THE COUP AGAINST CHÁVEZ AND THE MAKING OF MODERN VENEZUELA: AN INTERVIEW WITH AMERICAN WRITER BRIAN A. NELSON, AUTHOR OF "THE SILENCE AND THE SCORPION"
I had been living in Padova, Italy, bussy with an exciting, new radio project that presented me with a huge variety of possibilities. Away from friends and family, I Skyped quite a lot. One of my Skype buddies was the brilliant young venezuelan novelist A.A.Alvarez, author of “Chronicles of a Nomad: Memoirs of an Inmigrant”, who overseeing the Aegean Sea from his house in Athens, Greece, was always hunting for fresh, interesting literature on Venezuela.
As venezuelan expatriates, Alex and I would go reflecting on the country´s matters for hours, dissecting aspect after aspect of our voluptuous idiosyncracy. One night we were discussing the 04-11-2002 events that lead to the brief overtrhown of Hugo Chávez. Alex had just received a copy of a book that fully reconstructed what had happened that day almost on an hour to hour basis: The Silence and The Scorpion: The Coup Against Chávez and the Making of Modern Venzuela, by american writer Brian A. Nelson, a young academic at the Center for American and World Cultures at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Exceptionally well written, potent and accurate, the book was built on hundreds of hours of interviews with both sides of the coin: oppositionist “marchistas” that attended the million-person demonstration all over the streets of Caracas; Chávez loyalists who movilized to the surroundings of “Miraflores”, the presidential palace, to defend the “revolution”; and high rank military officers forced to make the biggest decission of their carreers on those critical moments. Nelson spoke to an incredible ammount of people, remarkably managing to gain acces to key players on each field.
Reading The Silence and The Scorpion made a huge impression on me for a number of reasons: because a non venezuelan could dive so deep (and probably deeper) into our national neurosis; because of its vibrant narrative and exhaustive research work; because the events so cleverly portraited forever change mine and millions of others life for good; because I was there and it wasn´t that long ago; yet the course of history was forever modified.
The 2009 Books of the Year list by The Economist have included Brian A. Nelson´s The Silence and The Scorpion: “A scrupulous account of one of the most important, yet most misunderstood events in recent South American history. It should be read by all those who believe that Hugo Chávez is a worthy champion of democracy and the oppressed”.
This interview was conducted between the months of december 2009 and january 2010. It´s been an infinite priviledge (as well as a pleasure) having the opportunity of working with someone like Brian, who´s phenomenal break into the literary scene only give us a clue of what his talent´s got yet to offer.
"The Silence and The Scorpion" is a very suggestive title, seems to talk about a place, but also about a character or circumstance...
Yes, “the silence” is a place in Caracas. It’s the area around the presidential palace where the violence occurred. For many Venezuelans “the silence” (el silencio) has now become synonymous with the bloodshed of April 11 and the coup.
Why did they call it the Silence? Once upon a time, back in the 1880s when the palace was built, this area was set apart from the center of Caracas. Old paintings of the palace show a beautiful pastoral area, so it really was a serene and quiet place. Today, however, it has been consumed by Caracas and is one of the most densely populated areas of the city. It’s somewhat ironic that a place called the silence is now interminably noisy.
“The Scorpion” comes from an old fable that one of the central characters in the book, General Usón, told me in our first interview. Usón was a close friend of Chávez’s but he defected to the opposition after the coup. In 2004 Usón was imprisoned for causing “insult and injury” to the Venezuelan military because of a TV interview he gave. The fable is about a scorpion and a frog. It goes like this: a scorpion tries to convince a frog to carry him across the river. The frog is initially afraid of the scorpion, but is eventually won over. When they are halfway across the river, the scorpion suddenly stings the frog. “What have you done?” cries the frog. “Now I am going to die and you will die with me.” To this the scorpion simply shrugs and says, “It’s my nature.” In our interview Usón compared Chávez to the scorpion—as someone who might have good intentions, but who is, by his nature, aggressive and militant by nature. I think it is interesting that Usón made this analogy before he was arrested. The comparison was not made vindictively, but as an observation by someone who had known Chávez personally for more than 25 years.
I want to ask you about the circumstances of your arrival in Venezuela as an AFS student in 1988.
I have to laugh when I think about how I ended up in Venezuela. It’s funny because Venezuela has become a huge part of my life, yet I never actually chose to go there. It was chance.
When I was applying to AFS—I must have been seventeen—I knew that I needed to learn another language, yet, honestly, I wasn’t quite brave enough to choose a really hard language like Chinese or Japanese. I knew that Spanish was supposed to be easy to learn so on my application, in the part where they ask which country you want to go to, I simply wrote “Spanish speaking.” I could have ended up anywhere between Tierra del Fuego and Madrid. About six months later I discovered that I was going to Maracaibo, Venezuela. I had heard that name, Maracaibo, but I had no idea where it was and I had to look it up on the map.
It’s one of those little decisions that change your life forever. There was no well-constructed plan. In fact, it was a short-sighted decision (based on the thinking of a teenager) that had long-term consequences. My major in college, my first job, my graduate field work, and my first book were all a consequence of writing “Spanish speaking” on that application.
Did you witness the February 1989 riots in Caracas? If so ¿Can you describe the impression it made on you?
I was in Maracaibo, which is Venezuela’s second largest city, during the riots of 1989. There was a great deal of looting there and some violence, but it was not as intense as in Caracas. One of the things I remember most distinctly was the day it began. Three of my host-brothers and I had just returned from school. I remember coming into the kitchen where we had a small black and white TV and seeing the first images of the looting. I can still see it in my mind: There was a man kneeling in front of one of those big steel garage doors that they use to protect the entrances to supermarkets (you know, Santa Marías). And there was this guy with a blowtorch about to cut through it—he had one of those heavy face masks and everything. He lit the torch and started cutting. Behind him was a huge crowd of people waiting to sack the store as soon as he’d broken through. As the camera pulled back, I realized that it was the supermarket three blocks from our house. It was that close. Not long after that, the government cut all the TV networks and the screen turned to static and snow.
I also remember the military curfew which, if I remember correctly, started every day at 6 p.m. That was, I think, the greatest fear we all had—that the military could kill you for any reason. We knew this was happening. It was martial law. In fact, we knew a family who had an emergency and tried to get to the hospital after curfew and they were all killed when they approached a military checkpoint. Even during the daytime you avoided leaving the house because you didn’t know what might happen.
The whole thing was very surreal. This was before the internet and DirecTV, so you had very little idea what was going on, so your imagination ran wild. Getting information became very, very important. There were all these rumors and strange stories going around. It was all based on someone’s uncle’s brother-in-law or someone’s second cousin who knew a politician or a general, etc.
When did you leave Venezuela? Did you follow the Venezuelan socio-political scene at the distance? How did you approach Chávez’s rise?
I returned to the United States in July 1989 and, yes, I did continue to follow what was happening in Venezuela for two reasons: First because of my friends and host-family still in Venezuela. And second, because of the Caracazo. That really stuck with me.
Oddly, the thing about the Caracazo that made the biggest impression on me was the macroeconomics of it. I know that doesn’t sound very sexy, but that’s what intrigued me. The riots showed me the power of economics. In February 1989 Venezuelans began to loot and riot because of macroeconomics. Soldiers came out into the street to kill them because of macroeconomics. It was the result of a package of reforms put in place by President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Bowing to pressure from international lending agencies, Pérez’s reforms caused a sharp rise in the cost of many goods and services—most importantly gasoline. That’s what sparked the crisis and it really changed the way I perceived the world. I realized that economics is not necessarily a casual ebb and tide of forces, not an indifferent system of incentives or a helping hand. It can be a violent and destructive thing. As you know, it had incredible effects on Venezuelan society—savings accounts were sucked away, real wages plummeted, pensions were eroded away by inflation. Essentially, the Venezuelan middle class was knocked into the lower class overnight. I remember very clearly how my host father, a professor of law, had to walk to work for three months because he couldn’t afford a 50 dollar battery for his car.
So when I returned to the United States and began college I double majored in Economics and International Studies, largely because of my experiences in Venezuela the previous year.
What did I think of Chávez initially? I thought the revolution was a great idea. I thought that Venezuela needed radical change to turn itself around. After all, I’d been going back to Venezuela about once a year (sometimes more) throughout the 1990s, so I was getting these regular snapshots of Venezuela’s socio-economic decline. The scandals, the corruption, the bank failures, the crime. So it seemed completely necessary to push “reset.” To wipe the slate clean and start all over. It’s a classic case of “be careful what you wish for.” At the time I thought (like most people) that it couldn’t get any worse. That it was worth taking a risk on a political unknown to turn the country around.
Much later, I spoke with some of Chávez’s campaign advisers for the 1998 election and they told me that they knew that Chávez was much more radical than the public realized, but they made sure he spoke as little as possible about his long-term plans. Instead they cast him as the independent, the one who would clean up the mess of the two traditional parties. People often forget about that: That Chávez was elected on a backlash to the two traditional powers, and not because of who he was. Most of us fell in love with the story of Hugo Chávez, not realizing who the real Hugo Chávez was.
Where were you when the 04-11-2002 events occurred? What were your first feelings at getting word of what had happened?
I was in the United States, in my last weeks of graduate school, when the coup occurred. I had visited Venezuela that last Christmas but, to be honest, I had not been following the political situation that closely as I was neck-deep in my studies. When the coup occurred, I was still very much in favor of Chávez and given the limited coverage in the States, I assumed that it had been a “classic coup”—a conspiracy within the military likely backed by the United States. After all, Chávez had already forged very close ties with Cuba as well as Iraq, Iran, and Libya. He was also speaking out against the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. With Venezuela as the fifth largest supplier of oil to the U.S., it made sense that the United States would want to get rid of him. The fact that the military installed a former oil company executive, Pedro Carmona, as interim-president, helped solidify my opinion that the coup was about ensuring that one of America’s most stable suppliers of oil was not lost.
It wasn’t until I arrived in Venezuela in September, five months later, that I began to reconsider things. Many Venezuelans that I respected told me how mortified they had been when Chávez made his miraculous return. I wondered how they could support the ouster of a democratically-elected president. So I decided to take a closer look.
I quickly realized that certain things just didn’t add up. Many things just didn’t fit the “classic coup” scenario. For example:
1. How could this be a classic coup if the military never attacked anyone? In fact, the military rebelled by NOT acting; by refusing to follow Chávez’s orders that they stop the march that was converging on his palace.
2. If the Chávez government was the victim of a coup, then why was it the one that cut the signals of all of the TV stations, thereby blocking out coverage of the violence around the palace?
3. Why did the Venezuela Supreme Court—which was entirely appointed by Chávez’s party—rule that there had been no coup at all, but rather a power vacuum precipitated by the executive branch?
4. Perhaps most importantly, if the Venezuelan government was the victim, then why did it launch a major cover-up of the events? Why did it suspend the Truth Commission, destroy evidence, and fire police detectives and prosecutors who tried to investigate what had happened?
There was definitely something else going on here. Yes, it was clear that the military had broken the law and so had Interim-president Carmona, but there was another story here that was not being told. That’s what piqued my interest.
Why and how did you decide to write "The Silence and the Scorpion?
It’s probably easier to answer that question by explaining what kind of book I didn’t want to write.
First, I knew I didn’t want to write a boring drawn-out history book about Venezuela that only a handful of people would want to read. Especially when what was happening in Venezuela was so fascinating.
Second, I didn’t want to feel like I was lecturing people about Venezuela. That’s one of the things that annoys me about travel writing, that it is about the author and not the place. Instead, I just wanted to show it. I was pretty sure that if I could do that; if I could just put reality “in front of the camera” then I would be creating something very original. Because that’s what you can’t get from a newspaper or magazine—that level of detail, that feeling of being there. I really wanted the reader to feel like I had just dropped them in the middle of Caracas. I wanted to recreate the feeling of discovery that people have when they go overseas for the first time. For example, I intentionally didn’t translate many Spanish words and I didn’t explain everything up front because I wanted the reader to feel a little disoriented, like you would if you had just gotten off a plane. There is an excitement in that confusion that I wanted to capture. Little by little—interspersed in the action—I gave the reader the background they needed to understand how Venezuela got to this point.
After I had determined what I didn’t want, it was easy to pick the coup because it was the most important and compact event that encapsulated what life is like in Venezuela today. It showed how Chávez has polarized Venezuela--why some people fight so hard for Chávez and why some people fight so hard to get rid of him.
How was the researching-interviewing process? How long did it take you to gather the information and testimonials? Was it difficult getting people to share their testimonials?
Good God, it took forever! [Laughing]
Okay, I admit that the beginning was a pleasure—conducting interviews is a great deal of fun. You are traveling around to different parts of the country, meeting new people, listening to their stories, learning new things. I met some of the actors half a dozen times and, as a consequence, many of them became my friends.
But then I had to take each of those recorded interviews and transcribe them. Which means that I had to sit with a tape-recorder to my ear, press play, listen to a few words, press stop, type those words into the computer, press play again, listen to a few words, press stop, etcetera, etcetera. And of course, we are talking about hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews. Then major parts of those interviews had to be translated into English, then woven into the main story. God, it was tedious! I felt like one of the designers for The Lord of the Rings: one of those guys who spends months making the detailing on a scabbard that no one will ever notice in the film. But in the end there was a payoff: Since I had thousands of pages of testimony on my computer it was much easier to patch the book together and much easier to search through all the testimony to find links between the characters.
This became my cycle of writing: I would do a series of interviews; transcribe them and translate them; then I would check my other sources—videos, photographs, newspaper articles, etc. to make sure that the testimony was credible; then (and only then) I would weave them into the main story. Then I would look at the finished product and find out what I was missing, so I would interview the person again or interview other people and start the whole cycle from the beginning.
Overall, people were very generous with their time and it was not hard to get interviews. The fact that I had lived in Venezuela in high school and kept in touch with all of my friends was a huge advantage here because many of my friends had split into the pro- and anti-Chávez camps and helped me get interviews with key people. This meant that most of the time I wasn’t interviewing strangers, I was interviewing a friend of a friend. That made a big difference in what people were willing to share with me. I was already a confidant. Yes, now that I think about it, I was very lucky, because I know that I got access to people on both sides that few foreign journalists could have gotten.
The only people who did not respond to a request for a second interview were the Tupamaros—one of the urban guerrilla groups in Caracas. I met with six of them and had a fascinating interview, but I think someone in their hierarchy told them not to go talking to any more “gringo” journalists, so that was the end of that. In hindsight, I have to admit, they told me things they probably should not have: how the government gave them money and sent some of them to Cuba for insurgency training, etc. (These are things that the government denies doing.)
What are the main conclusions you have reached after all the research work done on the 04-11-2002?
My main conclusion about the coup was that no one was innocent. The government, the military, and the opposition all did illegal things that contributed to the crisis and they all bear responsibility.
Concerning the Chávez government, it completely destroyed the rather romantic view I had of revolutionary socialism.
Why? Because the facts are undeniable: Gunmen and National Guard troops under orders from the Chávez government committed massive human rights violations against the opposition marchers and journalists as they approached the presidential palace. It was an unnecessary and completely avoidable act by the government (the biggest prong of the march was actually turned away with teargas, proving that violence was not necessary). In the aftermath the government not only blocked an independent investigation, but it harassed many of the victims and their attorneys, jailed innocent people in order to have scapegoats, and funded TV shows and documentary films to spin events in its favor.
In many ways the government’s reaction to the violence is much more telling than the violence itself. It was a critical moment because the government had a choice: it could have jailed the gunmen and National Guard troops who were caught on film and in photographs shooting at the marchers. This would have provided some reconciliation for the victims and proven that the government applies the law equally to all citizens. It did NOT choose that route. Instead, it began building up lies on top of lies to protect itself.
But perhaps the government knew full well that it had to lie because the stakes were so high. That is, a true independent investigation could very likely topple the government. After all, former Venezuelan president Carlos Andréz Pérez was impeached simply for sending campaign funds to a candidate in Nicaragua. How quickly would Chávez be impeached if a proper investigation were held into the violence on April 11th? Rest assured that Chávez has thought of this. I’m sure he’s also thought of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori, who is in jail for complicity in the killing of his opponents in Peru. Recall that Hugo Chávez spent two years in jail after his own coup attempt in 1992 and he didn’t like it. He knows that if he loses power in Venezuela he will likely face a prison term. Think about that for a second and how much that influences his decisions.
Again, Carlos Andréz Pérez was placed under house arrest for illegal campaign contributions to a single country, but it is well known that Chávez has meddled in the internal affairs of Mexico, Peru, El Salvador, Honduras, Brazil, and Colombia—not to mention the 800,000 dollars in a briefcase earmarked for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. Sending rocket launchers, ammunition, and money to the Colombian FARC? Also illegal. All of these cases remain uninvestigated in Venezuela because of Chávez’s control over the Parliament, the Supreme Court, and the Justice Department (Fiscalia). But if he loses power, the incoming government is surely going to go after him.
Obviously, many things are driving Hugo Chávez—his ardent belief in socialism, his distrust of the United States and the West (which to some degree is understandable given it’s historic role in Latin America), and his desire to become a legendary figure who can unite Latin America at least as well as his political muse, Simón Bolívar. But as someone who has studied Chávez’s record on human rights, I believe his fear of incarceration is also a factor. His repeated (and finally successful) attempts to change the constitution to allow for his indefinite re-election may be viewed through this lens. Yes, Hugo Chávez wanted to end term limits so that his revolution could continue, but I believe he also wanted to end term limits to protect himself from the cascade of lawsuits he will face if he has to relinquish power.
So that is why the experience of writing this book has destroyed my romantic vision of the revolutionary left. The discovery of the intentional use of violence on April 11th was the tipping point. It proved that the Chávez government is willing to violate the country’s laws and its constitution to advance its goals. In other words, Chávez believes that his revolution is more important than the law, more important than democracy. That’s a very dangerous thing. What’s more, I realized that the goals of the revolution are not as lofty as its leader professes; they are much more about the short-term, self-preservation, survival. Chávez acts as if he has picked up the banner of Ché Guevara, but he is merely cloaking himself in Ché’s image, in large part for his own protection.
Newsweek 2010 predictions includes a new coup d'etat in Venezuela. Having lived in the country; having had a permanent, direct rapport with Venezuelans for over twenty years; having written one of the most documented accounts of the April 2002 events to this date. How do you foresee Venezuela`s socio-political scenario evolving in the future?
I believe that Newsweek made that prediction because of a story they published in December 2007 by Jorge Castañeda right after Chávez lost the constitutional amendment referendum that would have allowed for his perpetual re-election (a referendum he later repackaged and won). That article discussed how Chávez tried to steal the vote on election day when he realized he was going to lose, but that General Baduel and the military high command “virtually threatened him with a coup d'état” if he did so. Newsweek believes that if Venezuela came that close to a coup in 2007, then it is even more likely in 2010 given the deteriorating economy and skyrocketing crime (Caracas is now the murder capital of the world, with twice as many homicides as Johannesburg, the second worst city).
While I do think that the deteriorating economy is hurting Chávez and is putting significant pressure on him, I think Newsweek has missed the point of the 2007 story. The point is not that Chávez was almost the victim of a coup, the point is that Chávez avoided a coup by appeasing his opponents, then he quietly regrouped and eventually got rid of them. Today General Baduel is sitting in jail (without a trial) and Chávez has successfully reshuffled the military high command to exorcise those he suspected of disloyalty. His control over the military is once again very strong. This is essentially what Chávez did after the April 11 coup: he temporarily retreated because he knew his position was weak, but then he methodically laid his plans and slowly and steadily purged his government and the military of all those he suspected of disloyalty. This is why many people thought it was an “auto-coup”—that Chávez had orchestrated the whole thing—because he emerged stronger than ever. (It wasn’t an auto-coup, but many people thought it was.) The lesson is that Chávez is a survivor.
So I am doubtful that there will be a military coup this year and I hope for Venezuela’s sake that there is not a violent or illegal change of government. But what is interesting is the growing fantasy of a coup, especially in the opposition. Many people want regime change in Venezuela. They dream about it. Any way they can get it. Why? Because they feel that all of the democratic paths have been exhausted. They don’t feel that protests work; they don’t feel that referendums work; they don’t feel that the courts work. They have lost faith in the institutions that should have protected against what they feel they are faced with now: a president-for-life. Most importantly, they have lost faith in the National Election Council, which Chávez does indeed control and, I feel, was a big part for his “victory” during the recall referendum of 2004.
