Caracas Chronicles

As expected, Nicolas Maduro’s “swearing-in” took place without major setbacks, although in a militarized capital and with closed borders and airspace. This very foreseeable event contradicted the expectations, rumors, and fables of the previous days and weeks, a product, among other things, of Edmundo González Urrutia’s promise to be sworn in that day.

This new wave of illusions was amplified by the tone of María Corina Machado’s messages, which contradicted her previous messages in which she insisted that there was no defined date for the end of the regime and the very logic of the slogan “until the end.” But after the traumatic events of the 9th, the obvious finally began to be discussed: that a new phase of the struggle is beginning. 

Machado spoke of boxing rounds as a metaphor—I find it difficult to understand why it’s being used this late—suggesting that Maduro’s inauguration was simply the bell for the next round.

Perhaps we can grasp this if we think not only about the chronic tendency of short-term thinking ingrained in our opposition, but how for many of us, victory is either assured or impossible. This difficulty in facing uncertainty is particularly problematic in a complex and chaotic period in which the repressive apparatus is in its Golden Age while the regime is experiencing its decline: surrounded by a hostile population, internationally isolated and very vulnerable, for example, to losing the flow of petrodollars currently guaranteed by U.S. leniency.

After Maduro stole the election, and amid constant repression, finding new vehicles and strategies has become more difficult. In that sense we have to contrast the fine organization demonstrated in the buildup to July 28 with its reverse: the lack of response to a fraud that was so foreseeable.

A famous experiment in theoretical physics, “Schrödinger’s cat,” states that a cat in a closed box can be alive or dead at the same time, to the extent that its situation cannot be observed. Maduro is ruling over a “Schrodinger tyranny” that is both fallen and consolidated at the same time, for which our illusions and disappointments cannot say anything useful. 

In an era of chaos and uncertainty, Machado is a determinist. Her effort to gain confidence from faith in the inevitable and the divine is a vintage and risky way of facing not only adversity but also uncertainty and chaos. Hers is not blind faith: she is right that the idea of ​​keeping an entire country at gunpoint is absurd, as well as the deplorable international situation of the dictatorship. However, her argument (determinist in substance and religious in form) does not explain how to go from the fragility of the dictatorship to its collapse.

In reality, the end of the dictatorship is neither decreed nor inevitable: it depends entirely on the sustainability of a repressive apparatus for which any cost is acceptable.

Sustainable repression?

We could take the concept of sustainability to ask whether it’s possible to maintain, under these conditions and indefinitely, a regime of pure repression, with all the costs that it implies, in which many of its members obey simply out of fear while the rest of the people demobilizes because they live in a “terrain of fear.” By expressing itself in intimidating videos and displays of force, by focusing on certain figures, by threatening family members, repression plays out by shaping how people think.

Machado’s rise has a lot to do with a battle, not only against fear, but against a culture that we could call “cowardly”, which presents the struggle as something absurd or useless. The election campaign mobilized people despite fear by projecting faith in a pragmatic, short-term goal. But that courage was based on the promise of the power of ballots to defeat violence.

This “mother of dragons” leadership, pushing us to fight and blindly obey, offers a series of advantages and disadvantages which are summarized in centralization, which allows for faster decisions but is also much easier to behead.

After Maduro stole the election, and amid constant repression, finding new vehicles and strategies has become more difficult. In that sense we have to contrast the fine organization demonstrated in the buildup to July 28 with its reverse: the lack of response to a fraud that was so foreseeable. It was the young and the poor who responded in a revolt not acknowledged by the leadership.

In this context, what was defined on January 9 was a certain regression of the new opposition to international tours and alliances with the old right, while Machado seemed to quit the continuous, asymmetrical struggle that she had spoken of at the end of last year, in favor of a decisive battle between repressors and repressed where it would be enough to accumulate all the “potential energy” of millions of people moved by faith in a decisive victory. 

The dragon and the hydra 

Machado’s leadership is textbook Caesarism: an “aristocrat” who becomes a champion of the common people by exchanging unity, leadership, and empowerment for devotion and obedience. In addition to the extreme disorganization of Venezuelan society, the long tradition of Caesarist leadership explains this phenomenon that, in a surprising turn, feminizes Venezuelan caudillismo as the fictional Daenerys Targaryen did with that of the also fictional Dothraki.

This “mother of dragons” leadership, pushing us to fight and blindly obey, offers a series of advantages and disadvantages which are summarized in centralization, which allows for faster decisions but is also much easier to behead. They became evident last week when people came out—although not in the expected numbers—despite repression, following the call of a leader who was kidnapped and (likely attacked) on a day that ended in a way that no one expected. 

Perhaps in an effort to dispel that feeling of vulnerability, many sought to explain Machado’s release through divisions within the government or fears of international reprisal, although as others have pointed out, everything could have been the product of a simple lack of coordination. In any case, January 9 made evident the fragility and insufficiency of that hypercentralist style of leadership when it came to getting rid of the habits of the old oppositions.

Ultimately the opposition has to decide if it is a dragon whose head can be chopped off, or a Hydra with a thousand heads.

On the other hand, the repressive apparatus is unequal but remains effective. It is troubling that many believed that, after being called to protest in less than a week via social media and local organization, people would turn up in sufficiently large numbers to overwhelm security forces. A recent interview by Juan Pablo Guanipa reveals that the plan for January 9 was simply to take as many people as possible to the streets and wait for the military to rebel. It also speaks of the awareness that the narrative of foreign intervention is demobilizing, and that political parties must readjust toward civil disobedience.

This shows how the leadership is trapped between new and old conceptions without fully conceiving the political organization beyond the traditional party apparatus. 

An opposition that is, in essence, an audience that receives instructions through audio messages, is more impractical than disturbing. Organization at the local level should be more dense and allow people to act with a degree of autonomy, at least to choose places to demonstrate in the face of police deployment. The wear and tear of the repressive apparatus will hardly occur in a single day but rather, as Guanipa himself says, in an “escalation from less to more” that manages to open several fronts.

Ultimately the opposition has to decide if it is a dragon whose head can be chopped off, or a Hydra with a thousand heads. Although essential to the democratic cause, Machado’s leadership is insufficient, and there are more options than blindly obeying her, as the religious wing demands, or undermining her as others intend. Enrique Márquez (whose forced disappearance has only been denounced by the left so far) and the movement for the freedom of political prisoners are good examples: Márquez reinforced the accusations of fraud with his testimony, and the mothers of the prisoners were, at the end of the year past, the most active front in the fight against the dictatorship. This type of synergy could compensate for the mistrust and differences that divide us.

Be that as it may, and taking out other variables and strange attractors, the only thing that Venezuelans can do to face uncertainty and decide if tyranny is alive or dead is to overcome the double resistance of fear and dispersion, and organize themselves based on action against the common enemy, which is what unifies us at this point—not spiritual or identity issues. Perhaps speaking pragmatically, in terms of actions, and understanding leadership not as the supernatural power of some but as a responsibility that we all share, we can figure out what’s ahead with purpose and determination.

That, however, will take way more than faith, prayers and hope.