Chavez: Change of Tune?

President Hugo Chavez's recent statements "the guerilla war is history" and "at this moment in Latin America, armed guerilla movement is out of place"1 is a rather drastic volt-face that may have left even his most ardent critics gobsmacked. Only months before Chavez had requested the international community that the FARC be delineated as a legitimate insurgent force and that they be removed from the international list of terrorist organizations.2 He had gone so far as temporarily severing diplomatic relations with Colombia and sending ten tank battalions to Venzeuela's border with Colombia to protest the assassination of FARC rebel leader Raul Reyes. The question therefore remains as why President Hugo has abandoned or at least ostensibly deserted the FARC.

It is conceivable that with the upcoming elections this November Chavez is not willing to risk votes that may potentially not only cost him his re election but also alienate voters in supporting a 2010 referendum which seeks to dissolve limits on his presidency.3 According to Fernando Coronil, a Venezuelan historian at the University of Michigan "Chavez has incredible political instincts and has shown to have had, with few exceptions, the pulse of the country, to read its changing political mood better than anyone else."4 This however was not the case during last December's referendum when voters narrowly rejected a measure which would have granted Chavez the right to indefinite re-election and concentrated all most all the power in the reigning executive organ of the government.i The result of the referendum may have served as an initial wake up call to Chavez who perhaps mistakenly believed his Bolivarian Revolution was unstoppable and that he as the leader was the only tenable choice to direct the Venezuelan people further towards his Bolivarian dream.

Chavez may however gone too far. According to Oscar Schemel of the Hinterlaces Agency which has carried out over 200 focus groups across the country:

"the era of social revenge' by the poor has now ended; it is so far uncertain what will replace it. The new citizen is not a socialist, but a liberal. There was a struggle of classes, but it was not antagonistic. The poor did not want to annihilate the upper classes, but demanded a new class relation: to be able to have what they have, to enjoy their opportunities."5

Chavez's statement that

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