Venezuelan Government Research Articles

Recent Works on U.S.–Latin American Relations

Recent Works on U.S.–Latin American Relations Gregory Weeks (bio) Borders and Bridges: A History of U.S.–Latin American Relations. By Stewart Brewer. Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006. Pp. 197. $49.95 cloth. Neighborly Adversaries: Readings in U.S.–Latin American Relations, 2nd ed. Edited by Michael LaRosa and Frank O. Mora. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. Pp. 371. $29.95 paper. Addicted to Failure: U.S. Security Policy in Latin America and the Andean Region. Edited by Brian Loveman. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. Pp. 367. $27.95 paper. Intimate Ties, Bitter Struggles: The United States and Latin America since 1945. By Alan McPherson. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2006. Pp. 208. $45.00 cloth. Anti-Americanism in Latin America and the Caribbean. Edited by Alan McPherson. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. Pp. 301. $85.00 cloth. Making the Americas: The United States and Latin America from the Age of Revolutions to the Era of Globalization. By Thomas F. O'Brien. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Pp. 390. $24.95 paper. U.S. Relations with Latin America during the Clinton Years: Opportunities Lost or Opportunities Squandered? By David Scott Palmer. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2006. Pp. 125. $24.95 paper. [End Page 247] Imágenes de un imperio: Estados Unidos y las formas de representación de América Latina. By Ricardo D. Salvatore. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2006. Pp. 191. There have, of course, been countless books on different aspects of U.S.– Latin American relations, especially after the Cuban Revolution increased U.S. governmental and scholarly attention to the region. Long gone are the days when the subject was dominated by U.S.-centric diplomatic historians like Samuel Flagg Bemis, whose influential text The Latin American Policy of the United States (excerpted in LaRosa and Mora) is almost painful to read for its paternalistic bent, particularly in its positive view of U.S. imperialism.1 Instead, the books under review here demonstrate how the study of U.S.–Latin American relations in the post–Cold War era has grown very diverse. It is, therefore, no easy task to tie together all the many threads of the topic, given the number of disciplinary and historical perspectives, the various audiences, and the aspirations of different analyses. Nevertheless, some things do not change much. In a book review essay published in Latin American Research Review in 1992, immediately after the end of the Cold War, Alyson Brysk wrote that the books that she examined "do not address each other directly and to a certain extent are aimed at different audiences."2 This is also the case with the publications now under review. We can, however, identify four distinct but intertwined goals set out in these books. First, there is the effort to characterize and summarize U.S. policy and its impact on, and response from, Latin America. Second, the authors seek to judge U.S. policy, especially in relation to its stated goals. Third, most of the authors analyze Latin America's reaction to U.S. policy. Fourth, a number of the books have an explicit pedagogical angle, while others could also easily be incorporated as class readings. For this, I will conclude by discussing how these publications could contribute collectively to theory building. The topic of U.S.–Latin American relations as a whole is unique because it has a wider undergraduate audience than many others; many universities and colleges teach it along with a general course on Latin American politics. Therefore, in addition to (or in conjunction with) theoretical and conceptual treatments, there is a steady stream of books aimed at the non-expert. Given the national debate in the United States on immigration, the rhetoric aimed at the Cuban and Venezuelan governments (including whether to talk to them at all), the continued flow of drugs and the associated [End Page 248] violence, and the discourse on free-trade agreements, just to name a few of the most prominent issues, there is a need for books intended for students at both the graduate level and the undergraduate level. One encouraging point is that the quality of writing in many of these...

The Black Market for Dollars in Venezuela

In February 2003, the Venezuelan government imposed a strict capital control policy to stem the outflow of dollars. We describe the mechanics and structure of the resulting black market for foreign exchange, present a theoretical model in the stock-flow tradition of Dornbusch et al. (1983), and evaluate the performance of our model against past models from the literature. Our model of the Venezuelan black market premium is parsimonious but achieves the lowest RMSE. We find a significant role for the lagged premium, the rate of depreciation of the black market rate, and changes in foreign reserves.

Monitoring an Endangered Freshwater Turtle Management Program: Effects of Nest Relocation on Growth and Locomotive Performance of the Giant South American Turtle (Podocnemis expansa, Podocnemididae)

Since 1993 the Venezuelan government has implemented an intensive management program aiming to increase the population size of the endangered giant South American turtle (Podocnemis expansa). Including nest relocation and a year of captive rearing of hatchlings, the program affects the main Venezuelan P. expansa population, located in the middle Orinoco River. Although the program seems to be increasing recruitment of new individuals into the population, the effects of such nest relocation on long-term fitness-correlated parameters have not been addressed. Here we measured posthatching mortality, presence of morphological abnormalities, first-year body growth rate, and locomotive performance of juvenile turtles subjected to this management program. Nest relocation had a profound influence on juvenile P. expansa turtles, affecting their mortality, morphology, body growth rate, and locomotive performance. Transplanted clutches showed higher hatchling mortality and higher incidence of morphological abnormalities, though higher growth rates than nontransplanted clutches. Likewise, juvenile turtles coming from nontransplanted clutches appeared to run faster than those coming from transplanted nests. Clutch manipulation seemed to be responsible for the occurrence of morphological abnormalities and the increased mortality. Higher temperatures, on the other hand, may be the cause for the observed higher body growth rates in transplanted nests. Our results suggest that future management efforts minimizing the effects of clutch manipulation will not only prevent clutch losses but also enhance the long-term survival of neonates.

Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chávez Phenomenon by Steve Ellner

Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chávez Phenomenon <i>by Steve Ellner</i>

Colombia’s Magic Laptops

Since the Colombian government bombed a guerrilla camp on Ecuadoran soil on March 1, it has orchestrated a highly effective media campaign backed by material allegedly found on laptops belonging to a high-ranking member of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The laptops were used almost immediately after the raid to implicate both the Ecuadoran and Venezuelan governments in drug-trafficking and “terrorist” connections to the FARC. A NACLA investigation sponsored by the Samuel Chavkin Investigative Fund finds that Colombia’s media campaign has been based on dubious evidence at best, and that the “magic laptops” are being used to deflect criticism of Colombia’s violation of Ecuadoran sovereignty, distract the public from a domestic political scandal, and justify the government’s policy of total war against the FARC.

Freed from Illiteracy? A Closer Look at Venezuela’s Misión Robinson Literacy Campaign

We evaluate the success of the Venezuelan government’s latest nationwide literacy program, Misión Robinson, using official Venezuelan government survey data. Controlling for existing trends in literacy rates by age groups over the period 1975–2005, we find at most a small positive effect of Misión Robinson on literacy rates, and in many specifications the program's impact is statistically indistinguishable from zero. This main result is robust to time series analysis by birth cohort and to state‐level difference‐in‐differences estimation. The results appear to be inconsistent with recent official claims of the complete eradication of illiteracy in Venezuela, but they resonate with existing research on other adult literacy programs, which have usually been expensive failures.

Rethinking Venezuelan politics: class, conflict, and the Chavez phenomenon

Foreword - Kenneth Roberts. Introduction: Rethinking Venezuelan Politics. From the Colonial Period to 1958: A Brief Overview. Venezuela's Model Democracy, 1958-1989. Neoliberal Reforms and Political Crisis, 1989-1999. The Four Stages of the Chavez Presidency. Conflicting Currents in the Chavez Movement. The Chavez Movement's Top-Down and Grassroots Approaches. The Chavez Government in the International Arena. Conclusion.

Explaining the Rise of Class Politics in Venezuela

The sudden rise to power of leftist former coup leader Hugo Chávez and the subsequent politicisation of social class raises a number of interesting questions about the sources of class politics and political change in Venezuela. Using nationally representative survey data over time, this article considers different explanations for the rise of class politics. It argues that explanations for the politicisation of class can best be understood in terms of ‘top-down’ approaches that emphasise the role of political agency in reshaping and re-crafting political identities, rather than more ‘bottom-up’ factors that emphasise the demands that originate within the electorate. The economic crises during the 1990s undermined support for the existing parties, but it did not create a politically salient class-based response. Rather, it created the electoral space that facilitated new actors to enter the political stage and articulate new issue dimensions.

National Training Program for Comprehensive Community Physicians, Venezuela

Introduction Through the 1990s, wide disparities in health status were recorded in Venezuela, a mirror of poor social conditions, decreasing investment in the public health sector and a health workforce distribution unable to meet population health needs or to staff effective, accessible public health services. Venezuelans' health status deteriorated as a result. In 2003-2004, the Venezuelan government launched Barrio Adentro, a new national public health model aimed at assuring primary health care coverage for the entire population of an estimated 26 million. Cuban physicians staff Barrio Adentro clinics, mainly in poor neighborhoods, until enough Venezuelan physicians can be trained to fill the posts. Intervention Cuban experience with community-oriented medical education and global health cooperation was drawn upon to develop curriculum and provide faculty for the new National Training Program for Comprehensive Community Physicians, begun in 2005 in cooperation with six Venezuelan universities. The program differs from previous Venezuelan medical education models by adopting a stated goal of training physicians for public service, recruiting students who had no previous opportunity for university-level education, and concentrating the weight of their training on a service- and community-based model of education, relying on practicing physician-tutors. Results Over 20,000 students have been enrolled in three years. The six-year program has been extended to all 24 Venezuelan states, relying mainly on Cuban faculty who are practicing Barrio Adentro doctors and who receive postgraduate training in medical education. This "university without walls" has accredited 5,131 Barrio Adentro clinics as teaching institutions; its infrastructure includes other health care delivery facilities plus 855 multipurpose classrooms throughout the country. For the 2006-2007 academic year, the pass rate was 82% for first-year students and 94% for second-year students. Some difficulties persist in student selection, pre-medical preparation, and achieving optimum use of existing resources. Academic, institutional, and external evaluations are ongoing. Conclusion This is the most ambitious example of scaling up of physician training in a single country. The program has been made possible by considerable political will from the Venezuelan and Cuban governments; by the experience acquired through development of the Cuban health system and medical education programs; by the individual commitment of Cuban curriculum developers and physician-tutors; and by ever-more-organized Venezuelan communities. The size of the undertaking, coupled with significant innovations in curriculum, present challenges. The Venezuelan experience - emphasis on training physicians for a revitalized public health sector, accompanied by a paradigm shift in primary care - warrants attention from the international community in the context of the global shortage of health workers and efforts to achieve a more equitable distribution of health services worldwide.

Changes in Latin America: Consequences for Human Development

This article looks at Latin America's political shift over the last several years. The author argues that these changes have largely been misunderstood and underestimated in the United States for a number of reasons. First, Latin America's unprecedented growth failure over the past 25 years is a major cause of these political changes and has not been well-understood. Second, the collapse of the International Monetary Fund's influence in Latin America, and in middle-income countries, is an epoch-making change. Third, the availability of alternative sources of finance, especially from the reserves of the Venezuelan government, has become very important. Finally, the increasing assertion of national control over natural resources is an important part of the new relationship between Latin America and the United States. For these and other reasons, the relationship between Latin America and the United States has undergone a fundamental and possibly irreversible change, and one that opens the way to new and mostly more successful economic policies.

Evolución de las fusiones bancarias y su impacto en el Sistema Financiero Venezolano, período 2000-2004

Venezuelan banks have in recent years been the scene of so-called "bank mergers", which were implemented as a measure to stand before a change in the economic sphere. Thus, the Venezuelan government contributed to this process will be achieved in a short time, so it approved in enabling laws, the legal basis of the process of bank mergers. In this regard, the fundamental objective of this work was to study the evolution of the same and its impact on the Venezuelan financial system in the 2000-2004 period for which an investigation of descriptive and explanatory character was used as well as a strategy documentary study. Everything went according to plan, but the causes which initially justified this process, which was to strengthen the financial system and provide better customer service, stayed behind. On the contrary, everything seems to indicate that this process has been the big business of the twentieth century, as the strongest banks at the level of deposits and loans, disproportionately increased their profits and eliminated much of its competition.

Foreign Support for Venezuelan Political Exiles During the Regime of Juan Vicente Gómez: The Case of México, 1923–33

The history of Latin America is littered with examples of the direct and indirect involvement of the United States in the internal affairs of certain countries that make up the region.1 Less well k...

Venezuelan Oil

Venezuelan oil diplomacy has long been a factor shaping the international energy regime, and domestic political conflicts in Venezuela have always interacted synergistically with conflict over the global energy system. So it is the case with intense domestic conflicts that have swirled around President Hugo Chavez, the country's controversial populist leader. Partly at stake is whether the rules of the global oil regime will correspond to a neoliberal framework permitting freer access to minerals and hydrocarbons on the part of capital, or whether national sovereignty continues to legitimate host countries' right to regulate access and demand compensation for exploitation of resources. Are the resources in a sovereign nation's subsoil a free gift of nature that lie worthless without the application of labour and investment, or do they constitute exhaustible natural wealth for which the nation is entitled to compensation? This question recurs in debates over the imposition of royalty, participation in OPEC, management of state-owned enterprises, and foreign participation in different phases of the industry.Venezuela ranks sixth in the world in proven reserves of conventional crudes, with 78 billion barrels.1 235 billion barrels of heavy oil (at an eight percent recovery rate) in the Orinoco tar belt can be added to this total. At a 30 percent rate of recovery, the oil ministry estimates Venezuela's total reserves at 700 billion barrels, more than proven reserves in the entire Middle East. Impractical today, such reserves might become attractive if most global oil fields have passed peak rates of recovery, global demand continues to increase, and technological improvements in emulsifying heavy oils are made. In addition, Venezuela has the world's ninth largest reserve of gas, trailing only the US in the Western hemisphere. Venezuela consistently ranks in the top five exporters of oil to the US market.Oil powers Venezuelan diplomacy. Deliveries of oil on credit helped Argentine President Nestor Kirchner face down the International Monetary Fund in 2003-04. Venezuela experts are advising other Latin governments, including Colombia and Bolivia, on contracts with foreign investors. Oil money funds Telesur, a Venezuelan-initiated, hemispheric television network. Petrosur is Venezuela's effort to create a South American oil company; PetroCaribe provides discounted oil to countries in the Caribbean Basin. Oil diplomacy has helped Chavez obstruct the US initiative for a NAFTA-like free trade area of the Americas and promote his Bolivarian alternative for the Americas, which prioritizes social objectives and regional integration.VENEZUELA AND GLOBAL OIL REGIMESVenezuela's leadership in shaping third world oil policies arose in part from the consequences of the Mexican revolution. Mexico was the first third world country to nationalize foreign oil companies (in 1938), but consequently the foreign majors excluded PEMEX production from global markets until the 19705, when Mexican oil was welcomed back as part of an effort to counterbalance the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In 1943, because of political space opened by Mexican nationalization, the companies accepted a new oil law revising generous concessions of the past and acknowledging that their profits are subject to Venezuela's sovereign powers of taxation. A few years later, the Venezuelan government and Standard oil agreed to stabilize each side's share of profits at 50 percent. American companies promoted this 50-50 agreement in the Middle East, helping them muscle their way into subsoil previously the preserve of European companies. Illustrating how transitory such agreements can be, in 1958 a Venezuelan government, facing a difficult economic situation inherited from a recently deposed dictatorship, unilaterally raised taxes.Venezuela's advantage as a low-cost producer was diminishing as the country began shakily in 1959 what would be its first extended period of democratic rule. …

Biotechnology research in Venezuela: Five case studies

The organization of biotechnology differs across countries. The structure of the industry, the academia, and the links between these two sectors vary according to which country is studied. Biotechnology is organized in Venezuela mainly around the research done by special research and development units at national universities. The paper describes some of these units in order to shed light about their performance. Two economic approaches are used to explain the academic production of these biotech research organizations: the technological and organizational approaches. A case study methodology is used in this research. The results can be summarized as: The percentage of researchers who are doctors is less than seventy percent in each research and development unit, funding source comes basically from the Venezuelan government, strategic alliances are mainly formed between universities, performance of research and development units is mostly oriented to research but not to development . The main conclusion of this paper is that the research and development organizations are only carrying out the research function because (i) the low number of doctors, (ii) the few number of strategic alliances with the private sector and (iii) the form the research and development units finance themselves.

Venezuelan State Policy Towards Motilón Indians: From Isolation to First Contact

In the first half of the 20th century, Motilón Indians, who inhabited the westernmost state of Zulia in Venezuela, fiercely resisted outside encroachment. Motilones, which included several indigenous groups inhabiting the area of Perijá and the Colon District within the Maracaibo Basin, confronted a diverse group of outsiders, including oil prospectors and Capuchin missionaries. State policy towards the Motilones was contradictory and inconsistent. On the one hand, the authorities welcomed oil investment and allowed missionary efforts to proceed. Venezuelan leaders saw the government as a harbinger of civilization, bringing prosperity and other material benefits to backward indigenous peoples. In this sense, they echoed calls by oil companies and missionaries, intent upon opening up Motilón areas to increased settlement. However, though Venezuelan politicians were certainly racist and never questioned the centrality of the civilizing narrative or of reducing the Indians to settled life, political leaders expressed concern regarding abuses of indigenous peoples. In addition, the state was wary about conceding excessive autonomy to missionaries and oil companies. From a political and economic standpoint, Zulia was an important region in Venezuela, with a long history of secessionist sentiment. Venezuelan regimes, whether military or democratic, attempted to assert political control over missionary and oil company activity in Indian areas, while alerting them that the government was a player in remote jungle areas.

Leaders' Motivations and Actions: Explaining Government-Dissident Conflict-Cooperation Processes

This study posits a theory to explain government and dissident sequential responses to one another and develops a statistical model to test the implied hypotheses. While competing hypotheses emerge from both formal and empirical models, the current literature lacks a single, coherent, theoretical, and empirically corroborated model of the interactive relationship between dissident and government behavior. The study seeks to fill this lacuna in the literature by developing a comprehensive theory to account for a large number of competing hypotheses within a single framework. The subsequent empirical tests enable one to find support for the various competing hypotheses under different sets of conditions. The analyses of Chile (1983—1992) and Venezuela (1987— 1992) provide evidence that the model captures well the sequential responses of Chilean and Venezuelan governments and dissidents.

The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela

The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela. Edited by Jennifer L. McCoy and David J. Myers. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. 368p. $49.95.The replacement of a “stable” democracy with an elected self-proclaimed “revolutionary” government—especially in a major petroleum-exporting country—demands the attention of comparative politics. Thus, this volume is a welcome addition to the rather thin body of scholarship on Venezuela. Comprised of essays by several leading students of Venezuelan politics, it locates the preconditions for Hugo Chavez's rise in the vulnerabilities of the previous regime. Some chapters, including the conclusion, also attempt to explain the nature of the new government under Chavez. However, given the origins of the book in conference papers from 2000, the latter task is quite underdeveloped. A fuller analysis of the nature and structure of the Chavez government, now into the final year of its first full constitutional term, would have made the book all the more valuable. Nonetheless, its question about democracy's “unraveling” is of great importance.

Agricultural Market Reforms and Potato Farmers' Strategies in the Pueblo Llano Valley, Venezuelan Andes

Abstract Agricultural market reforms initiated by successive Venezuelan governments in the 1990s have triggered a complex set of coping strategies in the Venezuelan Andes. A case study in the Pueblo Llano valley showed that some of the most important livelihood strategies used by farming households to cope with economic uncertainty during the period of research (1994–1999) were land expansion, plot dispersion, and an increase in sharecropping arrangements. However, in constructing these strategies, farming households had to draw on social and cultural resources (ie kinship) as a mechanism to access more land, inputs, and labor.

In Search of a Theory of Polarization: Lessons from Venezuela, 1999-2005

The Hugo Chavez Frias administration (1999-present) is the most polarizing government in Venezuela since the late 1940s and in Latin America as a whole since the Sandinistas ruled Nicaragua in the 1980s. Supporters admire Chavez for having inaugurated a new form of democracy, so-called ‘participatory’, which is unabashedly anti-party and presumably more attuned to ordinary citizens. They also admire his call for an alternative economic model, a ‘socialism of the 21st century’, which is decidedly anti-globalization and pro-poor, at least in words. For critics, these are pretty-sounding slogans intended to disguise a new form of authoritarianism – one that uses democratic instruments (electoral majorities) to produce undemocratic outcomes (exclusion of political opponents). Each side sees the other as politically threatening. The disputes between them plunged Venezuela into new levels of political instability. Venezuela in the 1970s was considered a paradigmatic case for the study of democratization, and in the 1980s, for the study of democratic decay. In the 1990s, it became a paradigmatic case for the study of policy incoherence. In the early 2000s, it has emerged as a paradigmatic case for the study of political polarization. The best works on the Chavez administration focus on the evolution of the political regime – what exactly happened to Venezuela’s democracy in the past 40 years? Yet, even these works have made insufficient progress in understanding the nature of opposition politics under Chavez. In most democracies, the opposition obsesses about how to defeat incumbents. Only in few democracies do opponents and incumbents take the extreme steps witnessed in Venezuela in 2001-04. This essay is an attempt at drawing lessons from the Venezuelan case to construct theories of political polarization. However, the most recent arguments on the issue of regime type in Venezuela will first be reviewed. This issue is crucial because to understand the dynamics of polarization requires first understanding state policy, which is intrinsically linked to regime type. For that reason, the first part of this essay reviews existing arguments on: 1) the conceptualization of the Chavez regime – is it democratic?; and 2) the origins of the regime, which depending on how the first question is answered, is an exercise in debating theories about the origins of democracy or authoritarianism. I will focus mostly on works published since 2000. After discussing the debate on regime type, I offer some thoughts on how the Venezuelan case can illuminate our theoretical understanding of political polarization.

Gregory Wilpert Replies

With regard to human rights abuses, Casey mentions violent attacks against opposition demonstrations. Although it is true that people were killed during demonstrations between April 2002 and March 2004 (hardly before or since that period), there are several facts one should be aware of when drawing conclusions about the Chávez government with regard to this violence. First, the violence came from both sides of Venezuela's political divide and affected both Chávez supporters and opponents equally. Chávez's security forces, however, were almost never responsible for these deaths. Rather, in all except for one case the deaths were caused either by unidentified shooters (such as during the April 2002 coup), civilians from both sides, or by city police under the control of a city mayor who was with the opposition.