The Silence and the Scorpion - book

The Silence and the Scorpion The Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela, Brian A. Nelson (Nation Books, New York, 2009)

This is a somewhat unusual book in that it deals in virtually minute-by-minute accounts by a number of different people, representing both sides of the conflict, over the three day period of the attempted coup to oust Hugo Chavez. It not only informs one about the actual people involved, their motivations and ambitions, but also tells a great deal about the nature of modern Venezuela and Venezuelan politics and culture.

Hugo Chavez rose from very humble beginnings to become President of Venezuela, the post he currently holds. His political career began when he was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Venezuelan army and participated in a failed coup against the then President, Carlos Perez. He was jailed for a time but became a hero to many because of his attempt to overthrow what was widely believed to be a corrupt government. In spite of its great oil wealth the vast majority of Venezuelans lived in abject poverty while the country was managed by an elite minority. When the Presidency changed and Rafael Caldera became President, he pardoned Chavez, who immediately began building a political machine.

As the country fell farther and farther into poverty for the masses and rampant inflation eroded the currency, the situation had became so bad it led to the socialist Chavez’s election in 1998. During the first 18 months of his Presidency Chavez managed to alienate members of the former ruling elite, the church, the media, and many others by his actions in gaining complete control of the country. This led to a massive, million person march on the Presidential Palace to display citizen displeasure. With this as an excuse and an opportunity the former ruling elite attempted to oust Chavez and return the country to its former condition. When violence broke out and people were killed it was blamed on Chavez who had, in fact, ordered his Generals to unconstitutionally fire on the demonstrators, but they refused. Even so, Chavez was nevertheless thought to have been mainly responsible for the killings, a belief that made most of the country turn against him. It was widely believed that the coup was engineered by the Generals and it was an attempted military takeover that, as it quickly turned out, it was not. Chavez was being forced to resign which, following advice from Fidel Castro, he refused to do (had he resigned it would not have been considered a coup). Once Chavez realized that it was not a military coup against him, and once it was learned that the killings had been engineered mostly by opposition snipers, he managed to hold onto his Presidency. The coup was apparently not well organized or well planned, having been merely a kind of last minute attempt to take advantage of the huge march that had really nothing in particular to do with it. Once the facts became known Chavez was forgiven by the masses that once again rose up to support him, which they continue to do.

This was an exceedingly chaotic situation, far more complex than can be described here. In the end, however, it was the Venezuelan poor who stood to gain from Chavez and his policies. With their support he has managed to remain in power and has, in fact, improved the lives of ordinary Venezuelan citizens. The oil wealth of the country is now used for useful social purposes, education, health care, land reform, and so on, rather than being controlled by the wealthy for the wealthy.

The author seems to have had almost unlimited access to participants on both sides. His portrait of Chavez is by no means all positive, but his portrait of the other side is equally fairly objective as near as I can tell. Another interesting thing about this work is that there is little or no mention of any American involvement, even though the CIA was immediately suspected of involvement. You may recall that at the time it was pretty much assumed that the U.S. was behind the coup. But while it is obvious that the U.S. did approve of the illegal takeover, that did not result in its success. It is impossible to tell from this account just how much the U.S. might have been involved (and I suspect more than the author reports), but that does not detract from the main, unusually detailed account of this incident in Venezuela. It appears that Hugo Chavez, like probably most leaders of most countries, is neither all-good nor all-bad, but I believe he has been very good for Venezuela and South America in general. As a socialist, however, he will not find much sympathy for his new “Bolivarian” moment coming from the U.S. or the Oil interests.