Ricardo Hausmann’s “Morning After” for Venezuela: The neoliberal brain behind Juan Guaido’s economic agenda
While
online audiences know YouTube comedian Joanna Hausmann from her
videos making the case for regime change, her economist father has
flown below the radar. His record holds the key to understanding what
the U.S. wants in Venezuela.
by
Anya Parampil
Part
3 - Revolt against the austerity agenda
During
the late 1980s, as Lt. Col. Chávez watched the wholesale ravaging of
his country’s economy by foreign capital, he formed a cadre of
populist officers called the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200.
In 1992, Chávez led the officers in an attempted military coup
against the government of Pérez, hoping to ride the wave of popular
resentment for the neoliberal policies enforced by Hausmann and his
fellow IESA boys. Though he initially failed, Chávez captured the
mood of the Venezuelan public, including sectors of the middle class,
and emerged as a national folk hero.
Even
mainstream U.S. media conceded that Chávez had a point. At the time,
the Washington Post identified him as the leader of a popular
movement challenging Perez “for not instituting a viable
democracy and stewarding an economic program that has not served the
country’s poor.”
In
contrast to the Post’s contemporary coverage of Venezuela, which
reads like an information-warfare campaign on behalf of the
anti-Chávez opposition, the Post at that time freely conceded
public dissatisfaction with the IESA reforms: “Many people
around Caracas banged on pots and pans today and shouted out of their
windows in support of the rebels,” the paper noted.
It
added: “Venezuela, the third-largest producer in the
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cartel, has been
wracked by unrest. Critics accuse the government of not distributing
oil riches to the public, citing corruption as a cause.”
For its
part, the New York Times reported: “The coup attempt
followed violent protests and labor unrest arising from a growing
disparity between rich and poor in Venezuela. The Government has
admitted that only 57 percent of Venezuelans are able to afford more
than one meal a day.”
The
Guardian also described the military insurrection as a popular
insurgency against the ruthless austerity program of Pérez’s IESA
Boys: “The underlying cause of the military unrest is
undoubtedly the widespread social discontent. When he came back to
power three years ago, President Pérez was expected to repeat the
expansionist policies of his first term of office in the late 1970s
when Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the developing
world, enjoying the easy wealth brought by its huge oil reserves. But
Mr. Pérez overnight adopted the liberal economic policies dominant
in most of the Western world. He cut back heavily on government
spending, opening up the economy to market forces and international
competition.”
Across
the board, mainstream media identified the economic program imposed
under the watch of Hausmann and his colleagues as the force driving
Pérez’s unpopularity. Though Chávez failed to take control of the
state in 1992, calling for his comrades to lay down arms following
his failed revolt, he declared that “now is the time to
reflect,” promising “new situations will come.”
“The
same month that Chávez led a failed coup against the Pérez
government, Hausmann officially joined the government as planning
minister,” recalled Ciccariello-Maher, adding: “It’s not
clear to me whether it’s better to have been in charge when the
government instituted a brutal neoliberal reform package, or to
willingly join that same government after it had massacred hundreds,
if not thousands, who resisted the reforms.”
Six
years later, Chávez won democratic elections for president,
convening a national assembly and referendum to rewrite the country’s
constitution and alter the character of the Venezuelan state in a
dramatic fashion.
By this
time, Hausmann and his wife, Ana Julia Jatar, who also served in the
Pérez administration, had left for high-flying careers Washington,
where Hausmann took over as Chief Economist at the Inter-American
Development Bank. While her husband worked at the bank, Jatar was a
Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank primarily
funded by Chevron, the Ford Foundation, USAID, and her husband’s
employer.
In 2000,
Hausman took a professorial job at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School
of Government, watching and waiting for an opportunity to return to
power in his home country.
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