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From International Socialism 2 : 109, Winter 2006.
Copyright © International Socialism.
Copied with thanks from the International Socialism Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
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José Vincente Rangel is one of the members of the Venezuelan government with decades of political experience. It began in the Movement for Socialism (MAS), the party formed by ex-guerrillas who split from the country’s Communist Party in the 1970s. But while MAS and many of its former leaders are now aligned with the country’s right wing opposition, Rangel has become one of the more important of Chavez’s collaborators, first as minister of defence and foreign affairs, and then as vice-president since the attempted coup in April 2002. This interview first appeared in the German weekly Freitag. |
Why is Chavez risking a clash with the United States?
We don’t think the US is now necessarily in a position to look
for a conflict with a country that wants to be respected. Chavez has
clearly distinguished between the US government and its people. It is
not as easy to isolate Venezuela as it was in 2002. We have developed
many international relations, more than ever before in our history.
If there is anybody that is isolated in the world, it is the US, or
at least the Bush administration. For a long time many governments
have been making concessions to the arrogance of power of the US.
They are afraid of the US and so do not say what they think. In our
case, we do not have any fear for the future.
What are the objectives of your foreign policy?
We want a multipolar world, without the hegemonies that exist at
present. For that reason we propose a refoundation and
democratisation of the UN, which functions according to the logic of
the world order established after the Second World War. The
Organisation of American States, the OAS, was until a few years ago a
sort of backyard of the US. Today that is no longer so. A second
central aim of our foreign policy is the struggle against poverty –
the most important present-day problem, which has to be at the centre
of all policy.
In recent years Venezuela has promoted the establishment of a petroleum consortium involving various state enterprises and, with Petrocaribe, has formed a petroleum federation in the Caribbean. In addition, various states receive Venezuelan oil at advantageous prices. How do these measures fit into the foreign policy you have just outlined?
These measures are making concrete a policy of integration. For
decades there has only been the rhetoric of integration in Latin
America. Today the integration of Latin America and the Caribbean has
a political dimension. Venezuela is a power in terms of energy. We
dispose of considerable reserves of petroleum and are the sixth
country in the world in terms of gas. And the situation is favourable
to us geostrategically. Venezuelan oil is four days from the US
market, Saudi oil four weeks. Each country has comparative economic
advantages – Argentina has enormous agrarian production, Brazil its
industry, and ourselves our enormous energy reserves. But what
matters for us is not only our petroleum, but that we act in
solidarity and seriously in the interest of Latin American and
Caribbean integration.
Hugo Chavez in an interview on the US TV channel ABC spoke of a Plan Balboa for US interventions against Venezuela. Do you think that the US would risk a second military intervention after everything that has happened in Iraq?
There are two logics as regards this. One is contained in your questions and says the US already has enough difficulties in Iraq to get involved in other, perhaps bigger, ones. But often imperialism does not behave in particularly rational ways. If it did, it would not have invaded Vietnam. There is something like a logic of desperation. And the Bush government, it becomes clearer every day, is very desperate. There are few things more dangerous than an erratic giant.
Rationality would advise the US not to attack Venezuela. But an
irrational attempt at intervention is conceivable and we have to be
prepared. Part of this preparation consists in making public possible
scenarios for intervention.
The Venezuelan state, as the owner of the CITCO network of petrol stations in the US, has announced that it will offer heating oil at advantageous prices to community organisations, schools and old people’s homes in poor areas of the US. What is intended by this?
Three much wider objectives are linked. We want, in the first
place, to build three new refineries in the US, since the refining of
oil is the bottleneck that is at present making prices shoot up. In
the second place, we want to extend the network of petrol stations to
14,000. And thirdly, we want to give an impulse to the social
component – that is, to something completely foreign to US
enterprises. It is possible to offer schools and hospitals in poor
neighbourhoods heating oil and petrol at concessionary prices without
the Venezuelan state suffering losses as a result.
Brazil is the most important partner in the Latin American integration that you propose. But President Lula has not lived up to the expectations you had of him. If the Workers Party loses the next Brazilian elections, will this make things much worse for Venezuela?
The result of the Brazilian elections remains open. Furthermore, I
don’t think what is taking place in Latin America can be explained
very well by the existence of this or that government. What is
involved is a social process that puts neo-liberalism in question.
Politicians who ignore this will be cast aside. Just think of
presidents like De la Rua in Argentina, Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador
or Sáchez de Lozada in Bolivia. In this sense I am an optimist.
The opposition in Venezuela is hardly to be seen now. Rather it is the state itself that appears to be the principal obstacle to the ‘Bolivarian process’. The apparatus puts obstacles in the way of the democratisation and self-administration that the communities seek. Your government, conscious of that, has deliberately instituted the misiones – numerous social programmes – outside the ministries. Wouldn’t you have to destroy the state completely and create something completely new if you were thinking seriously of the emancipation of the Venezuelan people?
That is the pure truth. I subscribe completely to your critical observations. I live inside the monster and know what it is like. We have inherited the whole anachronistic bureaucracy of ‘Puntifijismo’ – of the old dominant Social Democratic and Christian Democrat duopoly that still exists protected by the law. We cannot simply dismiss the functionaries. We have suspended people we know to be corrupt, and the Supreme Court has declared these dismissals illegal. And that is how it is – those decisions show that we are in a state based on the rule of law.
The misiones are an attempt to get over the wall of
bureaucracy – or at least to make it more permeable. We have
achieved something in this respect – the creation of an alternative
economic structure and an alternative bureaucracy. But we have to be
on our guard to make sure the new bureaucracy does not result in
something as bad as or even worse than that of the old republic. At
the end of the day, the problem is not only with personnel which come
from the old traditional parties, but with a political culture. The
corruption is a state within the state – it reproduces itself
continually. It is a difficult process, but also a very stimulating
one, for the Venezuelan Revolution is not violent but respects the
democratic rule of law.
Aren’t the governmental parties of the left a problem even greater than that of the bureaucracy? Despite the revolutionary rhetoric, they inspire anything but confidence. There is an absurd struggle for positions and influence, and, as everywhere else, a great deal of corruption. Or at least, this is what is said by people who come from the urban movements who have to deal with administrations run by the parties of the left.
There is probably some truth in that. You must not forget that the
Bolivarianos are part of the population. We are not dealing with
Martians who have come to Earth to make a revolution. I think the
accusations of corruption are often made lightly, but without doubt
there have been many cases among the left. You cannot deal with the
matter with concepts like angel and devil. That is to say, on my side
are those dressed in white, and over there those who are corrupt. A
process of transformations like ours is not a pure phenomenon. There
is also corruption among us and a perverse obsession with
positions.
Don’t you have to break the structures of the state and democracy completely to change anything? Finally, is not representative democracy itself the cause of the problem?
We want to create a participatory democracy in which the people are the protagonists and exercise direct control over the public budgets. Here also the political culture plays a decisive role. If people are not conscious politically they can easily be manipulated. The attempt is being made to inspire a population who have not known anything of politics for 50 years to take their own decisions.
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