Posted on 03/17/2002 3:46:35 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS, Venezuela -- When President Hugo Chavez gives one of his frequent nationally televised speeches, thousands of city dwellers here often stand on apartment balconies or lean out of windows and vigorously bang pots and pans in an effort to drown out the verbose president.
In these middle-class neighborhoods -- where support for Chavez and his hours-long discourses are weakest -- the din from these kitchen-inspired protests can be deafening. Residents call it cacerolazo, from the Spanish word for pot, cacerola.
From Argentina to Colombia it has become the symbol of the people-power movement in Latin America, where citizens fed up with corrupt and incompetent leaders have discovered a increasingly popular way to make themselves heard.
"This is something everyone can do, everyone has a pot to bang in their kitchen," says Caracas housewife Moraima Mendez, pausing between wooden-spoon blows on a dented aluminum frying pan. "It's the only way the common people can express themselves."
As events in Peru and Argentina illustrate, people power works. In December, thousands of pot-bangers marched on the presidential palace in Buenos Aires as their economy descended into chaos. President Fernando De La Rua eventually boarded a helicopter on the palace rooftop and flew into political oblivion.
In November 2000, angry hordes sick of rampant government corruption in Peru surged at the palace gates, prompting President Alberto Fujimori to never return from a trip to Japan.
And in Colombia, the cacerolazo has been used to manifest the populace's widespread ire not with the government, but kidnap-happy guerrillas.
The spotlight has now swiveled to Venezuela where an intensifying opposition, tired of Chavez's combative governing style, unfulfilled promises and leftist policies, is mounting a formidable people-power challenge to pressure the populist president to resign.
Pot-banging, mass marches, petitions and so-called civic strikes, in which businesses close and protesters simply stay home, have been the tactics, so far to no avail.
People power is not new and by no means limited to Latin America. Similar movements have brought down governments from the Philippines in the 1990s to Poland a decade before.
But analysts say that the current surge of dissatisfaction in South America is rooted in the entrenched poverty and deficiencies of governments. The region's decadelong commitment to democracy, which was heralded as a panacea, instead has generated a crisis of expectations that is proving contagious.
"In many countries governments are just not performing well," says Michael Shifter, Latin America expert at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C. "There's deep unhappiness and people are searching for alternatives, but there's nothing available. It's a troubling trend."
Key state services such as health and education remain shoddy, while institutions such as judicial systems are commonly cowed by political interference.
Leaders have bent democratic rules for their own benefit. As Fujimori and Argentina's Carlos Menem tinkered with their constitutions in efforts to get re-elected, their citizens grapple with civic ills such as high crime. The result is widescale disillusionment with the political class and a profound sense of frustration that life is not improving.
Chavez appealed to that dissatisfaction during his 1998 election campaign, with vows to redistribute the nation's vast oil wealth to make life better for the 80 percent of Venezuelans who live in poverty. But unemployment remains high at 14 percent and Social Security pensions remain a dream for many workers.
Frustration is such that people of all ages and occupations who say they have never participated in political events before have taken to the street.
"Nothing (in the government) ever gets done. All Chavez does is talk and travel," says Jose Hernandez, a 57-year-old technician, who participated in a recent march. "I lost a day's pay to come here because I think it's important to put in my 2 cents."
People also are spending money on "march gear" to manifest their political persuasion, from red berets that symbolize a chavista to T-shirts proclaiming "Chavez is killing us!"
And most actions are spontaneous. A subway passenger can start a sing-song chant "He's going! He's going!" and strangers immediately join to make a jubilant chorus. Friends make up a caravan, draping their cars in flags, beeping horns, and yelling slogans out the window. Soon, others join in to make a festive trail down the highway.
When Air Force Col. Pedro Soto last month publicly called on Chavez to resign, to the surprise of many, hundreds held an impromptu demonstration to support him in a city square.
"We have to create the pressure to get (Chavez) out so things like this are important," says Rosa Caballero, a 19-year-old law student at Central University of Venezuela wearing a "Let's get the crazy man out!" headband.
But while people taking to the streets might be an expression of democracy in its purest form, analysts say it runs the risk of being carried too far as citizens may not be giving their leaders enough time or leeway. In Argentina, the continued pressure of pot-bangers at the gates of the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, led to a succession of five presidents within several weeks.
That impatience for change is underscored by increasing travel and globalized media such as cable television and the Internet, which readily emphasize more advanced standards of living in developed countries.
"Every time a leader makes an unpopular decision, he can't run the risk of being toppled," says Miguel Diaz, South America project coordinator at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. "They're demanding maybe too much of democracy, particularly young people who have not seen how far their countries have come."
The result may be that the people-power trend heralds a new period of instability in the region as the populace searches for new options that are not readily available.
That uncertainty promises to be exacerbated by the lack of fresh political classes to replace discredited old guards, which is the case in both Argentina and Venezuela.
"You can't base a government on an unorganized popular mass, but no one's offering a clear alternative," says Kurt Weyland, associate professor of government at the University of Texas.
In response, Chavez has organized his own marches and rallies. He even urged his own supporters to bang pots louder in his favor. For now, such tactics have both sides deadlocked.
So business and labor leaders are planning a general strike that could paralyze the country. The same people-power approach worked back in 1958, when Venezuela's last dictator, Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez, was toppled.
Nevertheless, ousting Chavez does not promise to be easy.
"This is a message to all those who are trying to get Chavez out," the embattled president bellowed in a recent rally. "Chavez is not going!"
The people of Venezuela and the world have seen Chavez in action long enough to know he's taking the country away from democracy and toward Marxism!
But analysts say that the current surge of dissatisfaction in South America is rooted in the entrenched poverty and deficiencies of governments. The region's decadelong commitment to democracy, which was heralded as a panacea, instead has generated a crisis of expectations that is proving contagious.
"In many countries governments are just not performing well," says Michael Shifter, Latin America expert at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C. "There's deep unhappiness and people are searching for alternatives, but there's nothing available. It's a troubling trend."
U.S. planning to keep corrupt Latin American officials out-- ''People will understand that we are serious about going after government corruption,'' he added. ``There is a very selfish reason for this: We end up paying for the bill when these people steal the money, because we have to provide aid, or accept the citizens as refugees or as migrants.''
President Bush is meeting with the heads of other countries in Monterrey, Mexico - Rich, Poor Nations Discuss Poverty - I think he'll have some frank things to say. This is the time to make substantive changes. It's the perfect time to seek change while the mood of the people is calling for democracy. To let it pass would be unforgiveable.
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