Venezuela: Chavismo implodes without Chávez

The enemies of the Bolivarian socialist revolution are attacking, said Nelytza Matuzalen in Ciudad CCS (Venezuela). Last week, the leader of the right-wing opposition, Leopoldo López, rallied his supporters in Caracas and “incited them to violence.” They rose to the call. One member of a pro-government citizen militia group was shot dead, and two of López’s supporters were killed in the ensuing melee. “Violent motorcycle gangs” raced around “throwing rocks and large objects at the Bolivarian National Guard and the Bolivarian National Police.” They even firebombed a court building. Will the “fascist right” listen to President Nicolás Maduro’s calls for calm?

Violence at anti-government protests is exactly what Maduro wants, said Fausto Masó in El Nacional (Venezuela). “Anytime a tire burns in the streets or a stone flies, Maduro jumps for joy.” Violence allows him to invoke his universal excuse for the nation’s continued decline, that fascists backed by the U.S. and beholden to moneyed interests are plotting a coup. Of course, that ridiculous theory is intended to distract us from the real issue: the economy that Maduro is destroying with his outdated brand of socialism. We already had “long lines, inflation, food shortages, and insecurity.” Now Maduro has added the Fair Prices Act, which subjects any merchant to criminal penalties for charging whatever the government arbitrarily decides is too much. “Toyota is leaving the country, as will other assemblers, because of this draconian law.” We can’t allow Maduro to change the subject from the crippled economy to his imagined coup.

Look, I support the opposition too, but it is hardly blameless in this, said Carola Chávez in Últimas Noticias (Venezuela). López called for protests “until this government falls,” so he can’t claim he’s moderate. And demanding “zero impunity” for criminals in the government while also calling for the release of all arrested students—some of whom really were at fault—is just plain hypocritical. Most people I know who oppose the government are also “fed up with the self-indulgence of spoiled young guarimberos” or protesters who riot and loot. Yet even worse than them, said El Nacional in an editorial, are the pro-government citizen militias that terrorize the country. The National Guard has effectively “ceded sovereignty” to these paramilitaries, leaving ordinary Venezuelans at the mercy of gun-toting thugs.

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Venezuela is finding out that you can’t have chavismo without Hugo Chávez, said Gabriel Guerra Castellanos in El Universal (Mexico). During his 13 years in power until his death last year, Chávez became wildly popular by empowering the poor, but he did so by utterly disempowering the middle and upper classes. “Some might call that divine justice, but as the Anglophones say, two wrongs don’t make a right.” It was an unstable situation even for the politically gifted Chávez. And Maduro has “neither the vision nor the cunning and charisma of his late boss.” In Maduro’s own short tenure, he has worsened the economic situation and “created a climate of antagonism and confrontation that is stretching Venezuela to the breaking point.”