Raúl Zibechi interviews Emiliano Terán Mantovani
The interview below was conducted by Raúl Zibechi and originally published, in Spanish, in Brecha Magazine of Uruguay.
Emiliano Terán Mantovani is a sociologist from the Central University of Venezuela, researcher and activist. He has collaborated with various initiatives such as the Atlas of Environmental Justice and the Scientific Panel for the Amazon. The interview was not easy to put together, as he has to move with extreme caution in the face of the overwhelming militarization that the country is experiencing. He maintains that Maduro’s government is not a leftist or even progressive government, but a “regime of corruption, abuses, making life precarious, and repressive violence”.
He also analyzes the opposition that defends “an orthodox neoliberalism, of massive privatizations” and a “geopolitical closeness with the United States”. He concludes that the competition is between two neoliberal forces and that the Maduro regime is in a state of deep decay.
How would you characterize the Maduro government?
Since July 28, an electoral fraud has been carried out in Venezuela that will be much talked about when the biggest frauds in the contemporary history of Latin America are remembered, such as the “fall of the system” in Mexico, Fujimori’s, or some cases that stand out in Central America. Today, we are facing a reconfiguration of Maduro’s political regime so that it can govern under conditions of complete social, political and international illegitimacy. It is a dangerous reconfiguration because it intends to take repression and social control to unheard of levels. But allow me first to explore where we are coming from in order to see where we could be going.
Maduro’s government has drifted more and more, over these 11 years, towards decadence in every sense. It has been pulverizing the framework of social rights, seeking to suffocate all political and social dissidence, with a brutal repression of the entire popular sector, even if one is a critical chavista. Venezuela has been governed under a permanent state of exception: a legal one, by decree, which lasted more than five years, from 2016 to 2021, something totally unconstitutional, but which paradoxically was normalized.
On the other hand, the power architecture of the Maduro regime was shaped by a gradual restructuring of the State. The antecedent is the corporate and militarist State established during the Chávez administration, its authoritarian and vertical ways of doing politics, with its fundamental principle of maximum loyalty to the leader above all else. The structures and networks of state corruption are also an important antecedent. These elements saw continuity in Maduro’s government, but now without Chávez’s charisma and political legitimacy, without the enormous oil income that it once had, and in the context of the Venezuelan systemic collapse. And so everything began to be imposed fundamentally by force and violence.
The National Assembly, won handily by the opposition in 2015, was disregarded, and a parallel National Assembly* of the regime was created in 2017. Military companies were created for the direct and private appropriation and management of wealth. The enormous poverty that the crisis produced was used politically, creating institutional channels for the selective allocation of wealth to state officials and supporters of the PSUV. Access to information was eliminated.
Numerous state and para-state security forces were deployed, a structure of corruption and unchallengeable power, in an environment of maximum impunity and militarization. Something that also consolidated a mafiazation of the State. All this, justified in the name of “defending the revolution and socialism” and “fighting against the right wing”. Thus, we had a regime change from within and a new type of dictatorship was consolidated, a patrimonial and oligarchic regime, which also allows the direct appropriation of regional wealth to maintain provincial loyalties. Venezuela is governed as a hacienda, an image that harks back to political regimes of the last quarter of the 19th Century and the first quarter of the 20th Century in Latin America.
However, some consider it to be leftist.
There is no basis whatsoever to say that this is a progressive government, much less a leftist one. There is a strong liberalization of the economy, with promotion and protection of transnational capital, large tax exemptions, low-profile privatizations, promotion of special economic zones, and the creation of a VIP Venezuela (tourism, restaurants, bars, trips, luxury vehicles) only for foreigners, business people, and high-level government officials. There is the systematic destruction of the salary, keeping it in bolivars while the economy is completely dollarized (today it is equivalent to 4 dollars a month**). There is the abandonment of the public sector. Among other factors.
Fedecámaras, the country’s main business association, which was always seen as the great enemy of Chávez, is now a friend of the Maduro regime. Analyzing each economic measure, we can affirm that we are facing one of the most aggressive neoliberal restructurings in the region, although it is certainly not a conventional neoliberalism. The development of an authoritarian system and the neoliberalization of the economy are two factors of the same process of regime change in Venezuela. One is a function of the other.
In addition to business people, the Maduro regime has made a new alliance with the evangelical churches, as Bolsonaro has done. Chavismo criticized Uribe but in the same way Maduro has deployed a network of parastate shock troops. Maduro has recently announced that his power is based on a “civil-military-police” alliance. In these days of popular protest, forced labor prisons for “terrorists” and “coup perpetrators” are being promoted, reminiscent of Bukele. The two governments that have most promoted the destruction of rights in Latin America today have been precisely those of Milei and Maduro.
I believe that some groups on the left that continue to support this have not even managed to understand the level of decadence, conservatism and mafiazation of this regime. And they end up being dragged down by this decadence. They get bogged down supporting this disaster and undermining their own credibility. This is a symptom of an historical loss of direction that must lead us back to the question of what is the left in this crisis, which is a global crisis. What historical direction does the left have today? What does it represent? Who does it represent? How does it understand the relationship between ethics and politics? How does it respond to this changing and violent world? But as far as Venezuela is concerned, we reach a point where there is no nuance whatsoever.
The second conclusion is that this regime of corruption, abuses, making life precarious, and repressive violence is understood and felt by the vast majority of Venezuelans as a nightmare. A nightmare they wish to see come to an end. That was one of the antecedents of this election: The people were extremely weary of Maduro’s government. It was a level of disgust never seen in the 25 years of the Bolivarian process. And this created the critical mass of irrefutable generalized discontent that was overwhelmingly reflected in the elections. Every sector of Venezuelans voted massively against Maduro, be it rural, urban, young people, adults, the most precarious, the middle classes, in Caracas, in the Andes, in the Llanos, in the Amazon, various sectors of the left, center, right, religious, atheists, all of them, with a forcefulness never seen before in Venezuelan electoral history.
This does not seem to be understood by some parts of the left, who sadly have criminalized the popular protests in the most impoverished neighborhoods of the country, calling them “ultra-right”, which reinforces the mechanisms of repression and persecution that are underway. And in other cases they treat the population like children and underestimate people’s capacities, alleging that they are confused, manipulated, lacking sound judgment, and handing the country over to the United States. They have no self-criticism or the least understanding of the magnitude of failure that this Chavista political project has had to be in order for people to flee across the borders. No self-criticism that would lead to deep reflection on the mistakes made by the Bolivarian governments. On the contrary, I notice that this part of the left insists on constantly putting on the shoulders of the Venezuelan people this sack of stones of being suspect because they protest the lack of water, their miserable salaries, or because they want their vote to be respected. They tell them that they are “playing into the hands of the right wing”, and all this blackmailing tale that has no end, that is perpetual. For these leftists, the people do not have the right to rebel and should remain silent, supporting the government until the end of time.
Where is the regime going?
What we are probably witnessing is a new, more radical, more extremist political reorganization of the regime to control the population. Constitutional guarantees are de facto suspended. Government spokespersons have reported more than 2,200 arrests in a few days, without any legal procedure, affecting the entire social and political spectrum of the country. Security forces stop passers-by to check their phones to see if they have any content against the government in order to arrest them. Mechanisms of snitching or social denunciation have been established to report opponents. Even an app has been created to enter their names, addresses and photos. Houses of those who protest or oppose the government have been marked.
Also, from official speeches and security agencies, content is circulated to frighten the population, announcing that “they are coming for you”. And uniformed prisoners are exposed, Bukele style, shouting slogans in favor of the government. There is a strict surveillance of social networks and a “National Council of Cybersecurity” was created to formalize this surveillance. A law was passed to control NGOs.
As you can imagine, the Venezuelan population today is terrified and in shock. This is what the Maduro government has called a new “civic-military-police” alliance. We live in a totally policed, quasi-Orwellian society. The regime seeks to control every sphere and expression of Venezuelan society.
How sustainable is this over time? It is difficult to know, but what is clear is that in this scenario the dispute is very internal to subjectivity, to subjective integrity. It is biopolitics in its pure form. The body/subject is a hostage in its own country.
What characterization do you offer of the opposition led by María Corina Machado?
Machado has an orthodox neoliberal political-economic program, of massive privatizations and alliances with international capitals, and a geopolitical closeness with the United States and what these sectors call the “free world”. She is a woman who comes from the powerful economic classes, from a family of important business people. Her position towards the Bolivarian process has always been classist, ruptural and confrontational, though, certainly, in order to make herself more palatable and broaden her scope of alliances, she has been moving towards more moderate positions in recent times. But, in any case, what must be underscored is that the recent electoral and political competition for Venezuelans has been between two neoliberal forces. This shows us the kind of dilemma in which the Venezuelan people have been and will continue to be for the time being, and the great need to gradually build a political alternative to this, a path of popular, sovereign struggle that also seeks to change the model of society, that seriously begins to think beyond oil and extractivism.
But there are nuances about the opposition that must be mentioned, in order to have an up-to-date understanding. This is not 2017. Although the huge majority of the population rejects the government, we are not facing two strong political blocs in equal conditions of confrontation. Maduro’s government controls everything: the armed forces and security corps, the judiciary, the electoral authority, the national assembly, the vast majority of regional and municipal governments, the national media, the oil industry, everything. The truth is that the situation of 2017 or even 2019 cannot be equated to this.
The opposition sector that Machado leads today is not homogeneous. She does not have total control and has had many political adversaries within that sector. For the elections she managed to build a unity with the other actors of the coalition, but it is difficult to know if such unity can be maintained, given their history of conflicts. To date there has been no consensus concerning her orthodox economic program, since, for example, not all agree on privatizing PDVSA. If it were to assume power, Chavismo would still control the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Assembly, the electoral body CNE and the other powers I mentioned. Even in power, it might have chavismo as opposition. The Venezuelan population has not been historically inclined to neoliberal ideas, but rather to an anti-oligarchic political culture. There is also the question of what would be the level of military support for Machado, there having been mutual antipathies for a long time. The Venezuelan context has a very unstable and fragmented floor. This is probably what part of the left and several social movements have calculated when they decided that they preferred to confront a government of Machado and not Maduro.
Finally, how do you see the future? Do you think a civil war is possible?
One scenario is that Maduro’s government remains in power, through three factors: First, a regime of brutal repression that prevents the emergence of a significant dissident force or a strong political alternative. Second, a regime that already knows how to manage the country at a very low political cost. That is, it knows how to govern in a context of collapse and chaos, and does not care much about international criticisms and isolation. Who loses there is mainly the Venezuelan population. And third, a regime that manages to consolidate some international trade channels for its natural resources, taking into account some oil and gas licenses that could continue given the global energy needs; the support of China, Iran, Turkey, Russia, among others, also for the selling of other commodities; and waiting for the waters to calm down to again more openly invite new international investors. It’s not the first time that the cruelty of extractivism has sustained and legitimized dictatorships.
Maduro’s government has tried to recover a part of its former voters through various clientelistic mechanisms or demagogic speeches and, far from it, what we have witnessed is a sustained collapse of its support, a total debacle. It would be difficult for a scenario of rupture not to break out sooner or later, though, I repeat, we do not know when or what form that rupture would take. Another matter is the unraveling within the governmental bloc, which has also been gradual and has recently seen manifestations of public discontent such as that of Francisco Arias Cárdenas or the Minister of Culture Ernesto Villegas. Clearly, at the core of the questions that have arisen are questions about internal ruptures even in the military sector, which would indeed play a defining role in the crisis.
The outcomes will not happen by inertia alone. It will be the capabilities for mobilization that will give them shape and dynamism. It remains to be seen how social resistance will develop, how the discontent, fear and terror that people are experiencing will be channeled, whether with tendencies towards paralysis and habituation, or towards other expressions of anxiety, rage, the feeling of having no future, and a new form of weariness that mobilizes, probably in much more intense and unknown ways. Social creativity and persistence will be crucial for popular recomposition in times of iron dictatorship. The international response will be important, although varied, and it will likely be triggered depending on how the alternatives for change move internally.
Finally, the domestic economic situation will be very decisive. The so-called economic recovery is based on very weak foundations. The distribution of wealth continues to be extremely unequal. And we cannot forget that we are coming from a long economic crisis brought about by the exhaustion of the oil rentier model.
Could there be more violent confrontations? It is a possible scenario if all channels for a peaceful solution are finally closed. Although a civil war requires two armed sides, and in Venezuela that monopoly is essentially held by the national government.
Venezuelan Voices’ notes:
*The government imposed a National Constituent Assembly in 2017, after massive popular protests were crushed, with the initial stated goal of writing a new constitution but in fact it only exercised the legislative powers such as appointing a new Attorney General or enforcing new laws, while the democratically parliament was stripped of these powers and de facto annulled.
**It refers to the minimum monthly legal wage.
Translation: Steven Johnson.
Venezuelan Voices 