The Literature Behind Venezuelan Bolivarianism (2006)

IN AN INTERVIEW with Caracas newspaper in 2005, British historian Malcolm Deas claimed that is an ideology without content. (1) Whether Deas is right or not, it is certainly difficult to say with any certainty what Bolivarianism really stands for, because it is full of contradictions and paradoxes. An examination of some of its key texts might help illuminate this vaguely articulated but much-contested political term. Bolivarianism, as coherent public concept, emerged during the presidency of General Eleazar Lopez-Contreras (1936-1941), who tailored and promoted the concept, transforming it into an official doctrine designed to overcome the praetorian tyranny of the recently deceased strongman General Juan Vicente Gomez. During notable speech, Lopez-Contreras claimed that ideals constitute the norm that inspires the government in all its acts. (2) According to one analyst, Lopez-Contreras and his supporters created Bolivarianism to combat Bolshevism, which they saw as ideological, antipatriotic, and tyrannical; in effect, Bolivar's ideals were used to avoid situations of extreme political violence. (3) Bourgeois Venezuela respected the 1936 constitution and laws of the State, but with the well-known military careerist Gomez as president, popular support existed for establishing Bolivarian groups to back the government. Meanwhile, the constitution outlawed socialism. Finally, because Lopez and his followers were antisocialist, their version of Bolivarianism was politically to the right, or at least anti-leftist. A more modern version of the Bolivarian phenomenon comes from retired Venezuelan Admiral Hernan Gruber-Odreman. In Soldados Alerta! (Soldiers, awake!), Gruber-Odreman uses Bolivarian principles to justify Creole/Latin-American military aimed at fighting threats of extinction from the United States, the World Bank, and the combination of globalization and neoliberalism. (4) According to Gruber-Odreman, these threats provoke Creole military response of the sort originally designed to combat Bolshevism. Other Venezuelan writers with military backgrounds, among them Army Captain Eliecer Otaiza and retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel William Izarra, agree with the fundamentals of Gruber-Odreman's arguments. They proffer version of Bolivarianism common among retired military officers that clearly aligns with the current government's thinking. (5) Historian Tomas Straka refers back to Lopez-Contreras's concept of Bolivarianism and claims that who inherits the army of he who founded the nation ... also inherits the right to found it [Bolivarianism]. (6) This line of thinking permits us to better understand Gruber-Odreman. Bolivarianism appears to have taken on praetorian nature. Without effective military support, so the thinking goes, it is simply impossible to advance left- or rightwing political plans. The intellectual Heinz Dieterich, who is said to have a Mexican soul, in spite of the German origins [of] his education and personality, expresses the other (leftwing) extreme of the Bolivarian pendulum. (7) In the radically socialist zeitgeist of contemporary Venezuela, Dieterich cites Bolivarianism's particularly democratic character, insists the United States is the principal threat to Venezuela, and advocates an Ibero-American regional power bloc to avoid destabilization by globalization and neoliberalism. For Dieterich, Venezuela's new manual, Defensa Integral de la Nacion (The integral defense of the nation), marks the birth of the military doctrine of the Venezuelan revolution. (8) Decidedly anti-U.S., the manual advocates the fusion of the army and people, who then function strategically as part of an integrated defense during asymmetric conflicts. Academic Versus Political Bolivarianism As historian German Carrera-Damas notes, academic analyses of Bolivar's philosophies explore the fundamental social-political strategies of the Liberator and explain how the Creole majority assimilated them and used them politically. …