How Hugo Chávez dismantled Venezuela’s state and left a criminal system in its place

06 July 2026 , 18:08

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Just twenty-three days after being sworn in for the first time as president of the Republic, on February 27, 1999, Hugo Chavez Frias announced the launch of Plan Bolivar 2000.

Today we know that this was a defining event. It was not only the first of the inefficient and wasteful large-scale social programs that would become a gigantic cover for corruption. It was not only the first gate he opened for his military colleagues to begin a gradual process of occupying key government posts and functions. It was also, and this is essential, the inaugural impulse behind the destruction of the Venezuelan state.

It was said at the time that Chavez intended to build a parallel structure, since he would not be able to subdue the state that existed in 1999. The later appearance of more social programs with their own administrative and operational frameworks, outside the ministries or previously existing institutions, encouraged an idea that proved to be prophetic: that the regime was trying to create a political and social atmosphere of exceptionality, of permanent operations and emergencies.

Meanwhile, the constant appointment of military officers to decisive positions continued. The fact that events quickly showed ignorance and incompetence to be prevalent among the circles of Chavista military officers produced no consequence other than stubbornness: Chavez continued to militarize the state, moved some military officers from one post to another, increasingly brought in other uniformed personnel, and even went so far as to call retired military officers, with neither the training nor the experience to face such tasks, into technical functions such as managing electricity generation and distribution.

The process of dismantling the Venezuelan state has been multifaceted: it has been stripped of autonomy, indoctrinated, and the standards of professionalism have been shattered. Agencies have been placed in the hands of politically loyal officials, if not openly militant members of the ruling party; they have been granted privileges and economic and labor advantages; and a pact of enormous effectiveness for the regime has been established: guaranteeing the impunity and durability of high-ranking government officials in exchange for receiving from power that same impunity and durability.

This set of elements has led to institutions that are corrupt, inefficient to grotesque and indescribable extremes, mediocre, politicized in the most precarious way, neglected, and operating in places that are increasingly dirty, ruined, precarious, and without resources. This is fundamental: corruption has ended up devouring its own foundations, its own resources, its own excuses and simulations. They no longer even try to convince anyone of their existence, their functionality, or their possible social usefulness.

In almost 28 years, the state ceased to exist. It rotted. It was eaten away, eroded, hollowed out at its foundations, delegitimized in its purposes and functions. I will say more: the entity, the institutional existence of the state, has ceased to exist. It has been destroyed.

These may seem harsh or hyperbolic words. I accept the suspicion, because the sustainability of any society depends on maintaining basic conditions of order and coexistence. But it is enough to refer to the evidence that emerged in the minute after the two earthquakes of June 24.

One of the first scenes that hundreds of thousands of us saw on television was that of an official crying out for a flashlight. Men without equipment, without vehicles such as tractors or cranes, without extraction equipment, without tools with which to confront the enormous chunks of concrete and rusted rebar, without electronic sensors to detect the presence of life beneath the rubble. These men, with nothing but their strength and the will to help, were the first to appear and try to act; the initial response to the horror.

Minutes passed. Hours passed. Then an unusual phenomenon occurred in a society that abhors and fears people in uniform: the question spread of where the military were, and why they were not acting in the face of the tragedy. On social networks and in the media, this question became society’s repeated demand of those in power.

When they finally appeared, as if in furtive waves, they did not join the rescue efforts. They did not act as a logistical structure for the distribution of water, food, medicine, or tools. They stationed themselves around the areas where civilians were working, hunting for opportunities to steal, extort, aim their weapons, and obstruct the desperate operations to save lives.

I am also among those who affirm it, overwhelmed by the evidence: there is no state. It was liquidated, eaten away by corruption and impunity. In its place, a huge and voracious criminal corporation has been erected, armed, loud-mouthed, and insensitive to Venezuelan suffering, seeking to maintain a subdued and numbed society that remains impassive before the next chapter of its work plan, which is none other than appropriating the international aid for the victims of the two earthquakes.