5. The ‘Mega-Election’ of 30 July, 2000, and the Forty-Nine Enabling Laws¶
Core Argument¶
In the ‘mega-election’ of 30 July 2000, Chávez secured 59.8 per cent of the presidential vote and a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, a result that rendered him even less tolerable to the Venezuelan oligarchy. The chapter argues that the Chávez government’s programme—anti-corruption measures, income redistribution, support for local self-help initiatives, and grassroots participation—genuinely mobilised the popular masses, but that this activation was met with ferocious opposition from a parasitic elite that had previously excluded the poor from political life. The oligarchs, having lost their political hegemony with the defeat of AD and COPEI, faced the prospect of accountable courts, anti-discriminatory legislation protecting women, barrio dwellers and indigenous peoples, and the reorganisation of PDVSA to cut off their major source of illicit income.
The chapter details the government’s social advances: Barrio Adentro I built over 3,000 two-storey medical centres in the barrios, staffed by Cuban healthcare workers under a bilateral oil-for-services agreement, providing universal free healthcare where previously patients had to bribe doctors and bring their own supplies. The Women’s Development Bank, headed by Nora Castañeda, offered low-interest loans enabling thousands of women to start businesses. Bolivarian Circles and Health Committees, staffed largely by women, organised medical dispensaries, food kitchens and child care. These measures, the text notes, were tremendously progressive and deserved defence by all revolutionaries and democrats.
Yet the chapter is sharply critical of Chávez’s political method. It states bluntly that Chávez was no Marxist and had no perspective of establishing a workers’ state, which in the era of imperialism was the only means of attaining his declared goals. Instead of building a co-ordinated network of action committees with a clear common political perspective in every barrio, barracks, refinery, factory and landed estate, he relied on a loose network of socially-heterogeneous Bolivarian Circles. This organisational weakness, the chapter argues, was the only way to defend the new constitution and deter counter-revolution.
The crisis came to a head in November 2001 when the Assembly passed an enabling law empowering Chávez to enact forty-nine decrees. Two measures—the Organic Law of Hydrocarbons, which doubled fixed royalties and limited foreign companies to fifty per cent of new ventures while demanding transparency in PDVSA’s finances, and land reform, which called for expropriation of unproductive land with compensation at market value—touched the opposition where it hurt. The chapter notes that the land reform affected less than a tenth of Venezuelans but carried immense symbolic weight as a challenge to the oligarchy’s power; more significant in numbers was the Decree on Regularisation of Urban Land, which granted legal title to barrio dwellers. The opposition, led by Fedecámaras and the CTV, responded with a lock-out on 10 December 2001, hailed by the private media as a successful strike.
The chapter polemicises sharply against the opposition’s racist campaign, which described Chávez supporters as lumpen, negros or pata en el suelo, and notes that Chávez himself—zambo, a mix of Amerindian and Black African—was loved by the barrios and hated by the white wealthy middle-class suburbs. It also condemns the role of US imperialism: the National Endowment for Democracy provided up to US$3 million exclusively to opposition parties supporting the violent overthrow of Chávez, while the Wall Street Journal openly backed the lock-out. The chapter concludes that Chávez’s economic and social programmes, though not intended to challenge capitalism, raised expectations among the popular masses—a danger the US had learned from Cuba. The PDVSA managers’ strike in April 2002, the CTV’s call for indefinite action, and the opposition’s demonstration on the anniversary of Pérez’s overthrow set the stage for the coming coup.