the parachute regiment's refusal to surrender arms to the new
regime. More mobile phone calls assured us that the crowd outside the
palace was still growing, and still peaceful. The BBC had a reporter in
the crowd, and spoke of thousands of people gathered. Darkness fell, and
still no word from any of the national networks. At one point the CNN
anchor pointedly asked its Caracas correspondent whether or not local
television was covering this tense situation: no, he replied, despite
these same channels' protests over alleged censorship under the previous
regime. Now the self-censorship of soap operas and light entertainment
stood in the way of any representation of what was slowly emerging as a
pro-Chavez multitude.
Indeed, the private networks had previously protested loudly and bitterly
about the former president's policy of decreeing so-called "chains," in
which he obliged all the networks to broadcast his own--often long and
rambling--addresses to the nation. Now the networks had instituted their
own chain, the apparent diversity of variety shows masquerading a uniform
silence about what was happening on the streets.
Then a development: suddenly one channel broke its regular programming to
show scenes of the street outside its own headquarters. A group of thirty
to forty young and mobile demonstrators, on motorcycles and scooters, were
agitating outside the plate glass windows. Some rocks were thrown, some
windows smashed and graffiti sprayed, and suddenly a new chain was formed
as all the networks switched to the same image of demonstrators apparently
"attacking" the building. But the group moved on and the soap operas
resumed. Until a similar group turned up at another channel's
headquarters, then another, then another. No more stones were thrown, but
the demonstrations could now at least be glimpsed, in fragments (the
channels splitting their screens into three, and, as one of the images
turned out to be an image of the television screen itself, further still,
into an endless regress of fuzzy images snatched through cracked windows
and over balconies). A local pro-Chavez mayor who had been in hiding from
the repression was briefly visible, apparently calling for people to
remain calm. But no camera teams ventured outside, and we still had
little idea as to what was happening at the presidential palace.
We were switching rapidly between channels: to CNN and the BBC at the top
of the hour, and then through the various commercial channels to try to
see at least a partial view of the multitude that must now be on the
streets. The international channels were showing footage shot during the
day, of police repression of protests in the poorer neighbourhoods--the
footage was out there, but had not been screened or discussed on any
private channels. At around 10:30pm, on one of these searches through the
cable stations, we saw a channel that had been dark had now come back to
life. A friend phoned almost immediately: "Are you watching channel
eight?" Yes, we were. State television had, amazingly, come back onto
the airwaves.
The people who had taken over the state television station were clearly
improvising, desperately. The colour balance and contrast of these studio
images was all wrong, the cameras held by amateur hands, and only one
microphone seemed to be working. Those behind the presenters' desk were
nervous, one fiddling compulsively with something on the desk, another
shaking while holding the microphone, but there they were: a couple of
journalists, a "liberation theology" priest, and a minister and a
congressman from the previous regime. The minister spoke first, and very
fast. She gave a version of the violent end to Thursday's march that
differed absolutely from the narrative the media had put forward to
justify the coup that had followed: the majority of the dead had been
supporters of Chavez (not opposition protesters), and the snipers firing
upon the crowds were members of police forces not under the regime's
control. Moreover, the former president had not resigned; he was being
held against his will at a naval base on an island to the north. The
current president, Carmona, was illegitimate head of a de facto regime
that was product of a military coup. Thousands of people were on the
streets outside the presidential palace demanding Chavez's return. A
counter-narrative was emerging.
The congressman appealed directly to the owners and managers of other
television stations to portray what was happening in Caracas. No change
on those other channels, however, most of which had returned to their
regular programming. And then the state channel went off the air.
Over the next few hours, channel eight would go on and off the air several
times. Each time the immediate fear was that it had been forcibly closed
down again; each time, it turned out that technical problems were to blame
as the channel was making do with a team unaccustomed to the equipment.
Several times the channel attempted to show images from inside the
presidential palace, but these were eventually successfully screened first
on CNN: the "guard of honour" defending the palace was declaring its
loyalty to Chavez. Later, around 1am, amid the confusion, we saw pictures
of the vice-president, Diosdado Cabello, inside the palace, being sworn in
as president. Venezuela now had three presidents simultaneously: Hugo
Chavez, Pedro Carmona, and Cabello. The situation was extremely confused,
the majority of the channels were still transmitting none of this, and
rumours reported on the BBC suggested that two of the three--Carmona as
well as Chavez--were currently being detained by different sectors of the
armed forces. But the balance of power seemed to have shifted to
supporters of the previous regime. The only question remaining, the
questioned posed by the thousands at the gates of the presidential palace
and still besieging the private television stations (by now some had been
forced to interview spokespeople from the crowd, while at least one had
simply switched to the feed provided by channel eight), was: would we see
Chavez?
And so the apparently unthinkable happened. As all the armed forces as
well as the seat of power effectively passed back to the control of those
loyal to the deposed regime, shortly before 3am, Hugo Chavez, president of
Venezuela, returned to the presidential palace, mobbed as soon as he left
his helicopter by the thousands of supporters who were now in a state of
near delirium. All the television stations were now running the images
provided by channel eight--a new chain had formed, as commercial
television lapsed into a new form of stunned silence. The president
returned to the office from which he had been broadcasting on Thursday
afternoon, when he attempted to close down the private stations and as the
coup was unfolding. This time, however, he was no longer alone behind his
desk, but flanked by most of his ministers and in a room crowded with
people, buzzing with excitement and emotion. We turned the television
off.
Today the fall-out from this revolt is far from clear, just as the
partial, confused television images have yet to be re-written as linear,
coherent newspaper narrative. What is becoming clearer are the lineaments
of the coup that the revolt overthrew--though even here rumours abound,
such as the notion that it had been planned for three months, or about the
extent of possible US involvement. If it had been planned for three
months, then it was badly planned over that time: above all, those who led
the coup were always uncertain as to whether or not they wished to present
the coup for what it was. Had they decided to go through unashamedly with
a coup d'etat (in, for instance, the Pinochet style), they would have been
more thorough-going and widespread in their repression (though as it was,
more people were killed during the illegitimate regime's brief existence
than were killed in Thursday's demonstration, let alone by Chavez's
security forces over the past three years); they would have detained more
chavistas, rather than leaving key (former) ministers to pay a part in the
revolt (though as it was, they used extreme force in raiding several
ministers' homes, and detained, for instance, up to sixty people at the
country's largest university); and they would have decisively secured the
state television and no doubt imposed a state of siege. Yet had they
decided to preserve at least a facade of legitimacy, they would have made
some effort to extract some kind of (written or televised) resignation
from Chavez, would have not dissolved the Congress, would have not
detained and stripped of power (democratically elected) provincial
governors, and hence would not have so utterly breached the constitution.
As it was, the pact between military and business that engineered the coup
was weak, and could survive only through repression or apathy. But the
military was split, and (especially) the front-line forces unwilling to go
through with repression--even while the business component refused to
negotiate with the other anti-Chavez sectors of society, nominating a
cabinet almost exclusively composed of figures from the extreme right.
More importantly still, the coup plotters were surprised to discover that
they were received not with apathy, but with an extraordinary and
near-spontaneous multitudinous insurrection.
The fate of Chavez's government, and indeed also of Chavez himself,
remains uncertain. Support for what was once an overwhelmingly popular
regime had been in steady decline, in part as a result of a relentless
assault by both the press and the television networks, but also because it
had so far failed to achieve its stated aim of transforming what, for all
its oil resources, is still a country with considerable poverty. Now
(despite an initial concession of reversing the interventions in PDVSA
that had triggered the most recent convulsion), Chavez still has a large
proportion of the middle classes firmly set against him, people who
supported the coup; he must negotiate with them without at the same time
betraying--and indeed while starting to fulfil--the desires of the
multitude that overthrew it. The government has a golden opportunity--it
is now more clearly legitimate than at any time since its auspicious
beginnings (when it had 80% support in the polls), whereas the commercial
media that so fomented his downfall are patently in disgrace. Yet the
government could so easily blow that opportunity, especially if it
continues (as before the coup) to depend all too much on the figure of the
president himself, at best a maverick, at worst authoritarian in style
(and probably in fact quite incompetent), whose personal charisma is
already lost on the middle classes. As Chavez's personalism allows for no
competition, it leaves few alternatives to those who believe in the
generally progressive causes advanced (if intermittently) by his
government. "Chavismo" itself came to create a political vacuum that
briefly allowed the far right pact of arms and commerce to take control.
In the event, however, the multitude came to fill that political
vacuum--silently at first, almost invisibly, at the margins of the media.
Though Chavez (and chavismo) claims to represent that multitude,
yesterday's insurrection should be the signal that the regime is in the
end dependent upon (constituted by) that multitude. Chavez should not
repeat the mistake--made both by the nineteenth-century liberators he
reveres and the early twentieth-century populists he resembles--that he
can serve as a substitute for that multitude, or that he can masquerade
their agency as his own. For in the tumultuous forty-eight hours in which
the president was detained, it became clear that "chavismo without Chavez"
has a power all of its own, apt to surprise any confused attempt at
representation.
Thanks to that multitude, Venezuela continues to constitute a dissident
exception to the contemporary prevalence of a neoliberalism that has only
accentuated the divide between rich and poor throughout Latin America. It
is not so much, perhaps, that Chavez demonstrates that other models are
possible--though his unpredictable foreign policy (embracing figures as
diverse as Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro), as well as his more coherent
attempts to make OPEC a force of third world producers allied against a
global system heavily weighted in favour of first world consumers, do help
to suggest that another form of globalisation might be imagined. Rather,
it is that the multitude suggests another possible, liberatory, side to
the almost complete breakdown of any semblance of a social pact that
characterises the Latin American "mainstream."
One sign of this breakdown is the perceived dramatic rise in delinquency
or common crime--Caracas is a city that abounds with a surplus of security
devices (people are weighed down by the number of keys required to operate
lifts and open doors, gates, and pass through other protective cordons)
that regulate the middle class's comings and goings in line with this fear
of latent social disorder. But yesterday's events suggest another side to
this apparent disorder, both on the one hand that it is a criminological
demonisation of a sector of society that (it is presumed) has to be
systematically cleansed from social spaces; and on the other that it is a
glimpse of a desire to go beyond such enclosures. The criminalisation of
mobility is a reaction to a force that no longer "knows its place."
Another sign of this breakdown is the withdrawal of any popular
legitimation for political systems--the clamour in Peru, Argentina, and
now Venezuela (among other countries) has been against politicians of any
kind, all of whom are regarded as equally corrupt, equally inefficient,
and equally inadequate to the needs and demands of the multitude. But the
breakdown of any representation of yesterday's insurrection might also
point towards a politics that is itself beyond representation, beyond a
set of systematic substitutions of people for politicians.
Venezuela's coup, and the revolt that overturned it, constitute simply
another sign of the disappearance of the former contract (however illusory
that contract may have been) between people and nation. Hugo Chavez tried
to reconstruct that contract by televisual means, but the medium itself
(unsuited to such simple narratives) rebelled against him, and it will
continue to do so. The current regime has legitimacy, but this legitimacy
does not come from paraded invented rituals for the cameras; it comes from
the multitude's constituent power. And the multitude is also waiting for
other alternatives, and other possibilities.
Jon Beasley-Murray
University of Manchester
jon.beasley-murray@man.ac.uk
Caracas, 14th April 2002
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