Please, enough of saviors

By Luis Manuel Aguana

Again people looking for a savior of the fatherland. What will be the disease, mania, tendency, or stubbornness of our people to try to find "someone" to "save us" and solve the problems? In January 2016, after investing Henry Ramos Allup as the new President of the National Assembly, Ramos automatically became the opposition leader and "savior of the fatherland". Everything had to do with Ramos. And he really assumed his role as a fighting cock to the point of using his position to secure a presidential candidacy.

Now the saving "responsibility" has fallen on the businessman Lorenzo Mendoza. It is interesting to address that analysis because using that "wild card", the regime - and its miserable opposition - has found a very clever way of convincing the population to go back to Tiby's electoral slaughterhouse - or whoever takes his place if she really died - after the agreements of the Dominican Republic.

But before examining the particular case of Mendoza, it would be interesting to approach this cultural trait so intense that it makes us follow the next “man on horse”, as the poet of the people Andrés Eloy Blanco so aptly said.

Caudillismo in Latin America and especially in Venezuela has been studied exhaustively by our historians (see El caudillismo (Venezuelan historiography) at m = 1): “A first approach to the historiography on caudillismo was made by the sociologist and historian Virgilio Tosta with his book “El caudillismo según once autores (1954)”, in which he explains the definitions and the causes of the phenomenon according to authors mainly from the XIX century and early XX, and even points out in the preface his own idea about it. For Tosta the internal conflicts and the caudillismo is synonymous, and these conflicts are products of personal ambitions that forge “montoneras” (private armies) that fight among themselves, generating the “anarchic caudillismo” that later will be transformed into the “despotic caudillismo”. (highlighted ours). We could indicate that seeing what happens in Venezuela that statement of Tosta is adapted to this reality: internal conflict implies caudillismo.

Laureano Vallenilla Lanz (1870-1936), the main intellectual support of the dictatorship of Juan Vicente Gómez, praised the necessary character of the caudillo, stating that “... anarchy demands subordination to this type of headquarters, which are based more on personal loyalties what in the laws; and finally the boss becomes the only one capable of achieving national unity ... ". A whole chapter of his work “Cesarismo Democratico” was dedicated to what he called “The necessary gendarme”: “... it is evident that in almost all of these nations of Latin America, condemned by complex causes to a turbulent life, the Caudillo has constituted the The only force of social conservation, even taking place the phenomenon that men of science point to in the first stages of integration of societies: the chiefs do not choose but impose themselves. “ (See full text in spanish in “Cesarismo Democrático y otros textos” in .

This discussion about the need or not for "a boss" has been settled to this day. Everyone in Venezuela is desperately looking for a boss. They searched for him with Hugo Chávez in 1998 and they are still searching for him in 2017 as the crisis worsens and with anyone who puts himself in charge of this struggle that the people of Venezuela are giving. And there is no doubt that in Venezuela there is this anarchy, which demands, as Vallenilla Lanz indicated in his work, someone to put order.

However, contrary to what is possibly our historical development and of which we may be prisoners, I believe that we are not condemned to that fate of a civil or military leader who acts as "savior of the fatherland". The theory of the "good tyrant" of Vallenilla Lanz was extraordinarily well refuted from Colombia by Eduardo Santos, owner of the newspaper El Tiempo de Bogotá, in a brilliant article published on December 28, 1920:

“Is it really a tyrant what these countries need to prepare to take their place among the great civilized peoples? An impartial examination of who we are and what we need would prove otherwise. These peoples of Latin America, threatened by the expansion of colossal forces, do not need only gold, immigration, trade and agriculture, roads and factories. They can achieve all this by the roads free of legality and it is doubtful that the tyrant will grant it to them under tolerant conditions, but even if this materialistic policy, imposed by the hand of a ruthless dictator, were to give ample development to the country's natural wealth, it would leave their children unarmed in the face of much worse dangers than that of misery; It would not strengthen their spirit, nor form a collective soul; it would not invigorate certain moral factors indispensable for a people to be independent and free. Quite the opposite: oppression and silence, interrupted only by the flattering voices of the favorites, depress the popular soul until it becomes an easy prey; they extinguish any ideal light, create an atmosphere of servility and moral cowardice within which nothing healthy or great can grow. The man needs to live from a certain amount of decorum, like a certain amount of air,"said José Martí in one of his lapidary phrases" (emphasis ours) (See full text in spanish in “Cesarismo Democrático y otros textos” at the above address). Extraordinary answer that still lingers in time!

The status quo parties of all political tendencies in Venezuela have inherited that way of approaching the problem of our country: according to their vision, we need strong leadership to take us out of the problem every time the country becomes ungovernable. Eduardo Santos summed it up in a phrase that demonstrates the civic character that has differentiated Colombians from our military weaknesses: “Our presidential staff does not go in the suitcases of soldiers of fortune ... That is the synthesis of our idiosyncrasies, genuinely democratic ...” What a deep truth these words still contain! We still have to learn a lot of that.

After this brief historical explanation about how Venezuelans have handled this problem, trying to find someone to “save us”, it is not difficult to think that the solution that parties seek in the face of the monumental loss of prestige they have come to, is to find a “outsider” with credibility, and who better than the entrepreneur who has more prestige in the country, coupled with the natural tendency of the Venezuelan to find someone to solve problems, a new" savior of the country. "

And of course, the regime died laughing over the imbecility of this mediocre opposition. Without having modified the electoral casino -the CNE- and without having dismantled the illegal Constituent Assembly, Lorenzo Mendoza would give them the presence in the ballot boxes that they require to bury what is left of the country. Who knew Maduro didn't beat Lorenzo Mendoza in a good fight? The millions who would come forward to vote again would legitimize the next red fraud with the SmartMatic's machines.

That is why they are already assembling the new electoral-presidential circus by early or mid 2018, product of the new agreements of the “dialogue” of the Dominican Republic. The only thing that could prevent this new trap is that Mendoza refuses to participate in it. However, international forces are already moving to convince Mendoza to be the next successful “outsider” in the Americas, who has Donald Trump in the United States as a leader, a graduate of his university, Fordham University in New York, and Mauricio Macri in Argentina.

Lorenzo Mendoza may believe - or be led to believe - that the only way to protect the country's first industrial food emporium from these evildoers is to do so. Nothing could be further from the truth, on the contrary. When the election fraud, Mendoza will immediately lose - or we will lose - everything. If the regime does not yet appropriate Empresas Polar's regime is because they do not know how to handle that, and would immediately bankrupt it, as they already did with PDVSA. And here we are talking about the highest percentage of people's food that is still produced in the country. However, they are waiting for Mendoza to make that mistake.

Lorenzo Mendoza, like the current King of Spain, was trained and especially designed since childhood to manage the family business. Lorenzo's mother, Leonor Giménez de Mendoza, gave it to him after his education, and immediately he raised it to an unseen levels, to the point of producing 4% of the country's GDP (see Lorenzo Mendoza in  That's what the ordinary people who cry out Lorenzo President very hard understand.

Nobody could do the work that Mendoza does in Empresas Polar, but anyone could do the job of President of the Republic in Venezuela, even a bus driver. However, the Dominican Republic's politicians aspire to survive on the back of the country's main food industry, along with its owner. If that laboratory move comes to fruition, unlike most people think, the loser will not be Lorenzo Mendoza, we will all of us living here, because at the end of that madness of the next “savior the fatherland” there will be much less food on the Venezuelan's table. Please, no more saviors...

Caracas, December 16, 2017


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