Book Review, Popular Politics in Bolivarian Venezuela

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The Media and Power in Postliberal Venezuela
The Legacy of Chávez for the Debate on Freedom of Expression
by Anthony Petros Spanakos and Mishella Salomé Romo


The Bolivarian process in Venezuela provides scholars two immediate and ongoing challenges. First, unlike many other efforts to democratize, it is a case that is deliberately nonliberal. Second, its emphasis on the popular will has often been in tension with the outsized role of the leadership of Hugo Chávez and the use of state resources to advance interests shared unevenly in a heterogeneous coalition. In other words, scholarly explanations find support for both bottom-up and top-down explanations. These challenges are especially important given the decline of oil prices, the shift from Chávez to Maduro, and the intensification of political conflict in the past three years. The four books reviewed here offer valuable contributions to these questions and provide insight into the current political crisis in Venezuela.

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Abstract, Between Permanent Revolution and Permanent Liminality

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Between Permanent Revolution and Permanent Liminality
Continuity and Rupture in the Bolivarian Government’s Higher Education Reform
by Mariya P. Ivancheva


After traditional academics mobilized university autonomy against government intervention and supported the coup d’état against Hugo Chávez, his government created a parallel system of public universities. María Egilda Castellano headed the effort to extend university access to poor Venezuelans. The events of her terms as vice minister of education (1999–2002) and rector of the Bolivarian University (2003–2004) and her subsequent career show the difficulty the Bolivarian government has had in creating sustainable institutions and challenge the applicability of the concept of permanent revolution to the Bolivarian process.

Abstract, “We Are All Chávez” Charisma as an Embodied Experience

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“We Are All Chávez”
Charisma as an Embodied Experience
by Lucia Michelutti


The current chaotic post-Chávez political and economic scenario affords a little certainty: Chávez is still very present in the everyday life of contemporary Venezuelans. Chávez as a martyr, as the second Bolívar, as a saint, as a spirit, is becoming part of the religious and social life of a great number of people. Despite being dead, he continues to shape Venezuelan revolutionary selves. An examination of Chávez’s legacy through the lens of divine kinship provides important clues to understanding how charisma is embodied in people and things and circulates through networks of kinship (and fictive kinship) from gods, spirits, and ancestors to democratically appointed leaders and their ordinary followers.

Abstract, ¿Por qué no les callan? Hugo Chávez’s Reelection and the Decline of Western Hegemony in the Americas

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¿Por qué no les callan?
Hugo Chávez’s Reelection and the Decline of Western Hegemony in the Americas
by Sean W. Burges, Tom Chodor, R. Guy Emerson


On October 7, 2012, Hugo Chávez was comfortably reelected president of Venezuela. Just days before the vote, the impression given by major international print media was that it would be close, an assessment that proved to be at best optimistic. Western media coverage of the election in Venezuela was designed to skew the result toward the opposition, and this effort singularly failed. The “propaganda model” advanced by Herman and Chomsky is now faltering in the Americas, and the region is acting in a manner that is increasingly free of influence from the United States. Venezuela thus stands as a case of the citizenry actively and independently asserting its political agency despite clear attempts to redirect its thinking and decision making.

Abstract, The Media and Power in Postliberal Venezuela The Legacy of Chávez for the Debate on Freedom of Expression

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The Media and Power in Postliberal Venezuela
The Legacy of Chávez for the Debate on Freedom of Expression
by Ewa Sapiezynska


Two narratives dominate the literature about the state of freedom of expression in postliberal Venezuela, and they have few points in common, since they depend on different conceptualizations of the notion of freedom of expression. While the traditional liberal narrative focuses on the negative freedom that prohibits state interference, the postliberal narrative is based on positive freedom that encompasses the collective right of self-realization, particularly for the previously marginalized. During the government of Hugo Chávez, the discourse of freedom of expression was renewed, placing it in the context of power relations, accentuating positive freedom, and emphasizing the role of the public and community media. The establishment of the international public channel TeleSUR has revived the 1970s debate about the right to communication and contributed to the creation of a new Latin American-ness.

Abstract, The Media and Power in Postliberal Venezuela The Legacy of Chávez for the Debate on Freedom of Expression

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The Media and Power in Postliberal Venezuela
The Legacy of Chávez for the Debate on Freedom of Expression
by Ewa Sapiezynska


Two narratives dominate the literature about the state of freedom of expression in postliberal Venezuela, and they have few points in common, since they depend on different conceptualizations of the notion of freedom of expression. While the traditional liberal narrative focuses on the negative freedom that prohibits state interference, the postliberal narrative is based on positive freedom that encompasses the collective right of self-realization, particularly for the previously marginalized. During the government of Hugo Chávez, the discourse of freedom of expression was renewed, placing it in the context of power relations, accentuating positive freedom, and emphasizing the role of the public and community media. The establishment of the international public channel TeleSUR has revived the 1970s debate about the right to communication and contributed to the creation of a new Latin American-ness.

Abstract, Indigenous Peoples, Social Movements, and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez’s Governments

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Indigenous Peoples, Social Movements, and the Legacy of Hugo Chávez’s Governments
by Luis F. Angosto-Ferrández


The unprecedented enfranchisement of Venezuela’s indigenous population is partly a result of the formation of a state-sponsored indigenous movement. This movement prioritizes access to social services, economic development, and political participation in state structures over certain goals of free determination. Other forms of collective action with different priorities are evidence of the existence of diverging interests and goals among indigenous people. These divergences are a reflection of the way in which the indigenous population partakes in the shaping of contemporary Venezuelan politics.

Abstract, Everyday Crafting of the Bolivarian State Lower-level State Officials and Grassroots Activism in Venezuela

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Everyday Crafting of the Bolivarian State
Lower-level State Officials and Grassroots Activism in Venezuela
by Iselin Åsedotter Strønen


Venezuela’s communal councils are legally sanctioned organs for popular participation implemented mostly in poor communities since 2006. The promotores integrales, lower-level state employees who assist the communal councils in their everyday work, serve as mediators between state policies and community politics, and study of their roles and perspectives provides important insights into the complexities of implementing policies of popular participation and transforming state practices in the context of radical social change. While the cultural politics and knowledges of the popular sectors have become imprinted on the Venezuelan state, attempts to change the state in accordance with Bolivarian ideology are subject to intense contestation and struggle.

Abstract, Contested Spaces The Communal Councils and Participatory Democracy in Chávez’s Venezuela

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Contested Spaces
The Communal Councils and Participatory Democracy in Chávez’s Venezuela
by Matt Wilde


Since their launch in 2006, the communal councils have been heralded as a significant step toward the establishment of a radical, participatory democracy in Venezuela. Ethnographic fieldwork carried out in a working-class barrio in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city, shows that local residents perceive and make use of the communal councils in a variety of ways. Older women in particular have become central players in community political life as a result of the reforms, although the burdens they take on arguably reproduce patterns of gendered inequality. Some residents express suspicion of new community leaders, accusing them of corruption, and there are conflicting views of what participatory democracy actually means in practical terms. The communal councils should be understood as contested spaces, the ambiguities and conflicts within them reflecting broader tensions within the Bolivarian project as a whole.

Abstract, Class Struggle in the Bolivarian Process Workers’ Control and Workers’ Councils

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Class Struggle in the Bolivarian Process
Workers’ Control and Workers’ Councils
by Dario Azzellini


Workers’ initiatives and government measures in Venezuela to increase workers’ participation in the management of their companies sharply contrast with institutional actions that intend to inhibit and reduce such participation. Despite this, the movement for workers’ control in Venezuela has grown in recent years and achieved some important victories in conflicts in state companies.

Abstract, The Venezuelan Path to Socialism Questions about Gradual Change

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The Venezuelan Path to Socialism
Questions about Gradual Change
by Raphael Lana Seabra


The Bolivarian Revolution is characterized by the gradual and peaceful conquest of political power without an immediate break with the capitalist order, following the legitimate path of democratic radicalization to the creation of a multiple system of property with the medium-to-long-term goal of overcoming the pillars of capitalist domination. Petroleum redistribution policy continues to strengthen some capitalist factions. The tactic of a gradual transition to socialism tends to reinforce the capitalist system of accumulation for certain factions and could interfere with the revolution.

Abstract, Communal Currencies The Chavista Experiment with Noncapitalist Money

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Communal Currencies
The Chavista Experiment with Noncapitalist Money
by Kristofer Dittmer


Venezuela’s communal currencies are unique worldwide as a central government initiative. However, efforts to establish significant currency systems have failed so far. Their lack of success can be interpreted in terms of the experiment’s foundation on strong cultural optimism and confused concepts of the nature and origins of money. Government support has been limited to a single model of isolationist-egalitarian “barter” systems. Some form of local currency may be relevant to ecosocialist transition in Venezuela, but the current spatial organization of the systems is wasteful of transport fuel, suggesting that a transition to ecosocialism cannot postpone addressing structural challenges.

Abstract, The Reproduction and Crisis of Capitalism in Venezuela under Chavismo

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The Reproduction and Crisis of Capitalism in Venezuela under Chavismo
by Fernando Dachevsky and Juan Kornblihtt


The current crisis in Venezuela is sometimes said to have been provoked by the response of imperialism and the local oligarchy to the fundamental changes in economic and political relations fostered during the administrations of Hugo Chávez. A quantitative study using various statistical sources shows that the significant increase in oil rent during the Chávez presidency did not translate into a qualitative transformation in the form of state intervention and that, although social expenditures increased in that period, most of the income that allowed this was obtained through currency overvaluation by inefficient national and foreign capital. The current crisis is, therefore, evidence of the limits of low-productivity state and private capital reproduction due to the decline in oil prices rather than of a conflict between overcoming and reproducing capitalism in an alleged “economic war.”

New LAP Issue! The Legacy of Hugo Chávez

The Legacy of Hugo Chavez

by Daniel Hellinger and Anthony Petros Spanakos

Table of Contents

Following his death in March 2013, Hugo Chávez left a significant legacy, but one that is highly contested. It could hardly be any other way given the level of polarization in Venezuela and scholarship about Venezuela. Too often discussion of Chávez paints him and the political movement he led with little subtlety in Manichean or hagiographic terms. The purpose of this special issue is contribute to a better understanding of the possibilities and limits of the Bolivarian project, ranging from democratic innovations to economic experimentation, from alternative economic integration to the role of charisma in revolutionary politics. Contributions include analysis of what it means to be a citizen in a post-neoliberal democracy in Venezuela; the extent to which Chavismo achieved a real redistribution of socio-economic and political power in Venezuela; lessons for other countries dependent upon extraction; what sort of domestic political and economic institutional structures have been developed under Chávez’s government, and how these affect the question of succession and future governability; the sustainability of the Bolivarian project since the decline in oil prices; and the relationship of Venezuela with the United States and other Latin American countries.

Listen to the Podcast!

Tomas Ocampo, Outreach Coordinator for Latin American Perspectives, interviews issue editors Daniel Hellinger and Anthony Spanakos about LAP issue, "The Legacy of Hugo Chávez," published in January 2017. CLICK HERE to listen to the podcast! Podcast is also available in SPANISH! Listen here.  You can also listen to past podcasts by clicking here!

Abstract, The Contribution of Hugo Chávez to an Understanding of Post-Neoliberalism

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The Contribution of Hugo Chávez to an Understanding of Post-Neoliberalism
by Anthony Petros Spanakos and Dimitris Pantoulas


When Hugo Chávez was president, he pronounced the death of many things—the constitution, the old “partyarchy,” Venezuela’s “Fourth Republic,” and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, among others. Since his own death in 2013, scholars, activists, and citizens have contributed to a rich discussion of his legacy. Part of that legacy is an understanding of post-neoliberalism that recognizes its competing and contradictory components, some of them seeking to complement, improve, and reverse neoliberal policies or overcome neoliberal logics and others constituting important remnants of neoliberalism.

Abstract, From System Collapse to Chavista Hegemony The Party Question in Bolivarian Venezuela

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From System Collapse to Chavista Hegemony
The Party Question in Bolivarian Venezuela
by Gabriel Hetland                                                                 


During the 14 years Hugo Chávez was in office, Venezuela’s party system experienced a 180-degree shift. When Chávez was elected in 1998, Venezuela’s party system had collapsed because of a two-decade-long economic-cum-political crisis. His initial appeal was built, in large part, on his antiparty message, a stance that continued through the first half of his time in office. A series of factors, principally the need for a more cohesive organization to combat an intransigent opposition, led to the creation of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela—PSUV) in 2007. The PSUV quickly became Venezuela’s largest party and the linchpin of a new hegemonic system. The contradictions of that system are manifested in the split between the PSUV’s right and left wings, and the hegemony of Chavismo is now in doubt.

Introduction, The Legacy of Hugo Chavez

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The Legacy of Hugo Chávez
Daniel Hellinger and Anthony Petros Spanakos                                                                 


In 1992, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez failed to replace the beleaguered government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez but succeeded in capturing the hearts and imaginations of a broad swath of the Venezuelan population frustrated by a decade of economic crisis, shifts in the social contract, weakened institutionalized modes of representation, and the consequences of a neoliberal structural adjustment program. El pueblo (the people) found hope in the temerity of the coup attempt and Chávez’s famous “por ahora” (for now).