An inverse transition: Delcy Rodríguez as Venezuela’s first post-Chavista president

First published in Spanish at Corriente Comunes. Translation by Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

In recent weeks, various Bolivian social movements have blockaded highways and streets, besieging the capital to protest President Rodrigo Paz’s economic and social policies. A few days ago, I listened to two students from Argentina’s anti-capitalist left speak at a university occupation with great clarity about their resistance and defending their rights.

Right now, social and indigenous groups in Ecuador are preparing for a national strike on June 24–26, having initiated a recall process against President Daniel Noboa. They want an end to extractivist policies, and reject the government’s public service price hikes and failure to comply with previous agreements.

The ‘stabilisation phase’ and dismantling the state

While social movements in the rest of the region are pushing back against anti-popular economic policies, in Venezuela, the process of state restructuring has accelerated since the January 3 US bombing. It began with the hydrocarbon law reform, then the mining law reform. More recently, the announced electricity law reform paves the way for privatisation and price hikes to make the sector more profitable for private companies.

According to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the US government, Venezuela is currently in a “stabilisation” phase. What does this phase entail? It seems to mean the structural transformation of the state by dismantling its legal framework — a process focused on facilitating foreign investment, privatisations and the gradual elimination of the rule of law and rights enshrined in the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Last week, National Assembly president Jorge Rodríguez, with the same arrogant vehemence with which he defended the opening up and privatisation of the oil sector, criticised the state’s management of agricultural farms. He called into question the entire land redistribution process under former President Hugo Chávez and announced a cattle ranching law reform to “rectify” those “failings.” This represents the final restoration of latifundismo (large landed estate ownership) in Venezuela, which is responsible for high levels of violence and contract killings against the peasant movement in recent years.

This stabilisation plan, announced by Rubio and agreed to by the Delcy Rodríguez government, is about more than just control and management of the economy. It involves a structural transformation of Venezuela’s social state and rule of law, dismantling whatever social policies remain. The US government insists that, by the end of the stabilisation phase, there should be a complete transformation of Venezuela’s social institutions and legal framework. This radical reform is to be carried out by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its allies — that is, by Chavismo.

A kamikaze government: Bearing the political cost

It is worth asking why the US government has kept the upper echelons of Chavismo in power. Is it simply because they can manage and guarantee political stability and territorial control through their hold over the repressive apparatus? 

Or, additionally, because forcing Chavismo to eliminate social policies — not just those it introduced, but even institutions that predated Chavez’s election in 1998 — would represent its final and definitive defeat. By delegating the dismantling of Venezuela’s social state to Chavismo, the US guarantees the next government will not bear the political cost of implementing such reforms. It also avoids having Chavismo in opposition, which could act as a counterweight by mobilising society against these reforms.

Since about 2017, there has been a debate in academic and political opinion circles over what the first post-Chavista government might look like. Reflecting on that transition, analysts and investigators noted that any new government would have to carry out a “political self-immolation” or become a kind of “kamikaze government” to enable such a transition. The first post-Chavista government would have to implement unpopular and brutal austerity measures, such as “adjusting” public service and petrol prices, restructuring debt and the state, and turning to the International Monetary Fund to secure capital injections. 

Discussions in these circles centred on the “day after” syndrome: the magical expectation of recovery following the change in government clashing with the harsh reality of this structural adjustment. Any post-Chavista government would have to bear the high political and social cost of dismantling institutional controls.

One variable excluded in these analyses was the possibility that a Chavista government could implement these policies. The Nicolás Maduro government began to do this with many of its measures, but his government never dismantled the legal system and apparatus that formally constitutes Venezuela’s social state. Instead, policies were implemented via de facto measures, national emergency decrees or states of emergency due to economic crisis, and measures such as the anti-blockade law. Delcy Rodríguez’s government represents a certain continuity and radicalisation of that process. 

Yet, at the same time, it also represents the first post-Chavista government in the sense described by analysts between 2017-20. It is dismantling the state and its legal apparatus because the US overlord believes that Chavismo must bear the social cost of austerity, while using its repressive apparatus and carrying out an ideological juggling act to contain its social base, which in theory should be the first to react in opposition.

Annilating popular resistance

But does Chavismo have the capacity to mobilise against these policies? To answer this, we need to consider that Venezuela’s grassroots, at times organised around the most advanced Chavista sectors, did mobilise against austerity policies in 2018-19. 

In subsequent years, the campesino movement mobilised and suffered first-hand measures aimed at destroying the movement, from assassinations to cooption and division. The same occurred with the trade union movement, with dozens of its leaders arrested and jailed, including some well-known Chavista militants. Other sectors with a significant mobilising capacity, but whose leaders were not Chavista, were subjected to intense repression: the nurses’ and teachers’ unions initiated escalating struggles across the country in 2023, which led to political persecution and threats. 

Left sectors that broke with the government, or that never supported it, were intervened into and stripped of their electoral registration. Criticism was relentlessly criminalised. The capacity to resist anti-popular austerity measures had to first contend with Maduro’s government, which operated both through repression and soft mechanisms of control.

Ultimately, large sections of Caracas’ poor neighbourhoods, which had been key to mobilising support for Chavismo, also took to the streets in the wake of the July 28 elections [when the Maduro government claimed victory while refusing to publish results] only to be violently repressed. The most macabre social terror was unleashed in these areas to prevent further protests. This dealt a sustained blow to the capacity of social sectors to respond to the state’s dismantling.

I began by mentioning the capacity for resistance of social movements in countries where progressive governments were replaced at the ballot box by right-wing governments, but where a greater capacity for mobilisation and confrontation persists, precisely due to this contrast. The Chavista government never devised a strategy for relinquishing power; the hegemonic bloc, which drove out other internal forces, never considered a strategy for stepping down and becoming an opposition with agency. 

On the contrary, they squandered mobilising capacity, social support and the power of resistance, preferring to cling to power through fear and terror. Every possible election loss was seen as an existential crisis: relinquishing power was equated with disappearing as a political force. Each election was seen as all or nothing, and in that all or nothing, the country lost. 

The Bolivarian Revolution has found itself left with nothing, not just for itself but for all Venezuelans. Restoring the social fabric and capacity for mobilisation will be an uphill struggle but is the main organisational challenge for the coming years.

Stage set for the transition

Rubio’s stabilisation plan involves the Delcy Rodríguez government — the ruling echelons of Chavismo — completing the dismantling of the social state and rule of law enshrined in the constitution, radically transforming the legal apparatus, bearing the political cost of austerity, and overseeing the transition as the first post-Chavista government. As such, the next government will have stage set and the dirty work already done for them. If nothing is done in time, they will face a completely demoralised, fragmented and impotent opposition.

This analysis must not become an epitaph for popular struggles. The greatest victory that the current stabilisation plan could achieve is convincing society that demobilisation is irreversible. Avoiding this trap requires overcoming the grief for what has been lost and grasping the new contradictions that will inevitably generate fresh antagonisms. 

Rebuilding mobilisation requires grassroots work at the lowest level, in the streets alongside living forces in the trade union, peasant and student movements, as well as identifying new arenas for struggle. It is not a question of repeating the slogans of the institutionalised movement, but of acting in defence of concrete material conditions. Venezuelan society faces an uphill battle, but one that is indispensable for building a new hegemony from below.

Manuel Azuaje Reverón is a member of Corriente Comunes. A Spanish version of this article can be read on their website.