Gerardo Rojas is a community organiser in Barquisimeto, in Venezuela’s Lara state, and a Chavista activist, a reference to the political movement of the working-class poor that backed former president Hugo Chávez. Rojas is also part of the communication, education and political activism collective Tatuy TV, though the opinions expressed in this interview are his own.
Green Left’s Federico Fuentes spoke to Rojas on September 4, about why we might be witnessing the Nicolás Maduro government’s final break with the Bolivarian process of radical change initiated by Chávez.
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What are your thoughts on the fact the National Electoral Council (CNE) has still not published the final results more than a month after the presidential election?
To us, it is crazy. This is the first time in Venezuela’s recent history that, 38 days after an election, we still do not have verifiable results broken down by polling booths. [At the time of publication, no results have been released.]
Traditionally, on election night or at the very latest the next day, we would go to the CNE webpage and look at the results, booth by booth, to verify what had occurred in our community and compare the results with the previous election.
We did this because we believe that participation and legitimacy is key and fundamental to any democracy, and should not only be left to political parties, but involve the community.
These results are basic ingredients for a vibrant and active democracy, which is the democracy we defend. As important as the total results are, they do not tell you everything you need to know about an election.
A PDF uploaded anywhere could be a start. When the CNE had problems with its website in other elections, it set up a mirror site and published information there. There is simply no technical explanation for why we do not have this information.
What happens if the results are not published?
Thirty-eight days have passed by without the results being published and, at times, it seems they never will. This position is causing serious damage.
Among other things, if anything defined the Bolivarian Revolution and above all Chávez, it was the basic principle of constructing democratic hegemony, of broadening our support base by convincing others.
“Convince” was a key word in Chávez’s speeches, and you cannot convince others by simply asking them to have faith in you; you need explanations and arguments.
If you cannot convince others, then you cannot expand your support base and exercise democratic hegemony. You might be able to construct hegemony using other mechanisms such as coercion, but for us that is not what the Bolivarian Revolution was about.
I am not saying you need to convince the ultra-right, we know that is very difficult. The issue is making sure there are no lingering doubts among the grassroot activists and your neighbours. How can we turn up to an assembly and speak about participatory and protagonist democracy if we cannot even verify electoral results when people express doubts?
I would say convincing others is fundamental. If that does not occur, you undercut the possibility of winning over the majority to your project — which means defeat.
For the Bolivarian Revolution, winning the majority has meant having clear popular support for our project. That was the type of hegemony Chávez built. But by seeking to build a new historic bloc of classes today in which, as Maduro says, the capitalists play an important role, you stop seeing the people as key.
That is why we say this is not just about democracy, which is of course fundamental, but the very possibility of building a political project like Chavismo on its original motivating principles: respect for sovereignty, radical democracy, historic reconstruction of working-class memory [and the] fight against corruption.
Can we say that the Maduro government today represents a break with the Bolivarian process?
Maduro himself has said it publicly and in clear terms: we are in a new stage. I am one of those who believes a slow shift has been occurring in economic and political terms for a few years now.
If the issue of the elections is not resolved transparently, this shift could become a complete break [with the Bolivarian process]. This would put at risk Chavismo’s very identity and ability to rearm itself for what comes next.
This process of rearming will be a complex task, given [that] through its rhetoric, the government tries to hide the reality that we are living. We have an official discourse that directly clashes with people’s daily reality.
The government seeks to impose its version of reality on society. But when you are accustomed to using imposition and force to resolve differences and justify it by saying it is being used against the enemy, you soon end up using it against anyone.
Today, branding anyone as manipulated by enemy propaganda, a traitor, a paid agent of imperialism or, worse, a fascist, has become a means to rule out any internal debate through simply negating the other.
The government might be able to retain power this way, but the cost is tremendous. You cannot impose reality on a society, unless you attack society itself.
This is also made more complicated, at least for those of us who seek a revolutionary way out of the crisis, by the fact that we have business chamber representatives as [United Socialist Party of Venezuela] parliamentarians, and the head of the Caracas Stock Exchange saying the opposition represents instability and suggesting it would be better to stick with what we have.
When those are some of the spokespeople defending the continuity of Maduro’s government, it gives you some indication of the internal balance of forces and what the overriding political and economic tendency is within the government.
For these, and many other reasons, an important part of Chavismo no longer feels represented by this government.
Many of those who continue to identify with the government have certain criticisms, but believe it is the best option for overcoming this difficult period in order to then retake the revolutionary path and go for more. I deeply respect their position, but I see that as highly unlikely.
What implications does all this have for Chavista activists and for solidarity with the Bolivarian process?
The reality is that we live in a very difficult world. When you look at a map, you can see numerous conflicts across all continents — and everything indicates we are heading towards even greater confrontations.
That weighs a lot on what is happening in Venezuela, because we are clearly and obviously caught in the middle of a geopolitical game, at the heart of which is control of our resources.
But I believe that, as important as the current geopolitical game is, any calculation in terms of tipping the scales towards any of the factors in dispute should not be based on actions that directly go against our wellbeing and sovereignty.
I am very grateful for the solidarity we have received from comrades outside the country. I think you can support the government or criticise it, or even denounce it as representing a break with the process, but solidarity with the Venezuelan people must always remain firm. It must continue independently of one’s characterisation of the government or the opposition.
What we have here is an accumulation of forces that has been minimised, deactivated and is in crisis, but no one can take away from us what we have built, and what we continue to build and dream about in many of our communities.
That is why I ask that solidarity continue, just like with any other peoples in struggle facing difficulties, such as for example the people of Palestine or Argentina. We should be guided by a sense of class solidarity.
As for the government, if there has been a break, then this puts us in a very difficult situation when it comes to the kind of activism we have carried out during the Bolivarian Revolution. This is something we will have to resolve in some way.
The same is true in terms of working with and maintaining communication with those working-class activists who continue to defend the government and for whom I have a lot of respect.
We have already lived through extremely complicated moments in this country, and unfortunately, this will not be the last one. We will continue trying to do what we can, with what we can. And try to point to Chávez’s historic project, not out of nostalgia but to make use of the concrete forms of doing politics he left us.
We must never forget that we have always been critically minded working-class activists. Even with Chávez, whom we always defended, we had to raise demands on more than one occasion, or march against specific policies.
In that sense, we are not doing anything different to what we have always done — because it is our right and, moreover, our responsibility today.
[Read the full interview at links.org.au.]