Magical History

What’s Left of Chavez?

Fernando Coronil

(to the memory of Yolanda Salas)

Given the polarization of debate around the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela

led by Hugo Chavez, discussing any aspect of his regime is entering a mine field.

Both in Venezuela and overseas, it is hard to talk about Chavez without falling or

being pushed into one of the opposite extremes. Particularly among

Venezuelans—but also among those who follow Venezuelan events closely---it is

easy for partial political differences of opinion to be construed as total personal

ontological differences , for emotions to replace reasons, or to descend to ad

hominum disqualifications in terms of political convenience, moral inferiority,

crass material interests, or simply cognitive dysfunction.

For those of who may not be familiar with this debate, I’ll start this discussion by

presenting briefly the two extreme views; although they may seem to be

exaggerated caricatures, they in fact capture the basic outlines of the two polar
positions:

From one pole, the Boliviarian Revolution is as a radical revolution, an

innovative process of fundamental historical change that is transforming

Venezuela--bringing well being to the majority of Venezuelans, deepening

democracy, integrating Latin America, and countering imperialism. The country is

developing a nationalist energy policy and the economy is healthy and growing.

Petroleum is now for the benefit of Venezuelans. Chavez is a world historical

leader, a veritable comandante, a redeemer, Bolivar incarnate.

From the other, the Bolivarian revolution is a fake, a revolution travesti, more of

the same, a change of elites, the boliguersia replacing the old bourgeisie, a

bunch of pillos (thugs). The oil policy is a disaster, a collapse of oil prices would

lead not only to the collapse of the government but of the whole economy;

Venezuela imports 75% of its food, and is able to produce less and less of

everything, including oil. Chavez is a new version of the old populism, a new

Peron, Vargas, or Velasco Alvarado, a charlatan, the coward of the 1992, not a

comandante, but a mico-mandante--a monkey that rules.

As Venezuelan cultural critic Yolanda Salas often commented, these clashing

images are specular, mirror images of each other that share the same
assumptions and manichean structure. Although moving to the middle, away

from these extreme caricatures is perhaps the beginning of wisdom, it is not a

matter of shifting from Black or White to gray, or from Red or Blue to any other

one color, but of breaking out from this Manichean, fundamentalist framework. In

brief, the point is not to see gray, but to grasp the vibrant colors of a complex

reality; if we are to find any truths, we must seek them in life’s rich complexity—

and often, through significant details.

I have called this talk Magical history in part to explore what’s happening to

“history” in Venezuela under the Chavez state-- a state that is being increasingly

defined as yet another manifestation of what I examined as the “magical state.”

For instance, in an article published last summer titled “The New Debut of the

Magical State,” the respected Venezuelan historian Margarita Lopez Maya,

objecting to the concentration of power in the person of Chavez, argued in that

article that the Magical state, provides a template or a model for understanding

transformation of the Chavista state. She argued that one could see the Chavez

regime in the mirror offered by the rule of Gomez, Perez Jimenez, and above all,

Carlos Andres Perez. Many others have made a similar point.

In that article Lopez Maya noted that in talk I gave at the Central University as

part of a conference on the decolonization of knowledge, I had recounted my

own struggle to understand Venezuelan solciety and to develop categories that

fit its distinctive reality. I explained then that the notion of the magical state was

inspired by Jose Ignacio Cabrujas, a brilliant Venezuelan playwright and public

intellectual, more free from the prison house of Eurocentric social scientific

categories.

While most social scientists typically discussed the Venezuelan state in terms of

categories developed to interpret the state of advanced metropolitan nations---or

as underdeveloped versions of these nations—Cabrujas managed to address its

fundamental reality. He argued that the state in Venezuela, thanks to the nation’s

oil wealth, came to be personified in the figure of the president as a magnificent

sorcerer. As a magician performing tricks of prestidigitation, the president in

Venezuela brings realities out of hat—cosmogonies, factories, freeways,

constitutions.

In The Magical State I develop this insight, expanding it into a critique of social

theory, including marxist analysis of Latin America, centrally focused on the

relationship between capital and labor, and forgetful of land, the third element of

what Marx called the secret of capitalist society, the Trinity Form: of course, by

"land" Marx meant not just land, but all the powers of nature. In the case of

Venezuela, land is the foundation of both the Venezuelan state and Venezuelan
society. It is also the foundation of the powers of these magical presidents.

As I argue in the The Magical State, forgetting land obscures the dynamics not

just of Venezuela, but of societies of the South, built so much not just on the

exploitaiton of labor power, but also of nature, not just on the extraction of value,

but of riches. Of course, this forgetting or erasure of "land" in Venezuela makes

this invisibility of nature particulary visible.

The notion of magical state also builds on notions of fetishis, marx and charisma,

wever. It suggests not just a one way, top down flow, but a dynamics interaction:

a mutual construction. Charisma entails a charismatic community that confers

charisma to the leader. Similiarly, the nation of magic suggests trickery, but also

the real power of unseen forces. It is this comp;lex formation I seek to analyze in

the The magical State.

Wtith Margarita Lopez, I believe tha Chavez is a magical state, perhaps the most

magical ofa ll, and he is the most magical of our president. But I think there is

difference. And I think this difference has to do with the kind of history that

chavez is trying to produce. I want to xplore this in fact by examining Chavez’s

relationp to history, understood in its double as words and as happenings.

The inspiring idea for this talk, in fact started from a detail. Last week I read an
article in the Venezuelan newspaper Tal Cual about a meeting with Chavez and

leaders of the Partido Socialist Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). One sentence

jumped at me: he told these leaders that they should be disciplined and forget

personal projects and vices-- that they should not like whisky, but be ready to die

for the nation. If found this juxtaposition remarkable, this bringing together the

demand that they don’t drink whisky, and be ready to die for the nation.

For those not familiar with Venezuela, Venezuela is the first consumer of whisky

per capita in the world. Under Chavez regime, it has become quite common for

leaders not just to drink the already expensive 12 years old whisky, but also the

much costlier 18 years old. What Chavez demanded from his leaders was

something that everyone knew was not possible—not that people would be ready

to die for the nation, because this was imaginable, but that they would not stop

drinking whisky. Yet, people accepted this and applauded Chavez. What to make

of this disjuncture between what Chavez says and what is, between

representations and reality? Even if we accept that people understood “whisky”

as a general metaphor for vices, and “dying” for the nation as a metaphor for

working hard for the nation, what to make of this manner of presenting alternative

codes of revolutionary conduct?

Why Magical history then? I’ve chosen this tilte….

Today I want to reflect a bit about this relationship between words and world by

focusing on what has happened to History in Venezuela not just under chavez

but through his mouth.

My focus today will be limited. While I''m concerned with history as a cosmology,

with ideologies of histories, today I want to explore one aspect noted commonly

and constantly in Venezuela but seldom analyzed: not just what Chavez says,

but the fact of his saying it and his saying it so repeatedly. I want to explore what

seems his formidable verbal production, for some his extraordinary pedagogic

presidency, for others his verbal incontinency or verborrea--his production or

overproduction of history through words. How does this proliferation of words

relate to the transformation of the world?

For those who are unfamiliar with Venezuela let me just say that Chavez speaks

publicly a lot, as far as I know, more than any political leader on earth, ever.

According to those who like to count count, he speaks an average of 40 hours a

week, a full time job. He has spoken now for more than year cotinuously, 24

hours a day. He does'not hold regular cabinet meetings, like previous president,

where technical reports are presented and discussed carefully and in private; his

method is to convoke the nation to weekly meeting, his alo president, where
policies are defined and proclaimed--sessions which have no time limits--one

knows when they start, but not when they end--some last more than seven

hours.

What does all this talking mean? What's is this production or overproduction of

words about? How does his narration of history relate to the making or changing

of history?. I'm going to explore this by focusing on seven themes or ideas ,

seven steps towards understanding Chavez's world of words, his making of

history and his narrative of History. This is highly exploratory, and I want to

benefit form your presence here for comments and suggestions.

Ok, these are the steps--stepts to understand the difference within continuity of

Chavez's magical state.

1. What comes out of the the Magicians Hat is now different: not elements of

history, but History itself. And it is a history not for the whole nation, but for part

of it.. A radicalization of the narrative of History itself: what comes out of a hat is

not cars, factories, hospitals, schools, or even a cosmogoy, but history itself, a

different history.

If one examines Venezuelan history from Gomez to Caldera, one finds a

remarkable continuity in the content of the modernization project. The means

were different, but the content was similar.

Previous presidents sought to modernize the nation by various means. Juan

Vicente Gomez during the first quarter of the 20th century, by pacifying the nation

and ruling like a private hacienda. General Perez Jimenez, in the mid twehtieth

century, by means of a “revolution in the physical geography”--freewyas, hotels,

petrochemicals (Venezuelans keep talking about this golden period of physical

achievements and social peace, there is nostalgia for this period._ Carlos

Andres Perez One, by means of grandiose industrial plans, as with the “Great

Venezuela,” and Carlos Andres Perez Two, through the “Great Turn Around,

breaking through the illusion of the state-led development and proclaiming as

real the illusion of market-led modernitzation.

With Chavez, it is different. It is a matter of qualitatively changing Venezuela—it

is not just more “development,” or more modernity, but a different kind of

development and modernity. If other presidents, to use Cabrujas’s imagery,

would bring progress to Venezuela out of a hat, Chavez claims to bring out a

different Venezuela out of a hat. This change, I think, requires an oveproduction

of words--a framing to explain particular changes within a general scheme.

(As I argue in the Magical state, Not true that Siglo XX started with the death of

Gomez, as mariano picon salas argued. This myth made Cabrujas himself focus

on Perez Jimeenz and Carlos Andres. But they build on the foundations

established by Gomez--. Two aspects: the foundations, the petrostate. But

another I haven't explored in the Magical state: regime, but the opposition--a sort

of perverse dialectic. gomnez created the conditions for imagining the struggle of

all against one man. . Betancourt: a class alliance, defeating those who believed

that divisioins were esssential.

(This notion persevres---Trienio was sectarian, it sought to present its a

revolutionaryh, but its ontologization of history was partial--it was a partial

rupture, it drew a lot fropm the past, it was not moral or historical epic battle: it

was the displacement of a ruling sector by another, not the annhilation: both were

fighting for a similar conceptino of modernity.

Chanvez in many respects, as many have noted, is a repetition of 1945: the

eruption into the stage of Venezuelan history of the masses and new leaders

who represent them; similar reaction of the ruling elite, similar disdain. Las

negritas who greeted chavez in 1998 reminjded AD leaders of the negritas who

greeted the Junta in 1945 or Gallegos in 47,.)

But this history is also not for all. Since Gomez, the nation that was produced by
the state was more or less inclusive; in princiople, it was for all Venezuelans.

Despite its fractures and differences, the relative small siize of Venezuela's

population, its limited ethinc divisions, and social differences made it possible to

imagine a historical project for a whole nation--and this of coruse was part of the

genious of Betancourt against marxists who argued for social divisions.

Today we have a fractured Venezuela: Chavez offers to this Venezuela a History

that recognizes this profound division: the division of history and before and after

entails also a division of venezuelan society: a history for the majority, not for all.

Profound sense of exlcusion from this hhistory of many sectors--if they are not

with chavez, they are not only of the governemtn, but of history. The virulence of

the oppositioin against Chavez cannot be explained simply by the exclusion of a

sector from positions of privilege; particularly for the large middle classes, for

whom this privilege has been reduced anyway, the virulence is explained by a

loss of identity, of a sense of place in society, the fear that the future won't belong

to them.

The creation of this narrative of history, particulary because it ruptures an old

hegemonic conce[ption, requires constant narration.

2. . The intensified personalization of the state. The state is Chavez. The

Venezuelan petro state has always led to the personalization of political power in

the office of the president. But with Chavez this sitautioin has become even

more intense. Five factors contribute to this: first, the breakdown of institutional

mediations, including political parties, that had constrained in the past the

extraordinary power of presidents; second,, the 1999 constitution, that

concentrates further of powers in the figure of the president; third, the

extraordinary financial resources of the state resulting from this new oil boom and

the clientelistic structures it has created ; fourth, the control of all the branches of

the state by Chavistas, and and fifth, the very uncertainty of a new political

landscape with undefined historical horizons. These factors create a a

combination of monopoly of power and " programatic or ideological vacuum" that

must be filled. Chavez fills it not just with actions, but mostly with words.

IN the United STates George Bush claims he is, as he says, " the decider;"

everyone knows that he is not; it is known that decisions come from s chenney,

the Pentagon, the energy and military industiral comp;lex, that decides. In

Venezuela chavez claims he is a soldier of the revolution, a brizan de paja en el

viento. But we know that Chavez is is the decider. The point of the comparison is

not compare two men, but two situation: in the USA there are entrenched

interests, institutions, organizations, that decide policies. In Venezuela, in the

context of a dissolution of institutions, it is Chavez who fills the gap.

Chavez often says he is just the soldier of the revolution, he also presents

himself as the indispensable agent of the revolution, as the embodiment of the

spirit of Bolivar, of Christ, of History, and as such, as the person who makes the

fundamental decisions. Let me give you two examples, or rather, let me ask you

a question that I like to ask Venezuelans. I once asked Teodoro How did

venezuela become socialist in this paritciparoty democracy? Was there public

discusison? Teodoro didn't know. ((please if I've asked you now, don't respond).

It It was in 2005 , in Porto Alegre, in a moment of personal illumination akin to

Galileo's Eureka, an intimate, private moment without public discussion, Chavez

decided that Bolivarianism was insufficient as guiding ideology of his revolution,

that “the third way” was no way at all, and that Venezuela should march towards

socialism. And he decided this by himself. Let me quote him: Bueno, ¿qué

produjo todo esto? (his acceptance of socialism) El Golpe del 2002, paro

patronal, sabotaje petrolero, contragolpe, discusiones y lecturas. Llegué a la

conclusión –asumo la responsabilidad porque no lo discutí con nadie al hacerlo

público en el Foro Social Mundial de Porto Alegre– que el único camino para

salir de la pobreza es el socialismo. Well, what produced all of this? (he means,

his accpetance of socialism rather than bolivarianism and the third way). The

coup of 2002, the business lock out, the oil sabotage, the countercoup,
discussions and readings. I arrived at the conclusion—I assume the responsibility

because I didn’t not discuss it with anyone when I announced this publicly in the

Porto Alegre Forum—socialism is the only way to overcome poverty.

Second example: he was proud that the articles of the Constitutioanlo Reform

were the product of his own mind, as he said, written in secret by his puno y

letra.

This personalization of the state can lead to silence or to words. In the case of

Gomez, who wanted to rule the country by turning it into an hacienda, it led to

silence; silence worked well. His Ujim, his looks, were enough. Skkurski has

analyzed this as a "hacienda model of rule," one defined by established

practices, what Bourdieu would call habitus or doxa. Against Gomez's orthodoxy,

the generation of 28 proposed a heteorodxy that shared some of its basic

pricnip;les: the centrality of the petroleuem state, the need to sow the petroleum

(a formulation produced at the end of the Gpomez period by USlar). For Accion

Democrtica, sowing the oil was diversiing the economy and creating a welfare

state. For Perez jhimenez, it was a revolution in the physical geography: bring

modernity as a blueprint already existing.

When the basic picture of the future is given, as with Gomez, Perez Jimenez, or
AD, words may be used, they are not indispensable to define reality. But in the

case of Chavez, words are indispensable. The question is not to bring to

venezuela a familiar modernity, but to create a new modernity. Chavez has to

provide a frame for this: constant narrative to give meaning to all that happens.

Each event is a battle in history. And because he is the decider, he is the one

who has to give meaning to history. Because the revolution is from above, he has

to define it--he cannot rely on collective defintions. Overproducitoin of words.

3. A Rethorical, nominalist revolution: it is not just that words are produced as

part of the revolution, but that words produce the revolution. To the extent that

Chavez IS the revolution, there is really no social revolution or a limited social

revolution, for revolution, by most understandings of this concept, involves

collective action and transformation. In the case of Venezuela, the revolution is

verbal before it is social, it is anticipatory--the narrative of revolution prefigures or

perhaps even replaces revolutionary transformations. In the context of limited

historical transformation, the production of a new history requires an

overproduction of words: particular events require a verbal framing which make

them menaingful as radical events by being placed within a narrative of a

revolutionary history. The very name of the nation has been changed: Republica

Bolivariana de Venezuela—the national symbols have been redrawn. Now the

flag has a new star. In our “escudo nacional,” the white horse runs towards the

left.

So, rather than the silences of Gomez, or the revolution of the physical

geography of Marcos Perez Jimeenz, or the Great Venezuela of Perez, that

combined words and actions, we have a Bolivarian or Socialist revolution that he

alone is defining. IN the previous cases, there wsas a concern to make a fit

between the dictates of the state and reality; in the case of Chavez, there is a

concern to make the statements of the state DEFINE reality. Chavez is always

giving content to reality by complementing actions or events with words.

It is not that there are no changes, but that changes, however limited or grand,

cannot match what is expected of them, the historical work they seek to produce:

the transformation of Venezuelan society and people. To do this, they have to be

differentiated from changes incscribed before the previous scheme of

modernization, and placed as part of a historical break: from the production of

lettuce in farms in the heart of Caracas to joint oil ventures with transnational

capital in the oil indsutry, Chavez has to present events as revolutioanry,

inscribe them within larger narrative, lift them out of ordinary context and present

them as part of epic.

4, The redefinintion of the relatioship between Civlilzation versus Barbarism.

This dichotomy, in its multiple articulations, has been a building scheme of

Venezuela and Latin American nations. For the opposition, even taking into

account a global crisis in projects of modernity, modern civilization is still

imagined as what metropolitan centers have already achieved; barbarism, on

the other hand, is identified with our traditional past, a primitive past that now

Chavez incarnates.

Let's go to history, to an instant which captured this tension and has become a

turning point in this redefintion.

Barrios. Colonial allegory. MOdel of civilization. Tell here the Barrio's allegaory,

1989...

For Chavez, in contrast, civilization stands for a non-existing order, a future

socialist society to be created, without precedents or models on earth—socialism

of the 21 century. Barbarism is located not in the past, but in the present—in the

savagery and selfishness of neoliberal capitalism. The issue for Chavez is not

just modedrnity, but justice: justice for the many who have suffered at the hands

of the few. He has inverted the discourse of barbarism and civilization. But since

this was such a hgemonic discourse, he has to produce it throgh constant

repetition, through its overproduction.

he previous discourse civilization and barbarism dichotmy assumed a

transcnednde through harmony--Santos Luzardo and Marisela. la raza cosmica

of Vasconcelos, the discourse of mestizaje.

Always in battle. A cosmic battle: national and global, personal and collective,

natural and social: against the soul, against selfishiness as much as againt Bush

and the war in IRak. An ontologization of history, history as cosmic and personal

at once. Bush, sulfur, Chavez cojones.:

Chavez has intensified. Sulfur, cojones. A world divided between good and evil.

Not unlike president Bush. These are not just words. Opec, Alliances, Telesur,

Alba.

Critical here is his relationshp with Fidel Castro: the sharpetst expression of a

moral conception of struggle between revolutiona and imperialism, betweeh the

morality of collective principles and the immonrality of market egosim.

5. Fronm the illusion of harmony to the illusion of Revolution. From Gomez to

Calderaa. a dominant scheme became hegemnonic: Venezuela is or should be a

unified nation where all have a place. This was the result of struggles in the

thirties against Gomez--the victory of Betancourt against marxists conceptions of

Venezuelan society as divided. This concetioiin was sustained by oil wealth.

Even with the brakdown of the illusion of harmony, this discourse continued to

rule; it was so hegemonic, that Venezuela could not recognize itself in another

reality, despite the caracazo and the coups 2002. These notions, part of the

habitus, constrained the political imagination of the leadership, old and new.

EVen Irene Saez and Salas Romer subscribed to it--their politics of anti-politics

resembled the politics of politics.

Chavez was a better reader of the sign of the times. Not only hjis 1992 coup was

an instantiation of a rupture, but the recognitoin of this rupture. His electoral

campagin was different.. I saw the opening of his campaign in 1998, in Petare.

Same day as Irene. A cloaca. Clean the past. A discourse of unity thorugh

division. Irene was reproducing the same discourse of Unity and harmony.

Chavez has been doing this. He needs to do this to represent him as the

representative of the majority against the majority that has magainlzied it.

The Fifth Republic replaces the Fourth. This is a temporal, a historic break. But

the Fifth Republic also is a social break, a rupture of the social body of the

nation: the escualidos versus the revolutionaries. One can attribute this to

Chavez--he has championed this division. But this division was there, but denied,
disavowed, in sotto voce. Somos cafe con leche. Negritas of Chavez are our

negritas, claimed the leadership of AD in 1998. . But in 1989 the negritas, and

negritas were treated as savages, as barbarians to be killed so as to preserver

"roll orices,, televions, and not go tback to guayuucos.".

Chavez as presidnet has been blamed for creating differences. He has not. He

has intensified them. He bujilds on difference. It is not the discourse of

Betnacourt--closer to the marxists of the 30's. He is no Betancourt, or at least he

has been a very different sort of Betaoucrt.. Different from AD. NO longer the

unjity of the nation as marriage of urban elite and the vital pueblo, of Santos

Luzardo and MArisela. Chavez is writing his own novel: it is now the history of

the insurgency of the opprosssed against the elite: a mixture of tamakin, el

vengador errante, bolivar, but bolivar popular, christ, fidel, che--it is a struggle of

the people against the elite.

6. The fetishization of history. What is general--the unfolding of cosmic, epic

history--is represented through particulars, and each particular become not just

an icon of the totality, but a symptom of its presence, a moment of its realization.

As in Hegel's geist, the real, the spirit, is constantly being expressed in

particularities. But this does not happen without discursive work. Laclau has

illuminated populism by treating populist leaders as signs, as empty signifiers

given content by social demands. But in my view, populist signs are not empty

signifiers but always already saturated by history; they are not the empty

signifier of Laclau building on Saussure,, but more the social sign of Bahktin and

Volosniov, always site of class struggle.

(Within this Manichean discourse, Chavez is depicted alternatively as hero or

villain, as a new Bolivar or as a monkey (mico-mandante). His supporters are

represented as virtuous pueblo or as primitive savages---as the violent masses of

the Caracazo, or the “turbas” of April 2002, examined in the excellent work of

Luis Duno. The opposition, in turn, is depicted as alternatively as embodiments of

civilization or of savage capitalism.

Neoliberalism: what Charles Hale calls multicultural neolbieralm: the acceptance

of differeence. But Chavez criticizes this antispectic muilticultural liberalism. He is

faithful to a hegelian/marxist nation of totality. For Chavez, the nation can only

be united through revolution: through justice. Through acts of civilization against

the savage capitalism. Chavez has emphasised it, constantlly buliding on a

discourse of friends and foes. He makes explicit the racism and elitism of

Venezuelan society, uncovers its denied presence, unamsks its true but

superfitial egalitariansim--one built on profound differences..

7. A miasmatic, murky reality. Chavez's nominalism does not mean there is no

distinction between words and world, but that words merge with world, confusing

the boundaries between representations and the real. Of course, Chavez is not

not unique, but part of a long tradition. In the Magical State I examine this as

part of the culture of the Baroque, as discussed by MAraval, centering on the

spectuaculr production of appearances. As mny presidents, his his

preformances are not directed to much to persuade through the power of logic,

but to enchant, to leave the public boquiabiertos. AS in a theater or in a movie,

one suspends disbelief--one pretends that what one sees is real, while one

knows full well it is not--yet one cries, sufffer, etc.

But Chavez has transformed this further-- The Chavez effect. It is as if in his

presence the public is prone to suspend beliief in the real and believe in its

representation: to believe that future leaders are going to die for the nation, love

their work and not whisky.

How to read Chavez's s words has been a problem from the outset. This has

been a problem not just for Venezuelan,s but those who have huge stakes to

interpret Venezuela. The US governemtn has huge computers, constantly

transcribing and analyzing everything Chavez says. For. US ambassadors

Maisto: : pay attention to not to his lips but to his hands, not to what he sayus,

but to what he does. But then others came to believe that Cahvez ends up doing

whtat the says--Maisto was removed, and Drona Hrniak first and Shapiro later

were brought at a time when the US was actively supporting regime change in

Venezuela.

What's striking is not that these different interpretations, but that they all focus on

Chavez: chavez as the decider, as the one who defines reality, policies. And this

is ironic. For his supporters people, chavez remains pure. He decides, but others

do. His motivations are pure, other are impure. He is with history as imagined;

others are with history as process. Chavez can exclaim, what revoloution is this,

the revolution of hummers, of whisky? He places himself above the terrain where

hummers and whisky define quotidian practices.

I'm not prone to suggest that this is universal condition, a la Badrillard.. Perhaps

mass media creates condition of

Not a simple double discourse. Rather, a miamsatic, ambigous, infection--as in

the dictionary definition of misama, a vaporus influenece or emanation, an

atmohnphsere that corrupts. In Venezuela this has been attributed to the oil, el

excremento del diablo, Buit of course, oil has very different effects in Alaska or

Texas; oil can help shape the historical landscape of Venezuela but this
miasmatic atomosphere is the product of our history, not nature. It is in these

terms that the oil indsutry itself remains a mystery, where comp;lex oil policies

are kept out of public discussion--another huge paradox of Venezuelan politics.

HOW TO INTERPRET THIS OVER PRODUCTGION words.

conclude: with two comments

a. one, a step to make sense.

Gramcsian notion of the passive revolution. It is no accicdent that the thinker

taken by southern scholars fronm india nd altin America, has been Gramcsi. He

is a thinker of failure. Of the difficulty of transition. Risorgimiento. Much in

common with the South. A failurre of the nation to come into its own. Two

modes: war of position, war of movement.

Cavouer versus Mazini. The idea was fundamentallly simp;le:when you cannot

take over the state, then you do a war of position. But What happens when you

have taken over the state? This remains beyond his analysis. ANd this is the

case of Chavez. Gramcsi only mniagine in the sturglge over the state, but not

from the state: how to fight capitlaism itself. Yet war of position and war of

manevouer, notion of passive revolution, perhaps can be applied also to

struggles from the State.

For Chavez, Cuba is the paradigm. A war of manevuer. Taking over the state

and revolutionaizing society. Chavez has taken over the state, but cannot so

easily revolutionize society. He faces the challenge that all nationalist" projects

confront in the Global South: the contradiction or tension between national

conditions of state legitimacy and the international conditions of capital

accumulation. Difficulty of imagining a horizon behond the capitalist market, as

the example of the leftist governmet in Latin America, starting with Lagos in

Chile--socialism by enumeration at best, as Insulza has argued.

Chavez, to his credit,resists giving in to the capitalist market, att least the level of

words. The reality of the World may prove recalcitrant, but chavez holds the ideal

of an alternative Future through his words. For him, a war of position is a war of

maneveour-he turns it as such in words. I think in this he is fundamentally right

about the need: to imagine an alternative future, even if we don't know how to

imagine it. Unnable to challenge it in reality, he challenges it in words; his in a

sense is a poetic revolution.

I want to conclude with a story to suggest a more radical connection bedtwen

words and politics: a story by Borges about the relation between words and

world, poetry and politics: La Parabola del Palacio, published in 1960, a critical
year in the history of Latin AMerican revolutions.

I is a story of an Emperor, the Yellow Emperor (perhaps one can imagine him as

as the Red or the White Emperor). The emperor shows the poet his empire. He

travels through his empire, figured in the story as a laberyntian palace, with

paths and rivers and people, a complex arquitecture that glorifies the emperor

and subjects the people to his implacable power; anhyone who disobeys or

disrpescts the emperor is punished or kiiled. At the end of this journey, the poet

recites a poem that reproduces the empire point by point; this brings the poet

both immoratality and his death. The emperor tells the poet: me has arrebatado

el palacio" You have taken away my palace." And the verdugo killed the poet.

The story within the story states that this story could be false--that what may

have happened iis that in the world there could not two similar things, and that

when the poet produced this representation of the palace, the palace vanished.

Or yet another story within the story,that in reality the poet was a slave of the

emperor and that nothing happened, the poet was forgotten, and the his

descendents are still are looking, and won't find, the word of the universe.

Perhpas it is too early to tell if Chavez is leading a revolution or a change of

elites, or even a readjustment of elites--see the Venoco case, or the

Cisneros/Chavez affair--but he has certainly revolutionarized the imaginary in

Venezuela. In his socialist palace, people are central actors, not just Juan

Bimbas, ( the John Doe or everyman) made famous in the forties, but a

diversified population that should have rights, including their right to different

identities. I don't think it would be possible in Venezuela ever again, or at least

for a long time, to say what Gonzalo Barrios said in 1989, to treat the people as

barbarous masses and to justify their killing using a colonial allegory, and to have

these words accepted by parlamentarians, politicians and civic organizatioins.

I think this change, this granting centrality to the people, is a huge progressive
step largely created by Chavez's words. . Still, he remains too much the owner
of the word. And the task remains to create conditions in which the people have
the word---a deep demoracy where not the empire's poet, but all the people, for
in this democracy every person would be a poet (at least a poet some time in
the day, as in an old wise man's utopian dream) would encounter the Word of the
Universe and to define the universe according to their words.