I'll be right back for a serious comment. In the mean time, enjoy 3 Legs, by Paul McCartney...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmGblSMH8Ug

"Falling prey to Chavez is exactly what we have been doing by not resisting and going along with his game of democracy."

I think the first thing I will stop right away is using the 'we' and start focusing on the opposition leadership this far. The opposition shouted 'fraud!' in August 2004 when, whether we like it or not, Chavez had won the referendum. It then boycotted the 2005 legislative elections and shut itself out of the main venue to oppose Chavez's policies. It then took AGES to elect a viable opposition candidate and refused to develop a coherent, well organized common movement. The opposition' victories' that came later were the result of the student movement (the anti-RCTV closure crowd), ISOLATED efforts by local caudillos (Rosales here, Salas there); and the government's own stupidity (e.g. the 2007 constitutional referendum).

A truly repressive atmosphere only developed in the post-2007 years. Two years. What has the opposition leadership done in these years? Have they called for a high moral stance? Are they organizing a common programmatic platform to get us out of the mess later on? Not much, no, and no are the answers. You can't blame Chavez for everything bad that has happened to the oppo leadership. I hate to say it: Chavez is an authoritarian jackass.... but most oppo leaders have done everything they needed to do to be in the sorry position they are today.

And I am not throwing really worthy leaders - like Carlos Ocariz - on the pot. He is one of the faces of a different opposition leadership that will eventually emerge from all this.

Gee, I beg to differ.

Conceiving our efforts as subversion means falling prey, once again, to Chavez's play. We do not need to subvert the government. We just need to get our act together and organize ourselves, for the first time, bottom up and work for years to create a really serious alternative.

In spite of all the control Chavez has of the system, he has won several elections not on the basis of fraud, but on the basis of enjoying the support of Venezuela's democratic majority. Our main goal is simple: We should become the majority. As simple (and painful) as that. And even if the government doesn't see itself leaving power, most people in Venezuela still believe in democracy, elections are fairly transparent and we still have plenty of means to articulate our views. The day the government loses a majority due to its decreasing ability to please Venezuelans' needs (oil price drops, general dissatisfaction, fatigue, etc.); and we had developed a centrist platform, with fresh faces and a well organized proposal, the NEW political opposition will take power. We don't need to define our struggle as subversion to do this.

Lucia is right that Chavez is losing support, and that it doesn't seem right to be worried or to give up. However, I think what has changed changing is our perception of the problem. In the past, the opposition's expectations were that, at some point, we would get rid of Chavez and return to 'democratic' rule. However, I think that vision is gone for good. Chavismo became the status quo. Though some people still wait for Cuban hell to be fully unleashed, a lot of people no longer subscribe to this doom prophecy. People are no longer acting in anticipation of what is bound to come, but accepting what we have right now as a given. And what we have is not Cuba, but it has its fair share of seemingly insurmountable problems (especially the crime rate).

I think the most useful thing to do, for all of us, is to help improve things from whatever our position is. We need to get engaged and think less about how Chavez is making everybody miserable. Let's stop pitying ourselves.

"He's moved against ONE kleptocrat, probably at the behest of other competing kleptocrats."

Quico got it right. This is an intra Chavista-coalition conflict; and it shouldn't surprise anybody, because the elite groups within Chavismo are still in flux and aggressively competing for ever scarcer resources.

However, as usual, with this things you can kill dos pajaros de un tiro. You can seize the opportunity and claim that an increased state role in banking is necessary, and move against other banks (including both good and zombie banks, and including some that are in opposition hands). Yet, I don't see this coming nationalization as one mainly motivated by ideological reasons. Clientelism redux.

RevBob,

I am not trying to persuade anybody of Chávez's democratic credentials or that Venezuela is the perfect polyarchy., because it isn't, and I think that's well established. But I think we have reached a point in which it is critical to look with complete honesty at what we have now, and what we had in the past. The 'whole clientelism thing' is not only an exchange of votes for a bottle of Cacique Rum: It is a logic that plagues practically all social relations of political import in Venezuela. It goes to the root of how we make policy decisions and allocate resources. It serves as a partial explanation to phenomena as seemingly unrelated as the Lista Tascón; the governments takeovers of private property and the use of labor to shut down manufacturing, much better than the common explanation that we are becoming 'a second Cuba.'

Now, the massive shutdown of media by decree, the Court packing, the submission of the judiciary, the open politicization of the Attorney General´s office --> Yes, I am there with you. Those are real differences, sometimes of form, sometimes of substance. And much worse than the past. Yet, this doesn't mean that in the past we had a free media, an independent judiciary or a functional and apolitical office of the Attorney General. We NEVER had any of those things.

I am currently going through a different stage: I am growingly convinced that the current political dynamics are not terribly different from the past, with the main difference been the still personalistic character of the current regime due to Chavez's overwhelming presence in the political arena in every sense. But, in the mean time, the PSUV is gradually consolidating as a dominant clientelist party, with a moderate and an extremist faction; while the opposition is still fragmented and internally resisting the formation of a real political movement that make its leaders accountable. Although the regime has indeed narrowed the avenues to challenge it, the opposition leadership has also been quick to do everything necessary to perpetuate their own presence and discourage the emergence of new leaders with ties to the still-large mass of opposition voters.

Honestly, yes, this is a hybrid regime, but it is not an oppressive dictatorship. Despite Chavez's disgusting rants and overwhelming dominance, it is more similar to the AD-COPEI regime in many ways than to any truly dictatorial regime you can think of.

Do we have a Russian Politics specialist around? This is so similar to what I understand has happened in Russia under Putin...

That's true. Chavez's overwhelming presence and perpetual reelection is a key difference...

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Venezuela is not on the way to become Cuba, but México under the PRI...