Losing the Fight in Venezuela
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“I’m scared, I’m very scared; I have three kids.” (Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 2005)
These are the words of Maria Corina Machado, the leader of Venezuela’s fight to save its democracy, on the prospect of spending up to 28 years in prison if President Hugo Chávez silences her through a phony trial.
Born into a wealthy Caracas family, Machado studied engineering at Catholic University in Caracas and earned a graduate degree from the Venezuelan business school IESA. After graduating, she worked for an auto parts manufacturer in Valencia, Venezuela, leaving that job in 1992 to create a foundation to care for Venezuelan street children.
Miss Machado had never been involved in politics until 2002, when she “decided to drop everything else” after a friend invited her to create a pro-democracy group. Here’s the situation which prompted her to do that.
Venezuela ’s current president, Hugo Chávez, was voted into office in 1998. Six years earlier, he’d led a failed military coup. He learned. This time around, Chávez used an ancient tactic: he blamed the rich for the troubles of the poor. Class warfare got him into office, and gave him the chance to make his dictatorship permanent by crushing democracy. Like so many dictators before him, Chávez carved away Venezuela’s freedom piece by piece: creating a “constituent assembly” dominated by his supporters, which voted to curtail the constitutional powers of Congress and the Judiciary; using the new assembly to write a new constitution advantageous to Chávez (dedicated, in the preamble, to counteracting “fetishist free-market discourse”); and removing hundreds of judges, accusing them of being “corrupt” or “abusive”. In 2000, Chávez won another election making him president until 2006.
For two days in April 2002, Chávez was briefly overthrown by a popular coup backed by labor, business, the Catholic Church, the media, and parts of the armed forces, but was quickly reinstalled by the Venezuelan paratroopers (his initial power base), and the presidential guard. In August 2003, the chavista government created a National Electoral Council stacked with government supporters (bypassing the constitutionally required congressional selection).
Maria Machado stepped into politics just at the time when Chávez’ methodical destruction of democracy was becoming perfectly clear. She helped to create Súmate, an organization explicitly dedicated to standing up to Chávez’ attack. Súmate’s goal was to force a recall referendum on the presidency by gathering 2.5 million signatures on a referendum petition. The Chávez government fought Súmate with every tool available to it, stopping just short of outright abolition. Those tools included intimidation, terror, physical violence, the use of corrupt judicial decisions, stifling the free press, and many other methods. In this process, Chávez created a bunch of new “laws” which essentially prohibited the basic individual freedoms which allow democracy to work. Amazingly, despite these odds, Súmate forced the recall referendum only to be defeated by what most fair observers call a blatant falsification of the results by the Chávez government. (Jimmy Carter, however, thought the election perfectly fair.)
Now, it was time for Chávez to take revenge. He accused Maria Machado of “treason to the nation” by allegedly endorsing the April 2002 coup and conspiracy charges for Sumate’s acceptance of $53,000 from the U.S. (congressionally-funded) National Endowment for Democracy.
Maria Machado has a perfect right to be afraid. Chávez either owns the judges or has terrified into silence anyone who might help her. This is not likely to be a story with a happy ending. President Bush made a gesture of support by meeting publicy with Maria Machado in May 2005, but Chávez’ power has grown so strong that he fears no condemnation from the U.S. or any other source.
It’s very hard for us, sitting comfortably so far away, to understand the fear and hopelessness which must be part of every living day for Maria Machado. Unfortunately, those who stand up for liberty do indeed risk everything, and they sometimes lose. The story of Venezuela truly should tell us what happens to a democracy which just doesn’t have enough Maria Machados.
