Interviews with Claudio Jose Sandoval

My passion for politics and social work exploded inside me in 2000. I had been developing this political initiative since I was in high school. But it was definitely in 2000, not just me, but thousands of young Venezuelans reflected about the political and social situation of the country that was taking place at that time. There was a coup d´état that year on April 11th. Basically, leaders of the opposition called a march that was later diverted to the Miraflores Palace, which is the presidential residence in Venezuela. This situation produced several confrontations between both sides and ended with the death of a lot of people. Many families lost their children, who were killed by snipers strategically located at different buildings.

That generated in many young people some kind of disappointment because we realized that we were facing a leader, in this case President Chavez, who had no democratic vocation. But on the other hand, we had an opposition that was not behaving democratically because it had brought about a coup d´état took place. We felt used like we say in Venezuela, as cannon fodder by two sectors that were disputing power. President Chavez´s supporters wanted to remain in power, and on the other hand, an opposition who wanted to once more take up its privileged past historic position. All of this motivated me to develop and to create an organization for public policy and discussions of public policy at the Andrés Bello Catholic University. Precisely that year I began to study law.

Where the democratic system has been lost, it is necessary to strengthen or try to promote the democratic struggle and the democratic values and principles. That is where our initiative of “Generación de los Puentes” [“Generation of Bridges”] sprang. It is an organization with educational purposes that promotes democratic values through the organization and conduct of seminars, debates, workshops. It is focused on young people and on emerging leaders. The organization is called “Generación de los Puentes” because we have a split society; we call it the “two Venezuelas.” Precisely, the political role – the political challenge – we have as young people is to try to reunite those two Venezuelas and make them into a single one once more.

So, “Generación de los Puentes” means to build bridges between those two Venezuelas, to achieve an understanding based on values – on democratic values. After all, the lack of unity in Venezuela is due to the fact that the elite holding power does not have democratic values and, even as a minority, is splitting the country and making people realize that some are democrats and others are Marxist socialists. That is not the truth. So, our role has been to spread the message of democracy, and make people realize that they have a democratic essence, especially young people.

Claudio Jose Sandoval is a Venezuelan human rights advocate. He was trained in social work and studied law at Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas. After the government of President Hugo Chávez closed down the country’s largest private television network, RCTV, in 2007, Sandoval became active in student organizations supporting freedom and democracy in Venezuela. He was active in the pro-democracy coalition Foro por la Vida (Forum for Life) and co-founded an organization called Generación de los Puentes (Generation of Bridges). His book “Beyond the Student Movement” discusses how Venezuela might achieve national reconciliation.

Venezuela is a South American country of 28.5 million people with a history of multiparty constitutional democracy. President Nicolas Maduro took office after Hugo Chavez succumbed to cancer in 2013.

During the 1998-2013 presidency of Colonel Hugo Chavez, a series of constitutional and legal changes were implemented that make it far more difficult for citizens to change their government. The Chavez government systematically used public resources to secure its power, closed down independent news media, and used legal and extralegal means to harass and intimidate its critics.

Soon after his first election, Chavez called for a new constitution that would give expanded powers to the president and replace Venezuela’s bicameral Congress with a unicameral national assembly. The new constitution was approved by referendum in 1999. Chavez acquired substantial control of the military, the judiciary, the electoral commission, and the news media. The government closed Radio Caracas Television Internacional (RCTV Internacional), the country’s largest television network, and forced into exile the president of Globovision, the other major opposition-aligned network.

The Chavez government’s increasingly repressive methods generated strong public opposition, including a series of public protests by students, workers, and others who were not previously aligned with the political opposition. In the 2010 National Assembly elections, opposition parties received the majority of the votes, but under the new electoral rules the government took a substantial majority of the seats in the Assembly.

Venezuela’s vast oil resources allowed Chavez to implement policies that steered the country towards a socialist economy. The country’s oil wealth funded a major expansion of government social programs, much to the approval of government supporters in the lower class. Oil became the foundation of Venezuela’s relationship with Cuba, which has strengthened substantially over the last few decades due to shared ideology and financial and security interdependence. Venezuela has replaced the Soviet Union as Cuba’s major benefactor, financially supporting the Castro regime. Cuba in turn has supported the transformation and strengthening of the Venezuelan military. In 2004, the two nations founded the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), a group of socialist and social democratic nations working toward economic integration. ALBA and its member nations often champion anti-American policies and sentiments. This alliance has led to close ties between Venezuela and nations such as Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

Immediately after Chavez’s passing, Vice President Maduro assumed the role of interim President. He then went on to narrowly defeat an opposition candidate by a 1.5 percent margin in the April 2013 presidential elections. Maduro has pledged to complete Chavez’s socialist transformation of Venezuela.

Recently, Venezuela has struggled with a rising crime and homicide rate, blamed by some on a recent economic downturn, the availability of arms, and the weak judicial system. However, Chavez and Maduro both have linked this increase in crime to the media’s portrayal of both fictional and real violence and have continued to influence what programming and content is available. Both leaders have expanded the security forces within the country, calling on police, militias, and the military to fight crime.

In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World report, Venezuela earned “partly free” status, with an overall rating of 5. A rating of 1 represents the most free and 7 represents the least free.