Everything leads one to believe that Venezuela is moving fast towards the outbreak of civil war and the establishment of a dictatorship by the faction that win this conflict to maintain order in the country. Very rarely, representative democracy can result from the political conflicts that occur in Venezuela due to the difficulty of establishing a social pact that would require consensus in Civil Society of difficult construction.

1. 1
VENEZUELA TOWARD CIVIL WAR
Fernando Alcoforado *
The Bolivarian Revolution was the term created by Hugo Chavez to designate the
political, economic and social changes initiated from his access to power in Venezuela.
The Bolivarian Revolution is based, according to Chavez, on the ideology of the
liberator Simon Bolivar and its main objective is the emancipation of Latin America. Its
strategy in Venezuela was to increase its influence among the popular strata of its
population and rely on the decisive support of the Armed Forces to give it support. On
the external plane, it established alliances with the rulers of Ecuador, Bolivia,
Argentina, Brazil and Peru, among other countries, strongly supported in the
fundamental wealth of the country, oil.
In Latin America, wars and revolutions of independence are at the origin of the Nation,
establishing some of its main features. What is epic in the struggles symbolized by
Simón Bolívar, José Artigas, José Morelos, Miguel Hidalgo, Bartolomé Miter, Bernardo
O'Higgins, Antonio Sucre, Jose Bonifacio, Frei Caneca, Ramón Betances, José Martí,
Tiradentes and many others, is rooted in the feat destined to emancipate the colony, to
create the national state, to organize the nation. Liberate it from colonialism, from
absolutism, from mercantilism, from original accumulation. Defending the interests of
Venezuela and Latin America has always been at the center of Hugo Chávez's concerns.
The national question is at the basis of some fundamental struggles of the countries of
Latin America. At different times, especially in deeper critical situations such as the
present one, the national problematic reopens. In several countries in Latin America, the
charge for a change of course is stronger every day. The impoverishment of the
continent has reached unacceptable levels. The concentration of wealth and social
exclusion has placed inequalities at levels never experienced before. The dilemma of
Latin American governments lies in fulfilling their commitments to the people or
putting themselves in the adversary camp - on the side that oppresses, exploits and
wants to keep everything as it is. Unlike most Latin American countries that have
submitted to the dictates of international capital, Venezuela has assumed a diametrically
opposed role with Hugo Chávez's rise to power.
Since his election in 1998, Hugo Chavez has gained notoriety in Latin American
political space. Some saw him as a vanguard ruler, representing what is most advanced
in Latin American left thought, others understood it as another authoritarian movement
carried out by a caudillo. Since 1998, Chavez has won several electoral lawsuits,
underwent an attempted military coup in 2002, demarcated and prioritized his electoral
base with various social programs, known as "missions", politically controlled the
country, including changes in the country's constitution (partly due to its political
capacity but also to the inability of the opposition to organize after the defeats at the
polls) and the prerogative to be pursuing the goals of social inclusion and participatory
democracy and has managed to sustain very high levels of popularity, especially
between the years 2004 and 2007.
Hugo Chavez, elected for the first time in 1998, won four successive presidential terms
by electoral means. In the early years of Chávez's presidency, he introduced social
welfare reforms that resulted in improved social conditions for the lower strata of the
population. It also implemented free health and education systems, up to university
level, funded by the government. About 1 million more children have been enrolled in

2. 2
primary school since the Bolivarian leader came to power. In 2003 and 2004, Chávez
launched social and economic campaigns that were converted into free reading, writing
and arithmetic classes for the more than 1.5 million illiterate Venezuelan adults.
According to surveys, this set of measures resulted in a growth of 150% in the family
income of the poorest between 2003 and 2006 and a reduction in the infant mortality
rate of 18% between 1998 and 2006.
Chávez's successive victories in the Venezuelan elections confirmed his mandate with
strong popular support, indicating that the path chosen by him in that country succeeded
not only in the mobilization and organization of the poorest population, but also in
building an affirmative agenda in defense of national sovereignty and confrontation
with imperialism, especially the American. The two great marks of the Chávez
government concern the purpose of realizing the Bolivarian Revolution and implanting
Socialism of the 21st Century. This socialism proposed by Chavez in 2005 at the World
Forum in Porto Alegre would be nourished by the most authentic currents of
Christianity, by Marxism and by Bolivar's ideas. However, the discourse proposed by
socialism of the 21st century and its practical application came to be faced with a series
of structural problems that the government of Hugo Chávez could not solve, such as
promoting the expansion of Venezuela's productive sectors and excessive dependence
of the country of importation of numerous products, including food.
After the death of Hugo Chávez and the rise to power of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela
has been the scene of economic turmoil and violent clashes between Chavistas and anti-
Chavistas, whose main causes are hyperinflation, the scarcity of strong currency (which
generates speculation with the dollar) and the shortage of some basic products that
strongly affects the whole population. Without credit and without foreign exchange,
Venezuela has become increasingly dependent on oil sales, as the only source of capital
inflows, whose prices have declined in recent years and are undermining the country's
economy. An indisputable fact is that Venezuela is a country divided and polarized to
the extreme between chavistas and antichavistas whose radicalization reached extreme
situation with the recent defeat in the parliamentary elections of chavismo to the forces
of opposition that today are majority in the National Assembly that in turn, wants to
hold a referendum to remove Nicolas Maduro from power.
In order to avoid his dismissal of power, Nicolás Maduro arrests opponents of
Chavismo, violently represses the manifestations of the opposition forces, uses the
Bolivarian militias to use violence to attack his opponents, establishes an exception
regime similar to the state of siege to maintain the order, in addition to announcing that
the National Assembly opposed to the government will disappear soon. The recent
convocation by Nicolás Maduro of the new Constituent Assembly has as main objective
to prevent the National Assembly from opposing the government. Socialism of the
twenty-first century turned into fascism for assuming exacerbated nationalism and
presenting the characteristics of a dictatorial regime under the leadership of Nicolas
Maduro. The prevailing fascism in Venezuela is an authoritarian, undemocratic political
regime that, under the pretext of defending the interests of the less favored classes, uses
dictatorial power by a party or by a clique that overlaps with law and morality.
The Venezuelan regime is fascist because it exerts coercion by force by very powerful
social actors, who, escaping all democratic control, impose their will on society.
Everything leads one to believe that Venezuela is moving fast towards the outbreak of
civil war and the establishment of a dictatorship by the faction that win this conflict to

3. 3
maintain order in the country. Very rarely, representative democracy can result from the
political conflicts that occur in Venezuela due to the difficulty of establishing a social
pact that would require consensus in Civil Society of difficult construction.
*Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education and the Brazilian Academy of
Letters of the Rotary - Bahia Section, engineer and doctor of Territorial Planning and Regional
Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and consultant in strategic
planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is the author of
Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem
Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000),
Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de
Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento
(Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos
Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the
Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (P&A Gráfica e Editora, Salvador, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e
combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011),
Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012),
Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV,
Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo
(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016) and A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), among
others