Americas Quarterly - Spring 2011

FRESH LOOK

HOWARD LAFRANCHI

La Rebelión de los
Náufragos

Mirtha Rivero Editorial Alfa, 2010, Softcover,

451 pages

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The modern tragic political figure is not just endemic to Latin America. The ignominious fall of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—once a war hero to his countrymen—is the latest proof of this. But in her book, La Rebelión de los Náufragos (The Revolt of the Castaways), Venezuelan journalist Mirtha Rivero takes us back to the tragic story of a man who was once one of Latin America’s most promising leaders, and who fell from power (like his modern counterparts) from a combination of pride and the failure to understand the yearnings of his compatriots.

1992—with the first led by a then-ob-
scure colonel named Hugo Chávez—
and a May 1993 Supreme Court ruling
that found probable cause to try the
chief executive for misappropriation
of $17 million in public funds and cor-
ruption, CAP resigned from office.

The number and depth of the interviews in the book are impressive. But Rivero’s narrative stitches the interviews together and gives the work its compelling novelistic, page-turner quality—even despite its enormous length. At times the avalanche of individuals’ names risks giving the work an off-putting, inside-baseball feel. But by the time the Caracazo comes up, about 100 pages in, the book is hard to put down.

Pérez was wrong on all counts. Con-
centrating on his second term, Rivero,
who now resides in Monterrey, Mex-
ico, argues that Pérez’ misjudgment
of what Venezuelans were and were
not ready for—combined with an ar-
rogance that kept him from sharing
his economic agenda with the pub-
lic—ultimately cost him his job. It
also, Rivero adds, tarnished his repu-
tation as one of Latin America’s new
modern leaders.

Rivero revisits Pérez’ fall from power through dozens of interviews with the most influential actors in his political tragedy: party leaders, members of his cabinet, jurists, economists, members of the Olympian “Notables” (a group of respected intellectuals who campaigned against Pérez), journalists, family members, and even Pérez’ mistress, Cecilia Matos.

It is through the narrative that we meet the presumably fictitious (or composite) members of the public who revolt at CAP’s economic prescription for weaning the country from its delusional vision of itself as the “Venezuela Saudita” (the Saudi Venezuela) and for kicking the habit of dependence on a patriarchal state. If anything, members of the public could have been more present throughout the book. Indeed, it is this public, along with the country’s politicians, who give the book its provocative title. The phrase “ rebelión de los náufragos,” or revolt of the castaways, is CAP’s own from his farewell speech of May 1993, in which he blames a public adrift in a sea of national disappointment and bitterness for his fall.

Carlos Andrés Pérez, re-elected in 1989 to a second term as Venezuela’s president, embodied one of Latin America’s first modern political trage-dies. He was a democrat who was confident that his country (along with much of his region) had conquered its ghosts and was finally ready for governance by first-world standards such as fair elections, a competitive market-based economy and political parties focused more on national interests than on self-preservation.

The book notes that within a month
of a glittery second-term inauguration
attended by dozens of world leaders,
Pérez, or “CAP” as he was universally
known, was confronted with his first
serious challenge: the February 1989
social uprising, known as the Cara-
cazo, which came in response to a
fiscal austerity package that most no-
tably included a price increase in gas-
oline. After two attempted coups in
Rivero is an incisive interviewer
and deft chronicler, but she is also
a compelling writer. Painting a pic-
ture of the “funeral-like” presidential
offices the day CAP resigned, Rivero
writes of the palace flag that had been
torn by winds just as the Supreme
Court’s ruling had come down: “No
one was interested in discussing triv-
ial matters; all talk was solemn, and
the softest commentary heard at that
hour had to do with the new flag that
was waving over the building.”
By the time the book reaches CAP’s