The
exact condition of Hugo Chávez continues to be a Churchillian riddle wrapped in
a mystery inside an enigma. The Venezuelan president, who won his third
reelection last October and has been hospitalized in Cuba for many weeks with
cancer, missed his own inauguration in January. In his absence, Vice President
Nicolás Maduro, Chávez's hand-picked successor, has been left in charge of the
government indefinitely. But Maduro is no Chávez, lacking both the charisma and
the power base of Venezuela's mercurial leader. And it's not just a problem for
the chattering classes in Caracas: The question haunting the Latin American
hard left, which Chávez has dominated in the last decade, is who will take his
place.
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In
explaining the rise of the political left in Latin America over the past
decade, Chávez's persona looms large. Politicians like Evo Morales, Rafael
Correa, and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner owe an enormous debt of gratitude to
Chávez for laying the groundwork toward a renewed form of populism, Latin
America's version of socialism. Chávez's illness has only served to highlight
that debt. "The issue of the health of brother Chávez is a problem and a
worry not just of Venezuela, but of all the anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist
people," Morales
said in January, speaking from behind
a podium reading, "We Are All Chávez." But Chávez's charisma and ruthless political
genius fail to explain why he has been able to achieve such regional clout.
Through a canny use of petrodollars, subsidies to political allies, and
well-timed investments, Chávez has underwritten his Bolivarian revolution with
cash -- and lots of it. But that effective constellation of money and charisma
has now come out of alignment, leaving a power vacuum that will be difficult
for Chávez's political heirs across the hemisphere to fill.
Several
Latin American leaders would like to succeed him, but no one meets the
necessary conditions: Cuba's blessing, a fat wallet, a country that carries
enough demographic, political and economic weight, potent charisma, a
willingness to take almost limitless risks, and sufficient autocratic control
to allow him or her to devote major time to permanent revolution away from
home.
What
will happen is partly in Cuba's hands. Because Cuba has made Venezuela into its
foreign-policy proxy, the Castro brothers need Caracas to remain the capital of
the movement for it to retain any vitality. While Cuba
is dependent on the roughly 100,000 barrels
of heavily subsidized oil Chávez's regime supplies to Cuba daily, the island
nation has a grip on Venezuela's intelligence apparatus and social programs. Chávez
himself
acknowledged last year that there are almost
45,000 Cuban "workers" manning many of his programs, though other sources speak
of an even larger number. This strong connection allows Cuba to exercise a
vicarious influence over many countries in the region. Caracas's clout in Latin
America stems from Petrocaribe, a mechanism for helping Caribbean and Central
American countries purchase cheap oil, and ALBA, an ideological alliance that
promotes "21st century socialism." The combination of the two gives Caracas,
and therefore Havana, some authority over the politics of 17 other countries.
What
does this mean for the future of the left? Essentially that Cuba will do its
utmost to prop up Maduro. Chávez's chosen man will never be a revered figure --
his talents as a politician are lackluster -- but with Havana's backing and
control of the money funneled to the region's leaders, he will retain some of
Chavez's stature. In recent months, he and what might be called the civilian
nucleus of the Venezuelan government have been a constant presence in Havana,
where they have relied on the information supplied to them by Cuba about Chávez's
real condition. This clique is comprised mainly of Rosa Virginia, Chávez's
eldest daughter; her husband Jorge Arreaza, who is also a minister; Cilia Flores,
Maduro's wife and the prosecutor general of the regime; and, finally, Rafael
Ramírez, the head of the oil giant PDVSA.
Maduro
has made most of his key political announcements from Havana, often flanked by
some of these people as a way to consolidate his legitimacy inside the
Venezuelan military, where he has rivals, and of course the Latin American left
writ large. It seems to have worked for now: The region's left lent him dutiful
support through various regional bodies when the opposition denounced the
arrangements that have turned him into an acting president indefinitely. In a
statement put out by Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, the Organization of
American States
supported the constitutional arrangements
in Venezuela in the wake of Chavez´s absence -- and incurred the ire of MUD,
the united opposition.
Critical
in all of this is the money at Maduro's disposal. The sales of PDVSA, the
state-owned oil cash cow,
amounted to $124.7 billion in 2011, of
which one-fifth went to the state in the form of taxes and royalties, and
another fourth was channeled directly into a panoply of social programs. This
kind of management makes for very bad economics, a reason why the company needs
to resort to debt to fund its basic capital expenditures, and for decreasing
productivity, but it remains crucial for the regime and the Latin American
left. Funding social programs at home and subsidizing oil shipments abroad, as
well as giving cash to various foreign entities, is in good part what makes
Caracas the epicenter of the left. Consequently, the support Maduro enjoys from
Cuba and the money at his disposal offsets his lack of Chávez-like charisma.
Although
Venezuela's current economic debacle has had a debilitating effect on the
system described above, as has Chávez's ill health, China has helped mitigate
the impact. The China Development Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank
of China
have lent Caracas $38 billion to fund some
social programs, a bit of infrastructure spending, and purchases of Chinese
products and services. Another $40 billion has been promised to fund part of
the capital expenditures needed to maintain the flow of oil committed to
Beijing. The oxygen provided by Beijing gives Caracas some ability to grease
the regional machinery despite the domestic crisis.
Cuba's
support for Maduro and his oil money notwithstanding, there will still be a
vacuum of sorts at the top of the Latin American left after the vice president
takes over from Chávez on a permanent basis -- assuming he is able to
consolidate his own power internally and fend off his military rivals. Other Latin
American leaders will clearly see an opening at least to enlarge their role if
not lead the left outright.
Argentina's
Kirchner is already trying. As she has further radicalized in response to an
acute economic crisis at home and the rise of an opposition both within the
ranks of her party and among the large middle class, in looking for a major
Latin American role she has departed from traditional Peronismo. In the last
year, she has made her country's claim to the Falkland Islands, now under
British control, a focal point of her foreign policy, obtaining explicit support
at Mercosur (the South American common market) and UNASUR (the Union of South
American Nations). Until recently, she limited her rapport with Caracas to
business and occasional gestures rather than ideology -- Buenos Aires sold
sovereign bonds to Caracas a few years ago and was later able to import fuel
cheaply and sign trade deals. Now she makes trips to Havana too and has raised
her voice in denouncing the usual imperialist suspects -- certain liberal
democracies, foreign investors, international courts, and the IMF. By adopting
this tone, she hopes to rally the base at a difficult time. She is currently
barred from seeking reelection in 2015 but is aiming to change the constitution
to allow her to seek another term, a move laden with certain Chávismo
overtones.
There
are, however, limits to her potential role as a leader of the Latin American
left. The most important one is economic. The statist, populist Argentine model
is now bankrupt. Economic growth was minimal in 2012, a year that also saw
record inflation and the expansion of capital controls to prevent a stampede of
dollars. This would not be an insurmountable political obstacle were it not for
the fact that a majority of Argentineans are now opposed to her
-- her approval rating is down to 30
percent -- and that her own party
is fractured. It is one thing to fight the
"fascist right" as the head of a united Peronista front. But it is quite
another for Kirchner to be denounced more stridently by her leftist base than
by the center-right. Apart from the fact that she lacks the funds to finance
regional revolution -- despite running the largest populist economy in Latin
America -- Kirchner can ill afford to devote her attention to foreign matters.
Last but not least, Argentina is too large and too proud a country for it to
accept near-subordination to Cuba, a key condition for leading the Latin
American rebels.
What
about Bolivia's Morales? Given the symbolism of his indigenous roots, he seems
a strong prospective candidate. But he is geographically too far from Havana --
Chávez´s constant pilgrimages to Cuba would be hard for Morales to replicate.
He too has mounting problems at home, where his social and political base is
now severely split. Unlike Chávez, who has been able to group his different
supporters under a socialist umbrella organization, Morales's party, MAS, has
become isolated from the myriad social movements that once backed him and now
claim he is not delivering on promises of social justice. His main fights have
not been with the right but with these organizations, which have paralyzed the
country at various times.
Like
other populists, Morales has some cash at his disposal through the sale of
natural resources. But private investment is tiny in Bolivia, and Morales has
doubled the proportion of the economy directly under government control.
Because he needs to pour resources into populist economic programs to keep his
enemies at bay, Morales cannot afford to fund foreign adventures. In fact, his
need for cash is forcing him to charge Kirchner, a close ally, about four times
more for Bolivia's natural gas than the going rate in Argentina's own
gas-producing region, the Neuquen Basin. Lastly, Bolivia's economy is tiny, amounting
to just 8 percent of Venezuela's.
Correa,
who as president of Ecuador heads an oil-producing country, is another
possibility. He certainly has the ambition and is the intellectual alpha male
of the pack. His inevitable reelection this month will give him renewed vigor.
But his country produces five times less oil than Venezuela and, with an
economy less than a fifth the size, is in no position to command leadership
regionally. After tripling government spending since he came to power in 2007,
Correa's coffers
face a fiscal deficit of 7.7 percent of
GDP. And because it defaulted on part of the national debt in 2008, Ecuador is
barred from capital markets. If not for the $7 billion-plus lifeline China has
thrown Correa in advance payments for oil and credits, the country's financial
situation would be dire. Given that 80
percent
of Ecuador's oil exports have been pledged as guarantee against these loans,
Correa would never be able to subsidize other countries.
That
leaves Brazil, the single most powerful Latin American country and a symbol of
ideological moderation that may well hold the key to the destiny of the Latin
American left -- if only it wanted to. Until now, Brazil has deliberately given
Chávez the space to play a disproportionate role in the neighborhood. Since
former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had Marxist roots and a radical base
to please, he made up for his responsible domestic policies by tolerating, and
sometimes encouraging, Chávez's leadership of the regional left. In foreign
policy, Lula preferred to spend his time cementing ties with the other BRIC
countries and collecting allies in Africa, partly with a view to building up
support for a permanent seat at the U.N. Security Council. The rest was spent
cozying up to the United States's adversaries, including Iran, and proposing
solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian question (an initiative for which he
teamed up with Turkey).
Dilma
Rousseff, the current Brazilian president and Lula's political heir, has
moderated her country's foreign policy but is conscious of the fact that her
overbearing predecessor and the party base want close relations with the left.
This is a major reason for having kept Marco Aurélio Garcia, a man umbilically
connected with the regional populists, as a foreign policy advisor.
But
Dilma is not personally interested in leading Latin America's left. Her
country's main economic tool in Latin America, the Brazilian development bank
BNDES, funds mostly domestic companies investing in the region, not other
governments, and its disbursements in Latin America
totaled a mere $1 billion last year. An
initiative for integrating South America's infrastructure led by Brazil, known
as IIRSA, lacks a political or ideological imprint. Dilma
also confronts an economic challenge that Lula was spared. Growth has stalled
(it barely cracked 1 percent last year), and some serious soul-searching is
underway about why the emerging star of the last decade is now facing the
prospect of a mediocre future if new reforms are not undertaken.
All of this points to the Cuba-Venezuela connection
continuing to play a pivotal role through Maduro. That said, Maduro will have
considerably less ability to project influence than when Chávez was at the
helm. Presumably, the vacuum partially left by Chávez will see various forces
vying for an increased role, including Kirchner as the radicalized Peronista
running the largest populist economy, while Morales and Correa, as well as
Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, call attention to themselves without the necessary
power to back their chutzpah. Brazil will arbitrate among these leftists and
wait to see what emerges before throwing its lot with anyone.
With no viable leader to take up Chávez's mantle,
the future portends disarray for the Latin American left. Fearful that this may
spell the end of the movement, there is but one miracle the left can cling to
-- that Chávez finds a way to rise from his Havana deathbed.
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