Counterpunch
Weekend Edition
June 9 / 10, 2007
Who's Pulling the Strings? Behind Venezuela's "Student Rebellion"
By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER
Caracas.

In response to the Venezuelan governments non-renewal of RCTV's
broadcasting license, a concession which expired on May 27th at midnight,
a new student movement emerged that has since grabbed headlines
domestically and internationally. Thousands took to the streets, some
marching peacefully and some squaring off against the police with rocks
and bullets, all in the name of "freedom of expression." But it's worth
asking: who are "the students," and what do they represent? In recent
days, it has become clear that these student mobilizations have been, in
fact, largely directed and supported by sectors of the opposition, all in
an effort to provoke, in Chávez's own words, a "soft coup" against the
revolutionary government. The opposition's strategy vis-à-vis this student
movement has consisted of two fundamental elements, both of which could
only be executed mediatically. But now, after being revealed and
discredited, that strategy is rapidly disintegrating.

Step One: Don't Be Seen

Firstly, opposition parties made a clear decision to stay out of the
spotlight, emphasizing the "independent" and "spontaneous" nature of the
student protests. Beyond anything else, this gesture proves the degree to
which the opposition has been discredited, garnering a reverse Midas touch
through years of poor decisionmaking and supporting coups. From the
beginning, the government was arguing that opposition politicians were
behind the student mobilizations, and so when government-run channel 8
covered one of the early student demonstrations in Plaza Brion in
Chacaito, the headline read "opposition demonstration disguised as a
student demonstration."

This claim was perhaps justified by the appearance at the demonstration of
Leopoldo López, mayor of opposition stronghold Chacao, formerly of
far-right party Primero Justicia, which he more recently abandoned in
favor of Manuel Rosales' nominally social democratic Un Nuevo Tiempo.
Opposition news channel Globovisión countered with the thoroughly
unconvincing claim that López, 36 years old and an established politician,
was a "youth leader." López himself wouldn't help the situation when at a
press conference he "accidentally" called for the students to employ
"non-peaceful" tactics (he later claimed that he had meant to call for
"non-violent" forms of protest).

That the "student leaders" are tied to the opposition is far from
controversial: for example, spokesperson Yon Goicochea is a member of
Primero Justicia and the aptly-named Stalin González belonged until
recently to the strangest of opposition organizations, Bandera Roja. BR is
a nominally Marxist-Leninist group which made the unlikely transition from
a respectable guerrilla organization to the attack dogs of the far right,
claiming to use the opposition as a vehicle to topple the fake communism
of Chávez and institute a true dictatorship of the proletariat. But
González recently revealed the extent of his opportunism by joining
Rosales and Un Nuevo Tiempo.

But the contours of the opposition's hands-off strategy wouldn't be fully
clear until the revelation of a taped phone conversation in which Un Nuevo
Tiempo leader Alfonso Marquina spoke of the need to remain in the
background, but to pull the strings regardless: "Let's mobilize all the
kids We have a strategy as an organization Let's mobilize all the kids,
because you know [UCV student leader] Stalin [González] is our vice
president here in Caracas Let's mobilize the kids from the Catholic
[University] We've decided that the politicians won't intervene, that
we'll leave it to the kids in their natural environment. We'll give them
support, stick them in trucks If I go out there, they'll say it's the
politicians that are calling the kids out"

"The only thing that can save us in this situation is if something
extraordinary happens," replies Elías, an advisor to RCTV head Marcel
Granier, on the leaked tape. It's comments like this that lead the Vice
President of the National Assembly Desiree Santos to argue that the
political opposition to Chávez was "looking for a death" among the
students, to "repeat the actions of 2002" in which pre-meditated deaths
were inserted into a pre-fabricated media strategy to overthrow Chávez.

Santos continues: "We want to denounce today a campaign which intends to
convince the country that these student protests are spontaneous, civil,
peaceful, and democratic, but behind them there lies an entire
conspiratorial apparatus. They are using these kids as cannon fodder..."
It was little surprise, then, that when a student was indeed killed (but
under circumstances unrelated to the protests), the opposition press
immediately ran with the story, only later rectifying their erroneous
reports that she had been shot by police. This convenient misreporting
even led to the story reaching the pages of Spain's El País.

Despite Marquina's revelations, Globovisión has continued to toe the
opposition line that these are apolitical "student demonstrations" and
that their objective is not to bring down a government, but merely to
support RCTV and "free speech." To make such claims, they continue to
systematically obscure the political affiliations of the students, their
interactions with opposition political actors, and conveniently ignore the
frequently heard chants asserting that "the tyrant will fall."

Step Two: Construct "the Students"

The second element of the opposition's strategy is to present the students
as a unified mass. This is not as difficult as it may seem: Venezuela's
university system is notoriously exclusionary, and this applies both to
private universities like the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB) and
selective public universities like the Central (UCV). In most of these
bodies, which represent the wealthy historical cream of Venezuelan
society, the opposition has significant strength, controlling most of the
official student unions and political bodies.

But, as Metropolitan Mayor Juan Barreto recently emphasized in a response
to the mobilizations, Caracas boasts 200,000 students, whereas these
demonstrations have not managed to mobilize more than 5,000. And these
mobilizations had been largely concentrated in the wealthy East of
Caracas, with no student protests in the sprawling barrios that house half
of the city's population. Who are the rest of these students? It is here
that we see another piece of the puzzle, and another crucial sector which
opposes the policies of the Bolivarian Revolution. As a response to the
entrenched elitism and conservatism of the existing Venezuelan university
structure, and lacking the political weight to attack the long-cherished
tradition of university autonomy head on, Chávez's government opted for a
different strategy.

Rather than attempting to change institutions like the UCV, the government
has funneled resources into the creation of new, alternative educational
institutions like the Bolivarian University (UBV), among others. In all,
the government has created 8 new free universities and plans 28 more (11
national, 13 regional, and 4 technological institutes) as a part of the
recently-baptized Mission Alma Mater. And this isn't even to mention the
vast network of already existing educational missions which stretch from
preschool to post-graduate education, and whose participants are currently
demanding that they, too, be recognized as "students." As it stands, these
new universities reach approximately 1.5 million students, and the
educational missions a further 3.8 million, together representing more
than 8% of the Venezuelan population, a figure which will only continue to
grow.

Recognizing that the students of these new universities are actually
"students" would certainly put a damper on the opposition's plans, and so
the opposition and international press has insistently maintained the
rhetoric by which "the students" of the opposition stand in for students
as a whole. It's a classic strategy of substitutionism, and one intimately
tied to the purportedly apolitical nature of the protests: since they
aren't political, the opposition press is attempting to paint a picture of
a unified (i.e. opposition and Chavista) student body standing together in
support of press freedom.

A Scripted Performance in the Assembly

The efforts of the students to appear peaceful and democratic ultimately
led them down a blind alley. This alley ended in the National Assembly,
and revealed with absolute clarity the falseness of the "unity" of the
student movement. Perhaps not expecting a positive response, the
opposition students demanded first to be received at the Assembly, and
later to be given the opportunity to address the national parliament in an
emergency session. Unfortunately for them, Assembly President Cilia Flores
accepted.

But here's the kicker: the opposition students were invited to participate
in a debate with a group of students identifying with the Revolution.
While opposition students had continuously emphasized their openness to
debate, the structure of the proposed debate threatened to fracture their
meticulously-constructed image as the sole representatives of the
Venezuelan student population. This was clearly a debate that the
opposition students couldn't accept. But on the appointed day and time,
they arrived at the Assembly. I was standing outside, when shouts went up
about "escualidos [i.e. opposition] disguised as Chavistas." Sure enough,
the anti-Chavista students were entering the National Assembly wearing red
t-shirts, a color generally reserved for supporters of the government.

At first, it was thought that they had merely donned the red to ensure
safe passage through the crowds of Chavista students massed outside,
chanting "education first to the children of the worker, education second
to the children of the bourgeoisie," and, "the people have spoken, and
they are right, now it's Globovisión and Venevisión's turn [to go off the
air]." But the red t-shirts were far more than a safety strategy: they
were an integral part of a professionally-designed media strategy.

The first speaker to the podium was Douglas Barrios, an opposition student
leader and economics student from the private (and notoriously-elite)
Metropolitan University (UNIMET). His speech, while well-crafted,
contained no arguments, only vague promises of continued struggle for RCTV
and, somewhat paradoxically, a process of national reconciliation. At the
end of his speech, Barrios said: "I dream of a country in which we can be
taken into account without having to wear a uniform." At this point, he
and other opposition student leaders in the chamber removed their red
t-shirts, revealing a variety of pro-RCTV messages.

The opposition students then began to withdraw from the Assembly, and it
was only the entreaties of the Chavista students and Assembly members that
convinced them to stay to hear the speech by the first revolutionary
student, Andreína Tarazón of the UCV (and representative of the
revolutionary M-28 movement). Tarazón began by attacking the opposition
students' anti-democratic threats to withdraw from the debate. Comparing
their performance to the recent behavior of Condolezza Rice at the summit
of the OAS, in which Rice attacked Venezuela before withdrawing to avoid
critical responses, Tarazón observed that "they had a march, they demanded
freedom of expression, and when it was granted to them they withdraw."

Tarazón continued, demanding that the opposition students clarify their
concepts. They seem to be confusing, she argued, "libertad de prensa"
(press freedom) and "libertad de empresa" (the freedom of private
businesses). Any productive debate would need to set out from clarifying
what these opposition students mean by freedom of expression. Tarazón went
out of her way, moreover, to attack the racism, sexism, and otherwise
exclusionary nature of RCTV, noting that Barrios himself had spoken of the
"political exile" Nixon Moreno, a student leader who, among other things,
is wanted for attempted rape. "I can't believe," Tarazón added, "that
actresses would come on television crying because they will no longer be
able to market their bodies as sexual commodities."

After Tarazón's speech, and a brief intervention by Primero Justicia
member Yon Goicochea, in which he again asserted the non-political nature
of their intervention, the opposition students withdrew from the chamber
and the debate, and their exit was carried live on a national cadena, or
simultaneous broadcast on all channels. The students, after demanding the
right to speak in the Assembly, had withdrawn, refusing to debate with
Chavista students.

This being the first time in Venezuelan history that student organizations
of any stripe were invited to address the Assembly, their departure
rightly shocked both Chavistas and anti-Chavistas: after all, these were
the same students who had been professing their democratic credentials and
demanding national debate. But the most interesting part of the day was
yet to come. As the opposition students were making defiant press
declarations before being hustled out the Assembly's back door to avoid
the masses of pro-Chavista students gathered out front (who were, at the
time, shouting "Cowards! Cowards!" and "Victory, victory, victory of the
people!") they failed to notice that they had forgotten something.

Speeches by the scheduled Chavista students continued, with each laying
out substantive arguments about the nature the Bolivarian Revolution and
its relationship to traditional notions of press freedom. When it came to
be his turn to speak, Chavista student leader Héctor Rodríguez of the UCV
stepped up to the podium with a sheet of paper that he promptly held up in
front of the gathered deputies. It was the last page of the opposition's
scripted performance in the Assembly, which laid-out the text of the
speech and the exact moment at which Barrios was to remove his red shirt.
And the script was signed by ARS Publicity, a company owned by none other
than the Globovisión media empire. Together with Globovisión (as well as
all other private media outlets), ARS was directly implicated in the
planning and execution of the 2002 media coup against the constitutional
order.

Let's go over this again, slowly: the students' withdrawal from the
National Assembly was scripted. This isn't all that surprising. But that
it was scripted by an organization owned by the opposition press is quite
revealing. It makes transparent not merely the political nature of the
opposition students and the fact that they don't represent the totality of
Venezuelan students, but more importantly it reveals the fact that the
opposition media has played an active role in planning and structuring
this wave of student protests that they themselves have painted as a
"spontaneous" rebellion.

In the meantime, Globovisión is busy broadcasting some of RCTV's programs,
a tactic which while seemingly benevolent, conveniently assures
Globovisión's control of much of RCTV's former audience share. And this
alongside advertisements sponsored by opposition party Un Nuevo Tiempo
which encourage the population to do all they can to get RCTV back on the
air: "it's in your hands," so the people are told. But RCTV's hope had
been pinned on "the students," an apolitical and unified rebellion that
threatened to disrupt Chavista hegemony. Unfortunately for the opposition,
the rebellion was more meticulously-crafted media image than hard reality,
and this image has begun to crack.

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at the
University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Caracas, and can be
reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.