Caracas Chronicles

“It is not an ideological problem, but a problem of the organization of power”
Gilles Deleuze

On September 26, through a message on her Instagram, María Corina Machado proposed a strategic and tactical concept: the swarm. “People are regrouping and returning for the relaunch of a new stage,” Machado explained in an interview with Venezuelan media, “What is happening with the internal mobilization? We are going into a new phase… a phase that I called the swarm strategy: these are not huge concentrations called in advance, but a decentralized and coordinated structure with an incredible organization that we have built in these 18 months.”

Not much has been said about it since then, but it is the first organizational idea that an opposition leader has launched in a long time: excluded or sidelined in the great Chavista distribution of public affairs, over the years opposition politicians have degenerated into professional candidates with no other project than to run for office and, once in office, to install their entourage, seek reelection or run for a better position. Therefore, it is significant that Machado—banned from running for office for years and reduced to a fringe figure in Venezuelan politics—has become not only one of the most successful candidates in national history, but also the first organizer of public space that the opposition has had in a long time.

Did Machado, confirming that her candidacy was impossible, saw the “electoral route” as a means or tool and not as a paradigm or moral duty? Whatever the reason, this evolution of Machado is inseparable from that of the Madurato, which, in the electoral juncture, reorganized itself as a machine of permanent intimidation and coercion, abolished the remains of the electoral system and has shown itself willing to isolate itself and pay any cost to remain in power. A reconfiguration of a regime that, according to the Minister of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, cannot be pressured.

But Machado’s proposal is, precisely, to pressure him from all sides, like a cloud of bees against an aggressor: is that even possible?

Swarm, baby, swarm

In her message of September 26, Machado formulated the bases of a strategy which challenges what—since the failure of Juan Guaidó’s interim government—had been common sense for the Venezuelan opposition. What she proposes is to raise the costs of staying instead of lowering those of leaving. “The regime will leave the day when the cost of staying is greater than the cost of leaving,” she said. “Therefore, we have to increase this cost every day. It works by increasing the force all the time until reaching that point.”

Force is a very rare word—almost cursed—in the Venezuelan political vocabulary, where it is synonymous with violence. But beyond the irritation of some, there remains the practical problem: where will this force come from? Machado mentioned several possible sources: “from international pressure, from international justice, from diplomatic pressures and actions, but above all from ourselves.” We know of her vintage faith in “Western democracies” and her idealistic conception of geopolitics, but this is the first time that the opposition leader has proposed a concrete form of organization and action to generate and deploy that pressure from within and beyond the electoral context.

There is nothing more alien to our traditions, in which people are a mass to be maneuvered, than the idea of a smart crowd.

“We are in a new phase. What is the key? Grassroots organization in swarms,” she said. “What the regime wants is to silence you, to scare you, to deactivate you, above all it wants to demoralize you, and it will not succeed. The swarm is a mobile, agile, super dynamic organization, without beginning or end. Fluid and adaptable, that appears and disappears, that acts in a decentralized way and is coordinated through social networks. We work very coordinated, decentralized and cleverly.”

Like many strategic concepts, the swarm sounds great in theory, but where does it come from? Is this idea even applicable in Venezuela?

From anti-neoliberal Seattle to anti-Chavista Caracas

Close to other concepts such as the collective intelligence of the French academic Pierre Levy, the War Machine of the French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari or the more operational smart crowd, the idea of the swarm and “swarming” were discussed by John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, researchers at the RAND Corporation—a think tank largely funded by the United States Department of Defense that formulates ideas and public policies for the security of that country.

In their book Swarming and the Future of Conflict (2000), Arquilla and Ronfeldt make an intensive exploration of the modes of armed conflict in which they identify four modalities: hand-to-hand combat, concentration, maneuver, and swarm.  

“Swarming” is simply attacking the enemy from all sides in small units, like bees, to cause disruption: that is, to disorganize the enemy. Swarming would be an optimal way to “strike the adversary from all directions simultaneously” through “systematic pulsing of force and/or fire by dispersed, internetted units.”

The Mongol and Persian cavalry, Britain’s air defenses in World War II, and Iranian-style naval warfare—using small torpedo boats rather than large ships—are all military examples of swarming (and in drones the swarm found its weapon of choice). But it is in political activism and NGOs, particularly in the 1990s, that Arquilla and Ronfeldt find the “purest” examples of this practice: the anti-neoliberal protests in Seattle in 1999, the Zapatista netwar, and the anarchist black blocs are cited almost with admiration by circumspect researchers.

Placing this discussion in Venezuela is not simple. To begin with, our political culture, trapped in the 20th century, focuses on the parties’ maneuvers, and is reduced to the politician conspiring with the military, seeking the votes of civilians or making pacts with other politicians. Activism is secondary (if not decorative) and citizens follow instructions from above, retreating when they have done their job, which is—usually—to vote. There is nothing more alien to our traditions, in which people are a mass to be maneuvered, than the idea of a smart crowd.

After the end of the military governments in 1958, Venezuela did not experience the decades of citizen struggles that were necessary in the rest of South America to win democracy, with its innovative experiences, its achievements and its disappointments that gave them comparatively more complex and advanced political systems, in addition to a conception of politics beyond the dualism between voto o plomo.

It is natural that Machado, with a different mentality and a background in NGOs and not in parties (her experience in Súmate was decisive for the day of June 28) is the one who proposes the thesis of using the “swarming”, but even so: Isn’t it ironic that it is the political leadership that orders the swarms to organize? Isn’t a swarm that depends on a queen bee that can be captured or exiled at any moment counterproductive? A swarm that, as in the last day of protest, announces to the repressors when it will appear?

It is understandable that for Machado the idea of a swarm—which for the dictatorship is a cloud of stingers and for her a cloud of obedient worker bees—is very convenient. But, apart from the assessment we can make of it, this centralization seems inconvenient in a wave of repression whose obvious purpose is to cut off as many heads as possible.

Venezuela disjointed

In the current context of collapse and mass emigration, it is not even clear whether it is possible to build any form of resistance. But, assuming that it is still possible, the old clientelist political party – and the business party and the entourage party– no longer have a place, nor do professional candidates: not only is Chavismo not prepared for the forms of cohabitation that were possible in the past, but the basic institutions for political representation –which is the “business” of the parties– and even the Venezuelan Petrostate, within which the elites made pacts, no longer exist.

In order to be able to put pressure on the regime from all sides, we would have to have several focal points of leadership and organization, distributed in different spaces and activities, as has in fact been the case in practice with the rise of Enrique Márquez as an important spokesman against fraud or with the mobilization to free the detained teenagers.

To put pressure on the level that is necessary, not only a “swarm of swarms” would have to emerge, but beyond that, an ecosystem of different organizations. The question of unity, instead of being thought of in terms of the bureaucratic issues of the national project –and the maneuvers of the old, heavy, and lordly party– should be considered as coordination between very different organizations although with common or similar purposes. Sometimes this coordination will have to be close and detailed, other times it will be reduced to not getting in each other’s way. That is, something that –if possible– goes beyond Machado’s leadership.

The big question would be whether in Venezuela, the weak and terrified civil society will be able to absorb and distribute within itself the function of leadership and organize its swarms without the need for Machado or coordinating with her in a hybrid organization: decentralized but coordinated.

Does the extreme helplessness, after repression and a continuous and cascading collapse, to which this civil society has been reduced mean that it will no longer be possible to generate new organizational forms? Or, on the contrary, is this destruction of the electoral system –which forces traditional parties to go out of circulation or resign themselves to serving as a troupe in sham elections– is the condition to free ourselves from bureaucratic and clientelist ways of doing politics?

Could it be the work of organizing in “swarms” and organizational ecosystems, not only to fight autocracy but even to survive, that allows Venezuelan civil society, melancholy obsessed with the black and white politics of the 20th century, to finally reach the 21st century?

At this point no one has an answer for that. But there are two things we can take for granted: politics as we know it has become impossible and we must start thinking outside the box.