[R-G] In the Land of the Master Chess Player

[Anthony Fenton]

In the Land of the Master Chess Player
June 21st 2008, by Clifton Ross - Dissident Voice
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/3580

I’m in the land of the Master Chess Player, Franco reminds me. It’s  
sunset and we’re a few kilometers outside of Barquisimeto, Venezuela  
after a dizzying trip filming in just a small part of western  
Venezuela which took us, among other places, through the home state of  
President Hugo Chavez. We’ve passed through and taped interviews in  
Carora, called the “first socialist city” of Venezuela, then dipped  
down into Sanare to visit and tape in agroecological coops before  
winding through the eastern edge of the Andes to Guanare, the  
nondescript capital of Portuguesa where stayed the night before  
heading through Chavez’s home state of Barinas. Finally, we drove over  
the mountains and through the eerie paramo, testing our brakes on the  
descent into Merida, in the heart of the Andes, where we premiered my  
movie on Venezuela to a small audience of friends and others in the  
community and also where we’ve left Ari to do his own explorations.

All along the way, we’ve passed through numerous alcabalas, or  
checkpoints. These checkpoints, manned by the National Guard and state  
police, are a new phenomenon, but I didn’t think to ask Franco about  
them. Franco, who has been driving my co-director on a new movie, Ari  
Krawitz, and me around in his Chevy Blazer, has a method for getting  
through the checkpoint without being stopped and it’s worked well all  
but once: we roll the tinted windows of his Chevy Blazer down and  
smile at the guardsmen and, when they see our innocent expressions, we  
pass through without a problem. The one time we were stopped the  
guardsman merely checked Franco’s papers, Ari’s and my passports and  
visas, and then waved us on when he saw we had nothing in the vehicle  
but suitcases and cameras.

I assumed that the checkpoints were part of new security measures in  
Venezuela, and in a sense they are, but they date back, as Franco  
tells me, to August of last year (2007). The subject of the  
checkpoints comes up incidentally as we pass by La Pastora Sugar Mill  
in the state of Lara, just across the border from Trujillo.

La Pastora is one of the bigger sugar companies in Venezuela and it’s  
dead center in one of the largest extensions of sugar cane fields I’ve  
seen, an area that reminds one of Nebraska with its endless cornfields.

As we drive past the sugar mill belching a large plume of grey smoke,  
Franco waves his hand out the window at the miles of sugar cane  
extending in every direction. “How is it possible that we had a  
shortage of sugar here?” he asks with more than a slight tinge of  
anger in his voice.

I shrug. “You had a shortage of sugar?”

He looked at me with alarm. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear about it,”  
he said, “yes, sugar — and milk and oil. And even, for a time, coffee,  
believe it or not. All this went to Colombia, and then we had to buy  
it all back.”

I ask him to explain.

“It happened last year just before the referendum. Polar, Alfonso  
Rivas y Compañia, Cargill and some other companies related to Purina  
and others, were sending all this stuff out of the country to be sold  
at market prices in Colombia. You see, the prices were being  
controlled here in Venezuela to make food available and affordable to  
working people. So what happened was these companies sent all this  
out, truckload after truckload: caravans of all this food, into  
Colombia. And we had to buy it all back.”

We pass through another alcabala where there is a National Guard truck  
with an x-ray machine and a conveyor belt attached. We dutifully roll  
down the tinted windows and turn off the air conditioner. We’re hit  
with a blast of dry air as we smile at the guards, who smile back, and  
then wave us through.

The overriding reason the corporations shipped food to Colombia was,  
of course, profiteering: a liter of milk sold in a transitional  
socialist economy won’t command the same price as the same liter sold  
in Colombia’s “free trade” capitalist markets. But there was also a  
political reason, and that was the referendum of December 2, Chávez  
and the Bolivarian Revolution’s first electoral defeat. The shortages,  
engineered by the very same opposition which decried them, then blamed  
them on Chávez, ironically boosted dissatisfaction sufficiently to  
defeat the initiatives for the further socialization of the economy.  
The referendum lost by less than one percentage point.

Franco waves his hand in front of him again. “Chavez is a plainsman  
and he has a long vision. He’s a great chess player who turns defeats  
into victories. And so he set up these checkpoints to stop what was  
really highway robbery by the big corporations, and then he began to  
nationalize the food industries.”

We stop for a cup of espresso at a roadside restaurant, Las Sabanetas,  
between Carora and Barquisimeto. I recognize the massive hallway of  
food shops that offer snacks, the typical Venezuelan food, arepas,  
guava paste candy, exotic fruit juices, and everything else, including  
statues of Maria Lionza, the Venezuelan goddess, and the local  
Chaplinesque doctor/saint with a little mustache and dressed in an odd  
black suit with tie and hat, Jose Gregorio Hernandez. This is the same  
mall in the middle of nowhere which the all-night Caracas to Merida  
bus visits at one in the morning, just in time to wake passengers up  
for a midnight coffee or a snack.

Franco orders a small black espresso and a small espresso with milk, a  
café marrón. He dumps a packet of sugar in each of the two little  
plastic cups, the sizes of large thimbles. I ask him if there are  
still shortages. He laughs.

“Not any more. Not since Chavez started nationalizing the food  
companies. Lacteos Los Andes, which represents over forty percent of  
the market in milk and milk products, is now state owned. He also  
created Pedeval, a PDVSA (Venezuela Petroleum Company) project which  
buys food from overseas and sells it here in Venezuela at very low  
prices. Then, to give a little to the capitalists, he also raised the  
maximum price for milk and suddenly there was milk everywhere. So he  
used the carrot with one hand, and the stick with the other.”

We slam down our coffees, stop by the bathroom to recycle the previous  
cups, and then we hit the road again. It’s a race against time as the  
sky darkens and still Barquisimeto seems so far away. We’d hoped to  
arrive by six but have been slowed down on the highway by a caravan of  
trucks loaded with green plantains. Franco puts his foot on the gas  
and we barrel along into the twilight.

“The bottom line is that you’ve got to be a masochist to be a  
businessman in the opposition,” he says as we drive into Barquisimeto.  
It’s nearly dark and Franco has notoriously bad night vision. That,  
combined with a pair of weak headlights, has me on edge as we weave  
into town. He tries to stay in his lane and look for our hotel at the  
same time, and then he sees the big cement factory. A car, which has  
nearly rear-ended us, convinces Franco to put on his emergency  
blinkers as we drive along the service road of the highway. Franco  
mutters something in Italian and then points to the cement factory we  
just passed.

“Look at that. Smart business people know they can do good business  
with Chavez,” he says. Someone honks at us and quickly passes, the  
roar of an engine temporarily drowning out Franco’s words. “If they  
push too hard and disrupt the country with another attempt at a golpe  
(coup) then he nationalizes them. Otherwise, if they cooperate with  
the new socialist economy, they win and make their money. Either way  
he has stopped them at the checkpoints.”

“That may be true, Franco, but then, what makes this a “socialist”  
economy?” I ask.

To my dismay, Franco takes his eyes off the road to look at me.  
“Making food, housing and education accessible to all as a top  
priority. Profit has to be a second priority,” he replies.

Check, mate.
Clifton Ross represented the U.S. in the Second World Poetry Festival  
of Venezuela in 2005 and his book of poems in Spanish, Traducir el  
Silencio, is forthcoming with Editorial Perro y Rana. Ross's movie,  
Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out has just been released by PM  
Press and can be ordered at www.pmpress.org or  
www.progressivefilms.org. Clif can be reached at: clifross1 at yahoo.com.  
Read other articles by Clifton