Venezuela, the minimum government and its difficulties?
By: Luis Beltrán Guerra G. - 24/03/2024
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The Venezuelan Marco Tulio Bruni Celli wrote “Governing is a serious thing”, some years ago, during the democratic presidency of Dr. Luis Herrera Campins. An interesting article that Rómulo Betancourt ordered to be given the dissemination he deserved. He was already former head of state, but guardian of the regime of freedoms that began in Caracas in January 1958, in whose creation he was the main actor. The father of our democracy had already tested the alternative of an intervening State, the central thesis of the Peruvian politician Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, founder of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) party, with a determining role in Latin America. Don Rómulo tried to direct Venezuela towards political, economic and social development through a Revolutionary Government Junta and free elections that elevated the novelist Rómulo Gallegos to the Head of State, whose government was overthrown by a coup d'état that led to 10 years of dictatorship. Black gold was already emerging from the warm Venezuelan lands, for a few the ingredient that led us to the easy life and its harmful consequences. The individual and corporate enrichment derived from a giving State, coupled with the severe restrictions on freedom and its manifestations led, thank God, to ten years of democracy, which was shot down, on the way to a wrong regime that still endures.
That is the scenario for the utopia of “minimal government” in Venezuela and other Latin American countries. In more technical words of the so-called “minarchism”, that of the libertarians, from which public power is viewed with a severe restriction on freedom. That of the philosopher Robert Nozick, author of the so-called “Theory of Distributive Justice”. The appreciation should not be understood as propitiating the “macrocephalic state” of “Leviathan” by Tomas Hobbes, “Yo El Supremo” by the Paraguayan Augusto Roa Bastos, nor the character incited in the Mexican expression “Es que soy el rey.” Neither does the one that is born from an unreal Constitution, which, because it is a compendium of promises, suffers the bad luck of its adaptation to reality through reforms or replacement with a new text, but of the same texture.
It is known that one of the historic speeches of Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister, was marked by the expression "blood, effort, tears and sweat", inspiring the English with the precise need to face the threat of Adolf Hitler, that of "the charismatic oratory", which combined with the economic, social and political crisis derived from the Great Depression of '29. Evidence that "human catastrophes" do not cease to have a link with the political, economic and social catastrophe", derived in the majority of the hypotheses of blunders and misleading manipulations. A surveillance government cannot be what libertarians propose as a “minimum.”
Of course, there are large, medium and small catastrophes and each produces unintended consequences. The equation is usually that the more intense they are, the worse their results are, as happened, precisely, with the fascism led by “the Furher and his gang.” Except for natural ones derived, as we read, from “violent or sudden changes in the dynamics of the environment, among others, earthquakes, floods and volcanoes, in the face of which people expect effective interference from the hand of the man who governs.
In Latin America, a continent in permanent conflict, it is advisable to bring up the questioning of the measures that had to be taken in one of Michele Bachelet's governments and the "political tsunami" in Chile, whose actions are reprehensible for some and efficient for others. , the latter who defend the Head of Government, claiming not to have responsibility for the deaths caused by the episode and those who accuse her of her alleged irresponsibility. The well-known opposition proposed to affect the popularity of Bachelet, who in the most important public opinion survey in the country obtained 51% of preferences as a future president, who, as it is argued, did what she could with the means she had in a country with weaknesses. institutional. The recommendation, "improve State institutions, since Chile does not have a prevention, early warning and damage mitigation system, despite being among the most seismic in the world and with more than 50 active volcanoes." Therefore , is decisive in the suitability of public power to face something that is not an extraordinary event, but rather are facts specific to Chilean geomorphology." Another claim against the so-called "minarchism" to lead the people.
A decisive difference between tsunamis derived from the characteristics of the Earth's crust and those attributable to human behavior illustrates, with respect to the understanding of them, that it is more feasible for humans to understand the ratio of the former, more than with respect to volitional ones, that is, those resulting from human behavior. It is heard from some philosophers that behavioral deviations feed a social fact in normal terms, nourished by circumstances that are specific to both the subject and the community where he lives. The task of authority is to educate regarding what is acceptable and normal. That is, what is not contrary to the Law. Political tsunamis must be mentioned in the context, to reflect the intensity of the crises of the state and citizens. Therefore, in an objective analysis, it is necessary to ask whether the undeniable crises of the political systems in Latin America meet the conditions to be classified as tsunamis. The appreciation leads to the analysis of the real manifestations of the difficulties, their comparison between the past and those of now and at a global level in "the for now" a global problem typified by the war Israel Hamas, China and its surprising economic decline and with Taiwan on the verge of invasion, the two Koreas, Ortega's Nicaragua, Bukele's El Salvador, the Peru that was Fujimori's, Castillo the Hat's, Ecuador's Laso and Correa's, Lucio Gutiérrez's, Jamil Mahuad's, who dollarized the economy and they did not let him finish the mandate and of the first-born of the King of bananas, El Chile of Pinochet and today of Boric, the Argentina of Juan Domingo Perón and his followers, currently in the hands of the libertarian Milei, the Spain of Adolfo Suárez , Felipe González, the freethinker José María Aznar and today's Sánchez, with and without socialism. E “cosi via, come dicono gli italiani”. Particular mention is required of Venezuela demanding an objective and sincere “Political Agreement” in an attempt to mitigate the negative consequences of a severe conflict between the government and segments of a painfully disarticulated opposition, a sincere mea culpa on the part of the rulers and opponents, including the armed forces for the sake of a once again prosperous nation.
The obligatory question would be to identify the culprit, but the answer, as in any dilemma, is still difficult. It will be the formulas or who manages them. Venezuela and its leaps continue to be a good case for analysis. A note from Professor Santi Romano may help: “The crisis of the State is evident. The doctrines that deny the personality of this, considering it a mere fiction, in conjunction with the intensification of individual and corporate interests, continue to be worrying. The alternative is to increase the political participation of various groups and social classes. It is not minimal government.
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