Comandante: Hugo Chavez's Venezuela

by Rory Carroll

  I returned to Caracas with a suitcase of books and notepads and moved into an apartment overlooking the Ávila in time for Chávez’s triumphant reelection in December 2006. The economy was roaring, support was electric, and opposition was feeble. It was, in hindsight, his apogee. The tank commander he once was had smashed through domestic and international obstacles, consolidating power and popularity. His votes were not so much counted as weighed.

  As a newcomer to Spanish, I appreciated Chávez’s communication skills. For all his idiosyncratic, colloquial Venezuelan expressions, he spoke clearly, enunciating each word and repeating key phrases until his meaning gleamed. The catch was he never shut up. Turn on the TV or radio at any time and there, invariably, he was. Talking about anything. The price of milk, aluminum production, George Bush, baseball, his granddaughter. In bars, offices, and hotels but mainly at home, I would plant myself in front of the screen. It felt counterintuitive, shameful, to be so sedentary. Revolution in a strange land, and me with my feet up. Elsewhere the rule had been to get out and hunt stories. Here too, but only after watching Chávez. After trips overseas or to the Amazon, I would return to Caracas and anxiously phone colleagues. “What did I miss?” It was worse for agency reporters compelled to stay in their offices every day and watch every minute, a cumulatively cloying, claustrophobic ordeal that drove many to quit. A young English colleague fled, vowing to move to Iran’s Zagros Mountains to write a novel.

  It was easy taking the political temperature. Chávez was everywhere. Over a breakfast of mango, arepa (a type of corn-bread sandwich), and coffee, I would read the local papers—polarized partisans that either demonized or praised the comandante—and throughout the day hear opinions about him on the metro, at street stalls, in offices. Perched on the back of a motorbike taxi weaving along motorways at breakneck speed, I would listen to its owner defend or attack the president, yelling his opinion over the roar of traffic. “¡Así es, mi amigo!” That’s how it is, my friend!

  —

  Every government leader uses the media to justify and persuade, project and burnish, but none like Chávez. He was on television almost every day for hours at a time, invariably live, with no script or teleprompter, mulling, musing, deciding, ordering. His word was de facto law, and he specialized in unpredictable announcements: nationalizations, referenda, troop mobilizations, cabinet shuffles. You watched not just for news value. The man was a consummate performer. He would sing, dance, rap; ride a horse, a tank, a bicycle; aim a rifle, cradle a child, scowl, blow kisses; act the fool, the statesman, the patriarch. There was a freewheeling, improvised air to it all. Suspense came from not knowing what would happen.

  State television, which under Chávez multiplied from one to eight channels, showed him continuously. On occasion it was just his voice when he phoned chat shows other than his own to chime in on whatever debate was under way. Under exceptional circumstances the executive was allowed to interrupt programming of all channels, state and private, to make live presidential broadcasts. Such broadcasts were called cadenas, chains. Predecessors had used this sparingly, for emergencies or major events, but Chávez used it every few days. There would be no warning. Soap operas, films, and baseball games would dissolve and be replaced by the familiar face seated behind a desk or maybe the wheel of a tractor. If you were listening to radio, the music would suddenly stop. “Good afternoon, compatriots. There is something important I want to share . . .” It could last minutes or hours. Sometimes Chávez wouldn’t be talking, merely attending a ceremony. If you missed the beginning of such a cadena and tuned in to the radio, you would hear maybe a brass band, or marching feet, or applause, and be left wondering what the event was. One time Chávez decided to personally operate a machine on the Caracas-to-Charallave rail tunnel. A television and radio announcer improvised commentary for the first few minutes but gradually ran out of things to say as the president continued drilling, drilling, drilling. Radio listeners, blind to Chávez pounding away, were baffled and then alarmed by the mechanical roar monopolizing the airwaves. Some thought it signaled a coup.

  Rhonny Zamora, a producer of the marathon Sunday show, said Chávez directed himself and chose locations, themes, camera angles, guests. “It’s wild, untamable, very complex. We tried to give it a fixed time, keep it down to two or three hours, but that was impossible. The president decides everything; it’s his show. It was called Hello, President because people would call in, but it became like the lottery, everyone looking to get a job, a house, something. That’s no way to run a country. Now it’s pretty much just him talking. The team runs on adrenaline and anxiety. The president can ask for anything at any moment. Ministers come prepped on the day’s themes, but the president is magnificent at knocking them off balance, throwing out something they’re not ready for. Does it reflect reality? The question, my friend, is what is reality? You can present reality whatever way you want, beautiful, ugly, happy, sad.”

  Hello, President had a fixed starting time, but since most of Chávez’s television appearances came without warning, it was best to leave the television perpetually on and on channel 8, the main state network, Venezolana de Televisión. From morning to night it would flicker in the corner, mute, half ignored, until the comandante surfaced. Then grab the control, click volume, tune in. “Good morning, citizens, I greet you from Miraflores Palace on this beautiful day.” There was no knowing when it would end. On days off you could leave your apartment, take the metro across town, pay utility bills, meet a friend for coffee, buy groceries, pick up laundry, come home, and find him still talking. Watching required patience and a sixth sense. You would pay close attention at the beginning to note the location and apparent theme—agriculture, a new social program, the armed forces, U.S. relations—and then gradually undertake another task, reading, writing, ironing, while keeping an ear and an eye on the president. Over the years an internal antenna developed that detected subtle changes in tone and expression, a dropping of the voice, a twitch, which signaled something important requiring full attention.

  Television was just one dimension, a controlled, electronic stage that concealed as well as revealed. What was happening in the wings, behind the cameras? Here there was darkness because when the comandante was not performing, the lights went out, the show stopped, draping a great virtual curtain across government. Chávez abolished individual ministry press offices and centralized all news through the Ministry of Communication and Information, known as MinCI, a few blocks from the palace. Its young employees, friendly, charming, casually dressed in jeans and T-shirts, would issue press credentials and ply visitors with state publications (Thoughts of President Chávez, volumes 1 to 4) but could never arrange interviews, because officials and ministers were not authorized to speak. Not even the succession of information ministers. They dodged interviews and phone calls and appeared in public only as silent, nodding assistants to the president. Venezuelans were by nature garrulous and effusive, but it was as if a cord had been pulled, silencing officialdom.

  This reserve applied only to ministers and courtiers. Those outside the golden circle, the revolution’s lower ranks and the opposition, compensated for irrelevance by shouting. They started soon after Chávez took office and were still at it a decade later, a relentless cacophony in print and on airwaves. One side—political parties, private media, business owners, the middle class—shrieking apocalypse, ruin, tyranny. The other—ruling party members, militias, the slums—ululating for the president and hailing progress, development, modernity. It was as if they inhabited different planets. They couldn’t both be right, and maybe both were wrong. If one wanted to understand the revolution and make sense of García Márquez’s prophecy, the trick was to skirt the shouters and do three things: follow the president on television, seek out the courtiers and functionaries who hovered behind him, and tramp through farms, factories, villages, and cities to see firsthand what the revolution had wrought.

  —

  Sublime, unexpected moments lit
up the screen and showed why the comandante remained popular even after a decade in power. Having dispatched the mayor to draft expropriation documents—“no time to lose, Jorge”—Chávez sat at a large desk in the center of the square, facing rows of cameras and seated officials. As usual, he talked torrents, one idea following another in a twisting, looping narrative: lauding newly established communal councils as instruments of direct democracy; a theological discourse on the revolution’s holy trinity of Christ, Bolívar, and Karl Marx; a folk song; a family anecdote; a solution to Venezuela’s electricity crisis; denunciation of U.S. perfidy; a joke about a Spanish barber; a greeting to his mentor Fidel Castro. “Hey, Fidel! How are you?” This said in English with a thick accent. Most Venezuelans could not speak English, and the comandante always exaggerated and reveled in his bad pronunciation—khellow! khow are yoo?—signaling that the gringo tongue, the language of superpower, was nothing to be feared.

  By now it was 2:00 p.m., and he had been talking without pause for three hours, a seamless narrative flow punctuated with little, gleeful prods to the mayor, who was occasionally summoned to the desk for updates on the expropriation.

  “Is the expropriation decree signed yet?”

  Rodríguez, looking anxious: “We are preparing it, President.”

  Chávez, with a hint of impatience: “You are preparing it.”

  As a posh, unpopular figure with the revolution’s more humble sectors, the mayor made a good fall guy.

  Then, polished as a network anchor, the comandante switched gears. “Let’s now go to the satellite.” The monitor cut to a gathering of about two hundred people in red baseball caps amid plowed fields just outside Caracas. The camera panned over a tractor, tools, seeds, baskets of vegetables, and newly built houses. A spokesman explained that these 3,400 acres originally belonged to Bolívar and had been neglected by subsequent owners. Now thirty-two communal councils comprising fifty-nine hundred families were making them fertile.

  Chávez: “Long live the communes! This is creation, heroic creation.”

  All this was standard fare for Hello, President. Last week happy factory workers, this week happy peasants. But Chávez almost always found a way to cut through the staging and show something real, which in this case turned out to be an elderly woman lurking behind the spokesman. A weathered grandmother, decades of poverty and manual labor etched on her face, who was clearly nervous with the attention.

  “Good afternoon, my comandante.” The voice quavered, and she looked anxiously at the microphone. Back in Plaza Bolívar, his face beamed on a monitor, Chávez smiled and nodded encouragingly. She continued. “My name is Laura Thais Rojas, and I belong to the Brisas del Paraíso commune. Excuse me, I’m suffering stage fright.” The voice quavered again. From her accent and age, she had probably left school very young and barely literate. Chávez nodded, signaling, willing her to go on. She gathered confidence. “But I’m going to speak with you.”

  And she did, leading the camera to a little house and vegetable patch. “This is where I’ve grown lettuce, tomato, radish, what else . . . cucumber, carrot, beetroot. The harvest has been good.”

  Chávez grinned: “Let’s give applause to Laura.” Everybody clapped. “She said she had stage fright but explained everything perfectly well. Laura, you spoke very well, do you know that?” She smiled shyly. “Yes, you told us about the lettuce, tomato, radish, cucumber, carrot, beetroot. So, Laura, you have that garden. How many meters is it? Tell me.”

  “Well, my comandante, it’s four flower beds, each six meters long, one meter wide. I also cultivate earthworms and spread them around the soil. I don’t have many, but they do the trick. Go ahead, Comandante.”

  “I bet the worms do do the trick, Laura. What a thing, natural fertilizer, nothing chemical or polluting. We have to make use of all these resources, all this technology in the hands of the people. How many people work in that garden with you?”

  Laura, the voice now firm: “My son, my grandson, my daughter, my husband. We work together. Before we were living on waste ground. Here I feel happy because I have a vegetable garden and I’m proud of it.”

  “Proud of your garden and we are proud of you, Laura. Tell me something, what type of support have you received? Tell me a little about that.”

  “Well, Comandante, apart from the land, we received a spade, a weeding hoe, a water tank, a hose, seeds. Technical advisers have been with us constantly, the Cuban teachers Sonia and Arbello.”

  Chávez grinned and clapped his hands: “Look how you explained everything so well. And you who said you had stage fright!” The audience applauded long and loud, and the camera zoomed in on the old woman’s face. Laura seemed fit to explode with happiness. This was the moment. There was nothing staged about the shine in her eyes, the joy creasing her cheeks. A long, humble life of scratching subsistence from baked earth, a life anonymous like those of her ancestors, had just been sprinkled with magic. A president asked her name, about her family, about her garden. A camera recorded her words, and a satellite in space delivered them to the nation.

  Most Venezuelans lived in towns and cities but had nostalgia for rural relatives and land abandoned in migrations to hillside slums. Laura could have been anyone’s grandmother, and her surge of pride and dignity melted hearts.

  The broadcast continued. An eclectic monologue about Native Americans being naturally socialist, a lament about Chávez’s baseball team, Magallanes, losing to Caracas, a warning about profiteering capitalists, a recommendation to read Lenin. Soon after church bells tolled 3:00 p.m., the mayor, face shining with relief, returned to the comandante’s side. “Mr. President, I have just signed the Request for a Declaration of Public Utility for the four buildings on the four corners of Plaza Bolívar. Tomorrow they will be officially declared public utilities, President.”

  Chávez examined the document. “Correct!”

  Another satellite linkup, this time to the state of Barinas, where the comandante’s brother Adán, the governor, toured a plantain processing factory. The comandante, following from his desk, asked a worker to peel a plantain. “Look at that, tremendous. Let’s cook some tostones!” His home state, he said, would be transformed by motorways, railways, quarries, dredged rivers. A little boy appeared by his desk. “Hey, hey, the gallito is here! Gallitooo!” A nickname for his grandson. They cuddled. “Are you well? Look at Bolívar. See Bolívar. Say hello to everyone. How do you greet soldiers?” The boy saluted. “That’s it. This is a soldier.” The audience applauded. “You sing about Bolívar. How does it go?” Together comandante and grandson sang ballads, then the national anthem. A final satellite linkup to Haiti, where Venezuelan and Cuban doctors ran a camp for earthquake survivors.

  Two final announcements: a canal to link the Orinoco to the Caribbean, an ancient dream, would become reality thanks to a deal with Argentina. And China and Russia had just pledged billions to modernize the creaking electric grid. Every home would have power. Music wrapped up the show. Hip-hop artists performed a rap about resistance. The comandante jived, waving a red handkerchief. “Bravo, bravo, bravo!” Then a folk group with a harp rhapsodized about Venezuela’s plains. The comandante sang the last verse. The closing image, as credits rolled, was joyful. Morning heat had turned to evening cool, shadows stretching, everybody singing, dancing, laughing. A few blocks away the Ministry of Communication and Information’s young, diligent officials stayed till midnight typing up the show’s transcript. It ran to eighty-nine pages, about average. Some shows filled more than a hundred.

  2

  INSIDE MIRAFLORES

  It was the comandante’s custom to rise late. The well-known fact he worked late, until three or four in the morning, gave rise to the legend he slept just two or three hours a night. In fact he tended to surface between eight and nine in the morning. Though impatient to start work, he took care over personal hygiene and grooming, important rituals. A vigorous shower—he timed himself to keep it under three minutes—followed by fastidio
us shaving, nail clipping, and combing of his cropped, frizzy hair. Body odor repelled him, so he used lotions and deodorant to combat the tropical heat, prompting aides to privately wonder how the comandante spent so many happy years soldiering amid sweat, dirt, and grease.

  Soon after the February 1999 inauguration he acquired the habit of spending nights in Miraflores Palace rather than cross the city to La Casona, the presidential residence, where his wife, Marisabel, and children lived behind high white walls. It was practical since he had no desire to wake up his family, nor half the city, with a predawn convoy of armor-plated vehicles. Also, he had spent most of his adult life in barracks and liked the order of having work and private life in the same place. And of course the palace, the same palace his soldiers had stormed during the coup attempt seven years earlier, symbolized the power he had so long strived for.

  His quarters were austere, almost monastic in their denial of adornment, with a small, well-ordered bookcase with tracts on history, politics, philosophy, and literature. Some, such as Bolívar’s writings, would inhabit these shelves for many years. Others were fleeting guests, lodging just a few days or weeks before making way for new arrivals. Upon Chávez’s emerging from this chamber, a waiter in a white jacket immediately served sweet black coffee in a small porcelain cup. The comandante would carry this down to the sala situacional, the situation room, an underground den accessed with infrared swipe cards. Inside about two dozen civilians and military officers huddled over computers, reports, and newspapers, muttered into phones, wrote on boards, and pinned notes to walls covered with maps and charts. This was the nerve center of the palace, the president’s eyes and ears. The first briefing began with a media digest, including the regional papers outside Caracas and who said what on the early morning talk shows. Then a sketch of international events and the day’s agenda of government and party business. In contrast to his bombastic public persona, the president would be reserved and listen attentively.