Venezuela

EVERYTHING in Venezuela right now stands under the sign of the presidential and congressional elections slated for the end of 1963. Like all the other Latin-American countries, Venezuela is much more highly politicized than the AngloSaxon or Continental European nations. This is not so much the product of the Latin temperament — Venezuela’s nearly 8 million people have a substantial amount of Negro blood among them — as of the fact that governments in Latin America are relatively much more powerful than they are in the United States and Europe. Therefore, the business of government is more important to the people, and the prizes of politics are larger than they are in developed countries.

Of course, there is a possibility that the elections will not be held at all. The Communist-dominated FALN terrorist organization, whose members stole paintings in Caracas and pirated the Venezuelan ship Anzoátegui, is doing its best to create such chaos that voting will become impossible. The members of the FALN raid government offices daily, rob and assault private citizens, leave scare bombs in hotels, and harass the countryside.

While there can be no question about the cold cynicism with which the Communists direct the FALN, it is also a fact that many of the young men in it are genuine, if misguided, idealists, and some of them, operating in the Andean regions of Venezuela, have gained the reputation of being Robin Hoods. The young idealists of the FALN feel that their terrorism serves to highlight the stark contrast between rich and poor in Venezuela and that it expresses the discontent of the urban and rural masses with the squalor of their existence, The naive members of the FALN think that problems of economics, politics, and social organization can be resolved overnight if the right principles and the right people prevail.

The extremists of the left and the right

The Communist manipulators of the FALN naturally have quite different aims in mind as they use the arms and funds that they receive via Cuba and as they exploit the idealists. It is not unlikely that they hope to provoke an army coup, staged with the avowed purpose of restoring law and order. An army coup would serve Communist purposes well. Either the military men who made it would turn out to be so repressive that they would provoke much wider popular resistance than the FALN is able to organize, or the military men, in order to stay in power, would swing the country very sharply and quickly to the far left. Either outcome of a coup would help the Communists take over at a later stage.

As usual, the Communists have the sympathy of the far right insofar as their opposition to the constitutional Betancourt government is concerned. The extreme conservatives in Venezuela are not numerous. Indeed, one very shrewd American political observer has said that he found the Venezuelan business community as a whole more progressive than many contributors to the Democratic Party in the United States.

The far right in Venezuela cannot forgive President Betancourt the fact that he was a Marxist long ago and cannot bring itself to believe that he has broken with Communism. The thesis of the far right is that Betancourt wants to attain complete state socialism but that he chooses to pursue his goal by more gradual means than the Communists would like; and the rightists are fond of quoting Betancourt s remark to Dominico Alberto Rangel, the left leader of the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria),which split off from Betancourt’s AD (Acción Democrática), “We want the same thing that you do.”

Rightists cannot appreciate the political-tactical context of Betancourt’s statement, when he was desperately trying to avoid the left-wing MIR break from the AD, nor can they appreciate the pressures that Betancourt is under to bring progress to the Venezuelan people. Rightists, like the Communists, would like an army coup, but the far right does not understand that an army coup would be much more damaging to conservative interests than to Communist ones.

If elections are held as scheduled, this achievement of constitutionalism and orderly succession will be important to Venezuela. The country is sufficiently disorganized that such normal succession will not necessarily bind it, but the precedent will be useful in establishing th idea that a governmental transition ought to be made democratically and peaceably.

There will probably be three candidates, one from the coalition of the Acción Democrátia and the Social Christian Party, COPEI; another from the democratic opposition, which consists of a non-Communist group that split off from AD and the URD (Unión Rcpublicana Democrática). a polyglot outfit of independents; and a third from the Communist-front MIR.

The independents organize

A very interesting new factor on the Venezuelan political scene is the recently created Asociación Venczolana Independicnte. AVI is composed of the Venezuelan wellto-do, from the self-made Eugenio Mendoza, the richest man in Venezuela, on down through many businessmen of lesser wealth but greater family tradition. AVI is not a political party but hopes to influence the elections in several ways. It would like to impose its candidate on the AD-COPEl coalition or, failing that, at least persuade the coalition to put up a man acceptable to AVI.

AVI is also talking with the democratic opposition parties to get them to nominate a candidate to its liking. Under the best of circumstances, AVI would like to be able to say to the Venezuelan public, in effect: “ Thanks to our pressure, you have two good democratic candidates to choose from. Vote as you please, as long as you don’t vote for the Communists.”But in all probability. AVI will have to decide whether to go along with the government coalition or with the opposition.

The extent to which AVI will have real influence remains to be measured. There is at the present very little money in the AVI treasury, and without money to contribute to the political parties, AVI is not going to be very effective.

Just as important as money will be the size of the following that AVI can attract. AVI is trying to mobilize the independent vote by a series of meetings throughout Venezuela. If AVI can rally votes, that will give it much more leverage with the political parties than the social status of its members does. When they let their hair down with AVI members, the working politicians of Venezuela always come back to the same question: “How many votes can you people produce? That is all we are interested in.”

The nation builders

As important as the end-of-theyear elections are, they are not everything to Venezuela. The most important things, as in every underdeveloped country, are the jobs of improving the lot of the people and of nation building. Perhaps the most interesting and exciting development is IVAC (Institute Venezolano de Accion Comunitaria). IVAC is a development foundation, conceived by the Venezuelan business community and handsomely financed by both foreign and national private enterprise. Before 1963 is out. IAC will have trained some 1500 village leaders, both men and women, in seven-week courses where they learn handicrafts, public speaking, and civic organization.

The graduates of the IVAC courses return to their villages and organize the people for do-it-yourself projects in the construction ol housing, aqueducts, roads, schools, and community centers. More important, the IVAC trainees give their fellow villagers a sense of civic consciousness and civic pride, so that they all feel that democratic selfhelp and self-determination are the way to progress, rather than extremist solutions.

IVAC’s village leaders are not left solely to their own devices. In each state capital there exists a volunteer team of engineers, doctors, dentists, electricians, and the like. Once a village has made its improvement plans, it can call on the specialist team for expert technical assistance. This process brings not only material benefits to the villages, but it also closes the social gap between country and city and between rich and poor. As time goes on IVAC should become one of the most significant factors which contribute to domestic tranquillity in Venezuela.

IVAC is but one example of the increasing enlightenment and progressiveness of Venezuela’s business leaders. Early this year, a hundred Venezuelan executives and foreign businessmen with interests in Venezuela met for four days in Maraeay to discuss the expansion of private and corporate philanthropy. The habit of giving for civic purposes is not nearly so well developed in Venezuela and the other LatinAmerican countries as it is in the United States. From the Maracay meeting and subsequent discussions there is expected to emerge an understanding among Venezuelan businessmen that, say, one percent of their corporate profits will henceforth be regularly earmarked for things like IVAC, private education, and public health.

A substantial amount of private money is already flowing into education at all levels, from the elementary schools of the Fe y Alegría (Faith and Happiness) organization to the Catholic University Andres Bello in Caracas. This private education is essential because the public school system is so heavily Marxist-infiltrated. A decade or so ago, the Communists captured the nation’s principal teacher-training institute, and as a result thousands of schoolteachers dispense Marxism with the three R’s.

The Betancourt government has made a valiant effort to reduce the infiltration of the school system, but this is not the sort of thing that can be corrected overnight. Meanwhile, the private educational system serves to protect the young from insidious indoctrination.

Students in turmoil

The blackest spot on Venezuela’s educational record is the Central University in Caracas, at which more than 15,000 students are enrolled. An aggressive Communist minority, both on the faculty and in the student body, keeps the university in constant political turmoil. The Communist students have arms in their dormitories, and when the mood strikes them they fire into the streets around the school.

At other times the Communists stage such wild demonstrations that classes have to be suspended for weeks at a time. Furthermore, student agitators refuse to do assigned reading and insist that examination questions must cover only what is contained in the classroom lectures. These various unsavory practices keep the intellectual level of the university down to the point where disciplined Marxist teaching provides the only body of coherent doctrine that many students ever experience. But even the Marxism at Central University is third-rate, since there is not one really competent Communist intellectual teaching there.

The university enjoys autonomy, which is to say that its grounds are off limits for the police and the military. However, the Betancourt government is taking cautious steps to abridge an autonomy that is both destructive for the university and for the peace of Caracas. The nonCommunist students and teachers are also becoming impatient with the constant disruption of academic life.

Despite all the political turbulence, Venezuela is making progress. In the countryside, a constructive agrarian reform program is creating thousands of new landed proprietors. The agrarian reform is based on solid sociological and economic studies rather than on political expediency, and the program is sufficiently well financed so that the new landowners receive the tools, seed, stock, and operating credit that they need.

In the cities, industrialization is proceeding apace, and the town of Valencia is booming with new plants and investments. Oil, the greatest source of Venezuela’s wealth, continues to flow in abundance and to finance the bulk of the government’s programs, and a new iron and steel industry is springing up. An orderly political transition through elections will do a lot to consolidate the progress that Venezuela has shown and to provide the framework for more progress in the years ahead.