Opinion piece by Alek Boyd published in El Pais | The deplorable state of the press in Venezuela should come as no surprise. As Andrés Izarra, one of the Chavista multi-ministers, stated shortly after the suspension of the license and the theft of equipment from Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV): “I launched the idea of communication hegemony as a reflection within the framework of building socialism, and I said it in the gramscian sense. Gramsci does not speak of hegemony as these right-wing intellectuals are doing, who want to portray it as an imposition, as a dictatorship, as a coercion over plurality, over the freedom to dissent, not at all.”
It’s clear that Izarra must have read a watered-down version of Antonio Gramsci’s ideological proposal. The truth is that in Venezuela, the hegemony that existed, maintaining the status quo of capitalism – according to the gramscian concept – has been replaced by another. A simple swapping. Where there was once a plurality represented by a few television channels and newspapers, which in the 40 years prior to the coup by Hugo Chávez criticized both sides, now there is a quasi-communicational hegemony that has gradually silenced critical voices. Let’s look at examples:
– RCTV was the most-watched TV channel in Venezuela; its license was revoked in 2007, and its equipment was stolen by the Venezuelan state – without compensation paid to this day. RCTV was relaunched as TVes, and its audience vanished;
– Venevisión, traditionally RCTV’s rival, has eradicated criticism from its programming since that not-so-secret meeting between Jimmy Carter and its owner (Gustavo Cisneros) with Hugo Chávez in 2004, which miraculously made this outlet disappear from the Chavista media landscape;
– Globovisión was the only 24-hour news channel in Venezuela; its directors faced all sorts of legal harassment and attacks until the situation became so untenable that they decided to sell to a “group of businessmen” (led by Raúl Gorrín) who have profited immensely from Chavismo;
– Cadena Capriles, whose newspapers Últimas Noticias and El Mundo are, by far, the most circulated in Venezuela, were recently acquired by banker Víctor Vargas, who is rumored to have acted as a frontman for Chavista governor Tareck El Aissami;
– El Nacional, one of two newspapers (along with El Universal) considered to be the stalwarts of the press in Venezuela, is controlled by the former assistant of radical Chavista Juan Barreto (Antonieta Jurado).
We find that the most prominent print and television media in Venezuela have been silenced, bribed, or bought by the regime or its frontmen. Given the primitivism that characterizes Chavista ideology, one of their favorite arguments is that “the media are in the hands of the opposition,” or the claim that the “Bolivarian revolution is a victim of a media war against it.”
The opposition leader, Henrique Capriles Radonsky, has felt the need to launch a new virtual media outlet (Capriles.tv) whose production values reflect the precariousness of its budget. This venture is a result of the decrease in independent media willing to provide a platform for his opinions. Such is the plural nature of the current media landscape in Venezuela.
While the regime boasts an innumerable number of community radios, national and international television channels, print media, offices, and propaganda agents, websites, etc., the independent media that traditionally provided an alternative perspective to the official line are now in the hands of Chavismo’s lawyers. In other words, with a few regional exceptions, important media in Venezuela have been subjugated. Even if dissenting voices still present in those media haven’t been completely extinguished, in the media created by Chavismo – the communication hegemony of Izarra – there is no plurality, no critique, no questioning, no right to reply; that is, in the effort to counter the “enemy” press, Chavismo abandoned any pretense of objectivity and presents a reality so distorted that even its own supporters don’t tune in for the dogma.
Izarra’s communicational hegemony does not seek or intend to inform. It is pure proselytism, Gramsci-style, that aims only to replace values rooted in Venezuelan society with those of “21st-century socialism,” something that even Hugo Chávez himself failed to conceptualize.