Welcome to the Nineteenth Century: Venezuelan Elections
by Fernando Calzadilla

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The Greeks found their own solution to the problem of growing populations, which is not pertinent to the content and extent of this paper. What we do today to solve the impractical problem of deciding public matters by direct vote when populations range in the millions is representation, the most theatrical instance of politics. Acting in the name of another is the sustaining principle of representative democracy. Insofar as the sustaining principle is a theatrical device, it is no wonder that electing representatives constitutes such a theatrical event. From the impersonation of a character by the candidate to the act of voting, the entire process is theatrical. The theatricality might suggest direct engagement, as voting performs the action by which democracy is most directly exercised, yet it is also, paradoxically, the most alienating. The most democratic act consists of surrendering the right to authority, the right to do any action, by electing a representative who will act in our name.

But delegating authority onto an elected representative requires a mechanism of control and accountability. How is the elected person accountable and to whom? In 1844, Venezuelan political thinker Tomas Lander wrote “Los partidos políticos son indispensables en el sistema representativo” (political parties are essential to the representative system) (2). In November 1958, following Perez Jimenez's ousting, Venezuela established a representative democracy based on a cooperative agreement between the three major non-communist parties (3) . Political parties should act as a buffer from democracy’s paradox, which both demands and overrules embodied, participatory practice. However, as Venezuelan thinker and historian Jose Gil Fortoul wrote about political parties in 1890, “[no] se transforman las costumbres nacionales en solo unos meses de entusiasmo patriótico” (national customs don’t change in just a few months of patriotic fervor) (4). Venezuelans believed in democracy, though, and through participation delegated authority. In December 1958, democratic elections were held with massive participation.

The theatricality of the electoral process extends to the practice of the democratically elected government or, one could argue, to all government. What makes the democracy especially interesting to analyze is the tension between what the constitution dictates (what people believe they are sustaining by voting), and what people practice (what I call the performance of social imaginaries). For example, in electing Hugo Chavez as President, people were sustaining democratic principles established in the 1961 constitution, but in reality, the practice indicates that the 19th-century caudillo social imaginary was at play. Chavez parading in military uniform, claiming inheritance to Ezequiel Zamora’s legacy and, above all, Simon Bolivar’s, reenacted the caudillo/savior scenario (5). Chavez has been a master at performing coup de théâtre. By breaking the protocol, he performs the space that exists between social actor and character. Social actor and character exist within particular scenarios that allow us to view them simultaneously. Characters are scripted but because they are embodied they are also open to change. The social actor’s performance of a character carries with it the possibility for cultural agency, for potential outcomes. This potentiality is the space that exists between social actor and character. In the swearing-in ceremony on February 2, 1999, Chavez swore “over this moribund constitution,” thus separating the social actor (Chavez) from the elected president character—who was supposed to follow the protocol. In consequence, his action rendered the 1961 constitution ‘unlivable,’ in spite of being the discursive frame that gave legality to his presidency. What Chavez represents at both discursive and embodied level is a democratically elected 19th-century caudillo who knows well how the theatrical mechanism works and how to use the space between social actor and character to perform a particular social imaginary. In this way, he manages to embody both constitutional and de facto power mantled in an aura of constitutionality.