Venezuela's CANTV: What should a 21st century "socialist" telecommunications company look like?

Daniel Chavez interviewed by Nick Buxton for the Transnational Institute



Venezuela's revolution has often been tied to the slogan “Socialism in the 21st Century.” What might that might mean concretely in changes under way in the renationalised state telecommunications company, CANTV?

TNI fellow, Daniel Chavez has been part of a team of international advisers working with Venezuelan researchers and CANTV to review the the state telecommunications company's history and put forward proposals for converting it into an effective socialist public company.

Tell us about the history of CANTV.

CANTV is the second largest company in Venezuela after the energy giant PDVSA. It not only provides telephone services, both landline and mobile; it also provides internet, satellite coverage and will soon provide digital TV (IPTV). It has gone through the usual history of many utilities in Latin America, firstly starting as a private company, then nationalised in 1953, before being privatised in 1991. In 2007, it was renationalised.

According to neoliberal ideologues at the time, CANTV was privatised for two main reasons: the first was that the services were bad and the second was that the state didn't have enough money to make necessary investments in the context of global technological change. Of course, similar arguments were made throughout Latin America and around the world to justify the wave of privatisation of water, electricity, health, education, telecommunications and other public services.

In Venezuela, the process was led by President Carlos Andrés Peréz in what was called the Gran Viraje (Great Turning) in which other companies were also privatised, such as ports and productive industries. That was also the beginning of the virtual privatisation of PDVSA, which for several years (until President Chavez's government regained control) theoretically remained in the hand of the state but was effectively managed as a private company.

So why was it re-nationalised?

CANTV was renationalised in 2007, as part of the broader Bolivarian project of recovering public ownership and management of strategic companies. Chavez had earlier threatened the company with nationalisation, after its refusal to attend to the demands of company employee pensioners.

Under the new Bolivarian legislation, telecommunications was declared a human right. This was a major challenge to the dominant paradigm, which views telecommunications from a profit-centered perspective.

Many analysts agree that telecommunications is essential for many dimensions of human development, but generally this hasn't been translated into public policy. The Bolivarian government argued that CANTV was failing to meet its social commitments as a privatised company, as agreed in the original contract signed in 1991; for example most investment was being made in coastal regions and the northern part of Venezuela as these was profitable, denying access to poorer, indigenous and geographically isolated communities.

Our research also showed that while the company was profitable and paying taxes, most of the dividends were going abroad as the main shareholder of the company was a US multinational giant, Verizon. Now those resources are being invested within the country.

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