Welcome to the Nineteenth Century: Venezuelan Elections
by Fernando Calzadilla

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The Candidate/The Performance
Venezuela’s electoral processes between 1958 and 1993 would seem to indicate a strong dominance of two political parties, AD and COPEI. Charisma and personalist politics dominated. Carlos Andrés Pérez, the most paradigmatic candidate of the era, was the first to campaign in a sport jacket; he had his canine teeth filed down to make him more photogenic; he wore sideburns, longish hair, big plaid blazers, and campaigned on foot with a light gait, sometimes so fast that his entourage had trouble keeping up with him. The campaign centered on his charisma and his way of greeting the masses became his trademark (both arms extended up and moving sideways). Little jumping-jack dolls with his likeness hung everywhere. He combined old-style flesh-pressing in rural areas and barrios (urban shantytowns) with a high visibility media campaign under the direction of electoral campaign advisor Joseph Napolitan, who had worked on the J. F. Kennedy and L. B. Johnson campaigns. His performance was the enactment of an old social imaginary: El estado soy yo, la democracia soy yo (I am the state, I am the democracy) (10) through the promise of a founding act, “La Gran Venezuela.”

It’s hard to imagine Hugo Chávez without Pérez. Although bitter enemies, Chávez learned from Pérez how to become a charismatic leader and outdid the master. After Chávez’s 1992 coup against Pérez failed, he was given two minutes of TV airtime to call his companions to surrender. He said that he could not achieve his objective, por ahora (for now), and the phrase stuck in people’s mind like hope for change. When he decided to run for President for the 1998 elections, the ‘por ahora’ was his best political weapon. Chávez mined the national imaginary to resurrect himself as the personification of the foundational hero, Simon Bolívar. Chávez modeled his charismatic personality on the military giant, the man of action who could take care of any situation. His performance of power highlighted his role as a trained soldier, as a man who could come to the rescue and become a protector, like Bolívar, the father of the nation. Chavez embodied the gendered image of virility, fatherhood, violence, and popularity. In the reenacting of the independence and federalist scenario, he triggered a social imaginary that played well at a time when democratic parties had lost credibility, the economic system needed revamping, and poverty soared to unprecedented levels. He filled the need for an action figure who could change the system and put the nation as the first priority, the warrior/martyr who could perform a sacrifice for la patria. His was a populist performance cloaked in nationalist discourse and embodied with brazenness in the way he revered Bolívar while enacting the 1960s revolutionary hero imaginary. His use of the military red beret was his political symbol. His followers modeled themselves on him, much as he modeled himself on Bolívar. They wore versions of the camouflage uniform he wore during the coup attempt. During carnival season after 1992, the most popular costume for children was Chávez’s uniform.