Lecture:

“The Failure of Chavismo and Recent Trends”

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Description:

In my presentation, I will address the deep and global crisis Venezuela is undergoing. This crisis has its roots in structural problems that are related to the oil rentier economy that has shaped society and the political order ever since the first decades of the 20th Century. The oil economy has made Venezuela extremely vulnerable to the international market prices of hydrocarbons, a market over which it has no control. It helped build a highly consumerist society and an inefficient and corrupt Petroestado. All these features were present before Hugo Chávez won the 1998 elections. His offer to the Venezuelans was to overcome these problems through a deep transformation that implied first going to a “participatory and protagonistic democracy” and in his second administration to a “revolutionary democracy” that would transform Venezuela into a 21 Century Socialism. Today, three years after his death, this project shows all its deficiencies and the Venezuelans have sunk into poverty and all kind of social and political troubles.

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Biography:

Margarita López Maya is a historian and PhD in Social Sciences of the Universidad Central de Venezuela. She is Senior Professor-Researcher of the Center for Development Studies (CENDES) of the Universidad Central and member of the Center of Political Studies of Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. Professor López Maya has been editor of Revista Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales and on the Board of the Latin American Social Sciences Council (CLACSO). She has been recognized as an important expert in Modern Venezuelan History, especially of the Chavista Era. Among her publications: Venezuela: Del Viernes Negro al Referendo Revocatorio [From Black Friday to the Presidential Recall] (Grupo Alfa, 2005), Editor of Ideas para construir el socialismo del siglo XXI [Ideas to build Socialism of the 21st Century] (Grupo Alfa, 2010 y 2011), Democracia Participativa en Venezuela. Orígenes, leyes, percepciones y desafíos [Participative Democracy in Venezuela. Origins, laws, perceptions and challenges] (Centro Gumilla, 2011), El Estado Descomunal (El Nacional Editora, 2013), “The Political Crisis of Postchavism” (Social Justice, 2014) & El ocaso del chavismo. Venezuela 2005-2015 [The Decline of Chavism. Venezuela 2005-2015] (Caracas, Grupo Alfa, 2016).