The Race toward Caraqueño Citizenship

• Author: Giles Harrison-Conwill
• Published date: 01 September 2011
• Date: 01 September 2011
• DOI: 10.1177/0002716211408025

ANNALS, AAPSS, 637, September 2011 165

This article examines the relationships between race,

class, and citizenship in Venezuela’s burgeoning grass-

roots democracy as the nation’s 2012 presidential

election approaches. Although the Venezuelan polit-

ical arena is frequently overshadowed by policies

and the personality of President Hugo Chávez,

recently developing techniques of governance per-

mit increased local autonomy. This and an associ-

ated push to integrate marginalized populations into

social and political life have played a significant role

in the production of community, public space,

and localized conceptions of citizenship. While

emergent Caraqueño democratic forms commonly

ideal ize equality and collaborative governance, dis-

junctures among the city’s communities are social,

geographic, and political. This article highlights the

varying modes of political belonging greatly engen-

dered by race and class in Caracas. These experi-

ences of citizenship, in turn, have resulted in increased

participation and access to power for some as they

deny inclusion to others. This study of modes of citi-

zenship focuses on the citizen and the public sphere,

emerging modes of governance and the developing

Venezuelan state, and dissidence within the demo-

cratic process.

Keywords: class; race; democracy; citizenship;

Caracas; Venezuela

The current presidential term in Venezuela

is nearing its end. In 2012, attention

will likely focus on President Hugo Chávez,

whose candidacy is all but guaranteed by the

elimination of term limits in 2009. While the

president controversially continues to push

for dramatic changes in Venezuela, actions

taking place in local sites throughout the

country, and especially in its capital, play a

significant role in the social and political

shifts emerging today. The Chávez era has

forcefully marked the decline of Venezuela’s

“exceptional democracy” (Ellner and Tinker

Salas 2007).1 Today, everyday forms of civic

The Race toward

Caraqueño

Citizenship:

Negotiating

Race, Class,

and Participatory

Democracy

By

GILES HARRISON-

CONWILL

Giles Harrison-Conwill received his PhD from Duke

University in 2010. His recent scholarship focuses on

citizenship and democracy in Venezuela.

DOI: 10.1177/0002716211408025

166 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

organizing and action are constant reminders of inequality that was concealed by

democratic process that did not extend beyond the political arena in Venezuela’s

recent past.

Although traditional notions of democracy are based on political liberalism and

rationalism, the daily experiences of participation and exclusion in life across

Caracas suggest wide variations in democratic practice. By approaching experi-

ences of race, class, and citizenship in Caracas, this article examines social and

political structures in contemporary Venezuelan democracy. The Chávez admin-

istration’s structural modification of the nation-state prompted the development

of more participatory forms of democracy throughout the past decade. I argue

that this has significantly changed the ways in which citizenship is experienced in

Venezuela. This process is especially significant for political organization in Caracas,

as residents have undergone intense class and political struggle that contr ibuted

to limited access to the public city (Fleming 2008).2 As a result, localized forms

of citizenship heavily influenced by race and class have come to define the char-

acter of democratic governance in Venezuela. This study bases its central argu-

ment for varying modes of citizenship on the examination of the following: the

citizen and the public sphere, emerging modes of governance and the develop-

ing Venezuelan state, and dissidence within the democratic process.

Caraqueño (i.e., Caracas-based) citizenship and democracy are closely tied to

civic engagement and the development of the public sphere. Without active pub-

lics, the sets of rights that presumably define the social and political category of the

citizen in liberal democratic societies are out of the average individual’s reach. As

I explain in this article, citizenship holds no significance unless there are forums

to define it.

One such mechanism discussed in this article is the consejos comunales

(neighborhood councils), a recent development in Venezuelan political and social

organization. Their popular acceptance illuminates the eagerness with which com-

munities reconstitute citizenship within Venezuela’s grassroots democratic system.

These adjustments in the state apparatus have extended rights to marginalized

citizens. However, they have also contributed to spaces of variable sovereignty

throughout the diverse territory of Caracas.

These reterritorializing effects of grassroots democracy in Venezuela have become

focal points of long-standing conflicts. Interrelated experiences of race and class

have profoundly affected the production of place-based citizenships within the

city. Events in the middle-class communities of Chacao near the 2006 presi-

dential election revealed the ways that dissidence—even if expressed through

discrimination—may constitute a right in this new democratic system.

Although discussions on democracy within the contemporary Venezuelan

nation-state include a chorus of voices, this article is especially concerned with an

analysis of the popular middle-class critique of the Chavez administration. The

international media has, in its presentation of the crisis in Venezuela, represented

the political opposition at the expense of poor and working-class Venezuelans—

many of whom are of African descent. Importantly, race, class, or geographic origin

does not determine political affiliation in Venezuela. However, complex relation-

ships between these factors are among those that do contribute to the social