The Venezuelan exceptionalism thesis separating myth from reality

The notion of Venezuela as a privileged Third World nation is rooted in concrete historical, economic, political, and geographical circumstances. Venezuela's status as a major oil producer far removed from the political turbulence of the Middle East, where the majority of Third World petroleum reserves are located, makes it unique. Oil is qualitatively different from all other Third World export commodities. Its strategic importance in the world economy and the decades of relative price stability have no equivalents among the major exports of other Third World nations. Venezuela also has other advantages, including its strategic geographical location, its regional diversity, and a host of raw materials other than oil, such as natural gas, iron, gold, diamonds, and bauxite. A brief overview of Venezuela's modern democratic period serves to place the exceptionalism view in perspective. For several decades after the overthrow in 1958 of the nine-year-old military dictatorship led by General Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the nation's two dominant parties, the social democratic Acción Democrática (AD) and the social Christian Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (Committee of Independent Political Electoral Organization - COPEI), alternated in power several times. Both parties supported the model of import substitution and government intervention in the economy, which enhanced regime legitimacy and the popularity of proestablishment political leaders. However, the second administrations of President Carlos Andrés Pérez (1989-1993), who belonged to AD, and the former COPEI leader Rafael Caldera (1994-1999) unexpectedly implemented neoliberal formulas that aggravated social inequality. These turn-abouts created political and social tensions that led to the electoral triumph of the leftist former coup leader Hugo Chávez in 1998. Venezuela's reputation as a privileged Third World country with "responsible" political leadership appeared in question. © 2005 Latin American Perspectives.