Reinaldo Iturriza
Chávez went up through La Piedrera in December 2010, when a flooded area left around 120,000 people homeless. A few months later he would launch the Great Mission Housing Venezuela.
I lost count of the number of times that, faced with an injustice or outrage committed by some leader, public official or, for instance, some soldier, the public responds visibly indignant, questioned how is it possible for such things to happen in a revolution.
Indeed, with a degree of frequency, especially when the atrocities are repeated or scandalous, when they camouflage impunity or complicit silence, part of the audience hastens to condemn that this revolution is nothing more than a farce, that at most there is a mock revolution, led by people who are less than willing to lift a finger to correct wrongs.
Indignation is perfectly understandable, although, as I once put it (1), if it is going to translate into political impotence, it is anything but desirable.
First of all, and without any pretension to dictate a lecture on the subject, we should ask ourselves what we understand by revolution.
It could be said that revolution is, by definition, conflict, meaning the opposite of the absence of injustices. And while it is true that the leaders of a revolution would have to do everything possible to combat excesses and abuses, it is no less true that the leaders do not make revolution. They lead it, for better or for worse. In fact, someone else has delegated to them the responsibility to lead or, to put it more clearly, to command by obeying.
If a leader is not able to command by obeying, that is, if he believes the representative fairy tale, if he feels comfortable not only disregarding the demands, but disobeying the mandate of those led, then he is a terrible leader. In such a case, those who have delegated to him the responsibility of leading, have not only the full right but also the obligation to create new leaders.
The genuine, authentic leadership of a popular and radically democratic revolution rests on those who are led: they are the ones who must command and it is the leaders who must obey. In them lies the power that makes revolutions possible. Both come from the same people: if the leader occupies such a position in a circumstantial way, it will be by popular mandate.
The problem, it will be said, is that lousy leaders abound, who, to top it all, have no intention of arm-twisting, because the stakes are high. But that is precisely one of the things that makes them lousy leaders. The point is that the stubbornness of the worst leader is nothing in the face of the power of those who rule. You have to be able to command. And to command is a matter of popular power.
If indignation in the face of injustice leads us to impotence, we are lost from the outset. We can do nothing. Correction: the first thing to do is to shake off impotence.
We are not going to do as the obscene do, who remain silent when an injustice is committed and turn the other way, because this is not the time, because it is necessary not to put our finger on this wound, because open wounds in revolution cannot be exposed. But the blows to the chest of the impotent do not help at all. On the contrary, they are food for the soul of the obscene, calm, imperturbable and firm like statues, and they can do nothing against the obstinate.
Injustices must be exposed. But that is only the first step. We must expose them in order to multiply our power to act.
Certainly, there are those who decide to expose the injustices as the justicians who come to declare the lost revolution. Let us know what thirst for justice there may be in such an elegy as impotence. Some people thirst for defeat.
That is why it is necessary to know how to distinguish between those who expose injustices in order to oppose them or because they are combating them, and those who expose them with the intention of convincing us that there is no longer any reason to struggle.
Of course, in a revolution many injustices, mistakes, excesses are committed. Worse still, many injustices are committed in the name of revolution. It is not a matter of resigning oneself, quite the opposite: but what else could one expect from a human making of such monumental proportions.
How is this possible? It is not only possible, but inevitable. But such a certainty only makes sense if we are capable of not forgetting that a revolution like ours is what people do when they want to make possible what until very recently appeared impossible: a more just world, a place where it is the people who rule.
Notes:
(1) Reinaldo Iturriza López. Por una lectura no indignada de los medios antichavistas, en: Wild Chavismo. Editorial Trinchera. Caracas, Venezuela. 2016. Pages 195-201.
