He calls the president of the United States the “devil” in his speeches at home and abroad. He ships oil to China at a loss of millions of dollars just to prove a point. He threatens to jail grocers who overcharge their customers. Since his first attempt to grab power in a 1992 coup, Hugo Chávez has been a populist symbol daring to do what other politicians won’t. Chávez has gained a huge amount of popular support with his radical social welfare policies and anti-U.S. rhetoric, which, combined with plentiful oil revenue, make him seem unstoppable. As it becomes clear though that Chávez cannot deliver on his unrealistic promises to Venezuelans, the wave of public support that brought him to power will rapidly turn against him.

Venezuelans like Hugo Chávez because he acts. Rather than wait for oil revenue to pass through various levels of government before reaching the people, Chávez simply orders the national oil company PDVSA to take on social projects itself and build everything from schools to power plants. Seeking better compensation for workers, he has also nationalized various sectors of the economy, including telecommunications, electricity, and, of course energy. Concerned about how few Venezuelans are able to go to college, Chávez has abolished university admission exams.

While this style of governing has made Chávez very popular, popular support will rapidly evaporate once he comes up short on the promises he made with his social projects. Accurate official statistics are difficult to find, but anecdotal evidence indicates that the results of Chávez’s social projects are flimsy at best. Chávez claims to have eradicated illiteracy—a claim that seems somewhat suspect for a country that fell from 46th to 76th between 2000 and 2005 on the UN’s Human Development Index. Most of the medical clinics built under Chávez’s Barrio Adentro program rely on cheap—and by some reports, sub-standard—medical labor imported from Cuba. Shelves at Venezuela’s subsidized state-owned supermarkets are said to be full of goods like Scotch Whiskey and Camembert cheese, but basic items like black beans or beef are nowhere to be found.

On my visit to Venezuela, I was able to see Chávez’s social projects in action—or perhaps, inaction. PDVSA guides drove me to a newly built state health clinic and a state supermarket, both part of Chávez’s misiones (social campaigns). When I asked my guides to show me inside, though, I was told that the facilities were closed—at 3:00 PM on a Thursday. I was also brought to a brand new community center that had apparently been built after President Chávez spotted an empty patch of land flying over Caracas in his helicopter. Complete with a performance space and its own health clinic, the facility was located right in the middle of a Caracas barrio where it could benefit the urban poor. Strangely, though, aside from the members of the Globalist staff, not a person was there. A reason why, according to our guides: it was a Saturday.

Should President Chávez want his projects to make an impact on Venezuela’s poor, he needs to mandate better hours for these new operations. As it becomes more and more clear that the social projects of Chávez’s so-called Bolivarian Revolution constitute nothing but a Potemkin village, public opinion will turn against him. Although they have been politically weak in recent years, Venezuela still has a number of wealthy elites and opposition political parties that can capitalize on dissatisfaction, and the country’s legacy of constitutional rule could prove both an anti-Chávez rallying cry and a template for a post-Chávez government. Anticipating this backlash, Chávez has been shifting gears from populism to authoritarianism. From strengthening presidential powers and unifying his supporters under a single political party to the recent closure of an opposition television station, Chávez has already betrayed his fear of hostile public opinion.

Perhaps because he realizes that populism only works while he remains popular, he is doing all that he can to build up his defenses against the forces of popular discontent he exploited to get into office. If he succeeds, those who once supported Chávez and his message of empowerment may soon find themselves thoroughly disempowered under Chávez’s authoritarian rule.

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