Fifty-four
years ago today, Venezuela's last military dictatorship fell, as a mass
uprising ushered
in an unprecedented era of civilian-led democratic rule.
From 1958 to
1998, center-left and center-right parties alternated in power as the result of
competitive elections, and while the era was certainly marred by rampant
corruption, and its second half hobbled by deep economic stagnation, it remains
the only reference point Venezuelans really have for stable democratic
governance.
"Veintitres
de Enero," the date of the 1958 uprising in Spanish, has become an
increasingly polarizing milestone in the 13 years of Hugo Chávez's rule. Since
the beginning, Chávez has set out an aggressive propaganda effort to discredit
the uprising and the era of civilian democratic rule it came to stand for. In
Chavista propaganda, 23 de Enero has been transformed into the starting point of
an era of false, bourgeois democracy, a debauched simulacrum of popular
sovereignty used as a cover
for the elite to ransack the state.
The symbolic
battle over the date continues to intensify year after year. This time around,
the opposition's Roundtable for Democratic Unity has picked it as the moment to
unveil
its platform ahead of October's presidential election, asking all the primary
candidates to sign on to it ahead of February 12's primary vote. This spirit of
compromise and conciliation among different factions pledged to unseat a
military strongman harkens directly back to 1958, when an elite pact between the
then three-main party leaders set the stage for the uprising that overthrew
dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez (shown above).
What's
remarkable is that Pérez Jiménez was as different, ideologically, from Chávez
as two Latin American military strongmen could be. Pérez Jiménez was a traditional, U.S.-backed
right-wing caudillo in the style of Cuba's Batista (who, as it turned out, fell
to Fidel Castro just 11 months after Pérez Jiménez did.) In his eagerness to depict himself as the Venezuelan Fidel Castro, however, Chávez has had to do some
creative re-arranging of the historical record, re-casting the democratic
regime that replaced Pérez Jiménez in the Batista role: the heartless
capitalists swept away by socialist revolution. This, in turn, has forced him
to rehabilitate the historical memory of Pérez Jiménez, who, while never quite
revered in chavista propaganda, is treated
with a degree of deference and respect that stands in stark contrast to the
torrents of abuse heaped on the democratic regime that replaced him.
The
manipulation of history involved is enough to make grown historians weep.
As this quick run-through should
make clear, however, it also makes painfully little sense, whether
ideologically or chronologically. It makes sense, though, from the standpoint
of chavista myth-making. And that, it
appears, is really all that's needed.
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