Depolarization and autonomy: Challenges to Venezuela’s social movements after D-3 [El Libertario, # 49, march 2007, Editorial] Visualizing what will happen to Venezuela’s social movements after the elections scheduled for December 3 – with the re-election of president Chavez – cannot be done without at least a general understanding of their historical path. During the second half of the 80’s the economic crises after the “black Friday” was the catalyst of new forms of organizing and demanding that began to develop in this Caribbean country: student and neighborhood movements, women, counterculture, ecological and pro-human rights. Subjective efforts that although coming from the left, did not automatically follow the organizational schemes of the guevarist-lenninists who claimed to be the heirs of the armed insurrection of the 60’s. The “Caracazo” (February 1989) as the expression of the growing malaise, marks the beginning of a civil society as alienated from the traditional political parties - networks of State’s clients - as it is from the left political parties. The effervescence that ensues weaves a social fabric out of infinite socio-political initiatives, with varied and developing levels of mutual interaction, which played a lead role in the mobilizations for the greatest objective at the time: getting Carlos Andres Perez out of power. Chavez’s original movement raises itself above this dynamic and becomes the face of the people’s malcontent, achieving legitimacy at the polls in 1999 by capitalizing on the prevailing wish for change that ran through the country, but also revitalizing the populist, statist and caudillista ethos so much a part of Venezuela’s historical make-up. The imposition of a personal mode of domination was preconditioned to the break up of the citizen-led dynamics that brought it to power. Among the many causes driving this process there is the polarization imposed by the contending elites: those banned from power representing the traditional productive sectors, and the new “leftist” bureaucracy giving legitimacy to the interests of those sectors crucial to the economic globalization of the country. After 1999 the social fabric is fragmented (neighborhood, student and ecologist movements), neutralized (human rights) and co-opted (indigenous, women, counterculture) by the expectations created by a government rhetorically of the left. In turn this has caused some expression of popular organization with no autonomy within a new network of clients, amidst one of the greatest economic windfalls ever, brought on by the high oil prices. These popular initiatives, instructed from above, have some common elements that distinguish them from other social movements: (1) Vertical solidarity supplants intra-class solidarity: mobilizations follow a political agenda imposed by the top; their calls for solidarity when others in the movement suffer repression are almost non-existent. (2) An identity permeated by personality cult and a lack of history and arguments different from those originating in the seat of power, which prevents any hypothetical “deepening of the revolution”. (3) Their praxis aims to legitimize government’s projects, without any other parallel or different process. (4) A progressing wearing out due to its adoption of politico-electoral cumulative logic. Default on the expectations generated by Chavez has caused the exponential increase of popular protests during 2006, something that will continue to grow in the coming year. But it is precisely the blackmail of polarization – “to give weapons to the right”, “manipulated by imperialism” – which contains the growing discontent against a state that neither transformed itself when it could, nor has a new bureaucracy able to make policies different from Latin American populist welfare. The challenges facing the social movements, after the hypothetical presidential re-election, are not only of a practical order such as its autonomous configuration or experimenting with diverse practices and spaces of learning and counter hegemony. They are also theoretical. Overcoming imperialist Manichaeism, centered exclusively on George Bush, would entail squeezing the multiple dynamics of money flow and the power of global capital. It is precisely the social movements, from both poles, which have internalized the discipline of being a cheap energy exporting country, in spite of any consideration for the environment, deepening in the role assigned to Venezuela by economic globalization. Sticking to the events of the last few months – actions against carbon exploitation in Zulia, protests by street vendors in Caracas and traditional fishermen in Guiria – and how they have been opposed and criminalized by the Chavez’s rank and file, we foresee a long period of conflict among the oppressed: some protesting for a few structural improvements and other opposing them to climb up to positions within the hierarchy of those embedded in the personal state.