Few contemporary political upheavals have been as dramatic as the events that have convulsed Venezuela in the past five years. In 1998, former paratroop colonel Hugo Chávez was elected President by a landslide majority, on a platform calling for a fundamental reconstruction of the whole political framework of the country. Within two years, he successfully pushed through an ambitious new Constitution, and was reelected President for six more years, equipped with an even larger majority—some 60 per cent of the vote—and a Congress dominated by his supporters. By the autumn of 2000, the country seemed to be at his feet.footnote¹ Eighteen months later, he faced a general strike and massive street demonstrations against his rule, swiftly followed by a military coup that deposed and imprisoned him. Despite being restored to power by popular counter-demonstrations and a revolt against his ouster originating within the armed forces themselves, Chávez was under siege again in less than a year.

This time he confronted the largest and longest employer/trade-union confederation strike in Latin American history, mobilizing virtually the entire mass media and a galvanized middle class that proved capable of remarkable—even sacrificial—levels of militant collective action, backed by a wide spectrum of senior commanders. Lasting from 2 December 2002 to 2 February 2003, this vast battering-ram paralysed Venezuela’s oil industry, its key economic sector, for seven weeks, leading to widespread expectations of the final demise of Chávez’s meteoric Presidency. But once again his popular and military support held firm, and after inflicting savage blows to the state’s finances, the strike collapsed. The opposition fronde has by no means given up its aim of driving Chávez from office, but for the moment he sits more securely in the Miraflores Palace than for many months.

What lies behind this extraordinary sequel of events? Why has Venezuela been close to civil war for the past two years? The ‘Democratic Coordination’ that has spearheaded successive swarming assaults on the President leaves no doubt of its vision of the dangers facing the country. Chávez threatens its people with ‘Castro-Communism’, a totalitarian dictatorship that has trampled on human rights and brought Venezuelans to the brink of ruin. Milder versions of the same general conception form the standard image of Chávez’s regime purveyed by the international media at large. No matter how often they are repeated, these charges are quite spurious. Under Chávez’s rule, there are no political prisoners, and there is no censorship. Citizens enjoy nearly total freedom of assembly: demonstrations blocking important installations or freeways are treated far more leniently than under most US city governments. The mass media pour out attacks against the government on a round-the-clock basis, of a virulence unthinkable in Europe or North America.

If some members of the Bolivarian Circles supporting Chávez in the shanty-towns are armed, the great majority are harmlessly engaged in community projects: the number of households possessing hand-guns is just as high in the middle as in the popular classes. Political violence, when it has broken out during demonstrations and counter-demonstrations, has been on a relatively small scale, with no one side clearly to blame. Congress meets freely, the opposition speaks openly, parties and movements organize actively. Neither legislature—where Chávez no longer has a secure majority—nor judiciary are controlled by the executive. Such is the totalitarian panorama of Venezuela today.

Chávez is also charged with plunging the country by reckless policies into a steep economic decline. In fact, on coming to power in 1998 his macroeconomic course was quite orthodox—he even retained his predecessor’s Finance Minister. The price of oil was at an all-time low and the economy contracted during his first year in office. However, during his second and third years, as oil prices recovered, the economy did reasonably well, expanding by 3.2 and 2.8 per cent, while inflation fell to its lowest point in nearly 20 years, dropping to 12 per cent in 2001. It was in 2002 that economic trouble began, as oil prices dipped again and capital flight accompanied business-led strikes and the coup attempt against Chávez. The government’s economic management has been far from perfect, suffering from the lack of experience of many of its ministers and a certain amount of traditional clientelism. But if it is to be faulted for anything, it is not for excessive radicalism, but—its skilful opec diplomacy apart—pragmatic muddle and lack of imagination. If the country is in low water today, the blame attaches not to the government’s performance, but overwhelmingly to the destructive venom of the opposition, whose eight-week blockade of the economy and oil industry this winter cost Venezuela $6 billion, guaranteeing an even more drastic fall in gdp in 2003 than the 8.7 per cent registered in 2002.footnote² Whatever damage has been caused by shortcomings of government policy, it is minor compared with the deliberate sabotage of the ‘Democratic Coordination’.

Colouring and suffusing both main accusations levelled at Chávez—that his regime is bent on a totalitarian dictatorship, and is bankrupting a prosperous country—is a vaguer, but no less passionate charge that he is a divisive ruler, whose abrasive and autocratic style has split the nation into warring camps. There is more substance to this notion, but it needs to be translated out of the idiom in which it is expressed. There is no doubt that Chávez is a rhetorically aggressive leader who has little fear of political confrontation. Nor that he has been a better mass orator and military organizer than political manager or corridor diplomat. But the complaints so widely heard in Venezuela about his style as President reflect something much deeper than dislike of his polemical gifts. What they really bespeak is a class fear.

For Chávez communicates with Venezuela’s poor in metaphors they can relate to, though they seem to the upper and middle classes improper or undignified expressions for a head of state to use. Although himself well-read, he visibly comes out of the same culture as the disadvantaged majority of the population, rather than the educated elite. In Venezuela the social division between the two overlaps, as so often in Latin America, with racial differences. This is a country where 67 per cent of the population are classified as mestizos and 10 per cent as black, leaving a minority of 23 per cent whites. Chávez, like most lower-class Venezuelans, is dark-skinned. A cursory look at demonstrations for and against the government is enough for anyone to notice the colour contrast between them. Most Chávez supporters are either pardos like himself, or blacks; most opponents are whites. The way the latter refer to chavistas, regularly describing them as lumpen or negros, leaves little room to doubt the feelings of racist hostility that the President and his following inspire in much of the Venezuelan middle class.