important trip was to Cuba, where he forged a deep bond with one of his heroes and another baseball fanatic, Fidel Castro. Castro would be his mentor, and indeed embrace him as his political son. For his part, Chávez would come to see himself as Castro’s legatee in the Hemisphere, but different in one crucial aspect—a Castro who would be bolstered with tens of billions of dollars of oil revenues.
LA APERTURA
Meanwhile, things had gotten worse for Venezuela’s economy, leading to a severe banking crisis. By the middle 1990s, it was clear that Venezuela urgently needed to increase its oil revenues to cope with the country’s problems. Since world petroleum prices were not going up, the only way to raise additional revenues was to increase the number of barrels that Venezuela produced. The new president of PDVSA, a petroleum engineer named Luis Giusti, embarked on a campaign to rapidly step up investment and output.
The most significant initiative, and one with global impact, was la apertura—“the opening” (really, a reopening )—inviting international oil companies to return to Venezuela to invest in partnership with PDVSA, to produce the more expensive and technologically challenging reserves. This was not a winding back of nationalization, but rather reflected the trend toward greater openness in the new era of globalization. It was also a pragmatic effort to mobilize very large-scale investment that the state could not shoulder by itself.
La apertura was highly controversial. To some it was anathema, heresy. After all, the traditional route that had been followed—nationalization, state control, expulsion of the “foreigner”—was enormously popular. But to Giusti, this was all ideology. What mattered was not appearances and symbolism, but revenues and results. The state did not have the resources to fund the full range of required investment, and social programs were a huge competing call on the government’s money. Moreover, despite its competence, PDVSA did not have the advanced technology that was needed. La apertura would bring in international capital and technology. Output would increase from older fields. And, at last, Venezuela would be able to use technology and large-scale investment to liberate the huge reserves of very heavy oil in what is called the Faja, the Orinoco region, that up to then could not be economically produced. “The Orinoco was dormant,” said Giusti. “ We had known for one hundred years that the oil was there, but nothing had been done.”
With la apertura, Venezuela might be able to double its production capacity by five million barrels over six or seven years, and the state would capture the lion’s share of the additional revenues through taxation and partnership. But none of this could be accomplished without foreign investment. As Giusti summed it up, “There was only so much money, and we had so much to do.”10
PAINTING THE PICTURE
The hardest part was the politics, starting with President Rafael Caldera. Giusti had to convince the president, who knew the nationalistic politics all too well. Giusti had the detailed plan for la apertura printed in two handsomely bound volumes, with blue covers and gold letters. At a meeting with the president, he saw that Caldera had put paper clips on many, many pages. This sent Giusti into something of a panic. He knew that Caldera was a very skilled lawyer and that he would lose if he got into a detailed legal discussion with the president.
How was he going to persuade the president to reverse what was one of the most fundamental and popular principles of national politics and public opinion? Somehow he had to get to the essence; he had to paint the whole picture for Caldera. Then he had an idea. Why not actually paint a picture ? He knew a brilliant geologist who was also a talented landscape painter, Tito Boesi. On a Thursday, Giusti called Boesi and said that he wanted the geologist to paint a large canvas mural that would depict every stage of the country’s oil technology development, from the seepages that had enticed the original explorers to the application of the various generations of technologies, up to what might be imagined for the future of the Orinoco. The purpose would be to vividly demonstrate how increasingly complicated and expensive would be the further development of Venezuela’s petroleum patrimony.
Giusti told Boesi that he needed the painting right away.
“Are you crazy?” said Boesi.
“I need it,” insisted Giusti. “I know you’re a very good artist, Tito. But it doesn’t have to be a masterpiece.”
Summoned to the president’s house the following Saturday, Giusti appeared with