Chavez's staying power

Rosita Toro is a thirty-six-year-old teacher with a ponytail and big brown eyes. She arrived at her polling place in Caracas at 2:45 a.m. on August 15. I spoke to her about four hours later while she was still waiting in a line that stretched for half a mile. "I think this is a historic process," she told me. And it was.

Venezuelans came out to vote in record numbers, with 75 percent of the registered voters participating in the recall referendum that determined the fate of President Hugo Chavez. The charismatic, left-leaning Chavez and his "Bolivarian revolution" won handily, capturing 59 percent of the vote. Like Toro, many people had gotten up hours before dawn to make sure their votes would count. Some waited in line for eight or nine hours in the blazing Caracas sun.

"We are defending our right to democracy," said Toro.

The Reverend Jose Gregorio Martinez is the head of a pro-Chavez group in the same section of Caracas where Toro is from. "For many years, we were marginalized from the political process," he told me inside the polling place. "We have to abandon this idea that some will be well-off and others not. Our resources are for all of humanity, not just for businessmen."

But Chavez has plenty of critics. They say the president bought off the poor with his social programs funded largely by earnings from the state oil company. Chavez's distribution of oil wealth to the poor--estimated to be about 70 percent of the population--is unique in the country's history. The oil industry was nationalized in the early 1970s, but existed as a virtual cookie jar for the upper classes until Chavez came to power.

"The one who gives us [social programs] can take them away, too," said Belkis, a manicurist who sets up her table every weekday near the downtown's central plaza, Plaza Bolivar. "On the one hand, his programs have helped a lot of people, but on the other hand, they've ruined the country, too. People work less. You have to work hard to succeed."

The Bush Administration has been openly hostile to Chavez, who routinely denounces U.S. unilateralism and praises Fidel Castro. But in the months preceding the August 15 vote, Bush did Chavez a favor. The Iraq War roiled the world oil market, sending prices up dramatically. Since Venezuela is the fifth largest exporter of oil, Chavez was able to lavish more funds for social investment, which may have helped him expand his margin of victory.

Cesar Perez Vivas is the secretary general of the Christian Democratic Party, one of the two major political parties that governed the country for nearly forty years. "In Venezuela, judicial power is wielded like a club, like a political horsewhip," Perez told me a few days after the vote. The judiciary, rarely an independent branch of government in Venezuela or in Latin America in general, could soon have a significantly larger supreme court, appointed by the pro-Chavez legislature. Critics say that Chavez is trying to stack the judiciary, and he has made his presence felt throughout the government.

"A military authoritarian--that's my definition of Chavez," added Perez. As a lieutenant colonel, Chavez first tried to come to power through an unsuccessful 1992 coup. He was imprisoned and later released. As president, Chavez talks about a "civic-military" alliance. But given that Chavez has won three elections with more than 50 percent of the vote each time, it seems a stretch to classify him as a military dictator.

Michael Santiago, an elderly man who was born in the United States and returned to Venezuela in the 1950s, finds Chavez infuriating. "He hasn't done anything in five years. Nothing at all," Santiago told me on election day outside of the El Llanito neighborhood polling center. "They're communist, and they came in hungry. Now they are doing everything possible to fleece the country and leave it in ruins." And Chavez's close relationship with Fidel Castro disgusts Santiago. "Fidel is his girlfriend," he said. "I don't know which one is the boyfriend, OK?"

The August referendum marked the opposition's third attempt to oust Chavez. The first was a failed coup in April 2002. With help from members of the armed forces, Pedro Carmona, head of the national business association, dissolved the legislature and the supreme court and declared himself president. The U.S. government quickly recognized the Carmona government. Meanwhile, people took to the streets to protest the coup, and members of the armed forces loyal to Chavez freed him. Carmona's presidency lasted only forty-eight hours.

The second attempt was a national strike that began in December 2002. The two-month strike was disastrous for the country's economy--it still hasn't completely recovered--but Chavez did not leave office. In fact, Chavez consolidated his power by firing the striking oil workers and appointing his associates. All Rodriguez, a former guerrilla leader of the 1960s, now heads the state oil company.