Monday, November 21st // Venezuela’s evolving crisis: Causes and Tendencies // Margarita López Maya
The Janey Program in Latin American Studies invites you for a talk with the leading Venezuelan scholar Margarita López Maya.
VENEZUELA´S EVOLVING CRISIS: CAUSES AND TENDENCIES
The presentation will address the deep and global crisis Venezuela is undergoing. This crisis has its roots in structural problems that are related to the oil-dependent and rent-seeking economy that has shaped society and the political order since the first decades of the 20th Century. The oil economy has made Venezuela extremely vulnerable to the international market of hydrocarbons and its price fluctuations. This helped to build a highly consumerist society and an inefficient and corrupt Petro-state. These features were present when Hugo Chávez won the 1998 elections. His agenda proposed to overcome these problems through a deep transformation that implied, first, moving towards a “participatory and protagonist democracy” and, in his second term, towards a “revolutionary democracy” that would transform Venezuela into a 21st Century socialist country. Today, three years after his death, this project shows all its shortcomings and the Venezuelans have sunk into poverty and all kinds of social and political troubles.
Margarita López Maya, historian, PhD in Social Sciences at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV, 1996). Professor at the Center for Development Studies (CENDES-UCV). Her researches focus on the socio-historical and socio-political processes in contemporary Venezuela, more recently studying popular protests, new political parties and social actors and the political conjuncture. López Maya was director of the Venezuelan Journal of Economy and Social Sciences (1999-2004), member of the Board of Directors of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO – 2006-2009) and president of the Venezuelan Studies Branch of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA – 2012-2014). Among her books and publications are (in Spanish): United States in Venezuela: 1945-1948 (disclosure of US archives) (UCV, 1996), “Hugo Chávez Frías: his movement and presidency” in Steve Ellner and Daniel Hellinger, Venezuelan Politics in the age of Chávez: classes, polarization and conflict (Nueva Sociedad, 2003), From Black Friday to the recall vote (Caracas, Alfadil, 2005), Ideas to debate XXI century socialism (Caracas, Grupo Alfa, 2007) and Participatory Democracy in Venezuela. Origins, laws, perceptions and challenges (Centro Gumilla, 2011). De-Communal State: an interview with Margarita López Maya (David González, 2012). To be published this year: The decline of Chavismo: 2005-2015 (Caracas, Grupo Alfa, 2016).
