Performing Citizenship Between The Monarchy and The Republic: The Scenarios of Venezuelan Politics

Since its independence, Venezuela has been a republic on paper but a monarchy on practice. There is a historical breach between the ways in which Venezuela has been constituted as republic and the ways in which its social actors perform competitive versions of citizenship, plunging the nation into disillusion because the contradiction manifests as broken promises. At the base of the historical breach between monarchy and republic is Simon Bolivar's cult, which has become a national religion, and Bolivarianism as the essence of Venezuelan political existence, the unattainable ideal universal morality because only geniuses like him can make history. This national religion integrates smoothly with a longstanding tradition of machismo and matrisociality which essentialize women as second class citizens and by metonymy also the nation, placing them in the dangerous position between adoration and abhorrence because violence is at the core of Venezuela's foundational act. Presently, president Hugo Chavez, who has managed to control all ambits of power, and whose Bolivarian Revolution embraces his own understanding of Bolivar's political thought and ideals as the only guide to Venezuela's sociopolitical practice, embodies the epitome of the predicament: between monarchy and republic.;I have adopted the concept scenario developed by Diana Taylor to analyze performatic moments of nation formation, citizenship, and political authority. Sustained by theatricality, I follow depiction and analysis to grasp the why of those moments and open my text to the poetics and politics of culture. The analysis is a back and forth dialogue between the tool of analysis and the work at hand, probing how the tool fares in analyzing the event while also considering the significance of how these events are historically and socio-politically situated. Finally, the use of scenario in this socio-historical analysis of political performance becomes a space to rethink the predominance of the theatrical metaphor to understand and talk about the world.