Two events have dominated Venezuelan politics for the past couple of weeks, both of which make evident the need for a discussion of antagonism, especially as this concept relates to such ideas as totality and populism. That is, these are events which show, firstly, the insufficiencies of existing notions of populism vis-à-vis totality. These events show that it would be an error to presume that the mere fact that a leader or a movement bear the markings traditionally associated with “populism” means that the same leader or movement is invested in the construction of a false totality (which obscures the class relation, etc.). Secondly, the very insufficiency of such theories makes clear the need for a clearer, more sophisticated, and above all strategic understanding of the operation of antagonism in specific contexts.

Event #1: General Mayor of Caracas Juan Barreto causes a bit of a stink.

Cheat sheet: Caracas has one General Mayor of the Federal District (a Chavista) and five mayors of the smaller municipalities which constitute the city (three Chavistas and two anti-Chavistas).

The two opposition mayors—Leopoldo López of Chacao and Henrique Capriles Radonski of Baruta—arrived late for the swearing-in of the Metropolitan Council in the (architecturally-exquisite) Teresa Carreño Theater, surrounded by a mob of press cameras. The meeting had already begun, and Barreto (who can always be counted on to speak his mind) began to shout at them from the podium for interrupting, and decrying their “media circus.”

Later in the meeting, things really hotted up when Barreto gave his speech, in which he decreed the expropriation of two golf courses in central Caracas, and their use for the construction of public housing. The two escuálido mayors, representing wealthier (largely sifrino) municipalities (not coincidentally the location of the two golf courses), were sitting on stage at this point, and began to gesture in disbelief, implying that the General Mayor had lost his mind.

Cheat sheet: The opposition is often referred to as escuálidos, a term which invokes social coldness and being sickly, pale, and thin. The opposition has seized on the label to a certain degree (sporting T-shirts reading “soy escualido, y ¿que?”), attempting to link the term to an alternative meaning, which refers to a type of shark. Sifrinos refers to the upper-middle classes, to a sort of bourgeois category which often overlaps with the political category of escuálido.  

This provoked Barreto to begin to harangue the opposition mayors in front of a cheering crowd of Chavistas. It was some excellent stuff: he deemed them “traitors of the people” and announced that they would soon find themselves in prison.

Cheat sheet: Leopoldo López, mayor of wealthy Chacao (reputedly the wealthiest municipality in all of Latin America), has already faced legal problems for participating in the siege of the Cuban embassy during the short-lived April 2002 coup against Chávez.

It was a pretty excellent performance, speaking from a purely ethical perspective. There were also, allegedly, some threats of personal violence exchanged, but these weren’t on tape.

The next day, Barreto appeared on the excellent “La Hojilla” (The Razor), which runs on Venezolana opposite Globovision’s “Buenas Noches.” He justified the threats of prison by showing that the opposition municipalities owed some billions of Bolivares in back taxes, and that the Mayor of Chacao would be investigated for illegal evictions of hundreds of tenants. Barreto also stuck a photo of the mayor outside the Cuban embassy with a gas mask onto his chest while speaking to the camera. Fucking great.

Both in his attacks on the opposition mayors and his order to appropriate the golf courses, Barreto was absolutely right. We should be clear on this. But the question is a strategic one. Many, including those in the Ministry, in Chávez’s MVR (Fifth Republic Movement) electoral coalition, and the Vice President José Vicente Rangel, have been openly critical of the mayor’s expropriation decree. This is clearly due to the upcoming election, and the fact that the opposition has long been sowing fears of communism and attacks on private property. These fears do have some impact on the middle classes that both sides hope to attract.

But let’s be clear: these “middle classes” would never be allowed anywhere near these golf courses. The question is whether or not they buy into the opposition hysteria, and this relates to more general concerns about the legal status of the revolution (both sides must effectively tip-toe around Schmittian insights regarding the political character of the law).

Event #2: The vicissitudes of diplomatic privilege.

Venezuela sparked a(nother) diplomatic row with the U.S., this time over diplomatic bags. The National Guard detained and searched at least one diplomatic package arriving at Maiquetia Airport, accusing the U.S. diplomatic staff of bypassing declaration requirements: they had declared three diplomatic packages, when in reality they entered with three large truckloads of contraband, including food like chicken and military equipment. [note: these included F-16 fighter components. One wonders why on earth the U.S. would be smuggling these in, given its embargo on the sale of military equipment to Venezuela].

The U.S. argues that Venezuela broke international law by searching the bags, whereas Venezuela claims the opposite, that the U.S. was abusing the diplomatic privilege. This is less interesting to me than the questions raised regarding antagonism. One might see the cultivation of anti-U.S. sentiment in the run-up to an election as predictable, and as proof of Chávez’s “populist” or crudely nationalist character. Luckily, the opposition disabuses us of such notions. Globovision’s incredibly boring afternoon newscaster on “Aló Ciudadano,” Leopoldo Castillo, responded to the diplomatic row by asking: “Has the Venezuelan government violated the law?”

By siding so resolutely with the U.S. at the expense of journalistic neutrality, the newscaster reminds us that nationalism can be mobilized against that same oligarchy which stands opposite the pueblo. In so doing, it ceases to be purely nationalistic, it ceases to emphasize the totality of the nation by cultivating a division within that nation. Hence the issue of the diplomatic baggage shares much with the golf course expropriation.

And one could say the same of Chávez’s recent statement that, “There are only two candidates in this election [on 3 December]: Hugo Chávez Frias and George ‘the Devil’ Bush.” On the surface, we might interpret this as nationalist hysteria, but it’s better understood as a statement about the absent figure of Manuel Rosales of the opposition, of the subservience of the Venezuelan oligarchy (ostensibly part of the “nation”) to the United States.

This interpretation, I think, is supported by a key contradiction: the same people who would denounce Chávez as a populist (that is, of referring to a national totality) would also denounce him for sowing hatred and class warfare (that is, of attacking the very same totality).

Pablo Medina—formerly of the Homeland for All party, the decentralizing sector of the Chavista coalition, but now resolutely anti-Chavista—deemed the confluence of these two events to be gestures toward civil war. As is often the case, our enemies speak some truth: these are gestures of antagonism, gestures on which Chavismo relies. The Venezuelan Revolution relies on, and has always relied upon the cultivation of a certain degree of antagonism.

It does so through the category of the pueblo, the “people” (a hopelessly insufficient but indispensable translation), which many erroneously conflate with the substantialist totality implied by “populism.” But the pueblo is not totality. Enrique Dussel disabuses us of this all-too-common error:

[11.24] The “pueblo” establishes an internal frontier or a fracture within the political community. There can be citizens and members of a State who are nevertheless, according to their relation to the bloc in power, distinguished from the pueblo, as is the case with those whose needs remain unsatisfied by oppression or exclusion. We will refer as plebs (in Latin) to the pueblo when considered in opposition to the elites, to the oligarchs, to the ruling classes of a political order. This plebs, a part of the community, nevertheless tends to encompass all the citizens (populus) in a new future order in which their present claims will be satisfied and equality will be achieved thanks to a common struggle by the excluded (20 Theses on Politics, forthcoming).

Chavismo has operated through antagonism to these corrupt ruling classes and oligarchs. This antagonism has facilitated the mobilization of the previously excluded plebs, who were ignored, starved, and murdered (notably in the 1989 Caracazo) by the oligarchy. With this in mind, we can’t dismiss all antagonism as bad for Chávez’s re-election. To do so is simple-minded and overly idealistic. “Hatred of the oligarchy,” as Ezequiel Zamora (one of the big three influences on Chávez) often put it, has as much power to mobilize as it does to alienate.

In some ways, then, this is an empirical question: how many undecided centrists might be persuaded to vote for Chávez? Compared to how many poor plebs who haven’t voted for Chávez but might, or who have supported Chávez in the past but feel that his radicalism has been blunted, and might choose not to vote? As it stands, the growth of the electorate favors Chavismo, and it has grown incredibly (by about 5 million since 1998, to a total of around 15 million) through the process of cedulación (the issuing of national identification cards, or cedulas) which seeks to include those informal popular sectors who were never incorporated into the political life of Venezuela.