The reign of Venezuela’s president epitomises the dangers of a leader losing political respect and trust
Latin America has been a primary source of inspiration for the anti-Stalinist global left for more than half a century.
After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, many young radicals in Latin America joined guerrilla groups in mountains and jungles with the aim of repeating the success of Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. The revolution inspired global excitement. Malcolm X welcomed Castro to Harlem and the ANC had hopes of making a triumphant entry into Pretoria, just as Castro had led his soldiers into Havana.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinista movement that opposed the US-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza began as an armed struggle which sparked a popular revolt in 1978. A general strike was called and the regime fell the following year after ongoing armed conflict.
But another model for a transition to socialism emerged in Chile in 1970, when Salvador Allende, a committed socialist, built a coalition of forces that included workers, peasants and students, which allowed him to win the presidency of Chile in a democratic election.
Allende was removed from power through a US-backed coup in 1973 and Chile was led by Augusto Pinochet, a brutal outright fascist, till 1981. The democratic left had hoped that Chile would provide a new model for the left but, in a tragic turn of events, the country under the Pinochet dictatorship became the laboratory of US economists inventing what we now know as neoliberalism.
In Brazil, left opposition to the US-backed military dictatorship, which held the country in a vice-like grip from 1964 to 1985, developed new ways of thinking and organising. Liberation theology became important and when Lula da Silva, a charismatic man from a poor family, became a national figure during a strike in 1978, it became possible to build a coalition of various forces that included intellectuals, workers, peasants and the urban poor.
There was never a democratic road to real socialism but the “pink tide” that began in the late 1990s brought a number of left governments to power, most famously those led by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela from 1998, Lula in Brazil in 2003 and Evo Morales in Bolivia in 2006. All of these governments made major gains for the poor and for black and indigenous people. Millions were lifted out of poverty and land reform achieved.
A US-backed coup attempt against Chavez in 2002 failed when huge numbers of people came out of the barrios to defend him.
There was also a coup attempt in Bolivia in 2019. False claims were made of irregularities in an election and some Western governments and media declared the opposition the real winner. An extreme right-wing, white-dominated government led by Jeanine Áñez was installed but lost badly when an election was held a year later and the left returned to power, this time under Luis Arce.
In 2016, the left government in Brazil was successfully removed in a judicial coup after the local media pushed what were later shown to be bogus accusations of corruption. Lula was jailed in 2017 and spent 580 days in prison. Brazil was ruled by the extreme right-wing authoritarian populist Jair Bolsonaro for four years, after which Lula returned to power in 2023.
The left is also in power in Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Honduras but there is a hard right president in office in Argentina. After huge success in gaining national control over an extractive economy and reducing poverty, the left government in Bolivia is now in crisis for the most petty of reasons — Morales and Arce are fighting about who should be the new president.
But the integrity of the left leadership in Colombia remains highly respected, the left government in Mexico has been hugely successful and its president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is also held in high regard. Lula retains his respect in Brazil and around the world. He is, in an unofficial way, the leading left politician in the world, while the MST, the country’s landless workers’ movement, is the world’s leading social movement.
Venezuela has been ruled by Nicolás Maduro since 2013 and has descended into a state of serious crisis under his watch. Part of this is due to severe US sanctions against the country but there is also corruption and there has been an alarming turn towards authoritarianism.
One of the standard models for achieving a coup is, as in Bolivia in 2019, to falsely claim that a fair election was rigged and then declare a right-wing, US-backed opposition the real winner. This history has led some on the left to declare that a coup attempt is underway in Venezuela after Maduro claimed to have won 51% of the vote.
However this is the view of a tiny minority of the left and, generally, that part of the authoritarian left that also supports the brutal and corrupt regime in Harare on the grounds that the West opposes it. These are the sort of people that also refuse to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin because he is an enemy of the West. The vast bulk of the global left has not been out in support of Maduro.
Moreover, and this is a critical point, the left governments in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia have also not come out in support of Maduro. Instead, they are insisting that he release the full information about the vote tally from each polling station. This is a clear indication that they have grounds to think that the election was not free and fair.
Even more importantly, huge numbers of people have come out of the barrios in opposition to Maduro. He has clearly lost the support of a large part of the original base for Chavez’s left government. This is extremely significant.
It is true that the opposition to Maduro is Western backed, white led and very right wing. This does not mean that there is a coup underway though. What it means is that, like Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe and the ANC, the once inspirational left government in Venezuela has lost the confidence of many of its supporters — to the point that they are not willing to vote for it, even when the alternative is right wing.
We don’t yet have the full statistical information about the voting patterns in the election in Venezuela and so no one knows exactly what transpired. But the fact that Maduro is refusing to release it, and that the leaders of the most respected left governments in the region and many poor and working-class people in Venezuela are not supporting Maduro, does not inspire confidence in his claim of being the victim of a coup attempt.
The principled left here in South Africa needs to follow the lead of Lula and others and insist that Maduro release all the details of the recent election. At the same time, we need to acknowledge that large numbers of poor and working-class people are joining the protests against Maduro and that it seems clear that, like Zanu-PF and the ANC, Maduro has lost a significant chunk of the base that used to support Chavez due to mismanagement and corruption.
The opposition in Venezuela are right wing and they are US backed. The fact that it seems likely that many poor and working-class people would rather be ruled by the right is an indication of just how badly the left project has decayed in Venezuela — and an urgent warning to the ANC.
If the ANC does not want to find itself in a situation in which even more of its erstwhile supporters prefer to stay at home, or hold their noses and vote for one of the right-wing options in the next election, it needs to take radical and swift action against corruption and towards resolving the economic crisis faced by most South Africans.
Chavez was hugely popular among the poor and working-class in Venezuela. Now Maduro’s government is shooting at, and sometimes killing, poor and working-class people demanding that he leave office.
The ANC must be aware of how rapidly the wheel of history can turn, of how easily political respect and trust can be squandered.
Dr Imraan Buccus is a political analyst.
