Divided loyalties play out in pop

Inside the cavernous Immanuel Episcopal Church in Los Angeles Saturday night, an earnest crowd listened attentively to a speech by an appointee of beleaguered Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who is facing an intensely divisive recall election.

In the church’s narrow vestibule, an overzealous pro-Chavez activist selling music CDs and arepas of ham and cheese kept turning up the volume on a boom box. A peppy salsa tune briefly echoed through the stone columns, sounding sacrilegiously out of place in this imposing place of worship on Wilshire Boulevard.

The song was on a home-burned CD by Grupo Madera, a critically respected band that blends salsa rhythms with Afro-Venezuelan folklore. As an usher tried to temper the volume, a catchy chorus carried into the church, marking a jarring contrast to the dry cadence of talk about oppression, revolutionary solidarity and creation of a caring economy.

“Ooh, Ah. Chavez no se va!” the chorus intoned to a boogaloo beat. “Hey, Ho. Chavez won’t go!”

The defiant, openly partisan pop record is just one sign of how Venezuela’s political crisis has polarized the country and its culture. The conflict over Chavez’s populist, left-leaning policies and his controversial alliance with Cuban President Fidel Castro has strained friendships, split families and compelled many musicians, artists and writers to take sides.

Citizens of the oil-rich and music-rich Caribbean nation now define themselves not as Venezuelans, but as Chavistas or anti-Chavistas. People pass around CDs of traditional Venezuelan folk songs, known as gaitas, with lyrics that either support or denounce the government.

Venezuela’s national rift has divided the country by class and color, a fault line that also slices through pop music tastes. The divisions are accentuated, observers say, by major media outlets that have dropped all pretense of objectivity and openly advocate one side or the other.

‘Nobody in the middle’

“The culture is so polarized that you define your political position by what type of music you listen to, what paper you read and what television network you watch,” says Ricardo Moreno, a Los Angeles-based activist who helped organize Saturday’s pro-Chavez church rally but who calls himself an independent. “It’s sad that Venezuelan society is so divided pro and con, as if there’s nobody in the middle. There’s not much room for those of us looking for an alternative, a third way.”

In the United States, it’s common for celebrities to take sides in politics, both at home and abroad. Their positions may be controversial, such as the anti-Bush statements from a member of the Dixie Chicks, but they rarely damage careers in the long term. American stars have even jumped into Venezuelan affairs. Saturday’s church meeting included among its co-sponsors actor Danny Glover and singer Harry Belafonte.

For Venezuelan celebrities, however, the risks of political activism run much higher. In the country’s current climate of crisis, artists can lose fan support and entertainment-industry backing depending on their perceived positions.

Venezuelan soap opera actor and heartthrob Fernando Carrillo, who has been living and working in Los Angeles recently, was heavily attacked in the Venezuelan press after his visit to Caracas late last year. Carrillo appeared with Chavez on the propaganda program “Alo Presidente” (Hello President), hosted by the leader himself.

“Carrillo is now persona non grata in Venezuela,” huffed Mirtha Villafane, a Los Angeles-based opposition leader who was distributing anti-Chavez leaflets outside the church event Saturday night.

That statement may sound overly sweeping. But it may be true to the extent that a performer can be blacklisted by opposition forces, which control Venezuela’s private entertainment industry, especially television and radio.

Last year, the conflict also took a toll on the country’s leading dance band. Guaco, a critically acclaimed group that fuses gaitas with a progressive salsa sound, suffered defections in the wake of a two-month national strike that paralyzed the country in December 2002.

A handful of musicians, including singer Nelson Arrieta, left the 17-member band and moved to Miami to find work. The reason for the highly publicized split is still disputed. But as a result, Guaco’s longtime leader, Gustavo Aguado, found himself fending off accusations that he was a Chavista.

“Of course, I voted for Chavez and so did 4 million other Venezuelans,” Aguado said in Spanish during a recent phone interview from Caracas. “We all were drawn to him at first because we all believed he had the solutions to our country’s problems.”

Today, Aguado, 54, says he is staunchly opposed to Chavez’s ties to Castro. He supports the recall, he says, because Venezuela needs a conciliator.

Chavez, a former lieutenant colonel and leader of a failed coup attempt 12 years ago, was elected in 1998 on a populist platform of radical reform. Under a new constitution, he was re-elected two years later with a comfortable majority, appealing heavily to the country’s poor, black and indigenous populations.

Chavez survived an aborted April 2002 coup attempt, during which he was briefly removed, then reinstated. The opposition, with heavy support among the middle and upper classes, then organized the strike later that year. While the tactic failed to oust Chavez, it left the economy devastated.

After gaining enough signatures on a recall petition, opponents now hang their hopes on a vote later this year. But there has been no truce on the culture front.

The latest salvo came last week in the form of a sharply worded letter from a group of 90 Venezuelan intellectuals and artists protesting a cultural exchange with a contingent of Cuban writers. The letter, addressed to Cuba’s visiting culture minister, was signed by veteran vocalist Soledad Bravo and well-known critic Cesar Miguel Rondon.

“Here, we will not let ourselves lose the right to give opinions, to write what we think, to communicate via the Internet or by telephone with whomever we desire, and to watch television channels to stay informed about our nation and the world,” the letter stated. “Venezuela will never be another Cuba.”

The early populist groundswell of support for Chavez and his Bolivarian Revolution has turned to bitterness in some quarters.

“Venezuela is a very musical country and he used every popular genre as capital for his revolution, sort of an effervescent leftist movement” says Edgardo Ochoa, publisher of Al Borde, a Los Angeles-based weekly covering Latin alternative music. “But after five years, he started to take off the mask and it all became part of an act this guy puts on. It’s like all vulgar dictatorships where the singer performs for the dictator. It’s very sad.”

Politics of pots and pans

Chavez is known to be a fan of the late Ali Primera, a singer-songwriter identified with Venezuela’s radical counterculture of the ‘60s. But the president has failed to win the support of Primera’s grown sons, Severando and Florentino, who have a recording career of their own as a pop duo.

“When Chavez was elected, the music of Ali Primera was played on the loudspeakers in front of the presidential palace -- something that would have been unthinkable during other governments,” Charles Hardy, a former Catholic missionary turned columnist in Caracas, told The Times. “His sons, however, have taken a political stance totally the opposite of their father who is probably turning over in his grave and weeping. They are totally identified with the wealthy and dominant class here.”

Chavez has attempted to counter his media opposition with programs such as “Alo Presidente” on a government channel. He is also known for commandeering the country’s airwaves to give speeches that must be carried by all stations simultaneously.

The president’s long-winded preemption of normal programming has given rise to another popular phenomenon known as Los Cacerolazos, a protest by opponents who stand on balconies and sidewalks and clang pots and pans to drown out the speeches.

Now, there’s even a CD recorded with the sounds of clanging kitchenware, so demonstrators can simply pop their protests into their boom boxes and crank up the volume.

There are signs that Venezuelans are getting fed up with partisans of both extremes.

At Cafe Bolivar, a small coffeehouse that serves as a meeting place for Venezuelan immigrants in Santa Monica, political tensions overflowed at a meeting after the aborted coup.

‘Sick’ of the fight

“People were going at it,” recalls co-owner Jose Carvajal, who left his native Venezuela 17 years ago. “They were yelling at each other and not respecting other opinions. So from that time on, we took a stance that we could not talk politics in the cafe. We’re a neutral entity -- a Switzerland in Santa Monica.”

Back in Caracas, meanwhile, an anthem to apathy became a surprise hit recently. It’s titled “Muerto en Choroni” (Dead on Choroni Beach) by Circo Urbano (Urban Circus), a relatively unknown group from the interior. One verse declares: I’m not from the right/Nor from the left/Because your whole fight/I swear makes me sick.

Some say this tune for the tuned-out captures the new spirit of battle-weary Venezuelans.

“It’s very neutral, and that’s why it’s a hit, because people are fed up,” says Jose Rafael Torres, the bassist for Los Amigos Invisibles, a Venezuelan alt-rock band now based in New York.

“At one time, it was all black and white; you were either on one side or the other. But people are changing.

“Shades of gray are gaining ground.”