| La Jornada December 27, 2012 An indispensable book Ángel Guerra Cabrera A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann. Antes que se me olvide [Before I Forget] (Editora Política, La Habana, 2012), about the conversations Alí Rodríguez Araque had with Cuban journalist Rosa Miriam Elizalde, is a book we absolutely need to come to grips with the Bolivarian revolution and which I’ll try to go over very briefly here. It’s an insightful first-hand account by Rodríguez, a highly cultured man who studied Marx, Engels, Lenin, Che Guevara and other giants of revolutionary thinking, and who, for more than half a century, played a major role in the Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary struggles and whose bedtime reading is Capital. His application of Marx’s theory of land leasing to oil and geopolitics is worthy of close attention. A veteran of the fight against Marcos Pérez Jiménez’s dictatorship and a tenacious guerrilla opposed to the fiercely anti-popular rule of Rómulo Betancourt and his successor –all sprung from the defeatist Punto Fijo Pact– Rodríguez, currently a high-ranking official with Hugo Chávez’s government, cast a creative eye over events that took place at the very heart of Latin America’s quintessentially submissive capitalism, its bourgeoisie, and the state they feed on, which uses the handouts resulting from the oil they rent out to anesthetize the huge surge of the popular masses following the overthrow of the dictatorship. They took advantage of the absence in the Communist Party and other left-wing forces of a revolutionary strategy to seize power and change society, given that the armed struggle blew up only when the popular tide had already receded. That’s why in spite of the admirable heroism and determination in combat or under torture shown by most of its members and leaders, their effort was little more than a political and militarily defensive attitude that ended up squandering in isolated and disjointed actions the remarkable prestige they had earned among the masses during their war on the dictatorship and the significant political work developed within the National Armed Forces, whose officers and troops frequently praise the Bolivarian ideal and are aware of their country’s social problems. Estranged from the masses, the left chose war as the only way to cope with the frenzied repression masterminded in the U.S., the source of several Cuban-American agents –including Luis Posada Carriles– sent to torture and kill revolutionaries and social fighters, such as Comisario Basilio, of the Venezuelan secret police. All of this made it possible for the two traditional parties (Democratic Action and COPEI) to apply neoliberal policies to the letter, starting with the privatization of the country’s hydrocarbons regardless of the important progress made regarding Venezuela’s sovereignty over its natural resources all throughout the 20th century. To this end, they relied on the structure of PDVSA –which is Venezuelan only in name, since its managers were trained in transnational companies– and the diligent help of a remorseful left-wing MAS, whose leader Teodoro Petkoff is an accessory to the approval and, as a government minister, the enforcement of laws in detriment of both his country’s rights over its own oil and the state’s redistributive capacity. Social democrat Carlos Andrés Pérez’s first and second terms in office were especially voracious in stripping labor for the benefit of the capital coming from his share of the wealth distribution. Rodríguez, who had arranged for the legalization of the guerrilla force as instructed by the Party of the Venezuelan Revolution, became in 1988 a mediator with then-paratroop commander Hugo Chávez. Pérez’s second presidential period saw in 1989 a great spontaneous popular revolt (known as the Caracazo) against a merciless package of neoliberal measures that led to the uprising headed by Chávez, who had long been plotting with representatives of the civilian left. Reluctant to take part in the 1998 election, the commander changed his mind after a tour of the country and turned the fight at the polls into his strategy –well thought-out and outlined this time– to assume power and transform Venezuela into a truly sovereign and democratic nation. OPEC’s revitalization, State control over oil revenues, and fresh impetus to Latin American unity are among the tasks Rodríguez joined Chávez to accomplish right from the beginning. As current head of UNASUR, he envisages a much stronger integration than OPEC’s by making the most of the region’s mammoth natural riches and the considerable number of features its inhabitants have in common. Twitter: aguerraguerra
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La Jornada
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