VENEZUELA: Foot soldiers of the revolution

While young people are playing a leading role in many spheres of Venezuela's Bolivarian revolution, particularly in the social missions, a myriad of political organisations exist among revolutionary youth, reflecting many different ideas and currents of thought.

A key challenge facing young Venezuelan revolutionaries is how to cohere all of these organisations and individuals into a mass youth and student movement that can not only challenge the corrupt elites of the autonomous universities (which have become bastions for the far right in Venezuela), but also push forward the revolutionary process as a whole.

The first attempt at organising youth in support of the Bolivarian revolution was Juventud y Cambio (Youth and Change). Bringing together a large number of youth groups, it helped initiate a national discussion on the National Law on Youth, from which emerged the National Youth Institute (INJ) that today functions as a youth ministry run by young people. Juventud y Cambio was dissolved after the INJ was created.

In 2002, the Bolivarian Front of Students was initiated by various student organisations in an attempt to unite campus and high school groups. Although not achieving the aim of organising high school students, it helped unite the Bolivarian left on universities and led to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's call for the creation of the Federation of Bolivarian Students (FBE). However, it only represented a tiny minority of youth, primarily from the university campuses. Today, many of the initial groups involved in the FBE have left due to bureaucratic practices, and nearly all of Venezuela's university student unions are controlled by the right.