Del ajuste a la revolución. Venezuela 1980-2012. El oficialismo se hizo revolucionario y la oposición nacionalista: conflicto y polarización social

Abstract

From Luis Herrera Campins’ government in 1979, Venezuela experienced a process of continuous implementations of macroeconomic adjustment policies with a neoliberal doctrine influence. Three were demonstrated through terms of office and three were demonstrated through the economic adjustment programs responsible for causing what Edgardo Lander clearly describes as an adjustment fatigue in the Venezuelan population. In other words, with every failed attempt, the Venezuelan population experienced deep disappointment and diminished faith in what that model promised to provide. Management accumulated and prolonged for nearly two decades of this malaise. Proposals were being implemented that seemed to promise the opposite of what had been experienced in recent years. These two factors combined were an incitement for Hugo Chavez Frías coming to power in 1999. Perhaps what no one anticipated - despite having been elected with a very favorable rate- was that this would also be the beginning of a process of strong social polarization in this country. In this article, these dynamics will be studied from their everyday expressions, the place where it finds expression, transgressing the geography of a capital, giving a new meaning and distributing patriotic symbols, exposing to light the scars of years of inequality, and particularly strengthening the inability of each position to recognize the other, seen more as an enemy than as a fellow. Mireya Lozada states that this polarization covers everyday life, and in Venezuela this is a reality.