{"id":6295,"date":"2017-08-16T08:20:05","date_gmt":"2017-08-16T12:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=6295"},"modified":"2017-08-16T08:20:05","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T12:20:05","slug":"venezuelas-long-history-of-racism-is-coming-back-to-haunt-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=6295","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela\u2019s Long History of Racism Is Coming Back to Haunt It"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
A young supporter of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez wears a headband that reads “Commander Hugo Chavez, President” while standing at a square in San Salvador March 5, 2013. REUTERS\/Ulises Rodriguez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the last four months, hardly a day has gone by without news coverage of the political and economic crisis in Venezuela<\/a>. At least 124 people have been killed<\/a>, some by security forces, while participating in or accidentally encountering opposition-led street demonstrations.<\/p>\n

The mainstream media narrative is of an increasingly authoritarian government repressing a series of popular uprisings in a desperate bid to hold onto power. Political leaders in the UK<\/a>, the US<\/a> and other countries<\/a> warn that President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro is turning into a dictator.<\/p>\n

But little has been said about the reported 49%<\/a> to 80%<\/a> of Venezuelans, both pro- and anti-Maduro, who are \u201cin disagreement\u201d with the radical opposition\u2019s use of violence as a political tool. Not all who oppose Maduro support the radical opposition or want them in power.<\/p>\n

While acknowledging that Venezuela\u2019s political unrest \u201cremains mostly confined to middle-class enclaves\u201d, the authors of an article published in the Wall Street Journal<\/a> suggested that many \u201cpoor Venezuelans\u201d are just \u201ctoo hungry\u201d to march. But rejection of the radical opposition goes far deeper than this. It is rooted in profound historical concerns, not just political and economic, but also racial and cultural.<\/p>\n

The ugly truth<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before Hugo Ch\u00e1vez was elected in 1998, Venezuela attracted little international attention. It was seen as exceptionally stable<\/a> by Latin American standards, and was best known for its beauty queens<\/a> and its oil<\/a>. Those national icons represent the racial and cultural politics that are driving today\u2019s unrest.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the beauty queens. While a majority of Venezuelans identify as black, indigenous or mestizo (mixed-race), the country\u2019s beauty queens invariably conform to white beauty ideals<\/a>. The organiser of the country\u2019s most important beauty pageant has stated that black women are not pretty<\/a> because their noses are \u201ctoo wide\u201d and their lips \u201ctoo thick\u201d. Afro hair is commonly referred to as pelo malo<\/a> \u2013 \u201cbad hair\u201d.<\/p>\n

These aesthetic values have political, cultural and economic counterparts. In the mid-19th century, several Latin American governments implemented \u201cwhitening\u201d policies along the ideological lines laid out in books such as Facundo: Civilisation and Barbarism<\/a>. Large scale European migration was promoted<\/a> for the \u201cimprovement\u201d of \u201cthe race\u201d. In Venezuela, these policies continued until the 1940s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This belief in the natural superiority of Europeans was also evident in the economically crucial, foreign-owned oil sector. Professionals and middle managers were white Venezuelans, but labourers were recruited from black and mixed-race sectors<\/a>. By the time oil was nationalised in 1976, the Venezuelan middle class it helped to create had come to identify<\/a> with US-style political, cultural and consumer patterns. For these Venezuelans, dubbed \u201cmiameros\u201d because of their frequent shopping trips to Miami, oil symbolised civilisation<\/a>, while the black and mixed-race masses represented the perceived barbarism of the past.<\/p>\n

But Venezuela\u2019s apparent \u201cexceptionalism\u201d was an illusion<\/a>. In the 1960s and 1970s, the \u201ccommon sense\u201d ideas of progress and modernity promulgated by the oil industry and backed by the government ran into trouble. Social tensions developed around the unequal access to oil profits, and strong currents of barrio and grassroots activism<\/a> began to surge. The situation worsened in the 1980s as oil prices dropped and the bol\u00edvar currency was devalued.<\/p>\n

In February 1989, the Caracazo uprisings<\/a> broke out in anger at newly-imposed, right wing economic reforms. An ensuing military crackdown claimed the lives of more than 400 people<\/a>, mainly from the barrios. To this day, poorer Venezuelans remember this state violence as an act carried out to protect the interests of the wealthy middle classes and their foreign allies. As a woman from the 22 de Enero barrio told me<\/a> in 2008: \u201cYou never saw anybody on the right protesting against the shooting of us; [they] \u2026 never cried when we were shot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barrio politics<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the early years of Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s rise to power, right wing criticism of the government was frequently couched in racial and cultural terms<\/a>. The private media portrayed government supporters<\/a> as hordes of \u201cmonkeys\u201d moved by base emotions and swayed by an authoritarian leader.<\/p>\n

One anti-Chavista told me in 2005 that a president should be a \u201cse\u00f1or\u201d who speaks English, and not someone from such a humble background that he only started wearing shoes at the age of eight. Ch\u00e1vez was not fit to be president, she elaborated<\/a>, \u201cbecause of his culture, the tiny bit he has \u2026 He wants us all to live like he used to live\u201d. For anti-Chavistas, Ch\u00e1vez and his supporters in the barrios represented the perceived barbarism of the past, and this instilled fear<\/a> in them.<\/p>\n

While the Ch\u00e1vez government attracted international attention for its economic and political programmes, it also addressed cultural injustices. Through new cultural policies and social programmes, such as Misi\u00f3n Cultura, Chavismo raised the symbolic status of the historically excluded poor and mixed-race masses. For the first time, previously marginalised people saw their history and cultural values, as they defined them, promoted by the government<\/a> and included in official representations of the national cultural heritage.<\/p>\n

These efforts were extremely powerful, and won the government deep support. As a barrio resident put it to me in 2008:<\/p>\n

We have a sense of belonging now \u2026 This is the responsibility of all of us, not Ch\u00e1vez alone \u2026 he can\u2019t do it without us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The opposition protests that have flared up since Ch\u00e1vez first came to power need to be understood within this cultural and racial context<\/a>. Radical sectors of the right wing opposition have repeatedly refused to accept the legitimacy of Chavismo and what it represents. In 2002, they helped organise both a short-lived US-backed coup<\/a> and oil strikes<\/a> meant to create chaos and bring the government down. The street demonstrations raging today are aimed at achieving regime change, but the opposition has not indicated<\/a> what policies they would introduce and how they would deal with the country\u2019s problems if they were in power.<\/p>\n

Maduro\u2019s popularity has fallen significantly this year, but many who have withdrawn their support for him feel alienated by the opposition\u2019s anti-poor discourse. They fear that a return to the political right would reverse the gains made<\/a> under Chavismo, and worse. Their fears are not theoretical; as observed<\/a> by Gabriel Hetland of the State University of New York at Albany, the opposition has carried out \u201cbrutal attacks\u201d directed at \u201cblack and brown men \u2026 and other people who look Chavista\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe crisis in Venezuela is not simply a matter of left wing versus right wing political and economic systems. It is also rooted in competing ideas about racial and cultural worth. The ugly truth is that for some, it is still a matter of civilisation versus barbarism.<\/p>\n

Hazel Marsh<\/a>, Lecturer in Latin American Studies, University of East Anglia<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last four months, hardly a day has gone by without news coverage of the political and economic crisis in Venezuela. At least 124 people have been killed, some by security forces, while participating in or accidentally encountering opposition-led street demonstrations. The mainstream media narrative is of an increasingly authoritarian government repressing a series…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":6296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6297,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6295\/revisions\/6297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}