"You Have to Have Power In Order to Change It.” Five Hours with Chávez

[Demeter]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19760.htm


This past April 12th, some hundred intellectuals and artists met with Venezuela’s president during the international conference convened by the network of networks, “In Defense of Humanity” under the theme “Armed With Ideas.” Over five hours, during which intellectuals posed a variety of questions, Hugo Chávez, in military dress following his participation in a military parade, spoke of the coup d’etat six years prior, the situation in Colombia, in Venezuela of course, their political principles and many other subjects.

He began in an intimate tone, recalling certain unknown details from the hours between April 11 and 12, 2002, when Chávez and his government were held by putschists. Among them, the words of his then Defense Minister, José Vicente Rangel, who also accompanied him at the conference: “Tonight, here, I sacrifice myself,” “The Palace must be defended with our lives.” To which Chávez responded: “I don’t think it will end here.” “For me, if it ends here, I’ve lived a full life; I’m ready to sacrifice myself,” said the Minister. Rangel telephoned his son to say, “Pepe, I already told Anita (his wife) that if this day should come, she would end up a widow.” The Venezuelan president emphasized the dilemma that the soldiers and cadets holding them then faced: “It was one of those moments in which one had to prove whether it was worth it to live,” and the cadets refused to obey the orders of the putschists. Chávez recalled that it was then that Fidel Castro’s telephone call came through; technically unexplainable, because “the telephone lines had been telepathically cut using the latest generation U.S. technology, because an armed fleet was already in Venezuelan waters.” Communication was achieved thanks to “Cuba’s invisible satellite,” he said ironically. Fidel told him, “Chávez you are not to die today, do not sacrifice yourself.” “And so, he strengthened the idea that I came to elaborate,” added the Venezuelan president. “I saw that they had come to kill me and I remembered el Che when he told his torturers to look at him, that they were only going to kill a man. Then other soldiers came out, also in the darkness, and I told them that if they were going to kill this man, they’d have to kill us all, and in those seconds my life was decided. Meanwhile, the people came out and mobilized themselves and communicated saying ‘take care of this man, for the people are already in the street.’ Two priests were even witnesses to the fact that I had refused to sign a resignation. However, all the television stations came out with the news about the resignation document that I’d never signed. And when the people took to the streets, they broadcast animated cartoons, as though nothing was happening.”

Shortly thereafter, Chávez joined a debate held at the conference with historic overtones of Lenin’s “What is to be done?,” and which he described as “the anguish of the concrete.” To paraphrase Alí Primera: “A sun is rising; we should push the sun.” “We face a historic opportunity,” he added.

He recalled that Simón Rodríguez, Bolívar’s teacher, said that there are two types of men. Those who were always writing and those who were always fighting. If everyone belonged to the first group, there would be no trees due to all the paper they would need and if everyone belonged to the second group, there would be no steel because of all the weapons they would require. In this way he suggested the necessity of the existence of both and that each group was essential enough to make dangerous the existence of only one or the other. He also explained the development of certain meetings among rebel military officers while he was young, with the aim of regenerating and democratizing Venezuela, just as in the first years of his government: “It was an interminable and exhausting argument that never went anywhere, and it was from there that infiltrators whose objective was to block and render us useless would be talking about the sex of angels or the three feet of a cat.” Which led to the coup d’etat in April of 2002. “Every revolution needs the lash of the counter-revolution,” he went on, paraphrasing Leon Trotsky, implying that these hard moments could serve to get beyond such paralyzing debates. After the failed coup, Fidel told him, “It won’t take much for them to try again for you.” And actually, just a few months later, the petroleum strike began with the objective of toppling the government at the cost of sinking Venezuela’s economy internationally.......


About the social struggles, Chávez criticized the idea of anti-power that often predominates at the World Social Forum, in an uncited reference to Toni Negri: “When I was in prison, some told me that I shouldn’t leave, that I shouldn’t accept amnesty, that my mission was to continue as a prisoner. Their idea was that I had become mythological, and I said that I didn’t want to be a myth, that I wanted to go to the street, with the people. And later that bothered them because I presented myself as a presidential candidate, and they said no, that the choice was anti-power. You have to have power in order to change it.”

[Blue_Tires]

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