Capture Life: The ‘Document-Monument’ in Recent Commemorations of Hugo Chávez

Abstract

The recent passing of Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela from 1999 till 2013, produced a juncture in the nation's imaginary that immediately sparked numerous and diverse commemorative practices. This article explores this sudden demand for a coherent and enduring memory of the late president by analysing different official postures and commemorative strategies. These are initially placed in the context of key historiographical tropes of the Bolivarian Revolution, and then analysed in light of such tropes. Specifically, the discussion identifies a thirst for ‘documents’, used in the broad sense proposed by Jacques Le Goff, which converged on the presidential body, the social body and public space as potential stimuli for memory. In this context, the initial possibilities of embalming Chávez's body, free tattoos of his signature and its use to decorate government buildings, appeal to the archive as a source of authority and as the commencement of history, as Jacques Derrida has it, while extrapolating the president's signature as a mobile and reproducible image of power to seek the eternal presence of the ‘líder eterno’ (eternal leader) as an anchor for political unity.

Notes

¹ Nicolás Maduro, public declarations made on Venezolana de Televisión, 13 March 2013.

² Jacques Le Goff, El orden de la memoria: El tiempo como imaginario (Buenos Aires: Editorial Paidós, 1991), p. 232. All translations mine unless otherwise stated. Le Goff is citing Charles Samaran in this section of his text.

³ Le Goff, p. 232.

⁴ Television advertisement for the Renault Captur. Capture Life! April 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 9ulS704LEAY (consulted 20 October 2013). My emphasis.

⁵ Sven Spieker, The Big Archive: Art from Bureaucracy (Boston: The MIT Press, 2008), p. 3

⁶ Pedro Pablo Peñaloza, ‘Maduro utiliza la imagen de Chávez para mover votantes’, El Universal, 6 November 2013, http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/131106/maduro-utiliza-la-imagen-de-chavez-para-mover-votantes (Consulted 6 November 2013).

⁷ This government housing project was created in April 2011 in response to Venezuela's housing deficit.

⁸ Hugo Chávez, ‘Discurso de toma de posesión,’ 2 February 1999, http://www.analitica.com/bitblioteca/hchavez/toma.asp (Consulted 20 October 2013).

⁹ A comprehensive study of cultural policy under Chávez has yet to be carried out. However, increased control of culture is evidenced by Chávez's dismissal of ‘elitist’ museum directors on live television in 2001 and the concentration of state museum administration under the Fundación Museos Nacionales in 2005. The culture budget was significantly raised to fund the multimillion Villa del Cine film infrastructure, which in recent years has funded Hollywood-style historical epics. A number of texts contribute to this discussion, including Thomas Muhr's recent edited volume Alternativa Bolivariana para las Americas (ALBA) and Counter-Globalization: Resistance and the Construction of 21st Century Socialism (London: Routledge, 2013) which features: Hazel Marsh, ‘Cultural Policy and 21st Century Socialism’; Lucia Michelutti, ‘Post-secularity and political hope in 21st Century Socialism’, and Libia Villazana, ‘The Politics of the Audiovisual Cultural Revolution in Latin America’. Regarding literature and publishing under Chávez, see: Gisela Kozak R. ‘Políticas culturales y hegemonía en la Revolución Bolivariana: “Ética y estética socialistas”’, Estudios: Revista de Investigaciones Literarias y Culturales 14: 28 (julio-diciembre 2006): 101–21. In La cultura bajo acoso (Caracas: Artesano Editores, 2013), former museum director María Elena Ramos collates texts regarding changes to visual arts policy; on changes regarding state museum and film, see: Lisa Blackmore, ‘Cultural Revolution’, New Statesman, 8 May 2008, http://www.newstatesman.com/arts-and-culture/2008/05/venezuela-art-museums-chavez (Consulted 18 October 2013).

¹⁰ In 2008 the Semana del Bravo Pueblo was celebrated in Venezuela and in Venezuelan embassies abroad. For an extensive photographs of the parade that foregrounded the idea of ‘historia viva’, see: ‘El Desfile del 4 de Febrero en fotos: “El camino era éste, el de la Revolución”’, Alba Ciudad, 5 February 2012, http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2012/02/fotos-desfile-4-febrero-2012–4f/.

¹¹ ‘El Desfile del 4 de Febrero en fotos: “El camino era éste, el de la Revolución”’, Alba Ciudad, 5 February 2012, http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2012/02/fotos-desfile-4-febrero-2012–4f/ (Consulted 20 October 2013).

¹² The Proyecto de Ley Orgánica de Cultura was approved in the National Assembly in August 2013 but has been under development for a number of years. While the focus here is placed on the gloss on recent history, it is also vital to consider the recourse to the fathers of Venezuelan independence commonly evoked in Chávez’s historical discourse, among whom Simón Bolívar, Francisco de Miranda, and Maisanta (Pedro Pérez Delgado), among others, feature prominently. On the specific relationship set up between Chávez and Simón Bolívar, see: Ana Teresa Torres, La herencia del tribu: Del mito de la independencia a la Revolución Bolivariana (Caracas: Editorial Alfa, 2009).

¹³ ‘El Desfile del 4 de Febrero en fotos: “El camino era éste, el de la Revolución”’, Alba Ciudad, 5 February 2012, http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2012/02/fotos-desfile-4-febrero-2012–4f/ (consulted 20 October 2013).

¹⁴ Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998).

¹⁵ Derrida, p. 1.

¹⁶ As well as a study of cultural policy under the Bolivarian Revolution, a related analysis of the policies affecting public archives and collections (from museum collections, through libraries to historical and institutional archives) would also be a much-needed contribution to understanding the quest to write history and produce collective iconography during this period.

¹⁷ ‘Archivos de Simón Bolívar pasarán bajo el control del gobierno de Chávez’, El Día, 27 April 2010, http://eldia.com.do/archivos-de-simon-bolivar-pasaran-bajo-control-del-gobierno-de-chavez/ (Consulted 20 October 2013).

¹⁸ Capitals as per original. These official declarations were made by Luis Felipe Pellicer and published in: ‘Los archivos de Bolívar y Miranda eran prácticamente clandestinos,’’ Alba Ciudad, 29 April 2010, http://albaciudad.org/wp/index.php/2010/04/los-archivos-de-bolivar-y-miranda-eran-practicamente-clandestinos/ (Consulted 30 October 2013).

¹⁹ Nicolás Maduro, public statement on Venezolana de Televisión, 7 March 2013.

²⁰ Venezuela's Ley de Protección y Defensa del Patrimonio Cultural (Law of the Protection and Defence of Cultural Heritage), established in 1993, sets out the state's obligation to be custodian of all types of monuments, including those erected in cemeteries.

²¹ Nicolás Maduro, public declarations on Venezolana de Televisión (Venezuelan state television), 7 March 2013.

²² Derrida, p. 1.

²³ During Chávez's administration it was common for meetings with ministers, the military, and other usually internal events to be televised.

²⁴ See: ‘Mi primer voto y mi primer tatuaje fueron para Chávez’, Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, 15 March 2013, http://www.avn.info.ve/contenido/‘mi-primer-voto-y-mi-primer-tatuaje-fueron-para-chávez’ (Consulted 30 October 2013). Other tattoos of Chávez have existed before. A notable case, for its media exposure, was that of Venezuelan boxer, Edwin ‘Inca’ Valero (1981–2010), who had tattooed on his chest a Venezuelan flag, the face of Chávez and the phrase Venezuela de verdad.

²⁵ The FIJU website does not disclose how the Foundation is funded. For an insight into the tattoo project, see the following video produced by FIJU: FIJU SANFCO, ‘Tattoo @ Firma “Rabo de Cochino,”’ 1 April 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = z9G8wOCm6RU&app = desktop (Consulted 30 October 2013).

²⁶Ibid.

²⁷ FIJU SANFCO, ‘Tattoo @ Jornada Firma “Rabo de Cochino”’, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = jP7bszHgSDo (Consulted 30 October 2013).

²⁸ Quotes taken from comments made in the video by Gaby Aponte and Orlando Ferreira, respectively. FIJU SANFCO, ‘Tattoo @ Jornada Firma “Rabo de Cochino”’, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v = jP7bszHgSDo (Consulted 30 October 2013).

²⁹ Hugo Chávez. Public declarations on cadena nacional. 9 December 2012.

³⁰ To see photographs of the buildings, see: ‘Edificios de Gmvv tienen firma de Chávez’, Últimas Noticias, 22 March 2013, http://www.ultimasnoticias.com.ve/noticias/actualidad/politica/fotos–-edificios-de-gmvv-tienen-firma-de-chavez.aspx (Consulted 10 December 2013).

³¹ Derrida, p. 3.

³² In this case it is not clear to what extent the government commissioned the signature decorations or whether they were spontaneous gestures created by workers and copied by others. The fact that these buildings are part of a prominent government housing scheme and that two of them are located close to the headquarters of the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), might suggest they were likely to have been commissioned.

³³ ‘Maduro aseguró que colocará sistemas de armas antiaéreas en los barrios’, El Universal, 7 November 2013, http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/131107/maduro-aseguro-que-colocara-sistemas-de-armas-antiaereas-en-los-barrio (Consulted 7 November 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lisa Blackmore

Lisa Blackmore obtained her PhD from Birkbeck College in 2011 and teaches Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on visual culture, urban space and memory in Venezuela and she is also a curator and translator. Her forthcoming publications include ‘Tecnologías visuales y el “archivo” de la desmemoria: el caso de Se llamaba SN’,Estudios: Revista de Investigaciones Literarias y Culturales, and she is currently working on a book manuscript that analyses the construction of a discourse of modernity and progress during the 1948-58 military dictatorship in Venezuela.