Electoral Martyrdom
and the Cult of Hugo Chavez (El Universal, Venezuela)
"Apart
from the myth they are trying to create, I neither think Chávez will 'live
forever,' as Evo Morales has said, nor that on the
day of Resurrection, he will descend from heaven with Jesus to impose peace and
justice, as foreseen by Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. ... The deification
of Chávez has more terrestrial and short-term goals: to preserve the movement,
win elections and maintain some authoritarian controls to prevent the nation's
deep economic crisis from destroying any future plans for survival."
Hugo Chávez died transformed into what he himself hated
and fought. A failed 1992 coup sent him to prison, but also gave him popularity
and a badge of national heroism, which served to whip up popular sentiment
against the establishment, party elites and corruption.
Chávez accused the-then political elite of being corrupt
and preventing this naturally-wealthy country from taking off as it should. But 15
years after winning the presidency in 1998, his movement contains as many flaws
as the governments of AcciónDemocrática and Copei
that preceded it. Venezuela is doing as badly as before, but now with wasteful
spending proportional to the skyrocketing oil prices.
Chávez' policies were directed toward the poor and
marginalized, and correcting all that traditional politics, which he
hated, had neglected. But in his ambitious re-founding of the republic, he
accumulated all state power - police, military and judicial - using them to
persecute his opponents and discipline his own.
With his anti-imperialist, anti-U.S. sermons, he masked his
expanding nationalist empire. He led with ideas for regional unity and strength,
using his millions in oil revenue to interfere in elections and politics abroad.
Hypocritically, his pretend empire had sought out the Yankee, the “evil one,” as
his greatest and most faithful commercial ally.
His personal charisma was faithfully reflected in the
crowds that paid respect to his coffin. And yet the support he garnered during
his career was not only spontaneous, but also deliberately created. Bolstered
by an enormous propaganda apparatus, Chávez created an emotional populism built
strictly on a cult of personality - which polarized the society. As a
consequence, after his death, some started the morning with tears, others
by uncorking bottles of champagne.
The machinery of populism doesn't distinguish among bone-fide
adherents, occasional beneficiaries or permanent parasites. It has its own life
and demands a leader, a martyr, or an idea to follow. Without proper
maintenance - propaganda, patronage and unlimited financial resources - the
movement could split or result in a dangerous boomerang effect.
Chavism today has all the advantages.
Thirty days is too short a time for emotions and grief to dissipate, and for
the 57 percent achieved in the October elections to lose momentum. The strategy
to extend the official mourning period to 14 days and perpetuate Chávez by embalming
his body is effective for maintaining the tension and cult of the leader.
The truth is that the natural death of Chávez was a heavy
blow. Death without tragedy, without persecution, is neither martyrdom nor
redemption. Chavism would have preferred its
commandant to fall like Che Guevara, Gandhi or Martin Luther King,
or at least the manner of his death should have sown doubt, like that of Salvador Allende.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
Hence the doubts now being manufactured by the interim
president, NicolásMaduro. Not
shying away from fiction, he has found a formula for creating the needed
martyrdom. While expelling two U.S. diplomats and in so doing, closing the
circle of a foreign plot, Maduro declared that a soon-to-be
created investigative commission would detect that Chávez was inoculated with
cancer, i.e.: his death was an assassination.
Maduro’s
conspiratorial imagery, so typical of authoritarian regimes on left and right,
was a permanent atribute of Chávez. He was as capable of predicting
invasions and his own assassination as he was of accusing the United States of causing
the Haiti earthquake with underground detonations.
The ultimate goal is always to whip up patriotism, and
above all, the almost religious loyalty of his followers. Now that he's dead,
the opportunism and loyalty of chavism intends to immortalize the body and spirit of the
leader, already turned into a hero, and to nourish the armed devotion of the Bolivarian
circles which swore to defend the revolution.
Beyond the myth they are trying to create, I neither
think Chávez will “live forever,” as Evo Morales said,
nor that he will descend from heaven together with Jesus Christ on the Day of
Resurrection to impose peace and justice, as predicted by Iran President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The deification of Chávez has more terrestrial and
short-term goals: to preserve the movement, win elections and maintain some
authoritarian controls to prevent the nation's deep economic crisis from destroying
any future plans for survival.
