Political Report #1466 The April 2002 Coup Through Time

 by LAP Editor, Steve Ellner

Published in NACLA: Report on the Americas. Vol. 54, no. 1

On April 14, 2002, the folly of the abortive coup staged against the government of Hugo Chávez three days earlier was clear, but the depth of its long-lasting impact was not. The April 11 coup was a milestone event that shaped politics in Venezuela and the region for the next two decades. Most important, the coup and the events that immediately followed it set off polarization marked by the radicalization of the government and the opposition, which impacted not only national politics but also government policy on all fronts.

The year 2002 was thus a turning point in Venezuelan politics. How did the nation reach such a defining moment? In the initial period after gaining power, the Chavista movement, like Fidel Castro's Movimiento 26 de Julio in 1959, did not stand for thoroughgoing socioeconomic transformation, even though both movements originated in attempts to gain power using force. Castro in 1959 denied being a leftist, and Chávez embraced the “third way” doctrine that stood between pro-capitalist and pro-socialist.

In both cases, however, powerful adversaries viewed the movements as existential threats. In Cuba’s case, the Eisenhower administration took steps to overthrow Castro shortly after he came to power. And in Venezuela, the nation’s two main parties, Acción Democrática (AD) and Copei, joined forces in an eleventh-hour attempt to avoid Chávez’s triumph at the polls in 1998, while the business organization Fedecámaras staunchly opposed his candidacy. Shortly after his election, the Catholic hierarchy claimed that Chávez had earned the wrath of God. By 2002, Washington officials, who for the most part initially refrained from criticizing his government, questioned his democratic credentials and then, in effect, supported the April coup. These developments intensified the polarization that has plagued Venezuela ever since.

In our article “The Remarkable Fall and Rise of Hugo Chávez,” published in the July/August 2002 issue of the NACLA Report, NACLA director Fred Rosen and I showed how the radicalization of the opposition unfolded the day after the April 11 coup. The article defined two contrasting positions within the opposition that, despite changing political terrain, have continued to this day: a hardline, right-wing strategy that on April 12 decreed the elimination of democratic institutions, and a centrist strategy of working through existing institutions. The latter favored reaching an agreement with former Interior Minister Luis Miquilena and other disenchanted Chavistas to achieve regime change through the legislative branch and in a way that “broad sectors of the population would be represented,” we wrote.

We pointed out that the hardliners, guided by “a well-conceived plan” that gave them an advantage over the centrists, seized control of the government in what we called “nothing less than a coup within the coup.” Economic policy lay just beneath the surface. We noted that “as a member of the export-oriented business class, [provisional president Pedro Carmona] and his followers very likely wanted once and for all to remove all the obstacles to full-fledged, neoliberal formulas.” To do so required “a clean and violent break with the populist past.” In other words, to achieve pressing objectives, democratic principles had to be compromised.

Carmona was set on implementing a radical neoliberal program, sometimes referred to as the “shock treatment,” consisting of harsh and swiftly implemented austerity measures. He staffed his cabinet with members of the elite while excluding labor leaders of the AD-controlled Confederación de Trabajadores de Venezuela (CTV), even though the CTV had made April 11 happen in the first place and its president, Carlos Ortega, was originally slated to head the provisional government, as Gregory Wilpert later noted in a piece for Venezuelaanalysis.

The absence of leaders of AD, the nation’s largest party, which had wholeheartedly supported the mobilizations against Chávez, was not by accident. Throughout the 1990s, a major faction within AD had opposed the shock treatment brand of neoliberalism, a position that partly explains the party’s decision to expel neoliberal ex-president Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1993.

The neoliberal radicals, however, attributed Venezuela’s backwardness to the allegedly left-wing populist tradition associated with AD, which they blamed for Chávez’s rise to power in 1998. On the eve of Chávez’s election, one prominent academic supporter of neoliberal reform, Aníbal Romero, ominously wrote in Latin American Research Review: “Venezuela is experiencing the agony of populism…and one cannot be sure of where it may lead.”

Fast forwarding to the Maduro years, the polarization between the Chavista government associated with socialism and an intransigent opposition remained intact, as did the high stakes of Venezuelan politics. Various features largely dating back to 2002 stand out.

Most important, a dominant radical faction of the opposition continues to overshadow a moderate one. The moderates, unlike the radicals, advocate electoral participation, favor recognizing the legitimacy of the nation's democratic institutions and the Maduro presidency, and oppose U.S.-imposed sanctions.

As in 2002, radicals—headed by self-proclaimed president Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López of the Voluntad Popular party—have had a distinct advantage over moderates, this time due to decisive support from Washington. The State Department demanded that the Maduro administration refrain from taking judicial action against Guaidó despite his numerous attempts to overthrow the government, and it influenced Maduro to privilege Voluntad Popular in the negotiations held in Mexico in 2021. In contrast, Washington placed sanctions on four important moderates including Bernabé Gutiérrez, a long-time AD politician.  

Radicals under Carmona prevailed the day after the April 11 coup even though they did not necessarily represent a majority of the opposition. Similarly, hardliners have relied throughout the Maduro years on U.S. support to maintain the upper hand over the rest of the opposition, even as most Venezuelans opposed sanctions and Guaidó’s popularity precipitously declined over the course of 2019 and 2020.   

Another overlap between 2002 and the current state of Venezuelan politics is the prospect of a revanchist wave should radical sectors of the opposition take power. The first day of Carmona’s two-day rule saw efforts to round up leading Chavistas as "Wanted: Dead or Alive" leaflets with prominent Chavista names circulated. Similarly, threats against Maduro supporters upped the stakes in the confrontation between him and Guaidó. In an indirect threat against Maduro supporters in the armed forces, the opposition-controlled National Assembly headed by Guaidó introduced a law in 2019 that granted “amnesty” to officers who supported regime change.

Blunders by opposition hardliners in 2002 repeated themselves over the next two decades, resulting in one fiasco after another. In April 2002 the opposition lacked a fallback plan. When sectors of the military, specifically among the high command, resisted the coup, the entire undertaking imploded. Similarly, as the prolonged general strike of 2002-2003 faltered and its regime change objective seemed lost, opposition leaders failed either to take stock or change strategy, instead letting the protest peter out. It was a pattern repeated in the months-long street protests known as La Salida (The Exit) in 2014 and later, during even more pitched protests against Maduro’s call for a Constituent National Assembly in 2017, as well as in numerous attempts at regime change undertaken by Guaidó beginning in January 2019.

The events of 2002 also affected Chavista leaders. Chávez reacted to the defection of his right-hand man and possible father figure Miquilena, and then the support of oil company personnel for the 2002-2003 general strike, by privileging political loyalty over competence and calling for unity at all costs. Hence Chávez’s oft-repeated slogan: "unity, unity and more unity." This type of learning experience—which political scientists call “political over-learning"—downgraded the importance of technical expertise, prompting frequent cabinet shuffles under both Chávez’s and then Maduro’s governments with little or no consideration of the professional training of incoming ministers.

The April coup also convinced Chávez and those closest to him of the need to prioritize social goals over economic ones to ensure the future support and mass mobilization of the popular sectors, so instrumental in defeating the coup. The government’s failure to put the accent mark on economic diversification to sever economic dependence invited criticism from across the political spectrum.

Another consequence of the 2002 events is that they exposed unreliable military officers as a result of their actions during the coup and general strike. Subsequently, loyal officers were privileged with promotions to higher ranks, particularly those involving troop command. The loyalty of the armed forces in the face of multiple efforts by the opposition and Washington to encourage rebellion has been a key factor in the Maduro government’s survival. Indeed, the U.S. strategy has backfired, as Washington failed to take into account the nationalist sentiment of military officers.

The overthrow of a president who in the previous three years had won two presidential elections with 56 and 60 percent of the vote—and went on to win again with 63 percent in 2006—proved a fatal move for the opposition. Refusing to recognize their error led to continuous insistence that the Chávez government was authoritarian and illegitimate, resulting in electoral boycotts and non-recognition of electoral results, even ones certified by international observers. As a consequence, the opposition time and again forfeited its presence on elected bodies at the national, state, and municipal levels.

The events of 2002 also locked Chavista leaders in a polarizing mindset of viewing Venezuelan politics as a faceoff between Chavistas and insurgent adversaries with little room for constructive criticism. As I discuss in a forthcoming article in Science and Society, the resultant sectarianism toward critical allies on the left led to the exit in 2020 of various parties from the governing coalition, including the nation’s oldest one, the Communist Party.  

Ultimately, what revisiting the April 2002 events shows is an urgent need for both chavismo and its opponents to take a step backward and critically analyze both the coup and its legacies, intended and otherwise, and examine their lessons against 20 years of hindsight.

________________________________________

Steve Ellner is an Associate Managing Editor of Latin American Perspectives and a retired professor of the Universidad de Oriente in Venezuela. His latest books include his edited Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism and Resistance in Broad Perspective (2021).

To cite this article: Steve Ellner (2022) The April 2002 Coup Through Time, NACLA Report on the Americas, 54:1, 16-19, DOI: 10.1080/10714839.2022.2045097

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2022.2045097

Review of Latin American Extractivism Dependency, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective, from our LAP in the Classroom series

 from our LAP Classroom Series!

Latin American Extractivism

Dependency, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective

Edited by Steve Ellner

A review by Angelo Rivero Santos

NACLA

On September 26, 2000, during the inauguration of the second summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEP), President Hugo Chávez urged its members to recognize that the “worst environmental catastrophe facing the world is human poverty.” He called for unity through the promotion of a “social and egalitarian model of economic development to eradicate poverty” in member countries. Until his untimely death on March 5, 2013, petroleum, and the profits it produced during the commodities boom (2000-2014), would be at the heart of Venezuela’s extractive development model and foreign policy.


The election of Chávez as president of Venezuela in 1998 marked the beginning of the Pink Tide, a period when several progressive governments came to power in Latin America. Left-leaning leaders were elected in Brazil (2002), Argentina (2003), Bolivia (2005), Uruguay (2005), and Ecuador (2006). Citizens chose these Pink Tide governments in reaction to the disastrous social consequences of the Washington Consensus’s neoliberal policies. Although they emerged in different socio-cultural, political, geo-political and economic contexts, Pink Tide governments in Latin America shared the goal of restoring the role of the state in the development process and reclaiming their sovereignty over natural resources. Dependent on the export of commodities such as soy, petroleum, and natural gas, Pink Tide governments benefitted from the rising world demand and resulting high prices of their products. The surplus created by the commodities boom allowed these governments to aggressively increase social spending and pursue redistributive policies that aimed to reduce poverty and inequality. Politically, some of these governments also sought to promote “participatory democracy,” an attempt to empower citizens “from below” to help design and implement policies that directly impacted their lives. In South America, Pink Tide governments actively promoted a type of integration based on the logic of politics rather than one of economics and trade, which had been favored during the neoliberal period.


Pink Tide governments evolved in different contexts, so the results of their extractive development strategies were varied. Analysts across the political spectrum, however, have tended to simplify—and in some cases vilify—the Pink Tide governments, failing to account for the variety of contexts, policies, and strategies for dealing with the social ills and extractive sectors of their countries.


What were the strengths and weaknesses of Pink Tide governments in relation to the extractive development models they fostered? What are some of the tensions and contradictions found in Pink Tide governments in regards to foreign investment, social, economic, and political development and in their relation with their citizens? And, most importantly, how did Pink Tide governments differ from each other, and from moderate and conservative governments in the region, in dealing with the national and global economic and political structures that sustain the extractive sector?


Steve Ellner and his contributors explore these and other important questions in the book Latin American Extractivism: Dependency, Resource Nationalism, and Resistance in Broad Perspective. More than any previous work, this book takes an objective look at the Pink Tide and non-Pink Tide government policies toward the extractive sector and their impact on the development process in the first two decades of the 21st century. Through an in depth look at cases from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela, the book explores the complex logic of the extractive development model during this time and its relation to national and global capital. It examines how the Pink Tide approach differed from that of the neoliberal period, and how different governments, progressive and conservative, dealt with opposition to the extractive development model from environmental and indigenous movements.


The book also provides a constructive critique of “neo-extractivism” theory, which asserts that, although taxing the extractive sector produced profits that helped promote economic development and social welfare, the strategy ultimately proved detrimental to democracy and development. According to this view, neo-extractivist activities led by foreign capital promoted a development model that was not very different from dependent extractive models of the past. It replicated the “peripheral” nature of these countries in the global economy and did little to enhance the quality of democracy, protect the environment, or defend rights of indigenous people, women, and Afro descendants. This record, the argument goes, overshadows any positive impacts claimed by Pink Tide governments and their supporters.


Steve Ellner and his contributors take issue with this “pessimist view.” While they recognize that Pink Tide governments have a poor record in transforming the extractive development model and attempting to change their countries’ “peripheral” position in the global economy, they point also to the undeniable harm that the extractive model has had on the environment and local communities. The authors recognize how Pink Tide government policies toward the extractive sector allowed greater resources to be allocated to social spending to mitigate poverty and ask that we pay closer attention to some of the positive outcomes of legislation and policies toward foreign capital under different Pink Tide governments. The book analyzes several cases of policies and legislation which varied from country to country and produced distinct results in different contexts.


Ellner emphasizes the importance of context in analyzing the record of Pink Tide governments in the introduction. He writes that “…this context includes the full range of policies associated with extractivism, Latin America’s historical condition of underdevelopment, and the aggressiveness of the domestic and foreign opposition to progressive governments.” Failing to recognize context, Ellner argues, has had “unintended consequences.” In several countries “recent cases of instability and regime change” can be traced back to neoliberal political leaders that, with U.S. support, “have used illicit means and repression in an attempt to roll back reforms initiated by Pink Tide governments.” No doubt that when analyzed in context one understands that the experience of different Pink Tide governments cannot be painted with the same brush, let alone compared with the experience of how conservative governments dealt with the extractive sector—and opposition to it—in the first two decades of this century.


Latin American Extractivism is organized in a way that is easy to read and ideal for classroom use. In the introduction, Ellner provides a comprehensive summary and critique of neo-extractivism and successfully places it in a broader context using evidence from the cases analyzed in the following chapters. In Part I (The Global Focus) the authors examine Colombia, Bolivia, and Venezuela to show the relationship between key aspects of globalization and its impact on extractivism at the national level. The next two sections are dedicated to the experience of different Pink Tide governments (Part II) and Conservative and Right-Wing governments (Part III). In Part II, the authors present evidence from Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Ecuador, and Argentina, that shows how different governments increased their control of extractive industries and how they dealt with the environment, protest movements, and the territorial rights of local and indigenous communities. The chapters in Part III on El Salvador and Honduras, Peru and Colombia show how resource nationalism and the management of environmental and opposition movements in these countries differed from the cases in Part II. The variety of practices and outcomes make it clear that it is necessary to look at the specific context to understand the extractive development model in Latin America over the past two decades.


The petroleum giant Venezuela, in particular, illustrates the importance of examining the experience of the Pink Tide in context. This was implicitly acknowledged by Chávez on January 16, 2003 at the United Nations. He said at the time that “…the only sin we have committed in Venezuela is to dare, for the first time in a hundred years, to face the gross privileges of a senseless and insensitive oligarchy that has carried a people that lives on top of gold and oil…to a degree of poverty that surpasses 80 percent of our population. That has been our sin.” This statement came after an attempted coup d’etat in April 2002 and a devastating petroleum strike in late 2002 and early 2003 by the state oil and gas (PDVSA) workers and technocrats that cost the nation billions of dollars. Both actions were supported by foreign interests that opposed the administration’s extractive development model that reverted efforts to privatize PDVSA and, in turn, reverted the neoliberal process in that South American country.


As the past few years have shown, “resource nationalism” and the the Chávez administration’s distributive policies cannot be understood in isolation from the structure of the world economy, the national and foreign interests in the extractive sector, the Venezuelan economy’s dependency on petroleum, and the geopolitical powerplay around this natural resource. Ellner and his contributors argue that this also applies to other Pink Tide governments and should be considered when analyzing their extractive development models and redistributive policies.


Ellner’s book is another successful publication of the Latin American Perspective in the Classroom series. It is a must-read for anyone interested in the complexities of the relationship between the extractive sector and development in Latin America in the age of globalization.


Angelo Rivero Santos is Teaching Associate Professor and Director of Academic Affairs at the Center for Latin American Studies at Georgetown University.


Review originally published here: https://nacla.org/latin-american-extractivism-dependency-resource-nationalism-and-resistance-broad

Get a copy here!

This book explores different aspects of Latin America’s extractivist economies and argues that on issues such as legislation and policies toward foreign capital and small-scale mining, economic ties with China, environmental destruction and indigenous rights, Latin American governments had different records. In doing so, the book takes issue with a school of writers referred to as “neo-extractivism,” who tend to minimize the importance of differences between Pink Tide progressive governments, conservative ones and those on the right on grounds that all of them have submitted themselves to the dictates of global capital. Several chapters look at cultural patterns involving gender, ethnicity and class that lay behind protests in opposition to extractivist projects as well as the contrast in responses from state actors to those movements. The book also compares the impact of strategies toward economic development as they relate to extractivism and analyzes the role of the state in promoting economic growth and its theoretical implications. In emphasizing resource nationalism, the book attempts to refute a basic precept of neo-extractivism writers that a “consensus” existed among Latin American governments on extractivism. The book argues that there may have been a consensus regarding the beneficial nature of extractivist industries, but not on how to maximize the revenue derived from extractivism, and how to put it to good use.

Steve Ellner is a retired professor at the Universidad de Oriente, Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, and is currently associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives. His books include Rethinking Venezuelan Politics and his edited Latin America’s Pink Tide, Latin America’s Radical Left, and (coedited) Venezuela: Hugo Chavez and the Decline of an “Exceptional Democracy.”

Political Report # 1388 The Second Implosion of Central America

By William I. Robinson NACLA William I. Robinson is also a LAP Editor

The decline of global capitalism points to another total economic collapse of Central America, reminiscent of the regional upheaval of the 1970s and 80s. Some three decades after the wars of revolution and counterinsurgency came to an end in Central America, the region is once again on the brink of implosion. The Isthmus has been gripped by renewed mass struggle and state repression, the cracking of fragile political systems, unprecedented corruption, drug violence, and the displacement and forced migration of millions of workers and peasants. The backdrop to this second implosion of Central America, reflecting the spiraling crisis of global capitalism itself, is the exhaustion of a new round of capitalist development in recent years to the same drumbeat as the globalization that took place in the wake of the 1980s upheavals. Lost in the headlines on Central American refugees fleeing to the United States is both the historical context that has sparked the exodus and the structural transformations through capitalist globalization that has brought the region to where it is today. The mass revolutionary movements of the 1970s and 1980s did manage to dislodge entrenched military-civilian dictatorships and open up political systems to electoral competition, but they were unable to achieve any substantial social justice or democratization of the socioeconomic order. Capitalist globalization in the Isthmus in the wake of pacification unleashed a new cycle of modernization and accumulation. It transformed the old oligarchic class structures, generated new transnationally oriented elites and capitalists and high-consumption middle classes even as it displaced millions, aggravated poverty, inequality, and social exclusion, and wreaked havoc on the environment, triggering waves of outmigration and new rounds of mass mobilization among those who stayed behind. Hence the very conditions that gave rise to the conflict in the first place were aggravated by capitalist globalization.

Political Report # 1314 Green for Blue in the Mexican Security State

By Nicola Chavez Courtright NACLA

On December 19, exactly three months after the earthquake that left over 360 dead in central Mexico, the iconic Arena México in Mexico City was gearing up for its regular Tuesday evening show. According to the event's flyer, however, the night of lucha libre would be punctuated by a special event: an homage to "the Mexican heroes who participated in rescue missions" after the September 19th quake. In a pause between lucha rounds, dozens of uniformed men and women marched into the arena in step with the Zacatecas March, played by the wind section of the National Defense Secretary band. While soldiers posed before the green, white, and red of the Mexican flag waving across huge LED screens, the celebration uplifted the military's role as the genuine heroes of the disaster, sidelining the roles taken on by civilian rescue groups in the quake's aftermath. The act exuded all the grandeur of an army that had just been given sweeping powers to conduct military operations against its own population. More than just a commemoration, the display at Arena México tacitly acknowledged a concerning sign of army encroachment into civilian life. Four days earlier, Mexico had adopted its Ley de Seguridad Interior, or Internal Security Law, which amends the constitution to enable the executive branch to grant certain police responsibilities to Mexican armed forces-a response that has become increasingly normalized since the beginning of Mexico's Drug War in 2006. In 2017, Mexico registered the highest number of homicides since the drug war began. Rather than a panacea, however, the law stands to create new sources of terror for an already-terrorized population caught in the ongoing U.S.-backed drug war ravaging the region.

Political Report # 1268 Justice for Lesvy: Indifference and Outrage in Response to Gender Violence in Mexico City

By Nidia Bautista, NACLA

The death of 22-year-old Lesvy Berlin Rivera Osorio on May 3 at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Latin America’s largest public university in Mexico City, is a tale of pervasive government indifference toward violence against women in Mexico. Rivera was found dead with a telephone cord wrapped around her neck on the campus, long considered a sanctuary by students and the intellectual community of Mexico’s capital. Her death sparked outrage among students and community members. Dozens have mobilized to denounce the death not only as murder, but also as feminicide. The investigation into Rivera’s death reflects the Mexican justice system’s failure to adequately address the issue of violence against women on a national level. Despite the enactment of federal legislation to prevent and prosecute feminicide, defined as the extreme violence against women due to their gender, marked by impunity that violates their human rights and results in death, authorities have failed to apply a gender analysis into their investigation of Rivera’s death. In fact, murders of women are on the rise in Mexico, and have been for several decades. Today, this issue is not limited to Ciudad Juarez-the northern Mexican city notorious for its violence against women. It’s a human rights crisis that has spread throughout the country. In Mexico City, once considered a safe haven exempt from the violence plaguing the rest of Mexico, women are also murdered with impunity. This month Mexico City’s public prosecutor ruled that Rivera committed suicide and detained her boyfriend Jorge Luis González for allegedly failing to intervene. González has been charged with homicide by omission for not doing enough to prevent Rivera’s death. In this case, Mexican law cites the perpetrator’s negligence, and not intent, as is the case with crimes like homicide and feminicide. The ruling comes despite video footage released by UNAM that shows him beating Rivera just minutes before her death.

Political Report # 1206 Cubans Remember Fidel

A man on a bus in Havana (Thomas Leuthard/Flickr) By Elizabeth Dore, NACLA

Whether Cubans on the island worship Fidel Castro despite his flaws, loathe him, or are indifferent to a figure they now regard as a historical anachronism depends more on their age than anything else. Olga, a former University teacher, remembered her faithful devotion to Fidel Castro when she was growing up in Santiago more than forty years ago. "Before the triumph of the Revolution I went to a Baptist private school. After I went to a state school, and I grew disenchanted with religion. This happened not only to me, it happened to my entire generation," she said. "The change was profound. Fidel replaced the God we had believed in. He was a very significant leader for everyone, but in particular for us of the younger generation. We threw ourselves into the struggle to make the revolution. Life was very difficult after the sugar harvest of 1970 failed. We suffered a lot, but we still had that belief, that determination, that we had to fight for the revolution. We thought of Fidel as our God the saviour, and we all closed ranks, and we struggled, and we tried not to see his errors, his flaws. I did not return to the church for many, many years.' I first interviewed Olga (not her real name) twelve years ago, when, alongside a team of Cuban and British researchers, I began recording life histories of Cuban men and women living on the island. Olga and I last met several months ago, in Miami, where she now lives. Our team has collected the life histories of 125 Cubans from different generations, social positions and political views, of diverse racial, gender, sexual and religious identities. Many talked with us multiple times, recounting how their lives and attitudes have changed over the years.   Cubans over the age of fifty frequently brought up Fidel in our conversations. Usually they portrayed him favourably, but not always. Fearing their criticisms might be overheard, in place of his name they tapped their shoulder, [indicating his epaulets], or stroked their chin [the beard], or referred simply to "He."

Political Report # 1179 Gentrifying Rio

Wei Han Frank Lin / Flickr By Brian Mier, NACLA

The 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro have put the city's controversial "arts-led" gentrification initiatives on full display. With the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, entering their second week, the issue of how the city's urban landscape has changed since winning its bid to host the Olympics is more relevant than ever. Faced with a weak economy and ensnared in political scandal, the state and city governments of Rio de Janeiro have faced harsh criticism for their immense spending on the 2016 Rio Games. But government decisions have also changed the face of Rio itself. These have included transportation improvements that mainly benefit white, middle-class sections of the city's west side and the carrying out of the largest public-private partnership in Brazilian history: an "arts-led" gentrification project in Rio's port area. Arts-led gentrification has in recent years become a popular tool for neoliberal mayors to strengthen real estate speculation in blighted neighborhoods around the world. Today the process is repeating in Rio de Janeiro's port region, where an artist's colony, supported by the Rio de Janeiro Mayor's office, coexists within the context of a mega project called Porto Maravilha (Marvelous Port)-part of a network of public works projects associated with the 2016 Summer Games. In a move patterned after similar processes in the Global North, the Rio de Janeiro city government has used the Olympics as an excuse to target the port region for gentrification while at the same time attempting to theme the area as a vibrant neighborhood for Brazil's "creative class."