Is Chavez the Next Fidel Castro?

Click here for all of David Frum’s posts from Venezuela.

Billboards all over the country exhort Venezulans: “Patria, socialismo o meurte! Venceremos!” It’s not a slogan that seems to have gripped the country: It is to be read only where some official agency has posted or painted it. I never saw any Chavezista slogan placarded on any private home, even humble homes. I never saw one on the bumper of a car (and there are a lot of private cars in Venezuela – it costs less than $1 to fill the tank even of an SUV). I never saw any pro-Chavez gear worn by any individual person on the street.

That’s not to deny that Chavez continues to command real popularity. Everyone agrees, even his opponents. I had a talk with a leading Venezuelan pollster. He says he never polls political questions – business is easier if he focuses on testing consumer products – but that if he had to guess, he’d guess Chavez still retains about 50% support. In other words: not a big majority, but certainly more than any other single political alternative.

At the same time, it needs to be stressed: at least to date, Chavez is not a killer – not yet anyway. Opposition Venezuelans express fear of the regime, but what they are afraid of is economic retaliation: they will be fired from their jobs, their property will be confiscated, they will be attacked with arbitrary tax assessments. Chavez closes independent radio and television stations, and independent journalists have faced criminal trial for “defamation” if they report embarrassing corruption stories, but he does not murder journalists. Extra-judicial killings do occur, but the victims are almost always gang leaders who have neglected to maintain good relations with the police, not political dissidents.

The behavior of critics gives you some idea of the spectrum of fear. In Caracas, people who want to talk politics in public will take care to sit at a table on the edge of the cafe, as far as possible from anyone else. They will lower their voices and refer to the president as “he,” not by name. These precautions last for maybe 2 or 3 minutes. But as soon as the group gets excited, the volume rises and everybody says what they like. They are speaking English, of course, which is not widely spoken among the non-elite – but still. Nobody would have taken that risk in Cuba in 1962.

Where the opposition is strong – on university campuses for example or in Maracaibo, an opposition stronghold – nobody takes any precautions at all.

For what it’s worth, the customs formalities don’t feel like those of a totalitarian state. Business in Venezuela? “Academico.” How long you stay? “Five days.” Stamp, stamp. And no exit controls at all, other than the surrender of the bottom half of the immigration form.

Now it should be said there are signs of worse to come. Chavez is forming a special “Bolivarian” police force. He has purged the army of officers of doubtful loyalty to him personally. As yet however there is nothing like a party militia, and the pro-Chavez youth groups do not receive military training. It should also be noted that Venezuela is generally a heavily armed society, even more so in the anti-Chavez parts of the country. In Maracaibo, I was taken to lunch at one of the town’s fanciest restaurants. It had a metal detector at the door – it’s understood that every well-to-do citizen owns a gun, but they are not welcome inside.

It should finally be noted: unlike Castro, Venezuela would be overwhelmingly and instantly vulnerable to U.S. economic sanctions. Oil is the country’s lifeblood. Food must be imported, to be paid for with oil. The oil must move by sea. And because of the breakdown of the refineries under Chavez’s neglect, the gasoline that moves Venezuela must increasingly be imported.

So don’t think Castro. Think Peron: another heavy-handed, corrupt autocrat with no comprehension of economics, who held power so long as the money lasted – and whose regime collapsed when his economic mismanagement exacted the predictable toll.