MCCARTY-JONES VS. VANNERS: THE VAMPIRE’S DIARIES “The challenge ahead for Venezuelan political leaders will be how they reconcile the differences between these two groups and encourage greater social cohesion in Venezuela.” Anthea McCarty-Jones Dear Anth and Joe: 1.- It’s been a funny breakfast time for me in Caracas while reading your concerns about plagiarism and imitation in Australia and listening Amanda’s show in the podcast. But you shouldn’t be surprised: imitation is the result of a strong influence, and it means Anth is becoming canonic figure at the moment to interpret the Venezuela’s events, unless in Australia. Secondly, Amanda is not a scholar, but a politician (former senator) with a radio show. She’s naturally an intellectual vampire, like the most of the politicians around the world: they (she) will never recognize sources, and will never quote. The only politician I heard quoting his sources every time was Chavez, by the way… Of course it must to be very annoying to see how you (Anth) made your homework coming here, sweating, working hard, while she easily used your article without quoting, in order to appear before her audience as an informed person. 2.- But: rejoice! You’re doing it pretty well. Imitation without recognition is a variety (I had severe problems to pronounce this word, remember?) of the envy. If you are angry, is a wrong focus point for your ego. You should say: Oh My Gosh, I’m fucking good! She is imitating me and is doing plagiarism with my article! 3.- Of course, I’m not Catholic or Christian, and I would never recommend you to put the other chick to receive a smash. Just roll it, make jokes with her, a caricature, something that put her in ridicule, not a trial, but a kind of smart joke in the net, or whatever… 4.- In the other hand, I’m concerned about the concepts you expressed in your article, and I think some of them are not quite exact. That’s because I’m writing you. I have three points in mind; A) I don’t think Chavez was the beginning of social politics to foster the living standards for the poor population in Venezuela B) You don’t see the influence of the international context in the formulation of the Chavez public policies C) Probably you don’t see the global context we are immersed in, one that built severe boundaries for the ideological (macroeconomic) responses we Venezuelans have to build after Chavez: I think is not as simple as you suppose in the final paragraph of your article I quoted. II.- OUR HISTORY REVISITED A) Actually, I remember the first social institutions of our XX Century were developed by General Eleazar Lopez Contreras, after dictator’s Juan Vicente Gomez die in 1935. He and the next President, Isaias Medina Angarita, created the hospitals system, the preventive medicine against malaria (the National Institute against Malaria popularly called “Malariology”) as well as an educative network all around the nation, with strong emphasis in the countryside schools, popular free food centers (something like the National Salvation Army), and huge invest in infrastructure: roads, bridges, public buildings, all of this financed by the petroleum. It was normal for a country that was awakening to the democracy, with a steady annual economic growing rate over 10% since 1914 until 1984. A miracle… Or a curse? (1) This wise route suffered a deviation in 1945, due to Romulo Betancourt coup d’etat, the “Trienio” (three years) between 1945 to 1948 when General Marcos Perez Jimenez took the power with the support of Washington and the most conservative military sectors of our country. What was on stake? The petroleum, of course. Lopez Contreras and Medina did their job: they created and fostered our social institutions, as a parallel narrative to the formal democratic institutions (vote for everybody, except women until 1947, parliamentary chambers elected by the people and so on). Not a full polyarchy in the sense of Robert Dahl, but an emerging one. They didn’t make POPULISM, with the social policies. For them (strong catholic persons) was normal to help the poor people at home and abroad. But Romulo Betancourt and AD (Acción Democrática, the “adecos”) did it: they created a character, named Juan Bimba (John Nobody), to represent the poor people aspirations. Lopez and Medina tried to represent the interest of the whole nation, while adecos tried to represent only the interest of people like Juan Bimba, the poor majority. They were very radical during the Trienio, and that was an enough reason to be defeated in 1948 through a counter coup d’etat leaded by Marcos Perez Jimenez: Washington thought Romulo was a communist. After Perez Jimenez, Romulo and the adecos went back to power in 1958, but with a lesson learned: our new role in the international map was to help the US to stop the Soviet Union expansion -through Cuba- in the Western Hemisphere (Cold War): that’s because we had the most sophisticated American and Israeli weapons in South America until Chavez. That role is now performed by Colombia. Adecos began to try to represent the interest of the hole nation (1958 and ahead), and the social public policies were not the core of the political discourse. For them began to be normal to help the poor people (like Lopez and Medina), and the discourse was centered onto concepts like progress, democracy, or La Gran Venezuela (The Great Venezuela). They were absolutely success in social policies because they continued the Lopez and Medina initial project that was not interrupted during the Perez Jimenez dictatorship: education, health, nutrition, although the communists and socialists suffered a fiery repression. Yes: there’s nothing most dangerous than a conversed. II.- THE CONSERVATIVE WAVE BUT: This balance began to fall in the early 80’s, during the conservative attack of Reagan and Thatcher administration. That’s the international context probably you missed when you supposed Chavez was the first President who began to govern “for the (poor) people”. On February 18th 1983, we suffered our first strong currency devaluation, the end of the illusion of harmony (a day baptized as The Black Friday). The increase in the interest service of our international debt, forced us to move the dollar prices from 4.30 to 6.50. BUT ALSO: since the first Caldera administration (1968-1973) –a very conservative government- by the first time in decades the government began to reduce the public invest in social policies, particularly in health and education: while before Caldera the proportion of the health system participation in the national budget was about 6%, whit him it began to fall, first to 5%, until 3% at the end of his administration (1973), while the population growth index keep growing constantly 3% annually. Who influenced this? The international conservative wave context: the attempt to reduce the public social medical attention in England by Thatcher, and with Reagan in the US and so on… This is a very simple equation: 20 years later, the disproportion was insulting. It was The Chavez Momentum. BUT: there’s another factor: Caldera created the private health insurance coverage FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR. It means that the public money for health insurance went to private hands. Let me explain myself: if you invest 14 billion dollars in our public hospitals, we could have a system similar to the British or the Australian. BUT: we invest only 7 billion… And the other 7 billion goes to private insurance companies and hospitals. I’m talking about public money: the private insurances companies cover the health policy of the employees of PDVSA, CANTV, even mine soon, after May 2013… So, a consequence of this is the notion that WE HAVE NOT A REAL PRIVATE CAPITALIST SECTOR (except POLAR Industries). There noting like a private sector in the health: the 75% of the insurance coverage executed every year by the private hospitals comes from the cover health policy system of the public sector. That’s what Chavez got: the half of the public money for health going to private hands. We need to revert this pervert tendency: invest all this resources in a public, efficient and universal health system, like you Australians have. If you are a private one and want to go to private hospitals, do it with your money. And if private investors want to build private hospitals, they can do it with THEIR resources, not with the public ones. We have a double system, a mirror system. Is the same story in the rest of the institutions dedicated to the social programs. Social Missions never eliminated this double system, but made it triple: the old regular publics system, the supposedly private one, and the new one, the Missions. There’s not enough money in the world to sustain it. Let me tell you that in the field of health –like in the others- the first resilience comes from the beneficiaries of this double coverage, because they don’t want public hospitals (they don’t care about the others persons): private ones have a best “hotel” service. Everybody in Venezuela wants to have a private coverage (I’m covered, and God have mercy with those who are not). And they believe this system is based on private investors: but, nop, is other people money… Is OUR public money. So, Chavez made no much in terms to revert this percent: 50% to public hospitals and 50% to private insurance companies and hospitals to cover health policy systems for managers and medium employees of the public sector. Things are still working this way… It’s a hallucination the most of the observers cannot discern. Chavez made a revival of Juan Bimba, and the social missions tried (with a relative success) to revert the public disinvest in social policies: everybody recognizes this, even Enrique Capriles. But the most important issue perhaps is that the populist discourse became the official one, and was engaged by the population, with serious consequences: neither the opposition, neither the international analysts discern still the deep emotional and cultural implications of this new identity. The middle-class suffered a shock, when their interests and visions of the world (ontology) were displaced from the top to the bottom. Is not a simple division, or a polarization; is something new, like the “ocupas” in Spain or the indignation movement in Wall Street. Is not a relationship of relativity: you have your values and I have mines, is a struggle one, “Mine’s are better and you are the devil” (this false argument is interchangeable between both sectors discourse). But is not as serious and dangerous as that between the Israelis and the Arabs or the other between America and the Empire of Evil. We have not so much global influence, except because we have the largest petroleum reserves in the world. III.- THE PROPOSAL You made a very exhaustive list of the Chavez government timeline (the one Amanda used without quoting), and I agree with you in the most of your points. But the solution (if exists) is not the reconciliation, a kind of Third Way, or to find a superior value around what we Venezuelans could “encourage greater social cohesion”. We are in the same stake you Australians, Spaniards, Greeks, Americans, are facing. The economy cannot growth infinitely in a finite world (2), and all the solutions proposed by IMF, experts, think-tanks and classic economists suppose the solution for the inadequacy of our actual systems through is a kind of new growing wave, exploiting the remaining resources over the planet: water, air, land… Or making green economy, or recycling, or… or… I think it’s a crisis of parameters, in politics, economy, physics, social sciences, in the full relations between Human Kind and Nature, and this is affecting the whole world. So WE (not only Venezuelans), YOU AND I, ALL TOGETHER, have to create alternatives way to think, to act. There’s not a Venezuelan crisis (Oh! There’s a crisis far away in South America, in a small country with a lot of petroleum…) is also YOUR crisis. In our situation even your perception and the way you write about us has consequences in economy, politics, social affairs, and whatsoever. And the way we perceive the world influences too, since the moment Chavez declared George Bush was The Devil, and Venezuela’s new friend began to be Iran, Belarus, Russia, China and Cuba. We, the consultants of the Venezuelan Government, are very conscious about the challenge we are facing. And we are working very hard on it. That’s because is so funny for us to see your concerns about plagiarism and imitation. It’s like to see a serial of The Vampires’ Diaries. Nothing personal, Anth: I’m your fan # 1 in Venezuela, you know that. But think harder… You can do it… Your friend Oscar Reyes Matute Philosopher, Master in Political Science, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at NYU, former consultant of the Venezuelan Parliament, former professor of Political Philosophy, and researcher at Universidad Catolica Andres Bello and at UCV in Caracas, Venezuela. (1) See Terry Lynn Karl: The Paradox of Plenty, Oil Booms and Petro-States (Studies in International Political Economy), University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997. (2) See Herman Daly: ECONOMICS IN A FULL WORLD, Scientific American, September 2005, Vol. 293, Issue 3. http://sef.umd.edu/files/ScientificAmerican_Daly_05.pdf