Lecture:

“The Venezuelan Opposition Under Chavismo: An Anatomy”

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Description:

Chávez’s first election in 1999 came as the result of a terminal crisis of the so-called “Punto Fijo political system.” It’s worth asking if chavismo has managed, seventeen years after, to build up some kind of new political system. Most of the energy of thinkers, observers, scholars, and politicians has been put on the task of deciphering the complex “true nature” of chavismo, but we lack a narrative that can account for the development of the opposition under chavismo.

 

How did the opposition evolve along these years? I would like to address this matter under the following hypothesis: there is a structural divide between the “political” opposition (led by political parties) and the “antipolitical” opposition (led by NGOs and “civil society” leaderships). Their relationships are defined by the struggle for internal hegemony. Along the years of chavismo, there have been cycles in which each of these has been dominant with regard to the other and has developed different political strategies. This divide precedes the rise of chavismo—indeed it is the main symptom of the crisis of the Venezuelan democracy. It implies also something like a “perpetual motion” which obstructs the institutionalization of the opposition, and then contributes to the survival of chavismo.

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Biography:

Colette Capriles is currently associate professor and researcher in Political Philosophy and Social Sciences at Universidad Simón Bolívar, Caracas, Venezuela. She is editor-in-chief of Argos, an academic indexed bi-annual journal of Social Sciences and Humanities with international scope. She is also a political consultant and writes for the Spanish newspaper El País, and some Venezuelan media.

She obtained a MPhil at Universidad Simón Bolívar with the thesis “The Wealth of Passions: The Moral Philosophy of Adam Smith,” which was awarded the Federico Riu Prize on Philosophical Research in 2000. In addition to several academic papers, mainly focused on Venezuelan political culture, she published two political chronicles books (based on her journalistic work): The Revolution As a Show (La revolución como espectáculo, 2004) and The Machine To Impede (La máquina de impedir, 2010). She is currently researching on a general theory of tyranny.