INTERNATIENAL
MARXISTREVIEW
April 27, 1992 and Action for Human Rights (PROVEA) records 135 people killed by the security forces and dozens of disappearances after the caracazo. It also reports that the armed forces have carried out simulated "counter-insurgency" exercises in various parts of the country (there has been no guerilla movement in Venezuela
13
Spring 1992
VENEZUELA
£2.50S5 since the 1960s).
From the time of the suppression of the guerilla movement to the caracazo, social conflicts were few and far between. Now, however, there intense social agitation in the towns. The SIC review, which is connected to Christian groups, recently claimed that the police should be coun ted among the organized criminal classes, systematically collecting bribes to improve their meagre salaries. According to this magazine "the evil is so deep in the system that it will need the sacrifice of an entire generation - as in Colombia — to even reach the beginning of a
THE SPRING 1992 issue of International Marxist Review focuses on the developments in the post-capitalist countries: • Post-perestroika in the exUSSR: revolution from above or below? • Interview with woman activist in Russia • New wave of nationalism in Eastern Europe • China since Tiananmen • Working-class consciousness solution".
ifter perestrolka → what next: in Poland
Perez denies corruption
No sooner had the putsch been defeated than
Carlos Andres Perez flaunted all his cynicism.
URSS, Poland, China,
Yugoslavia
• A balance sheet of Yugoslavia
Plus Fourth International resolution on Soviet Union
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After denying the existence of any "sickness in civil society" he stated "there is no corruption in
USA & elsewhere (airmail) $20; all countries (surface)
my government". He also declared that he
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Please make cheques payable to PEC. Bank transfers to PEC, BNP would pursue his economic policy, which, he
Robespierre Acct 120179/90. Postal transfers to PEC CCP no 2 322 42 claimed, was beginning to bear fruit. In Caracas and other towns, the mood of the people found
T Paris. Please mark clearly "IMR".
its expression on the walls: "CAP: crook and
For subscriptions and single copies please write to:
oppressor"; "CAP, you will go to the stake".
IMR, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France.
The man they call CAP
WITH his characteristic self-importance, Carlos Andres Perez, known as CAP, said in December 1991 that a coup d'etat was impossible in Venezuela. Two months later the tanks were in the street.
CAP had clearly not been paying attention to the army brass' talk about a great national crusade against corruption.
For the past 40 years CAP has carved out his career in the framework of the Democratic Action (AD) party. He started out as personal secretary to president Romulo Betancourt. In the 1960s, he drew attention at the head of the interior ministry, where he applied a version of the "dirty war" against Douglas Bravo's Venezuelan guerillas. In his 1974 presidential campaign he put himself forward as the candidate of the multinationals to put into action an "energetic democracy", as his electoral slogan put it. He achieved the feat of wasting the oil income without any benefit for the state or leaving any works that might remain as witnesses of those happy years.
The Third Worldist rhetoric of this darling of the Socialist International is known world-wide. In flight from his domestic failures, CAP sought refuge in international forums, where he strove to forge a nationalist image, lambasting the multinationals and talking about the development of the poor countries. In fact however he has obediently followed IMF and US orders.
His whole personality was summed up at the ceremony which took place when he assumed the presidential office for the second time in 1989. For his coronation, CAP brought together dozens of top flight politicians ranging from US Vice President Dan Quayle, his close friend Spanish president Felipe Gonzalez to Cuba's Fidel Castro and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. Meanwhile in the corridors he was busy negotiating an agreement with the IMF, with the consequences described elsewhere. *
Here the army mutineers were applauded as heroes.
However it is clear that the turmoil is only beginning. On November 7, 1991 there was an Impressive general strike throughout the country called by the various union confederations. The authorities replied with dozens of killings and arrests. There were violent clashes and buses were burnt. The Perez' government's hard line neo-liberalism has weakened the traditional role of the Venezuelan state. Fewer and fewer people continue to believe that the institutions can be the mediators of conflict. The different social classes are arming themselves to defend their interests. * 1. Carlos Andres Perez was re-elected president at the head of the Democratic Action (AD) party with 54.5% of the vote on December 4, 1988. He had previously been president from 1974 to 1979. He has for a long time been the most prominent Social Democratic leader in Latin America, involved in various diplomatic initiatives relating to the Central American conflict. 2. The poor of Caracas are confined to the slopes on the sides of the motorways which surround the capital. From these shanty towns the whole city can be seen; as a result their people can easily control the means of communication and encircle the middle class neighbourhoods. 3. See Alai, no. 142. 4. Since 1989 there have been several mini-caracazos in some up country towns and villages such as Merida. 5. Owing to the economic crisis, many armed gangs of youth have been formed in some neighbourhoods, 27 involved in robberies and drug trafficking.
From the Fujishock to the Fujicoup
International Viewpoint # 227• April 27, 1992
PERU traffic. The first decree put out by the so-called "emergency government of national reconstruction", nominated after the coup, grotesquely claims that its objectives are to "punish drastically all cases of immorality and of corruption in public administration"
The power granted to the military - in
"WE are already seeing the first fruits of the government formed by such men. The country has regressed to governmental individualism. The authority of the Congress has been subordinated to the whims of the President of the
Republic. A little bureaucratic organism has been created to fabricate representatives. The most tranquil and most effective of electoral coups realized in the Republic has been accomplished".1
This phrase of the historic founder of Peruvian Marxism
José Carlos Mariàtegui aptly sums up the coup d'état carried out on April 6, 1992 by the Peruvian President
Alberto Fujimori and the high command of the armed
ALFONSO MORO
H
ISTORY has unveidual who, after having promised democracy and growth, now seeks the support of jackboots and rifles to implement an economic programme of unrestrained capitalism and a political programme of outright authorita-
Twenty months after his accession to government, Fujimori has not succeeded in overcoming the power vacuum affecting all the economic, political and social structures of the country, which has existed for several years now. The aggravation of the crisis is demonstrated by, amongst other things, the incessant procession of prime ministers and the extension of the internal war against the Sendero Luminoso guerillas.
For the single year of 1991, there were more than 3,000 civilian deaths.
The country's lack of stability is a big problem for the government's neo-liberal economic programme which involves trying to attract foreign investment at all costs by the sale of the nation's wealth and cut-price labour.
All this has led to a collapse of the structure of the Peruvian state and stripped all popular legitimacy from the president: this is the tendency which the coup is intended to reverse
When he came to power in July 1990,
Fujimori adopted a programme of economic adjustment of a rigor unprecedented in
28 Latin America, with bitter resuls: the economy is still plunged in the morass of recession without any short term perspective of escape, while millions of Peruvians are in the street after losing their jobs and without any aid or benefits from the state. More than half of the industrial establishments are informal; the informal sector represented 46% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in The social costs of this policy are reflected both by the millions of workers forced to survive in the informal sector who daily flood the streets of Peru, as by the uncontrollable spread of cholera and the generalization of violence throughout the country. On the other hand, the government has, after endless bargaining, obtained some concessions from the international banks and other creditors on its debt servicing payments.
Build-up of militarization
This economic policy is carried out in the shadow of the military and the presidential decrees, which are far removed from the official speeches about democratic aspirations or modernizing political life.
Before the April coup, 40% of Peruvian territory was already under military control or administration. The armed forces bear the principal responsibility for the infernal cycle of human rights violations from which the population suffers: they are also responsible for assuring the flow and the networks of a substantial part of the drugs exchange for which the latter allow Fujimori to remain in government — is not translated by any greater efficiency in the struggle against the Sendero Luminoso or the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement armed groups. In practice, Sendero has extended its influence to the town of Lima itself, thus attaining what might be called a "strategic equilibrium", shold of what is characterized as the "strategic offensive for the taking of power"
On the other hand, the demoralization of the police and the military is increasing between October 1991 and March 1992 more than 2,500 police have deserted.
Aim is to destroy all opposition