Between the edge of the abyss and the fall without a parachute

I don’t know how many times countries have been on the edge of the abyss, but surely a lot. To be on the brink is a terrible feeling for a human being. It’s like feeling that you are on the verge of losing everything and that you will cross a threshold of no return. The same thing happens to countries. When they are at the edge of the abyss, they feel that there is no bottom and that you are already at the basement of the crisis. But… Experience and years show us that there is a big difference between being on the edge of the abyss and falling into the abyss. We Venezuelans have a lot of fabric to cut in this regard, after 10 years in which the 21st Century Socialism project has deepened to a collapse that even its own ideological architects could not have imagined. A collapse that ended everything they claimed to have conquered, a collapse that decapitated even their parents and that in the middle dragged 30 million Venezuelans.

of course I’m talking about the misnamed Bolivarian Revolution and Hugo Chávez. This March 5 marks the 10th anniversary of the physical departure of the former president. 10 years that for some may have passed quickly, but for Venezuelans it has been an eternity, because in those 10 years everything that was wrong got worse; and not only has it worsened, but it has collapsed from its dogmatic foundations to its concrete expression. I never agreed with the Chávez project, It was authoritarian, corrupt, populist, clientelist, militaristic and inherently destructive. He led us to the edge of the abyss before he died. The expropriations, the closure of television stations, the deterioration of education and public health, the annihilation of the separation of public powers, as well as the endemic corruption of PDVSA and other public companies were unmistakable signs of that basement that Chávez drove to in Venezuela.

Some figures show how bad Venezuela was under the Chávez government. In 2012, 80% of what we Venezuelans consumed came from abroad. Chávez’s policy of persecution and stigmatization of private initiative has generated disinvestment and destruction of national production. Since 2005, land expropriations have intensified. At the end of 2011, nearly 4 million hectares were confiscated. In terms of security, Venezuelans are experiencing an unprecedented spiral of violence. According to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, between 2001 and 2011, 141,487 murders took place in the country, which at the time placed Venezuela among the most dangerous countries in the world.

The situation was such that many of us came to say “We can’t be worse”. But, as the saying goes, time is a good counselor and knows how to disappoint. You can always strike deeper. You can always be worse. With Nicolás Maduro we could be worse.

With Maduro we jumped into the abyss and without a parachute. There poverty it reached unprecedented levels, rising from 32.6% (a high figure if the oil boom is taken into account) to 81.5%, according to figures from the Living Conditions survey (Encovi). In other words, we have almost tripled the poverty indicator in just 10 years. But that’s not all. Poverty is the consequence of an unprecedented economic disaster. A gross domestic product of nearly $300 billion has fallen to less than $50 billion. Which means we have lost over 80% of the size of our economy, which is the biggest economic collapse ever for a country not facing a war.

in matter fuel company, the downward trend in production that came with Chávez due to poor management decisions and corruption, has amplified to the point of de-controlling Venezuela. Yes, a country with a 100-year tradition of oil production and being one of the world’s energy market leaders, stopped producing oil overnight. We went from a production of 2.9 million barrels per day to a very small figure of 600,000 or 700,000 barrels of oil per day.

At this time, what little democracy was left (if it existed) was pulverized. It has even been said around the world that Venezuela under Chávez experienced a kind of competitive authoritarianism, a pseudo-democratic or hybrid system, which carried out authoritarian practices, but allowed moderately competitive elections. Well, that was in the past with Maduro. This slogan that all power belongs to the people and to the supposed participatory democracy, approved during the elections, has turned into cosmic dust. Maduro banned political parties, filled more prisons with political and social leaders, stole elections and applied the “silver or lead” law to silence an entire society. He even applied the formula to his own followers. Yes, those who raised their hands as successor to Chávez and those who had been ministers of the ex-president, he sentenced (like many opponents) to prison, exile and even death .

The atmosphere of repression against independent voices came to a head with Maduro. Until 2021, Maduro had shut down at least 84 media outlets, between the written press, television and radio, according to the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP). A figure that increased further in 2022, when it closed more than 100 radio stations. But free speech wasn’t the only human right that entered intensive therapy. The figures for arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions and torture have exploded. According to the OAS, since 2014, there have been 18,000 cases of extrajudicial executions and 15,500 cases of arbitrary detentions in the country.

One of the variants of the revolutionary project at this time is for Venezuela to officially become a failed state. A country totally ruled by organized crime. A kind of sanctuary for drug trafficking, mineral smuggling and the proliferation of groups like ExFarc and ELN. An incubator of illegality. Unsurprisingly, two of Maduro’s nephews were captured when they conspired to bring 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States. Unsurprisingly, Maduro’s main figurehead is imprisoned in the United States, after leading one of the biggest networks of corruption and criminality that Latin America has ever known. In the midst of this criminal paradise, anti-Western actors to whom Chávez gave entry and the green light in Venezuela, such as Russia, China, Iran and Cuba, took control of the scene, making our country their center of operations to destabilize Latin America America.

And maybe the most painful thing that happened in those 10 years was the migration. During the Chávez period, it is true that there was a migration, especially of the middle and upper classes, especially of the youngest of these classes. However, with Maduro, the Venezuelan migration has overflowed until today, being the second largest exodus on the planet, made up of 7 million people. Venezuela is wounded in the soul, it has lost about 30% of its children, the vast majority of them are talented and professional young people, who will be essential for the national reconstruction.

With this article, I do not intend to exonerate Chávez from his historical and inescapable responsibility in this disaster. Chávez was the creator of this model which undermined national sovereignty and led Venezuela to the greatest crisis in its history. But today the fight we are waging goes beyond our dimensions and forces us to see beyond of our nose, as well as our visions. We have to add to what we have to add to remove Maduro from power. 24 years ago in which we experienced multiple transformations, 24 years in which Venezuela went from a democracy to a dictatorship, and from a dictatorship to a failed state. The future that Maduro offers is none other than a hell where Venezuelans have only two ways: emigrate to flee or submit to the system of mafias, corruption and misery. As Venezuelans, we have a duty to build a plan to find a way out of the situation. A plan that makes it possible to reconnect with the country and the international community, in order to regain pressure and thus produce a political transition.

* Julio Borges is a former Venezuelan Congressman

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