Hugo Chavez received his first defeat yesterday since the start of his 9 years as head of Venezuela, with his constitutional reforms being voted no by a very close margin. According to the official count of the Venezuelan Election Commission, Chavez’s 69 amendments were rejected 51 to 49 percent. After accepting the loss Chavez said:

I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense.

But he also said he wouldn’t give up on seeking change.

The results were so close that this morning, one of my local Spanish language papers, El Diario- La Prensa had published a front page story saying that Chavez’s constitutional reforms had won.

The no vote means that Chavez will be barred from running again in 2012 but it means more than that. There will be no new political map of the South American nation, no shortened workday from eight hours to six, no social security fund for millions of informal laborers, and no communal councils where residents decide how to spend government funds.

One thing to note is that voter turnout was very low. Only 56% of eligible voters went out to the polls. Can this be read as Chavez losing the ability to bring people to the polls to support him? Or were people so confident that the Si would win that they stayed home? Would more participation garnered a greater margin between the two options? Is the low turnout and the defeat of Chavez’s agenda a sign that Latin America is moving to the right?

Via / Yahoo, The New York Times, El Diario- La Prensa, and Univision Television