FROM THE TRUTHOUT WEBSITE:
For almost two months now, Venezuela has been caught in a tense stand-off between the incumbent government of Nicolás Maduro and the US-backed right-wing opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who proclaimed himself president in January and who has since been trying to force Maduro from office with the active support of the Trump administration and various right-wing regional leaders. Over the next weeks, ROAR will be publishing a series of interviews with Venezuelan activists and intellectuals to help share local perspectives on the origins of the current crisis, the risks of an escalation in the conflict, and possible ways out for radical-democratic forces.
The first interview, published below, is with the Venezuelan sociologist and left-wing intellectual Edgardo Lander, who is a Professor Emeritus at the Central University of Venezuela and a Fellow at the Transnational Institute (TNI). Lander was a critically constructive supporter of former president Hugo Chávez, and served as a consultant to the Venezuelan commission negotiating the Free Trade Area of the Americas. He was one of the organizers of the 2006 World Social Forum, and is currently involved in TNI’s New Politics program. In this interview, he calls on the international left to recognize the complexity of the situation, and not to conflate the need for firm opposition to the ongoing US intervention with unconditional support for the Maduro government.
As the perceptive reader will notice, Lander’s position differs in several important respects from the reading offered by the Venezuelan sociologist and former government minister Reinaldo Iturriza in our second interview, published here. We offer these different perspectives on the assumption that the critical and intelligent reader will be able to make up their own mind as to which reading they find most persuasive, and which position they are most comfortable to align themselves with. We are currently preparing two more interviews with Venezuelan activists that we hope to publish over the next weeks. We consider these grassroots perspectives particularly important in the present context, given the international media’s systematic inattention to (and active marginalization of) the voices of ordinary Venezuelans.
In the process, we hope to relay some of the complexity of the present situation on the ground, while at the same time continuing to insist on the importance of the key principles of anti-militarism, non-intervention, self-determination, radical democracy, and solidarity with the marginalized and oppressed.
ROAR: Professor Lander, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Could you please tell us a little bit about everyday life in Venezuela right now? What is the situation like on the streets, and how do people experience the current crisis?
Edgardo Lander: The situation is extremely tense. Everyday life is becoming more and more difficult, more and more complicated. Inflation last year was over a million percent. Just this January it was estimated to be over 200 percent. People’s salaries have absolutely dissolved. There is no way people can afford to buy basic necessities. Oil production, the source of 96 percent of the value of the country’s exports is just a third of what it was six years ago. Public services have severely deteriorated.
Venezuela’s GDP is today just 50 percent of what it was five years ago. Per capita GDP is lower that it has been for quite a few decades. There is a profound health crisis. Severe child malnutrition will have a long term impact on the country’s future. According to the International Red Cross, the two countries in the world that worry them most today in terms of their respective social crises are Yemen and Venezuela.
There is such a high level of discontent and desperation among the population and the threats to their well-being that they are facing are so severe that all this could lead to an extremely negative outcome. We know from history that desperation is a breeding ground for fascism. People who are really desperate are willing to accept any alternative to the present state of things. A US military invasion and/or civil war are today real possibilities. Many people are just so fed up and so desperate that they are willing to accept basically anything, which makes for an extremely dangerous situation.
Venezuelan society today is not only extremely divided; people seem to live in two completely different realities. There is widespread distrust and fear of the “other.” In this context, people are willing to believe anything said by “their side.”
How did the situation get to this point?
The government seems decided to try to remain in power by any means necessary. And this has only been possible — so far — because of the backing from the military, which up until this point has shown no signs of fragmentation, divisions or doubts about its support for the government. But this is something that could change as external pressure increases.
On the other hand, as US policy has demonstrated in the cases of Iraq, Libya and Syria, the number of people who suffer or are killed as a consequences of economic sanctions or military intervention are not a matter of much concern to the hawks (figures like John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Mike Pence) who, along with Donald Trump, are today in charge of US foreign policy. The new level of economic sanctions is leading to an even more catastrophic situation.
In a policy characterized by extreme cynicism, the US government is simultaneously worsening an already dire situation for the population by strangling the Venezuelan economy, with a cost of tens of billions of dollars, and offering a few million dollars in “humanitarian aid” to alleviate the socio-economic crisis to which it is actively contributing.
These two opposing forces — the Maduro government with the backing of the armed forces, and the National Assembly with the backing of the US, including the threat of armed intervention — are slowly moving the country towards the brink of war.
On February 8, 2018, Guaidó declared that he would call for a US military intervention “if necessary.” He also announced that he would organize “volunteers” to open up a “humanitarian corridor.” This could easily have led to a confrontation with the Venezuelan military controlling the border between Venezuela and Colombia. After the failed attempt to bring in US aid into the country on February 23, “no matter what,” he has been actively asking the United States government to “use force” to oust the Maduro government.
Military backing makes Maduro believe that he has no need to negotiate. US backing make the opposition present in the National Assembly think that it is just a matter of time before they can overthrow Maduro. The risk of more violence — by February some 40 people had been killed, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office — increases by the day. At this moment both sides are playing a zero-sum game in which they want to annihilate the other. Some form of negotiation or agreement is urgently needed if this escalation of violence is to be stopped.
The Maduro government still has some popular support. It is not true that the support for the government among the popular sectors of Venezuelan society has completely disappeared. But it is smaller than it used to be two, or even one year ago, and certainly much, much smaller than it used to be during the Chávez years. The humanitarian crisis, the difficulties in everyday life, as well as the government’s authoritarian and repressive policies continue to erode popular support.
According to UN sources, 3.4 million people have fled the country over the last five years, representing more than 10 percent of the total population. A large proportion of Venezuelan families have close relatives — their sons, their brothers and sisters, as well as dear friends — that have left the country. This family fragmentation is a source of widespread pain.
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