Urban Citizen Movements and Disempowerment in Peru and Venezuela1
Daniel H. Levine and Catalina Romero
This paper addresses a core puzzle: why is continued citizen mobilization
accompanied by growing disempowerment of those same citizens? Why do movements
fail, leaders burn out and members disperse, and what are the implications of this
organizational failure for democratic representation? Our consideration of the issues is
rooted in a close examination of urban movements, mobilization, empowerment and
disempowerment in the recent experience of Venezuela and Peru. To be sure, the puzzle
that concerns us is not limited to these two very different nations: it is common to all the
Andean republics, and in different ways, to much recent experience of urban
mobilization, in Latin America and beyond. After a brief account of urban citizen
movements and politics in our two cases, we outline general reflections on the nature of
empowerment and disempowerment, and on the peculiar combination of strengths and
weaknesses that mark many contemporary movements. The character of city life is
important here. A close examination of types of movements and their links with political
parties and protest follows.
We close
with analysis of recent waves of urban
mobilization in Peru (that sparked the ouster of Alberto Fujimori) and in Venezuela (both
1
Earlier version presented at a conference on
“The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the
Andes, Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame, May 13, 2002. thanks to Jose Enrique Molina for
comments and suggestions.
1
We are grateful to Jose E. Molina for making this point. Cf. Jose E Molina and Carmen Perez,
in Marisa Ramos Rollón, Venezuela: Rupturas y Continuidades del Sistema Politico, (1999-2001)
Salamanca, Spain: Ediciones Universidad.
1
for and against Hugo Chávez Frías), and with reflections on the likely future of
empowerment and disempowerment for urban citizens and of democratization.
The Puzzle and the Cases
The puzzle is set up by three key facts that situate Venezuela and Peru in a
meaningful comparative perspective, while providing grounds for comparison between
the social and political processes each country has experienced over the last twenty years.
The first of these facts points to the decay, decline, and eventual disappearance of once
powerful political parties, and of the system of organizations and political norms built
around them. The second addresses the creation, expansion, rise to prominence, and
decay (often after specific goals were met) of networks comprised of civic organizations,
sometimes referred to as “civil society” or “popular movement,” depending on the
country and circumstances. Associated with the trajectory of new movements and
networks is a comparable trajectory of mobilization, activism and sustained protest rising
to peaks at moments of crisis, such as the movement to reject Fujimori’s 2000 reelection,
or the spring 2002 mobilizations against Chávez. In both cases, huge numbers of people
were mobilized for sustained, repeated and often risky collective actions including
marches, demonstrations, rallies, and campaigns to collect signatures. A profusion of
new, and often short lived groups combined with established organizations such as trade
unions or business federations and professional groups to manage and sustain the effort.
The decay of political parties and the rise of an explicitly anti party politics is a
common feature of the recent experience of both Venezuela and Peru. In Venezuela, an
entire political system built around powerful, permanent political parties weakened under
long term economic pressure, whose effects were exacerbated by massive corruption and
2
ineffective leadership, and further undermined by reforms set in motion in the mid 1980s.
It is not easy to date the start of the decline with precision, but most observers agree that
by the early 1990s, the two dominant parties (Acción Democrática or AD and the
Christian democratic party COPEI.) were shadows of their former selves. Their
weakened condition undermined the ability of leaders to respond effectively to the crisis
created by the two attempted coups of 1992, and by the continued economic crisis. Once
legendary party discipline weakened, making secure inter party deals in the legislature
much more difficult to manage. COPEI divided, and its founder Rafael Caldera, waged a
brilliant, anti party campaign to win the Presidency in a four way race in 1993. This was
the first election since the restoration of democracy in 1958 that was not won by AD and
COPEI. Although the two continued to do well in regional and local voting, the whole
period was marked by continued divisions within the parties (especially AD), by an
explosion of citizen organization (including insurgent unionism) escaping from party
controls, by rising levels of abstention, and by growing anti party sentiment. This
process culminated in the election of Hugo Chávez Frías (leader of the first 1992 coup)
as President in 1998, and his subsequent dismantling of institutional structure of the
party system. The election of 1998, and subsequent national, regional and local votes
have confirmed the parties’ death bed status. National voting has been dominated by
personalist coalitions (pro and anti- Chávez). The viting system invented for elections to
the Constituent Assembly, which wrote the country’s new “Bolivarian Constitution) gave
supporters and allies of President Chávez a disproportionate share of seats (95% of seats
3
with 66% of the vote). Subsequent legislative elections returned to the old system, with
results (in terms of seats) that were more proportionate to votes received. 2
Political parties in Peru have rarely been as powerfully structured or deeply
organized as in Venezuela. A political system hinged on electoral competition between
well established parties, each with its affiliated movements and organizations, made a
tentative appearance in 1955, and again, with the restoration of democracy and civilian
politics after 1980.(Tanaka, this volume). In this “system”, APRA was joined by AP
(Popular Action, founded several decades earlier by Fernando Belaúnde Terry), the PPC
(a Christian Democratic Party) and by a coalition of leftist parties gathered as the
Izquierda Unida, or United Left. The fortunes of these parties rose and fell through the
1980s, as the economic situation continued to deteriorate and the insurgency (led by
Shining Path ) grew in a seemingly irreversible way. AP (with Belaúnde Terry ) won the
Presidency in 1980 and then plummeted in support; APRA (with Alan García) won the
Presidency in 1985, and then lost support, and the Izquierda Unida gained steadily in
municipal elections through to the mid-to late 1980s, only to divide and fall apart. The
1990 election completed the decline of the parties, as the contest was fought between two
coalitions led by independents—the writer Mario Vargas Llosa and the unknown, and
eventual winner, Alberto Fujimori. Only two years into his term, Fujimori dissolved
Congress and began to rewrite the rules of the political game. After his ouster following
a re election in 2000 that was contested as fraudulent and boycotted by possible
opponents, the Presidency was won by another independent,, Alejandro Toledo, a leader
4
of the anti-Fujimori movement. His opponent in the second round was former President
Alan García, running again for APRA.
In both countries, the decay of parties and of a party system (strong or weak) was
accompanied and pushed or pulled along by an explosion of citizen organization and
new movements of all kinds. The process was visible earlier in Peru, where movements
emerged in the 1970s in opposition to military rule and as an expression, above all in the
cities, of grass roots organizing to meet social and environmental needs. In Peru, as
elsewhere in the region, the Catholic Church played a key role in promoting and
protecting many such movements, training activists and providing invaluable connections
among them. Many of these movements were “popular” in character and composition,
drawing together poor urban dwellers and recent migrants to the cities. By the end of the
1980s, and into the Fujimori period, the combination of economic decline (which made
collective action of any kind more difficult) with increasing violence both from Shining
Path and the government, undermined the ability of many groups to survive and renew
themselves.3 Generational changes in the leadership of the Catholic Church also removed
key allies from the scene. In addition to these factors, parties weakened because urban
organizations developed a sense of autonomy, looking in a democratic way to their own
collective interests and goals, which seemed to be different from those of the political
parties. Mobilizations continued, of course (Dietz, Stokes, Tovar, Levine and Stoll) but
became more short lived and more limited and specific in focus.
3
The problem of political violence is the important issue in Peru. The 1980’s leaders are now the main
forces in the new democratic regimes: local leadership, municipalities, regional government. And there are
young leaders emerging.
5
In Venezuela, the power of party organizations and their ability to colonize civil
society and monopolize access to resources inhibited the growth of independent civic
associations. These began to appear in the mid 1980s, tied to movements in the business
sector and manifest, most notably, in the emergence of movements of urban property
owners opposed to unrestricted development. Neighborhood defense soon expanded into
an agenda for political reform that would allow for independent elected urban and
regional governments (elected, not appointed mayors and governors). This reform was
put into effect in 1989, and had a significant impact on reshaping political parties and
campaigns through the 1990s. At the same time, the country’s long term economic
decline, which continued through out the 1990s, undermined the political parties’
capacity to distribute patronage, and thus hold loyalties. Autonomous professional
groups appeared, private foundations and new business groups consolidated their
position, and even independent trade unions began to gain ground. The latter, most
successful in the steel mills of Guyana, spawned a successful political movement, La
Causa R (the Radical Cause). This necessarily brief suggests that, with the exception of
the insurgent trade union movement, new civic associations and movements were more
middle class in Venezuela than in Peru, and were able to use their resources and skills(
for example, with the media) to full advantage. The term “civil society” appeared as a
regular feature of Venezuelan political discourse, and efforts to forge some kind of
unified position were made.
The political trajectory of Hugo Chávez Frías, his election to the Presidency in
1998 (affirmed in subsequent votes under a new Constitution and with new electoral
rules) and his overall political project challenged the legitimacy of the core political
6
arrangements of the past four decades, and looked to build a new, and supposedly more
democratic society and political system. Fiery populist, and class based rhetoric has been
the daily bread of the “Bolivarian revolution” from the beginning, and mobilization of
masses has been its core claim to legitimacy. Chávez, like Fujimori earlier in Peru,
looked to destroy the political parties (and associated groups, notably the trade unions),
with the difference that Chávez wanted to rebuild politics in a “revolutionary” and
“participatory” style, with a broad range of arenas and groups in direct contact with the
leader and the state. In practice this has meant dismantling old structures, restlessly
inventing and reinventing new ones, including notably the regime’s own political party,
and diverting state resources into vaguely defined “Bolivarian circles”. The decay and
rout of the old system was so complete that it took several years for opposition to begin
to regroup. Early steps came with the defeat of government sponsored efforts to “take”
the Central University (in Caracas) for the “people”, and with the overwhelming defeat of
a government sponsored referendum to “renew” the leadership of the trade union
federation.
These were followed by a massive series of work stoppages, strikes, and marches
that became a regular feature of the calendar in Caracas and to a lesser extent in other
cities. Protest techniques common in other countries, such as cacerolazos (or banging of
pots and pans, creating a truly deafening noise), caravans of cars honking horns, were put
to use and massive marches (long since abandoned in favor of television-centered
campaigning) returned to center stage. Television and access to mass media of course
continued to play a central role. A regime claiming legitimacy on the basis of its ability
to mobilize was now running into massive counter mobilizations. Fearing the appearance
7
of weakness and the prospect of losing control of the street, the regime began to put on its
own massive marches. There was continuous escalation in this process from early
December 2001 through to the tragic events of April 11-13, 2002, when a huge march,
heading through downtown Caracas to the Presidential palace, was attacked by snipers.
Many were killed, and in the ensuing crisis, the government was replaced and then retook
power as the military divided and different coalitions of citizens “took” and “retook” the
streets. All sides then pulled back from the brink for a while, but after about six weeks,
the rhythm of marches and counter marches began again.
It is instructive to compare the mobilizations that forced out Fujimori with those
competing to oust, support, or restore Chávez. The former were managed by a loose
coalition of groups from across the country, knit together by local and national level
activists with prior experience in mobilizations, energized by the OAS findings of fraud
and irregularities in the 2000 re election of Fujimori, and by growing revelations of
corruption linked to Vladimiro Montesinos. Moblizations were sparked first by students
and womens’ groups, who began with symbolic acts such as sweeping the plaza of the
Congress and regular washings of the flag (to cleanse them of corruption). As protests
expanded, they were joined by NGOs and then by political parties who added financing
and organizational reach. 4 The campaign itself combined enormous marches (such as the
Marcha de los Cuatro Suyos5 in Lima, of July 28, 2000) along with a series of sustained
4
The process is reminiscent of the rebirth of mobilization and protest in Chile, which Garretón calls the
“invisible transition” that lead up to the referendum that ended the Pinochet regime. Cf. Manual Antonio
Garreton, “Popular Mobilization and the Military Regime in Chile: The Complexities of the Invisible
Transition” pp. 259-77. in S Eckstein, ed, Power and Popular Protest Latin American Social Movements,
Berkeley 1989
5
The name comes from the four regions, or Suyos, of the Inca empire, or Tahuantinsuyo
8
regional moblilizations. innovations such as regular weekly washings of the national flag
The organizations and political parties so prominent in the 1980s had disappeared from
the political scene following the coup of 1992, losing their legal status after elections to
the Democratic Constituent Congress in 1993 and later in the Presidcential elections of
1995. They only assumed a rule once protests were well under way. In contrast, when
opposition began to recover in Venezuela, the organizational backbone for sustained
action did not rest on groups formed over the past ten or fifteen years. An unexpected but
highly anti government effective alliance was formed between the trade union federation,
the business federation, the Catholic Church, and the mass media. The first two
provided organizational resources, the latter two legitimacy and an amplified public
voice. That this coalition was able to put so many people into the street on such a regular
basis depended less on the groups’ own members, than on the motivation of a loosely
linked net of neighborhood and human rights groups. 6
In other words, despite continuous reference to
the role of ‘civil society”, in
neither country did the specific membership organizations of the previous decade, once
themselves seen as the potential foundation for a new kind of politics, play a central role.
Different kinds of organizations emerged to take the lead. Apart from human rights
groups, which have grown throughout the region in the last fifteen years in response to
dictatorship (Sikkink) the key organizational players were either occasional coalitions
6
Unionized workers are only a small proportion of the total work force, and the business federation is of
course, not a mass organization. The two made common cause drawing on the union federation’s successful
defeat of Chávez forces in the union referendum of fall 2001 and the business federation’s strong
opposition to a package of decree laws announced around the same time. Relations between the church and
the government had been tense for some time, inflamed by the President’s own erratic rhetoric (calling
priests ‘devils in cassocks” for example) and by his program for control and inspection of private
education. The mass media have been a favorite target of the government since the beginning, and with rare
exceptions, have responded in kind.
9
gathered for a particular purpose around a specific leader (eg Alejandro Toledo and Perú
Posible) or old line organizations such as trade union, business federations, or the church.
Mobilization and commitment were sustained not so much by
group structures
themselves, as by the presence of numbers of loose or “weak ties” among groups and
individuals that facilitated connections and the exchange of information, support, and
resources, across groups, social sectors, and physical spaces. (Granovetter, Smith) If this
is correct, mobilization—even massive and sustained mobilization—is compatible with
the absence of an organizational underpinning like that commonly provided by political
parties. But at the same time, the absence of a continuing organizational structure can
undermine the potential consolidation of gains and make it all but impossible for citizens
to demand, and achieve accountability from leaders, without a new round of massive,
institution challenging mobilizations. This deserves closer examination.
Empowerment , disempowerment, and representation
“Empowerment” is a notoriously plastic concept, often used in conjunction with
equally protean terms such as “civil society” or “social capital”. Like “accountability”,
“empowerment” has no easy equivalent in Spanish, and one encounters neologisms such
as “empoderamiento” filling the linguistic gap. The elasticity of these concepts reflects
their multi dimensional character: they point to processes that involve organizational
growth, personal and collective identity, specific leadership skills, trust, the ability to
secure goods and services, and the like, and which operate simultaneously on a range of
social levels. Of these concepts, “empowerment” is perhaps the most people friendly.
Empowerment denotes a kind of social and political process and a pattern of structure and
organization that provides citizens with a growing range of arenas for access to the public
10
sphere, reduces barriers to action, and creates conditions that enhance a sense of self
worth and recognized personal as well as collective identity. 7
In this light, the relation between empowerment and a sense of citizenship seems
clear enough. Those women and men who come to see themselves as citizens with rights
equal to others, are in that measure set on the road to individual and collective action as
normal and possible. The emphasis on identity, however, masks considerable ambiguity
around the relation of empowerment to organization.
Organization can further
empowerment by linking individual and group capacities together and moving action to
larger arenas. But at the same time, by subordinating group efforts to leadership concerns
and stifling independent decision, overarching organization can also disempower. In his
work on religion in the United States, Warner (1993) states “it is to be expected that the
empowerment functions of religion are latent. At an individual level, those who seek well
being in religion tend not to find it; those who gain well being from religion are not those
who seek it.”(1070) The logic of Warner’s apparent paradox rests on an argument that
locates empowerment (like social capital) in the long term construction of community,
trust, and the skills an disposition required for working together—not just in creating or
joining organizations, and much less in simply “getting the goods”.
This is a lot for any social process to deliver, and as we have suggested, many
movements have not been able to fill the bill. Even the briefest review of recent
theoretical and empirical work on urban social movements, empowerment, and
representation in Latin America brings to light a slow recovery from a hangover brought
7
Cf. Oxhorn, 2002, “ Efforts must be systematically undertaken at the grass roots level to begin to
empower people by helping them to be proud of who they are—regardless of their social class, gender,
ethnicity, religion, and so on. Studies have already demonstrated the success of such efforts to overcome
people’s symbolic exclusion. (14-15)
11
on by exaggerated expectations, laced with a heavy dose of idealization of the new
movement. The autonomy of movements (vis a vis institutions such as political parties,
state institutions, or church) was overdone, and a romantic image of the “small is
beautiful” kind made many observers look for a totally new kind of politics to arise from
the seedbed of these new movements., giving rise to a new institutional frame for party
politics, one that would hopefully be more democratic and more fully empowering of
citizens.
(Drogus, Hellman, Lander, Levine and Stoll, Lora, Ortner, Oxhorn 2001,
Tovar) This did not happen: in case after case, the new politics was easily absorbed into
the old, and movements split, or simply fell apart. That movements fail and
“empowerment” does not endure should come as no surprise. As Piven and Cloward
pointed out long ago for the United States, poor people’s movements commonly fail.
(1977), Activism is costly and antinomian and the day to day pressures of economic and
family survival make organization difficult to sustain. (Piven and Cloward, 1998)
Moreover, as Stokes and others have shown for Peru, the development and supposedly
more participatory (and therefore “empowering”) styles of organization among the urban
poor does not necessarily replace older self concepts and forms of action. People are
practical, and new styles of action take their place as an alternative to be weighed and
perhaps out to use, as circumstances seem to indicate.
We do not suggest that empowerment is necessarily illusory. Many men and
women have indeed acquired new skills and self images, and imparted these to others in
their communities. We do want to underscore that the concept is incomplete, and the
reality vulnerable. The difficulty lies more with links to organization and the reliable
construction of representation, which may undermine the consolidation of gains. The
12
linkage between the civic spaces of empowerment and the public spaces state political
representation and state power remains problematic. The absence of stable links to larger
structures also undercuts the visibility of groups in the public sphere, which is essential to
their gaining recognition as legitimate actors and claimants of rights and goods.
What does disempowerment mean, and what is the path from empowerment to
disempowerment?
There is withdrawal from activism, often prompted by burnout,
sometimes by family pressures (commonly gender specific, and affecting women). There
is also a failure of leadership replacement. Groups that campaign for democracy can of
course remain authoritarian within, and leaders find it difficult to let new generations
come to the fore. The problem is notorious in groups linked to the Catholic Church (as
many have been) where dependence on clergy makes for enormous vulnerability if and
when more conservative clergy arrive on the scene. Finally, of course, with the opening
of new political spaces (through transitions to democracy or reforms within democratic
systems) younger activists easily find other, perhaps more rewarding and less costly
outlets for their energies.
The theoretical problem is to discern what there is about the way in which
empowerment was sought, representation constructed or connections built by urban
movements that has self limiting or perhaps self destructive qualities. We also need to
understand how the fate of groups and protest is related to the issue of formal, electoral
mechanisms of representation. In other words, how elections, electoral mechanisms, and
pre election politics (candidate selection, district boundaries, voting systems) are related
to , and perhaps reinforce patterns within groups. Other institutional matters, most
13
notably the impact of judicial and penal systems, are also vital, especially for
considerations of security of property and persons.
Our earlier review of movements and politics in our two cases showed that
although the party focused model of organization was clearly stronger in Venezuela than
Peru, in both countries, the decay (or in Peru, the failed consolidation) of that model (and
of its controlling norms) had contradictory effects. The long process of organizational
deterioration in Venezuela set many potential clients free from party controls while
opening the field for new kinds of groups operating in newly created political spaces.
Cases in point include the expansion of urban neighborhood movements, the impact of
new electoral rules on the development of different styles of representation, and the
emergence of a range of groups and federations self consciously identified as civil
society. In Peru, where parties (apart from APRA) were never that strong to begin with,
the enormous surge of urban growth (fueled through the 1980s by internal war)
overwhelmed older structures and spawned a proliferation of urban groups of all
kinds—unified by their common need to solve urgent and immediate problems of
housing, food, transport, education and violence. Freed from control, these and similar
groups were also to some extent set adrift, with no clear access to state resources or
channels of influence. Under such conditions, the connection between particular causes
and concerns and more general political affiliations is hard for most people to identify,
much less sustain.
In both countries, new urban citizen movements arose to address very specific
needs created by the urban context and the deteriorating economic situation. Satisfying
needs required some rearrangement of the relevant institutions and political spaces, and
14
led to campaigns for political and electoral reform. Building these connections and
sustaining these campaigns requires allies and patrons: leaders and groups who can
provide and manage access. There is a fine line here between sustaining empowerment
and falling into time honored clientelistic patterns, and the line is easily blurred. One
need not have the complex pattern of dependence of PRI-controlled Mexico at its height
(Eckstein, 1977) to recognize that groups and communities need allies in the state and
the larger political arena, and that these allies may and likely do have other agendas.
State or party control of resources is critical here: hence the critical role often played by
NGOs with autonomous resources in freeing groups from dependence on parties. The
middle class character of many of the neighborhood movements in Venezuela provides a
roughly equivalent independence.
If we rephrase the question in terms of enfranchisement and representation, and
democratic representation at that, instead of empowerment, does the panorama become
any clearer or more hopeful? What is the relation of empowerment and by extension, of
disempowerment, to representation? One aspect of the people friendly character of
“empowerment” has been an emphasis on participation that is self sustaining and of high
quality. In this context, the “quality” of representation involves more than assuring that
electoral results reflect votes more or less accurately and fairly (according to whatever
electoral rules are in use).
Assuming universal suffrage and relatively free and open
elections, quality representation also entails multiplying instances and arenas of
representation, lowering barriers to organization and making voting easier, making
representatives more accountable and more accessible for ordinary citizens. As we
suggested earlier, the link is problematic and the record is at best mixed.
15
There can be no question that the institutional reforms put in place in Venezuela
(in the 1990s) and Peru (1980s) opened new possibilities for organization, representation,
and action. These possibilities were taken up with great vigor in both countries: local
governments were energized, and a profound process of political de- and re- alignment
got under way. Many gains proved short lived. Just as the rise of his movement shattered
old political allegiances, the new electoral arrangements put in place by President Chávez
and his supporters repeated many of the distortions of the old, pre reform system. .
Overwhelming majorities further distanced new leaders from constituents. The Chavez
regime made an effort (successful for a while) to bypass formal processes of interest
mediation or representation, in favor of a direct relation between the leader and the
people. (Kornblith, this volume, Levine, 2003). This was a set back for the autonomy of
social movements, and for decentralization. which had provided them with viable arenas
for mobilization and action. The Peruvian case, the post 1992 Fujimori dictablanda
moved more and more into a populist mode, making citizen groups dependent on the
state, and restricting independent access to resources. In both countries, the presence of
NGOs weakened as many transnational groups turned their attention and resources to
newly opened fields of action in central and eastern Europe. Both Chávez and Fujimori
sharply curtailed decentralization measures that had gathered force in earlier periods.
Much of the reevaluation of work on urban movements and empowerment has
been linked to the literature on transitions to democracy and democratization. We believe
that this unduly restricts the scope of the conceptual effort required, and argue that the
matter is better situated in a more general context of thinking about activism and social
movements, and institutions. Notable cases of transitions to democracy present the
16
following anomaly: citizen mobilization and new citizen groups that were prominent in
campaigning for democratization declined, split, and often simply disappeared with the
restoration of democracy. The anomaly lies not only in decline, which makes sense given
the availability of channels of action, and of competition for resources and for supporters.
Although decline was in all likelihood inevitable, the process was accelerated in key
cases by naïve and unworkable understandings of politics, and by untrustworthy and
unreliable political allies. With the possible exception of Brazil, where the PT has clear
roots in the popular movements, and has grown steadily at all levels, the common
experience has been one of division and betrayal. (Cf. Blondet, Lander, Levine 1998a,
Levine and Stoll)
If we reframe the question in terms of activism and social movements, the
anomaly presented by activism with disempowerment is easier to understand. Two points
are critical. First, movements commonly emerge, grow, succeed or fail, and decline,
moving through what Tarrow (156) terms a “cycle of protest.” “What is distinctive
about such periods”, he writes, “is not that entire societies ‘rise’ in the same direction at
the same time [they seldom do]; or that particular population groups act in the same way
over and over, but that the demonstration effects of collective action on the part of a
small group of ‘early risers’ triggers a variety of processes of diffusion, extension,
imitation, and reaction among groups that are normally quiescent.” In this light, the
proper question is not so much why groups do not survive, but what if any legacy they
leave in new rules, expectations, or capabilities. The second point is connected, and has
to do with the opportunity structure that urban citizens face—resources and institutional
channels available, accountability and access. Writers like Castañeda have argued that a
17
focus on local level organization and the delivery of “good government” offers the most
promising path to a rebirth of the left, and sustained empowerment of popular sectors in
Latin America. The record is mixed on both counts. We find a clear legacy of norms
about rights and activism, but weakness at making enduring and representative
connections. More often than not, surges of activism leave activists, at the end, at the
mercy of a different charismatic leader—new face, same dependence. The record of
institutional reform is promising but incomplete, with a reversal of many reforms.
Despite widespread attention to institutional design and institutional engineering, failures
of accountability are more the norm than the exception. The institution of provisions for
referendum and recall of officials holds possibilities, but does little to address candidate
selection, electoral rules, or the all too common impunity of police and lack of access to
courts.
Urban Spaces and Urban Citizen Movements
The preceding considerations bring us to a closer look at urban spaces and urban
citizen movements: the city as a stage or arena for action, and its citizens as actors. Both
dimensions are important. As in much of Latin America (and the Third World as a
whole), the urban context in Venezuela and Peru is marked by dominant capital cities,
explosive growth with bigger cities growing faster than smaller ones, and all cites faster
than rural sectors. In recent years, regional cities have experienced substantial expansion.
Internal migration is the predominant motor of urban growth in both countries. In
Venezuela, rural poverty, road construction and urban investment paid for by petroleum
sparked a process of migration, beginning in the 1930s, that has substantially emptied the
country side.
Explosive urban growth came later in Peru, , but when it came, it was
18
magnified by extreme rural poverty and internal war that drove refugees to seek safety in
the cities. Rural to urban migration in Peru produced a mixing of ethnic groups on a scale
unknown in the past: People of highland Indian culture came to Lima, bringing cultural
expressions (such as music or Quechua) with them.
In both countries, the new presence of migrants overwhelmed urban
infrastructures (particularly in the mega capital cities of Lima and Caracas) creating
urgent needs for water, transport, education, and other services, and of course, for
representation. The pressure was such in Peru that a well known book by Matos Mar
(1984) is entitled Popular Overflow and the Crisis of the State in Peru. (Desborde
Popular y Crisis del Estado en el Peru) The spatial configuration of urban expansion,
and the availability of transport within the city, has had notable impact on the
organization, citizen movements, and empowerment. Our analysis of the emergence and
problems of urban movements is a structural one: following Eckstein’s path breaking
work on Mexico City (1977) we situate movements in a context created by the political
opportunity structure of nation and city, and given specific form and content by the
availability of resources, and by those (NGOs, unions, political parties) present and
competing to provide services, orientation, and leadership
In Peru the career of urban movements did not follow the track of other social
movements in the sense of a steady accumulation of forces. Rather, after each successful
mobilization, they seemed to fade away. As one local leader said in despair, once
electricity was obtained and public lighting was place, “they buy a TV set and stay at
home.” The same happened after struggling to get water and sewage for the
neighborhood and getting their house connected to the main service. Urban movement
19
gained significance and presence in Peru during the 1970s when public space was
reduced by the presence of a military regime, with elections only possible within the
private sphere, with voluntary organizations free to assemble and elect their leaders. The
State regulated these elections and acknowledged the right of elected leaders to negotiate
for public services. These electoral practices and the experience of representation were
important for the creation of an autonomous public space within the authoritarian regime.
Towards the end of the decade attempts were made to centralize neighborhood
organizations in Lima.
How can we best understand the empowerment of urban actors in the 1970s in
the context of a changing political system? What was the meaning of the power that was
being generating in these neighborhoods? From the perspective of class theories of
accumulation of power, this was clearly a process of gradual upward social mobility, not
major
transformation of power relations.
But from the perspective of building
citizenship, there was indeed a significant change in terms of power: from subjects or
clients , members of the movements became citizen with rights,
The pursuit and
exercise of political rights in the cities is conditioned on refashioning the cities as
political arenas not only for protest (claiming spaces) but also
as venues for classic
kinds of representation including the creation of relatively autonomous units of
government. With the end of military rule and the advent of democratic politics in 1980,
municipal elections opened a public electoral space for movements, and many former
leaders became mayors or city council members.8
8
Representation was more effective when there was a multiple electoral district (1985,1990), since a
single electoral district (1992, 1995, 2000) restricts electoral possibilities to the elites leaving aside the new
leadership emerging from recent movements
20
During the 1980s, the core agenda of major urban movements underwent a
notable change in Peru. Housing and public services faded, and former migrants had new
issues of concern, new demands to press. Tanaka (1999:117) notes that struggle is
centered increasingly within the private sector:. “Achieving basic services and the
consolidation of the urban scene has changed in a radical way the priorities of the urban
settlers (pobladores) giving place to a whole new pattern of meaning regarding
participation, collective action, and membership in organizations. Attaining public goods
lost its centrality and needs related to private goods open their way as more important”.
Currently, most of new land invasions lead to confrontations with groups of working
class land holders associated in cooperatives, instead of the earlier struggles against big
urban land holders or the State, leading to face to face struggles more than initiating
social movements sustained in collective beliefs. In some sense, urban de-mobilization
responds to urban development and to municipal administration of once self managed
neighborhoods. Cities grow slowly into the margins of the old invasions or climbing
higher in the hills, and also transforming one family houses into multi family ones.
Mobilizations in the urban space of Lima typically has very concrete goals that
where easily assumed by municipal governments. Provision of public services, as
garbage collection, security, establishment and maintenance of parks and green spaces,
and coordination with private firms providing water and electricity to the city. Candidates
for municipal elections are now commonly seen as potential
experts on city
management, rather than as mobilizers or politicians. This has contributed to the
multiplication of candidates and the short lives of many local movements. Once the
21
neighborhood is converted in a municipality, the local voluntary organizations resemble
those of any other part of the city: sport clubs, cultural associations, School Parents
associations, Christian communities, Market vendors, Teacher’s Unions, and so on.
As political and economic crises became more acute throughout the 1980s, the
more dynamic movements since became those around survival: dedicated to providing
food, resisting unemployment, and literally defending life from both terrorism and an
arbitrary, repressive state. Social actors that were organized and could participate in
public demands were mostly middle classes: teachers, nurses, medical doctors, public
employees and public transportation workers. Both union and business firms were weak
as a result of the economic consequences of the foreign debt crisis, and the structural
reform policies suggested by the IMF. The result, throughout the 1980s, was a growing
demobilization of the masses, aided by a deadly mix of terror and repression. soon after
the change to a democratic regime.
Survival organizations have been particularly active at the district level. The
“Glass of Milk” municipal program, formed under Alfonso Barrantes, the Major of Lima
elected as a member of United Left in 1983, grew to distribute a million glasses of milk
every day at the national level: to pre school children, mothers with newborns, and later
to tuberculosis patients. There were also soup kitchens, known as “popular dining rooms”
(comedores populares), some self managed, and others sponsored by Catholic parishes
and party influenced organizations such as the APRA-linked “mothers clubs” and the
“popular kitchens” sponsored by AP. The most common pattern was that a group of
women got together, cooking in one of the members’ homes, and selling meals for a
nominal price to their members who would then pick up the meals and take them home to
22
eat with families. Complementary aid came from NGOs or the state, sometimes through
the donation of cooking equipment like stoves or pots and pains, and also through the
regular provision of food, including oil, rice, or wheat. Voluntary work by members and
their own contribution in financing the food is a central to the operation of this kind of
organization, and maybe a reason why they often do not reach the poorest families in
neighborhoods.
These organizations have been pioneers in changing the way of doing politics. In
September 1988, after the first wave of structural adjustment policies, they organized a
huge mobilization under the slogan “Protesta con propuesta” (Protest with proposals).
They demanded support from the government to buy food from local producers, instead
of importing it from abroad. This linked aid for the poor to rural development, joining
the agenda of urban movements to peasant demands. Soon after, the church started an
Emergency Social Program (PSE) offering resources to channel international support for
the poor. The Program opened a public space where the leadership of de “comedores”,
the entrepreneurial association CONFIEP, NGOs and the Catholic Church could work
together to elaborate an emergency program. This program continued under the Fujimori
government as a Social Emergency Program (PES).
In 1990 the leadership of the “comedores” decided to institutionalize their right to
receive public funding to feed the poor. The various organizations (independent and
related to political parties) join together toward this aim and lobbied with legislators
from different parties, and achieved their goal at the end of the year, with a Law,
promulgated by Fujimori in 1991 that recognized the responsibility of the State to feed
the poor. A successful organization of comedores, led the women to the streets and to
23
oppose the terrorist movement Shining Path. In a mobilization at El Agustino they
marched against the general strike called by Shining Path chanting “ni con hambre ni con
balas” (neither hunger nor bullets) to proclaim claim their autonomy and courage, which
cost them many lives.
Once the distribution of food became centralized by the government in the middle
of the 1990s the leadership that was usually elected or rotated among the members of the
associations were replaced by personnel coming from the same organizations, but loyal to
the regime. There were over 2000 self managed comedores, 3000 mothers’ clubs, and
moe than 7000 Glass of Milk committees in Lima alone. Many political cadres from
these organizations joined the Fujimori political movements created for each new
election as a party of independent candidates. Women candidates, leaders of the soup
kitchens were elected as Council members in the municipalities aiming to represent their
organizations’ own interests, but ending as part of the political establishment dragging
with them their former constituency.
Political violence and economic crisis throughout the 1990s undercut the vitality
of urban organizations, making it difficult to hold open assemblies and discussions in
the neighborhoods, and hard to elect new leaders. Urban citizen movements were caught
between terrorists on the one hand and a repressive and controlling government on the
other. The main goal of terrorist organizations, most notably Shining Path, was to control
territory within the city and neutralize, coopt, or eliminate competing groups and leaders.
For the same reasons, in terms of national security, a central goal of the regime was to
control the neighborhoods and establish secure ties with the population. Authorities were
suspicious of autonomous organizations;
disempowerment and control were the
24
dominant state strategies. Major mobilizations during the early 1990s were linked to the
killing of grassroots leaders and to massive demonstrations of solidarity, often around
funerals as was the case following the public assassination of Maria Elena Moyano by
Shining Path. Later, with the coming of peace, there was a notable political vacuum,
since no political parties were working among grass roots groups and only the Catholic
Church, the evangelicals, and NGOS remained to organize what was left of civil society.
It was only towards the end of the second government of Fujimori that the people
recovered the streets and public squares as arenas for assembly and protest.
The Venezuelan experience of explicitly urban social movements is very
different. To be sure, in Venezuela as in Peru, urban space (above all the streets, plazas,
and neighborhoods of the capital city) is a prime arena for political action of all kinds:
from rallies, demonstrations and marches to street fighting. But there are important
differences. To begin with, Venezuelan movements emerge within an established
democracy, with an agenda of broadening political access and citizen rights. In addition,
given their origin in neighborhood defense associations whose prime constituency was
urban property owners, movements have been more middle class in character.
Urban mobilizations played a key role in the overthrow of the country’s last
dictator, Marcos Perez Jimenez, in January 1958. Urban land invasions and the
formation of vast new shanty towns remained a prominent feature of city life through the
early 1960s, but have since faded. A different kind of urban movement came on to the
national scene decades later as part of the emergence of ‘civil society” as an actor in
national politics, and a drive to create spaces and vehicles for that action. Neighborhood
associations (vecinos ) were formed with the initial goal of urban development and
25
defending property rights. Their agenda soon expanded to include pressure for greater
municipal autonomy, and the fiscal and electoral reforms this entailed. Early
neighborhood associations began in the 1970s in a series of middle class areas of
Caracas. FACUR (the Federación de Associaciones de Comunidades Urbanas) was
established in 1971 as a coordinating body for these associations. FACUR provided a
model for associations and similar regional federations that soon began to spring up all
across the country. By the early 1990s there were federations in every state, that together
grouped an estimated total of about 15,000 associations.. In 1987 the neighborhood
movement succeeded in gathering 140,000 signatures on petitions asking for a reform of
the basic law governing municipalities (Ley Orgánica del Regimen Municipal or LORM).
This was one of the most important non-violent mobilizations to that date in Venezuela.
Changes to the law included the election of governors, the election of mayors, the
creation of parish councils, and the possibility of recalling officials
The impact of the movement was magnified by the school for neighborhood groups,
the Escuela de Vecinos de Venezuela or EVV. The EVV arose out of classes within
FACUR, and consolidated on a national level in the mid-1980s, with important support
from business, and from national and international NGOs. Since that time, the EVV has
established regional offices, mounted regular programs of courses for associations and
local public officials, and maintained a range of correspondence courses, periodic
meetings, and media presentations. EVV leaders have generally resisted pressure to
form a political party, preferring instead to spin off a series of pressure groups, each
devoted to a specific issue. Examples include Queremos Elegir!(We Want to Elect) a
group devoted to electoral reform, Fiscales!Electorales de Venezuela (Electoral Officials
26
of Venezuela), dedicated to!promoting citizen involvement in supervision of voting sites,
and Venezuela 2020 (an organization that promotes workshops and!round tables
concerned with the shape of the country's future. In other!words, not a party but
something more like "civil society". (Garcia Guadila and Silva Querales 1999, Gómez
Calcaño 1996, Lander 1995, Levine 1994, 1996).
The term "civil society" only came into wide use in Venezuela in the last ten years
Until then, the political parties founded in the 1940s and the political system consolidated
around them after 1958 encapsulated the expression of organized social life through
party controlled networks. Much contemporary theorizing (Escobar and Alvarez 1992)
depicts the "emergence of civil society" as above all defensive. The neighborhood
movement which began as uncoordinated efforts by urban middle class citizens to resist
unplanned city growth and to defend their neighborhoods is a case in point. The
emergence of the human rights movement is another. Human rights organizations began
to appear in the 1980s, in response to specific abuses and to challenge long standing
practices of official (especially police) impunity.9 They gained national stature and
impact in the wake of the Caracazo of February 27, 1989. Mounting violence throughout
the 1990s have kept them in the public spotlight. What these groups had in common was
an effort to mobilize opinion (and people) outside the existing network of organizations
controlled by the country’s political parties.10 Through the 1990s, as the political crisis
9
Groups include Provea, COFAVIC, Red de Apoyo Para la Justicia y la Paz. See Levine 1998 for details.
10
Cf. the 1991 Annual Report of PROVEA, a major human rights group, which states: "In contrast to
earlier years, and basically during and after the National Protests of February 1989 it was possible to
confirm that the social spectrum participating in protests is widening. Now participation in organized
protests has opened fields of action for new groups: along with students and workers one finds a range of
professional associations and social groups: doctors, nurses, peasants, Indians, firemen, police, cultural
27
grew and political parties were blamed by many Venezuelans for all the country’s
problems, “civil society” became a catch all banner for reform and right thinking
activism.
The years from 1989 to the present are arguably the most protest filled period in the
last one hundred years of Venezuelan history: one massive urban uprising, two attempted
coups, the impeachment and removal of one President, and a rising tide of violent actions
in the universities and on the streets. Protest surged following the Caracazo of February
27, 1989, and after a short respite under the second government of Rafael Caldera (199398), the rhythm of demonstrations, marches, and street protests pick ed up again as the
country entered a new electoral cycle. To be sure, urban protests, often violent, had
never completely gone away: Student activism, sparked by regular violent actions under
the leadership of encapuchados (lit. “hooded ones”, students with hoods to shield their
identity) regularly spilled over from campuses into the streets. Protest and the scope of
confrontation broadened with the election of Hugo Chávez as President. As Lopez Maya
shows (2002) among kinds of protest, confrontational actions showed the strongest
increase in 1999. Her figures do not encompass the events of 2001 and 2002, when an
officially sponsored, violent effort to take over the Central University was rebuffed by
faculty and students and the government was defeated in its effort to take over the trade
union movement. These defeats energized the opposition, and beginning in late 2001,
protests entered a regular rhythm of mobilization and counter mobilization, rally and
counter rally, with massive marches following one another at ever shorter intervals
through late 2001 and early 2002. Protests, marches, occupations of buildings, and
workers, housewives, and neighborhood groups actively joining in movements in defense of basic rights
(italics in original) (PROVEA, 114-15).
28
coordinated actions involving banging of pots and pans (cacerolazos) or blowing of
whistles or car horns (bocinazos) became the daily bread of urban life. Things s came to
a head in the bloody events of April 11-13, when snipers fired on a huge march making
its way through Caracas to the Presidential palace, the President was ousted and returned
to office a few days later. After a brief respite while all sides stepped back from the brink,
protests, marches and counter marches—this time all over the country—have begun
again.
The leadership and organizational backbone for the opposition evolved quickly,
starting with a pact between trade union movement, the business federation, and the
Catholic Church. Union leaders, fresh from defeating the government in a referendum,
played a critical day to day organizing. They were soon joined by political party
activists, human rights groups, and others as a range of new coordinating groups were put
together. (eg. the Coordinadora Democratica, in the summer of 2002). For present
purposes, the striking feature of this whole process is the continuing role played by old
line organizations like the union movement, and the way in which protests may have
provided an opening for political parties to take a visible role as violent confrontation has
evolved through the summer of 2002, into serious talk about constitutional reform and
early elections.
Religion, mobilization, and public space in Peru
A common role acknowledged to the Catholic Church in Peru as in other South
American countries has been that of opening a public space to meet, associate and
participate under dictatorial regimes. When other public spaces were closed and
forbidden , assemblies or prayer and Christian communities were open for the faithful
29
and were used by citizens to exchange information, listen to others and form an opinion,
circulate rumors, ironies, and hopes. In Peru, this role has been secondary. Even in the
worst times of the dictatorship between 1968 and 1980, freedom of association and of
public assembly were accepted although state-sponsored organizations regularly
competed with autonomous ones for members and public voice.
In this context, Christian communities offered a complementary space for
association and critical reflection contributing to the quality of leadership, and
stimulating involvement in other organizations and in the political realm. There was a
clear distinction between the public space of religion and the public space of politics.
Committed Christians were, for the most part, careful to act on their own, and not in the
name of their particular church, Catholic or evangelical. This experience underscores the
role religion can play in empowerment and disempowerment but not necessarily in
building representation.
Until 1980, Catholicism was the established Church in Peru and the State was a
confessional one. The Catholic Church had expectations of a prominent public role.
These expectations were not abandoned with the official separation of Church and State
in the 1980 Constitution. The Church’s prominent role in the struggle against poverty,
and later in the promotion and defense of human rights, opened new areas for common
action with other organizations in civil society, as well as with international agencies
sharing the same goals. As noted earlier, in 1988 the Church created a space for bringing
together different actors in an Emergency Social Program, including international
cooperation agencies, business entrepreneurs and grassroots leadership. Later, when
repression and terrorism continue through the nation the Church supported human rights
30
organizations, put its new gained religious legitimacy behind their pastoral agents –
clergy, nuns and laity – to care for the relatives of people missing and tortured, and those
innocent in prison. Drzewieniecki writes:
“In many parts of the country, clergy and Catholic lay workers developed new,
more egalitarian ways to work with the poor through parishes and the expanding network
of christian base communities. These Catholic activists as well as CEAS (Comisión
Episcopal de Acción Social – Episcopal Commission for Social Action) whose Human
Rights Department was founded in 1976, played a very important role in the development
of human rights work in many different areas of the country. CEAS became one of the
most important human rights organizations and played an important role in the creation
and institutionalization of the Coordinadora Nacional de Derechos Humanos”.
(Drzewieniecki, 2001: 4)
During the Jubileum campaign called by the Pope and joined by an Ecumenical
movement to lobby for forgiveness of the foreign debt to the poorest countries, the
network of communities collected the largest amount of signatures in the participating
countries, supporting the movement. The same network provided volunteers for the
Transparency organization in Peru, an NGO whose role is to watch electoral processes
for fair elections. In the 2000 elections, they played a key role and also in the 2001 one.
Commitment and involvement come together in compromiso , a key word for
Christians through the Catholic Church in Peru. But compromiso works more for
participation in general than for involvement in politics specifically. A clear distinction
is drawn between the political public sphere in which they can participate as citizens, and
the social public sphere has been created
through the creation and practice of
31
organizational life. This distinction is reinforced by the current experience of
participation in communities and parishes and in social movements but alienation from
institutional channels for representation.
The option for the poor has contributed to a growing awareness of identity
embedded in common interests and culture that cut across different classes and ethnic
divides, and even across different parties. But this religious awareness has not had a
similar intellectual elaboration in other fields such as literature, or politics. Institutional
politics and modern culture remain distant from the recently included citizens that often
feel themselves marginal or alienated from public agendas. Demands for cultural
representation at the institutional level, Congress, government, arts and mass media, have
been added to those of economic interests. And the new appointed Bishops, in important
cities as Lima, Arequipa or Trujillo are not helping to bridge the gap or to link the elite
with the citizenry.
Disempowerment as The Future of Empowerment
The combination of activism massive citizen mobilization with disempowerment
joins the social and political trajectories of Venezuela and Peru in an unexpected
convergence. From different starting points and the most varied social, organizational and
political traditions, these two nations have arrived at a shared space that does not augur
well for citizen empowerment or representation. The decay of political institutions,
including but not limited to political parties, has left Venezuelans and Peruvians with
space for the creation of civil society—a space they have filled,, as we have seen, with
great energy and creativity. But in the absence of reliable and trusted political
intermediaries—either formal institutions or political parties—these energies are rarely
32
converted into sustained and authentic representation. Is disempowerment the future of
empowerment? Reading back from recent waves of massive, mostly urban mobilizations
in each country (anti Fujimori in Peru, and pro and anti Chavez in Venezuela) may
provide some clues.
The decay of institutions is arguably greater in Peru, where the all encompassing
corruption of the Fujimori-Montesinos system of rule spread discredit very widely.
Taking a longer view, note that the very idea of citizenship remains uncertain in Peru:
although voting is obligatory, the regular rhythm of alternation between authoritarian and
democratic regimes, (with change coming about ten years or so) has meant that as
Peruvian citizens approach legal voting age they cannot be sure if elections will be held
at all, what electoral rules will be. Individual, or what we might call “civic”, forms of
citizenship begin to take significant form in Peru as a result of the struggle against
Shining Path and the MRTA (Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru) beginning
more as a defensive than as a social movement. Earlier movements have conquered
citizen rights in the areas of economic and social rights, and later in politics, in the
struggle to guarantee rights of association and public demonstrations. Individual rights
have been third generation, reversing the order outlined by Marshall. With strong links to
transnational human rights networks, civic activists developed networks and actions
within Peru that soon gained international impact. (Cf. Burgerman on El Salvador and
Guatemala). Although twenty years of activism have earned these groups considerable
social recognition, such that they are now considered an important part of “civil society”,
such organizations remain geared to work with victims, and not to building a membership
base.
33
The end of authoritarian rule and the return of democratic institutions and the rule
of law has not cleared the slate of human rights. Much remains on the agenda, as the
creation in Peru of a Truth Commission to review the past twenty years demonstrates.
Human rights groups have begun to broaden their agendas to include social and
economic rights as an integral component of human rights. Activism and pressure has
also continued with specific
concern for the country’s political transition—the
dismantling of the Fujimori regime and the reconstruction of democracy and political
rights. Explicitly “democratic” groups have been formed, first among university students
in opposition to Fujimori’s re election and in defense of the Constitutional Tribunal that
rejected his (and the Congress’) efforts to provide a basis for his re election. (Tanaka,
this volume). These struggles were reinforced by the efforts of Women’s Collectives
(Mujeres por la Democracia) as well as by artists and people from the media, in such
groups as Resistencia, with a creative adaptation of forms of protest from other countries,
such as weekly washing of the national flag (in the Plaza Mayor in the center of Lima),
sweeping the area in front of the Congress, or the mounting of “Walls of Shame” in
various places, where passers by could stick up their ideas, photos, drawings, or
commentary. There were also a series of street actions, rallies and demonstrations, in the
plazas of Lima. Many of these elements came together under the direction of opposition
political parties in the massive Marcha de los 4 Suyos, held on the very day on which
Fujimori was sworn in for his third, and short lived period in office.
To this point, the effort to construct democratic institutions in Peru has placed
emphasis more on institutions than on resources or actors. The result has been to depict
social movements, NGOs, and their leaders primarily as acting in pursuit of limited
34
sectoral demands. The new cutting edge of urban struggles and mobilizations is taking
place outside the capital city of Lima. In Iquitos, the Regional Front, strengthened during
the border negotiations with Ecuador carried out under Fujimori, is advancing claims for
development resources, and demanding that benefits go to Peruvians before they go to
Ecuadorans. There are also active regional fronts in Tacna (on the frontier with Chile),
in Puno, and in Madre de Dios (on the frontier with Bolivia). Strictly speaking these are
not urban movements, because they include peasants, but they are organized primarily in
provincial cities by business people and academics (from the local universities) and local
officials. Recently initiated processes of decentralization, with regional elections in
November 2002, will give added dynamism and resources to these organizations, and in
this way open spaces for the emergence of new groups and leaders.
In Venezuela, new citizen movements and forms of protest ,indeed the very idea
of “civil society” as an autonomous space for organization and action, appear within an
already established democracy. Their goal was not to challenge or overturn authoritarian
rule, but rather to broaden or deepen that democracy by loosening the constraints
imposed by a moribund but still all controlling set of institutions and tacit rules, centered
on the political parties. . The historical track thus differs but the resulting situation is
surprisingly similar. The creation of a movement around Hugo Chávez Frías, his rise to
power, and the implementation of a “Bolivarian Revolution” drew strength from the
discredit of the old system and the implicit association of the movement with “civil
society”, at least in rhetorical terms. The whole process makes sense as part of a general
onslaught on the old system, its institutions and operative rules. As Kornblith shows
elsewhere in this volume, the very word “representative” barely appears in the Bolivarian
35
Constitution of 1999. Instead, Venezuelan democracy is “and always will be democratic,
participative, elective, decentralized, alternative, responsible, pluralist, and with
revocable mandates” (Article 6) The preference has been for a new, and in theory more
authentic participation, grounded in provisions for initiative and recall, referenda and
citizen assemblies. The results have been meager. New institutions have either foundered
or never made it off the drawing board. Indeed, once the regime lost the trade union
referendum and the rhythm of opposition shot up, institutional reform has mostly
disappeared from the public agenda.
Meanwhile, in both countries a combination of steep economic decline and
political deadlock following close on the heels of apparent euphoria (resignation of
Fujmori, election of Toledo; victory of Chavez) has made sustained activism harder for
many ordinary people. The net result has been to magnify the middle class character of
much protest and confine most people massive sporadic bursts—witness the counter
mobilization that helped put Chavez back in power after his temporary ouster in April
2002.
Although the decay of parties sets groups free, in the same measure it sets them
adrift and leaves them with dwindling resources, easy prey to manipulative leaders and
personalist politics. Without strong and durable organization, "civil society" is unlikely
to provide coherence and direction for a complex and conflict ridden society. The kind of
organizational volatility noted here leaves ordinary people very much at the mercy of a
supposedly direct relation to the leader, whoever that may be. Civil society constructed
in this way is unlikely to yield enduring organization, and all too likely to be dependent
36
on, and ultimately betrayed by personalist elites, as unaccountable as their populist
predecessors.
It will not be easy to solve the puzzle of mobilization with disempowerment. Part
of the difficulty is clearly practical: obstacles of all kinds are in the way of those who try.
There are theoretical problems as well. Much thinking about empowerment, citizenship,
and representation is caught somewhere in between reflection on social movements and
analysis of institutional design, and to expand citizen access and participation in already
existing arenas. The problem is how to give enduring and legitimate form (to
institutionalize) this new participation. In Peru, this is starting to happen in the Round
Tables for the Fight against Poverty , established at district, provincial, and departmental
levels. There has also been the National Accord, with participation of political parties,
regional fronts, and the Mesas de Concertación; and a Truth Commission, which is just
getting under way. All these can be understood as kind of an end run around existing
political spaces, institutionalizing empowerment in new places. There is nothing
comparable in Venezuela, where as of late 2002, polarization and fragmentation of
political forces is such as to make agreement on such spaces (let alone on who should
participate in them) very unlikely. As we noted earlier, decentralization initiatives of the
19990s have been cut short, and some institutional reforms (for example, of the electoral
system) have exacerbated, rather than ameliorated problems of representation.
Looking at Peru and Venezuela together helps frame our puzzle in a new light.
Timing and context make an important difference. The movements that got underway in
Peru in the 1970s did not look to political representation (off the table under the military)
but rather to the construction of democratic spaces within organizations. With the return
37
of democracy in 1980, the agenda changed, and as was the case in Venezuela, later the
same decade, issues of representation and the fuller expression of citizenship (more
elective offices, lower barriers to organization and participation in elections, running
competitive slates of candidates) came to the fore. This suggests an evolving agenda of
empowerment. As a concept, empowerment is often related to the poor and powerless,
bringing them from the margins into the mainstream, however that is defined. 0nce the
poor and powerless become citizens, however, moving from demand making and the
satisfaction of needs to sustained representation requires the development of political
capacities and an ability to manage within new institutional spaces. . The core of the
problem has to do with links to organization and the reliable construction of
representation The linkage between civic spaces of empowerment and public spaces of
representation and state power remains problematic,
The future of urban citizen movements does not look as good as it used to, and it
is not easy to be optimistic, at least not in the short or medium term. It is important to be
clear about the core problem. That organizations fail and leadership is unreliable or
manipulative is itself nothing new. The difficulty for movements, and for the
representation that theoretically occurs in and through them, is not so much in the
survival of any given organization as such, but rather in the creation of a kind of
institutional safety net, something for groups to fall back on when times are hard. This is
the role played, and played well, throughout Latin America by foreign financed NGOs,
whose monetary and organizational autonomy provides an invaluable cushion. Such a
role is of long standing in Peru, only beginning in Venezuela. At the same time, it is
important that scholars understand what the members of movements know very well:
38
that the agenda of urban citizen movements has changed. At issue is less the traditional
range of urban demands: land, water, housing, transport, education and security. These
remain, to be sure, but now and in the foreseeable future, the pursuit and exercise of
political rights in the cities is conditioned on refashioning the cities as political arenas not
only for protest (claiming spaces) but also as venues for classic kinds of representation.
Only with these in place, and viable connections to other levels of government, can the
puzzle begin to be solved.
Epilogue: Venezuela in late 2002
On September 17, 2002, in the midst of evident preparation by the opposition for
another major round of demonstrations and marches, a Presidential decree was issued
(No. 1969) that identified nine ‘security zones” within Caracas, put these under military
control, and banned all marches, demonstrations, or unauthorized gatherings. Caracas
The zones identified flare out from around military installations, embassies and shopping
centers, in several cases reaching into residential areas, all of which have been preferred
points of concentration for opposition demonstrations. The decree effectively militarized
urban space and was clearly an effort to deny that space to the opposition. There was a
significant deployment of troops and equipment, and authorization for gatherings was left
in the hands of the military. Immediately following the decree, troops occupied one of
the major shopping centers in Caracas (Centro Commercial Tamanaco, or CCT), as well
as surrounding buildings, plazas and public spaces and parking garages. CCT lies at the
confluence of important highways in the city, and abuts an airbase. Clashes of security
39
forces with citizens, marked by tear gas and a complete shut down of CCT soon
followed. Controversy erupted and the government not long after gave a permit for
demonstrations in the same site. Soon after, the opposition, represented in the
Coordinadora Democratica, announced plans for a national work stoppage on October 10,
as part of an effort to ‘take back Caracas” (La Toma de Caracas).
As we have seen, protests of all kinds (marches, demonstrations, rallies,
confrontations, occupations of buildings, blocking of streets and the like) became a
regular feature of urban life throughout the 1990s, and has picked up steam in the first
year of the current century. There was a brief lull in the mid-1990s, while Rafael Caldera
occupied the Presidency, and then protest (including violent confrontations) began to pick
up again all across the country in the run up to the 1998 presidential elections. Another
lull came immediately following the Chavez election, the referendum on the constitution,
and the “relegitimation of powers” in elections under the new, “Bolivarian Constitution.
But once the opposition began to regroup, protest picked up again, and for the first time,
major (sometimes violent) confrontations began to occur in major cities outside the
capital: including most notably Maracaibo, Valencia, Barqusimeto, and Ciudad Guayana.
Protests also began to appear in smaller Andean cities such as Trujillo, Valera and San
Cristobal. The mobilizations and confrontations that take place in these smaller urban
centers are not on the scale of what happens in the capital, but they are nonetheless
noteworthy as a sign of the extent of the activity. In some cases, as for example in
Maracay (which has a major military base) confrontations are deliberately started by the
opposition, picketing around the gates to the base. All such efforts are swiftly countered
40
by pro-government groups, and it is common now that both sides arrive at the same time,
ready to go at it. Tempers are high and confrontation flares quickly.
As the decay of the dominant parties and party-controlled organizations
proceeded through the 1990s, it was accompanied by the creation of a profusion of new
groups and new political parties. Some groups emerged directly out of party decay, as
leaders split off to claim a new identity and disassociate themselves from the discredited
structures of the past. Examples here include Alianza Bravo Pueblo (led by a former AD
politicians, Antonio Ledezma) or the political movement around former COPEI leader
Enrique Mendoza in the state of Miranda. There have also been regional movements and
machines, such as that built in the state of Carabobo (centered on the industrial city of
Valencia) by Enrique Salas Romer and now his son, Enrique Salas Feo.
There is of course, the movement created around the presidential candidacy of
Hugo Chavez Frias, now known as the MVR, or Movimiento Quinta Republica. The
MVR, like AD and COPEI before it, has also spawned a series of new political as
dissident military and civilian figures abandoned the regime to establish new parties:
examples include Union, founded around Francisco Arias Cardenas, one of the four
comandantes of February 4, 1992, who was a popular governor of Zulia State in the
West, Solidaridad, organized around the figure of Luis Miquelena, a long time financer
and political chief of Chavez, along with Un Solo Pueblo and Venezuela Somos Todos
(organized respectively, by William Ojeda and Javier Elechiguerra). Many of these
parties are essentially personalist and regional vehicles and as such they are a throw back
in Venezuela, to older models of organization, and away from the nationally structured
and heterogeneous movements patterned on Accion Democratica.
41
But there has also been innovation, as new groups emerged from sectors not much
represented in the past, or from those who, seeking organization, made a deliberate
choice to preserve their independence by staying away from party networks. Some of
these new groups were begun with a view to seeking elective office and filling the gap
left by parties, bringing new issues to the table and providing what they believed would
be more authentic and effective representation. Most notable in this category was La
Causa R, (the Radical Cause) a political party with roots in insurgent trade unions of the
steel zone (around Ciudad Guayana) which experienced meteoric growth in the early
1990s. After a strong showing in the 1993 elections, La Causa R was in effect swamped
by the Chavez phenomenon. As support for Chavez and his movement grew, Causa R
divided, with a significant portion of the party taking a new name (Patria Para Todos)
and allying with the Chavez movement.
Many new political movements took advantage of the process of electoral and
institutional reform of the 1980s and 1990s, which created a host of new elective offices
(including Governors and Mayors) and generally speaking lowered barriers to getting
into the electoral arena in the first place. Opting to compete in state and local elections
entailed building a kind of political base that was new in Venezuela: working from the
local and regional (not the national) and creating a leadership with administrative, not
parliamentary experience. In addition to La Causa R, examples include numerous groups
that have emerged from splits in MAS, including most recently Podemos, leftist micro
parties that have acquired a new profile such as Bandera Roja (Red Flag) as well as
smaller parties such as Decision Ciudadana (formed to compete for mayoralties in the
suburbs of Caracas), RED, Factor Democratico, Vision Emergente, and others. Few of
42
these lasted long nor did they manage to acquire much of a popular base. The most long
lived of new parties, and the one which seems to have the best prospects for constituting
a center-right national movement is Primero Justicia, which emerged out of a series of
neighborhood social service and law clinics, and now has notable local and national
representation.
There is an important category of organization that one might call a “group of
groups”, not a mass movement but rather one that coordinates and sponsors the creation
of such groups. A growing number of NGOS dedicated to this role include CESAP, a
loosely collected network of human rights groups including PROVEA, COFAVIC, Red
de Apoyo Por la Justicia y la Paz, Federacion Nacinal de Defensa de los Derechos
Humanos de Venezuela, Foro por la Vida, Vicaria de los Derechos Humanos and of
course, the Venezuelan branch of Amnesty International. The business sector has been an
important sponsor of many groups, above all through the activities of CEDICE, (Centro
de Divulgacion del Conocimiento Economico the Center for the Diffusion of Economic
Knowledge,) a business education and lobbying coalition founded in 1984.11 There is also
an important range of groups that has emerged out of the neighborhood movement:
beginning with local associations and with their national group, FACUR, including the
Escuela de Vecinos de Venezuela (dedicated to promoting the creation of groups) and
branching into very influential groups such as Queremos Elegir, which has been a key
voice in promoting electoral and institutional reform, including such groups as Fiscales
11
For details on CEDICE, see Maria Pilar Garcia-Guadilla and Nadeska Silva Querales , “De los
Movimientos Sociales a las redes organizacionales en Venezuela: estrategia, valores e identidades” Politeia
No. 23. (1999, Segundo Semestre) pp. 7-27 The authors provide details on CEDICE and other groups,
connections among them, and advance a useful distinction between groups and networks of groups. For
details on other groups mentioned here, see Levine, 1998, and Gomez Calcaño.
43
Electorales de Venezuela, a group dedicated to mobilizing civilian poll watchers at
election time. There are also a host of neighborhood focused groups that mobilize for
specific occasions and on different sides.
For its own part, the government has put considerable resources into the
promotion and financing of Circulos Bolivarianos (“Bolivarian Circles”) relatively
small, mostly urban groups, that in theory provide serve as a venue for popular
participation, a medium for the distribution of officially provided goods and services,
and a source of pro government mobilization. Circulos are located primarily in poor
neighborhoods, and are intended to be present all across the country. There is no accurate
count of how many such groups exist, nor is there much agreement on how to identify
one, apart of course from self identification. Controversy has centered on the extent to
which groups are financed, and above all armed . Opposition leaders see them as
modeled on the Cuban Committees for the Defense of the Revolution; the regime claims
that are voluntary associations that serve key functions of direct representation.
Whatever the case, it is clear that Circulos played an key role in the street protests role
that accompanied Chavez’ return to office in April 2002. similar and related groups
supporting the government include the following: Frente de Resistencia Popular, Grupo
Carapaica, Movimiento 28, Sindicato de Motorizados Bolivarianos, Clase Media
Democrática, Constitución y Paz, Guardianes de la Luz, Emergencia Patriótica and
Grupo de Defensores Bolivarianos
As the opposition gathered strength in 2001 and the rhythm of marches and
countermarches rose to become a regular feature of local and national life (with
accompanying levels of violence) a new layer of groups appeared. It is difficult to know
44
the extent to which they represent a structured membership base, or are something more
like short lived coalitions sparked by the struggle with Chávez. Among those mentioned
as participants in recent marches are Asamblea de Educacion and Movimiento 1.011
(which both arose to contest the regime’s efforts to control and supervise of private
schools), Alianza por la Libertad, Alianza Civica, Ciudadania Activa, a range of
womens’ groups including Mujeres Unidas por Venezuela, Mujeres por la Libertad,
Coordinadora de Lucha de Mujeres, and many others organizations with similar names.
In the first half of 2002 a large group of political parties, organizations self
identified as part of “civil society”, trade unions (National Trade Union Federation, the
CTV), the business federation, Fedecamaras (a peak organization that includes
chambers of commerce, industrial groups, and agricultural organizations) came together
in a loose coalition called the Coordinadora Democratica,. Some analysts have
commented that the business-union alliance makes no sense given the contradictory
interests of unions and business. But this is only so if one remains beholden to a
mechanistic model of class interest politics. Viewed from a different angle, and taking
into consideration the disastrous economic situation and the government’s efforts to
extend its control to all sectors, the alliance has considerable logic. The Catholic Church,
whose leaders have been regularly attacked by President Chavez and assaulted (literally)
by his followers, has also formed part of this coordinating group. The process of creating
(or perhaps simply re naming) groups is constant. Reading the national press every day in
Venezuela, particularly coverage following any major demonstration, one almost always
45
uncovers some hitherto unknown group or list of groups. Most lists of this kind miss a
host of local and regional groups that form under the radar of national media coverage.
12
12
GROUPS BY TYPE Political parties : Anti Chávez: Primero Justicia, Union, Proyecto Venezuela, La
Causa R, Patria Para Todos, Podemos (from MAS) Solidaridad, Vision Emergente, Alianza Bravo Pueblo,
Decision Ciudadana, RED. Factor Democratico, Un Solo Pueblo, Venezuela Somos Todos
Pro Chavez: MVR (out growth of MBR 200)
Citizen groups:
Anti-Chavez: Foro Democratico, Ciudadania Activa, Momento de la Gente, Movimiento 1.011, Asamblea
Educativa, Alianza Civica, Fiscales Electorales de Venezuela Mujeres por la Libertad, Mujeres Unidas por
la Democracia, Coordinadora de Lucha de Mujeres, Frente Institucional Militar, Veedores UCAB
Asociación Civil Defensores Populares plus a range of neighborhood and city specific groups and
coalitions.
Pro Chávez: Circulos Bolivarianos Coordinadora Simón Bolívar, Movimiento Revolucionario Tupamaro,
Frente de Resistencia Popular, Grupo Carapaica, Movimiento 28, Sindicato de Motorizados Bolivarianos,
Clase Media Democrática, Constitución y Paz, Guardianes de la Luz, Emergencia Patriótica and Grupo
de Defensores Bolivarianos
Human Rights: PROVEA, COFAVIC, Red de Apoyo, Federacion de Defensea de los Derechos Humanos
de Venezuela, Amnistia Internacional, Foro por la Vida
Groups of Groups: CEDICE, CESAP, FACUR, Escuela de Vecinos de Venezuela, Queremos Elegir,
Coordinadora Democratica, Series of small NGOS
Trade Unions CTV, (including particularly active unions such as Fetratransporte, Fedepetrol)
Business: Fedecamaras (Consecomercio, Conindustria, Fedenaga), Pro Venezuela
46
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