Post-coup Venezuela

The turbulent events of the first half of April—oil company strike, general strike, mass demonstrations, coup and counter-coup, media blackout, plundering-left Venezuelans with disturbing insights: that the military is the ultimate arbiter in the fate of governments, that their society is abysmally divided, that the people continue to play a minor part even on the stage of the Bolivarian Republic's participatory democracy. Adding to these realisations is the painful feeling that the term ‘people’ is exclusive and divisive rather than inclusive and uniting, according to where you stand. ‘We are the people’, say the over one-third who criticise the Chavez administration sharply; ‘we are the people’, say the nearly one-third of his unconditional supporters; ‘we are the people’, say the one-third in-between. And, finally, the sentiment that the Chavez approach has come to a deadend and that there is nobody to offer a credible way out. No doubt, the collective identity of Venezuelans has been deeply hurt, and their trust in a better future shattered. With his aggressive, exclusive, hero-worshipping and stigmatising discourse Hugo Chavez, who had entered the stage as a messiah, is certainly responsible for the greater part of such frustration

Citizen journalism · Democracy · HERO · nobody · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subversion · Cultural and political discourse analysis · Law · Political Theory and Democracy · Politics and Society in Latin America

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