Monday, March 09, 2015
Obama Declares Venezuela a Threat to National Security
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Washington increases Clandestine Ops against Venezuela

By Eva Golinger
Millions of dollars are being channeled to opposition groups in Venezuela via USAID, while the Pentagon has established a new PSYOP program directed at Venezuela, including a “5-day a week television program in Spanish broadcast in Venezuela” during 2011
The 2010 annual report of the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), a division of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), regarding its operations in Venezuela, evidences that at least $9.29 million USD was invested this year in efforts to “support US foreign policy objectives…and promote democracy” in the South American nation. This amount represents an increase of almost $2 million over last year’s $7.45 million distributed through this office to fund anti-Chávez political activities in the country.
The OTI is a department of USAID dedicated to “supporting US foreign policy objectives by helping local partners advance democracy in priority countries in crisis. OTI works on the ground to provide, fast, flexible short-term assistance targeted at key political transition and stabilization needs”.
Although OTI is traditionally used as a “short-term” strategy to filter millions of dollars in liquid funds to political groups and activities that promote US agenda in strategically important nations, the case of Venezuela has been different. OTI opened its office in 2002, right after the failed coup d’etat against President Hugo Chavez - backed by Washington - and has remained ever since. The OTI in Venezuela is the longest standing office of this type in USAID’s history.
OTI’S CLANDESTINE OPS
In a confidencial memo dated January 22, 2002, Russell Porter, head of OTI, revealed how and why USAID set up shop in Venezuela. “OTI was asked to consider a program in Venezuela by the State Department’s Office of Andean Affairs on January 4…OTI was asked if it could offer programs and assistance in order to strengthen the democratic elements that are under increasing fire from the Chavez government”.
Porter visited Venezuela on January 18, 2002 and then commented, “For democracy to have any chance of being preserved, immediate support is needed for independent media and the civil society sector…One of the large weaknesses in Venezuela is the lack of a vibrant civil society…The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has a $900,000 program in Venezuela that works with NDI, IRI and the Solidarity Center to strengthen political parties and the Unions…This program is useful, but not nearly sufficient. It is not flexible enough, nor does it work with enough new or non-traditional groups. It also lacks a media component”.
Since then OTI has been present in Venezuela, channeling millions of dollars each year to feed the political conflict in the country. According to the 2010 annual report, OTI is now operating “out of the US Embassy and is part of a larger US diplomatic effort to promote democracy in Venezuela”.
The principal investment of the $9.29 million in US taxpayer dollars in 2010 went to the opposition’s campaign for the legislative elections, held last September 26 in Venezuela. “USAID works with several implementing partners drawn from the spectrum of civil society…offering technical assistance to political parties…and supporting efforts to strengthen civil society”.
In Venezuela, it’s widely known that the term “civil society” refers to the anti-Chavez opposition.
A SECRET FLOW OF FUNDS
Despite revealing its overall budget, the actual flow of funds from USAID/OTI to groups in Venezuela remains secret. When OTI opened its offices in 2002, it contracted a private US company, Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), one of the State Department’s largest contractors worldwide. DAI ran an office out of El Rosal – the Wall Street of Caracas – distributing millions of dollars annually in “small grants of no more than $100,000” to hundreds of mainly unknown Venezuelan “organizations”.
From 2002 to 2010, more than 600 of these “small grants” were channeled out of DAI’s office to anti-Chavez groups, journalists and private, opposition media campaigns.
In December 2009, DAI began to have severe problems with its operations in Afghanistan, when five of its employees were killed by alleged Taliban militants during an attack on their office December 15 in Gardez. Just days earlier, another DAI “employee”, Alan Gross, had been detained in Cuba and accused of subversion for illegally distributing advanced satellite equipment to dissidents.
When an article written by this author titled “CIA Agents assassinated in Afghanistan worked for "contractor" active in Venezuela, Cuba”, published December 30, 2009 on the web, evidenced the link between DAI’s operations in Afghanistan, Cuba and Venezuela, and their suspicious nature, the CEO of DAI, Jim Boomgard, was alarmed. Days later, he attempted to coerce me into a private meeting in Washington to “discuss” my article. When I refused, he threatened me by claiming that my writing was “placing all DAI employees worldwide in danger”. In other words, if anything happened to DAI employees, I would be personalIy responsible.
But Boomgard, who claimed little knowledge of his company’s operations in Venezuela, understood that what DAI was doing in Venezuela was nowhere near as important (to his company) as what DAI was doing in Afghanistan and other countries in conflict. Weeks later, DAI abruptly closed its office in Caracas.
Nonetheless, OTI continues its operations in Venezuela, and although it has other US “partners” managing a portion of its annual multimillion-dollar budget, such as IRI, NDI, Freedom House and the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), there is zero transparency regarding funding to Venezuelan groups.
A report published in May 2010 by the Spanish think tank FRIDE assessing “democracy assistance” to Venezuela revealed that a significant part of the more than $50 million annually in political funding from international agencies to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela was entering illicitly. According to the report, in order to avoid Venezuela’s strict “currency control laws”, US and European agencies bring the monies in dollars or euros into the country and then change them on the black market to increase value. This method also avoids leaving a financial record or trace of the funds coming in to illegally finance political activities.
If DAI is no longer operating in Venezuela and distributing “small grants” to Venezuelan groups, then how are USAID’s multimillion-dollar funds reaching their recipients? According to USAID, they now operate from the US Embassy. Is the US Embassy illegally dishing out funds directly to Venezuelans?
OTI’s 2010 report also reveals the agency’s ongoing intentions to continue supporting and funding Venezuelan counterparts. In the section marked “Upcoming Events”, OTI makes clear where energies will be directed, “December 2012 – Presidential elections”.
PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS
USAID isn’t the only US agency intervening in Venezuela’s affairs. In the Pentagon’s 2011 budget, a new request for a “psychological operations program” for the Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), which coordinates all US military missions in Latin America, is included. Specifically, the request refers to the establishment of a “PSYOP voice program for USSOUTHCOM”.
PYSOP are, “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups and individuals. The execution of PSYOP includes conducting research on various foreign audiences; developing, producing and disseminating products to influence these audiences; and conducting evaluations to determine the effectiveness of the PSYOP activities. These activities may include the management of various websites and monitoring print and electronic media”. Or, as the 2011 request indicates, running a radio or audio program into a foreign nation to promote US agenda.
USSOUTHCOM’s new PSYOP program in Latin America will complement a new State Department initiative run out of the Board of Broadcasting Governors (BBG), which manages US propaganda worldwide. BBG’s whopping 2011 budget of $768.8 million includes “a 30-minute, five-day-a-week VOA [Voice of America] Spanish television program for Venezuela”.
This increase in PSYOP and pro-US propaganda directed at Venezuela evidences an escalation in US aggression towards the region.
And the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is still running a special intelligence “mission” on Venezuela and Cuba, set up in 2006. Only four of these country-specific “mission management teams” exist: Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan/Pakistan, and Venezuela/Cuba. These “missions” receive an important part of DNI’s $80 billion annual budget and operate in complete secrecy.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Venezuela in Washington's Crosshairs
Washington fears Hugo Chavez for good reason. His "good example" threat raises concerns that other regional leaders may follow. As a result, throughout his tenure, he's been targeted and vilified - to discredit, weaken and undermine his government to destroy Bolivarian benefits millions of Venezuelans now enjoy, won't easily give up, nor should they.
Several failed coup attempts included:
-- April 2002 for two days, an effort aborted by mass street protests and support from many in Venezuela's military, especially from the middle-ranking officer corp;
-- the 2002 - 2003 general strike and oil management lockout, causing severe economic disruption and billions of dollars in losses; and
-- the August 2004 national recall referendum that Chavez won overwhelmingly with a 59% majority.
Thereafter, disruptions regularly followed to help domestic and US oligarchs regain what they lost, so far without success, but they persist, with supportive editorial, op-ed, and on-the-ground reporting. Also from an Organization of American States (OAS) report, the Vision of Humanity's annual Global Peace Index (GPI), US State Department, and Pentagon.
On March 19, Reuters reported that, in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, General Douglas Fraser, USSOUTHCOM (US Southern Command) head, claimed Chavez backs Colombian leftists, saying:
His government "continue(s) to have a very anti-US stance and look(s) to try and restrict US activity wherever they have the opportunity to do that. (It's) continuing to engage with the region....and continuing to pursue (its) socialism agenda. (It) remain(s) a destabilizing force in the region."
He said Venezuela continues to support FARC-EP rebels, providing "financial logistical support" and a safe haven based on evidence found on a laptop seized in a 2008 Ecuadorean guerrilla camp raid - information later proved bogus.
Yet a week earlier, before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Fraser testified otherwise, saying:
"We have not seen any connections specifically that I can verify that there has been a direct government-to-terrorist connection" between Chavez and either the FARC-EP or the Basque separatist group ETA. "We have continued to watch very closely for any connections between illicit and terrorist organization activity within the region. We are concerned about it. I'm skeptical. I continue to watch for it," but as yet haven't found it.
During her March 1 - 5 Latin American tour, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gratuitously insulted Chavez. So did Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, in Senate testimony, accusing him of FARC-EP ties - suggesting much more to come to boost opposition candidates in September parliamentary elections.
US State Department 2009 Human Rights Report: Venezuela
Released on March 11, it followed earlier ones, bogusly accusing Chavez of:
-- harassing and intimidating political opponents;
-- targeting the media; and
-- numerous human rights violations, including:
-- "unlawful killings;
-- summary executions of criminal suspects;
-- widespread criminal kidnappings for ransom;
-- prison uprisings resulting from harsh prison conditions;
-- arbitrary arrests and detentions;
-- corruption and impunity in police forces;
-- a corrupt, inefficient, and politicized judicial system characterized by trial delays and violations of due process;
-- (targeting) political opponents and selective prosecution(s) for political purposes;
-- infringement of citizens' privacy rights by security forces;
-- government closure of radio and television stations and threats to close others;
-- government attacks on public demonstrations;
-- systematic discrimination based on political grounds;
-- considerable corruption at all levels of government;
-- threats and attacks against domestic NGOs;
-- violence against women;
-- inadequate juvenile detention centers;
-- trafficking in persons; and
-- restrictions on workers' right of association."
Other charges have included drugs trafficking and ties to bogusly designated "foreign terror organizations" like the FARC-EP and ETA.
These sham charges and similar ones repeat regularly to discredit and undermine Chavez. Ironically, they're more descriptive of American domestic and foreign policies - ones that defy US and international laws with regard to human and civil rights, equal justice, war, occupation, domestic tranquility, and the Constitution's Article I, Section 8 for the Congress to "provide (for) the general welfare of the United States," the so-called welfare clause applying also to the Executive and judiciary.
In contrast, Chavez promotes world solidarity, democratic freedoms, human and civil rights, judicial fairness, fair and open elections, and a free and open media. He doesn't invade other countries, has no secret prisons, doesn't practice torture, or conduct fraudulent elections. As a result, he inspires millions worldwide, and has widespread domestic majority support. Yet bogus State Department charges persist.
Ones as well from a recent OAS report titled, "Democracy and Human Rights in Venezuela," produced under the mandate of the Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR).
Among others, its bogus accusations include:
-- restricting human rights "enshrined in the American Convention on Human Rights;"
-- no independent separation among government branches;
-- state punitive power to "intimidate or punish people on account of their political opinions;"
-- denying journalists the right to report freely;
-- "a pattern of impunity in cases of violence," especially against "media workers, human rights defenders, trade unionists, participants in public demonstrations, people held in custody, campesinos (small-scale and subsistence farmers), indigenous peoples, and women;"
-- restricted opportunities for opposing political candidates to secure "access to power;"
-- disempowering opposition politicians through legal and other means;
-- intimidating and punishing dissent against official policy through harassment, violence, and criminal proceedings;
-- targeting peaceful opposition demonstrations;
-- the absence of an independent, impartial judiciary; and
-- numerous other charges like the US State Department's, more descriptive of America, suggesting a hidden motive behind the report's issuance; perhaps also its timing, two weeks before the State Department's similar accusations.
Chavez called it "pure excrement....ineffable (and) ignominious" in denouncing the IACHR as "menacing....a true mafia and is part of the OAS, which is why one of these days this organization must disappear....It is the same Commission which backed (the de facto government of Pedro) Carmona" after the April 2002 coup. "But this is part of the attacks, of continued threats against the Bolivarian Revolution, (a) continued campaign (supported by Venezuelan and American oligarchs to) isolat(e) Venezuela."
OAS history is long and shameful in deference to US interests.
Writing in Granma Internacional in June 2009, Editor Oscar Sanchez Serra said:
Throughout its history, the OAS "made democracies ungovernable, turned them into dictatorships, and when they were no longer useful, reconverted them into even more diminished and servile democracies, because in the new, neoliberal era, with transnationalized oligarch(ic) capital, they were part of a much more sophisticated power structure, whose bases were not necessarily located in the presidential palaces or parliaments, but in continental corporations."
OAS nations had decades of "involvement with death, genocide and lies for (it) to survive these times. It is a political corpse and should be buried as soon as possible....The reality is, without the OAS, the United States would lose one of its principle political/legal instruments of hegemonic control over the Western Hemisphere."
In February 2004, Washington got its backing to justify ousting Haiti's President Jean-Betrand Aristide. Then in 2009, it abstained from strong actions after Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed, opting instead for symbolic toothless measures. It's new report reveals transparent support for bogus US charges, not Venezuela's participatory democracy, largely absent in the region and unimaginable in America where Washington is corporate controlled territory, and popular interests go unaddressed.
The Global Peace Index (GPI)
Launched by Australian entrepreneur, Steve Killelea, in May 2007, it claims to be the first study of its kind ranking nations according to peacefulness, identifying key peace drivers. Its initial report included 121 countries, increased to 140 in 2008 and 144 in its latest 2009 report, released in June last year.
Its problematic endorsers include:
-- the Dalia Lama, a known CIA asset from the late 1950s to mid- 1970s, and may still be one now;
-- John Malcolm Fraser, former Australian Prime Minister;
-- Kofi Annan, infamous as UN Secretary-General for backing US imperial wars while ignoring the plight of oppressed Africans and others globally;
-- Ban Ki-moon, current UN Secretary-General, performing the same services as Annan;
-- corporate figures including Ted Turner (CNN founder) and Richard Branson (chairman, Virgin Group);
-- an array of prominent current and past political and diplomatic figures;
-- two members of Jordanian royalty;
-- numerous academics; and others.
Organizations preparing GPI's report and/or responsible for its data include:
-- the Economist Intelligence Unit (founded by a former UK director of intelligence), calling itself "the world's foremost provider of country, industry and management analysis" since 1946;
-- the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at Sweden's Uppsala University, producing annual "States in Armed Conflict" reports;
-- the Oslo, Norway International Peace Research Institute, a private/publicly funded organization, producing "Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Annual Reports;" and
-- the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS), calling itself "the world's leading authority on political-military conflict" with 450 corporate and institutional members.
The world was less peaceful in 2008, according to GPI, reflecting intensified conflicts and the effects of rising food and fuel prices at a time of global economic crisis, impacting employment, incomes, savings, and for many shelter, enough to eat, and the ability to survive.
GPI used 23 indicators to measure the level or absence of peace, divided into three broad categories, including:
-- ongoing domestic and international conflict;
-- safety and security in society; and
-- militarization.
Scores were then "banded, either on a scale of 1 - 5 (for qualitative indicators) or 1 - 10 (for quantitative data, such as military expenditure or the jailed population, which have then been converted to a 1- 5 scale for comparability when compiling the final index)."
Indicators include:
-- number of external and internal conflicts from 2002 - 07;
-- estimated number of deaths from external conflicts;
-- estimated number from internal ones;
-- level of internal conflicts;
-- relations with neighboring countries;
-- perceptions of criminality in society;
-- number of displaced people as a percentage of population;
-- political instability;
-- level of disrespect for human rights;
-- potential for terrorist acts;
-- number of homicides per 100,000 people;
-- level of violent crime;
-- likelihood of violent demonstrations;
-- number of jailed population per 100,000 people;
-- number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 population;
-- military expenditures as a percent of GDP;
-- number of military personnel per 100,000 population;
-- volume of major weapon imports per 100,000 people;
-- volume of major weapon exports per 100,000 people;
-- funding for UN peacekeeping missions;
-- total number of heavy weapons per 100,000 people;
-- ease of access to small arms and light weapons; and
-- the level of military capability.
Conspicuously absent is any measure of outside influence causing internal violence, instability, and/or disruption. Top rankings went to New Zealand, Denmark and Norway. Ranked worst were Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Israel.
Venezuela ranked an implausible 120th behind Yemen, Haiti, Iran, Honduras, Uzbekistan, Uganda, Rwanda, and dozens of other unlikely choices. America was 83rd, despite hands down being the world's most violent lawless state, directly or through global proxy wars for unchallengeable world dominance.
It's also a domestic armed camp, using police state laws to quash human rights and civil liberties, criminalize dissent, illegally spy, control information, persecute political opponents, steal elections, and transfer public wealth to elitist private hands.
In contrast, Venezuela is democratic and peaceful, except during periods of Washington-instigated disruptions. America alone endangers global stability and world peace, waging permanent wars, targeting peaceful nations, and claiming the unilateral right to use first strike nuclear weapons preemptively. It also maintains over 1,000 bases and many secret ones in over 130 countries. Its annual military budget tops all other nations combined - way over $1 trillion plus tens of additional billions for intelligence and black operations, mostly for covert destabilization.
It overthrows democratically elected governments, assassinates foreign leaders and key officials, props up friendly dictators, practices torture as official policy, operates the world's largest domestic and offshore gulag, destabilizes world regions, and is hated and feared globally as a result.
In contrast, Chavez seeks regional and global alliances; engages foreign leaders cooperatively; assassinates no one internally or abroad; has no nuclear weapons or seeks them; spends less than one-half of one percent of the Pentagon's official budget; doesn't export weapons to neighbors; is socially responsible at home; has no secret prisons; respects the rule of law; is a model participatory democracy; governs peacefully; supports civil and human rights and social justice; affirms free expression; bans discrimination; and uses Venezuela's resources responsibly - for people needs, yet is friendly to business at home and abroad.
Nonetheless, GPI ranks it below America in human and civil rights, level of organized internal conflict, relations with neighboring countries, potential for terrorist acts, level of violent crime, political instability, perceptions of criminality in society, ease of access to small weapons, freedom of the press, political democracy, adult literacy (way above the US Department of Education's assessment), and willingness to fight.
Transparency International (TI) also rates Venezuela low in its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), indicating the perceived level of public sector corruption by country, claiming a 90% confidence of accuracy. It ranks America implausibly high at 19th and Venezuela outrageously low at 162nd out of 180 countries, behind notoriously corrupt states, including corporate occupied Washington, siphoning trillions of public dollars to private hands as part of the greatest ever wealth transfer.
In ranking America v. Venezuela, TI, GPI, and OAS measures look suspiciously manipulated to place a global hegemon above a peaceful democratic state that coincidentally is Washington's top regional target.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://prognewshour.progressiveradionetwork.org/
http://lendmennews.progressiveradionetwork.org/
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Cowboy in Caracas Ex-Priest Charlie Hardy, Turned Journalist Speaks on Venezuela
Charlie Hardy is a former Catholic priest from Wyoming who has lived in Venezuela for the last twenty-five years. Hardy lived in a cardboard shack for eight of those in years in a barrio in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.
He spoke about his book “Cowboy in Caracas – A North American’s Memoir of Venezuela’s Democratic Revolution” at the Plaza Library on February 26, 2010. The following is a transcript of an exclusive interview Mr. Hardy granted to kctribune.com
Why did you decide to go to Journalism school?
“In 2002, there was a coup in Venezuela – somebody said to me afterwards “Hey take a look at Narco News”. I had never heard of narconews.com. It was an online newspaper, so I looked and they had a good article about what happened in Venezuela. Then I saw where they were going to have a school for authentic journalists. I thought well maybe I would become a journalist because I could see that the truth wasn’t getting out of Venezuela. So, I applied for a scholarship and then I got a letter saying “Sorry we don’t have enough money – we want someone in radio, video and so on down the line. It went onto say “But we do want you as a professor – you write too well and you don’t need the school but we need you”. Professors at the school pay their own way. This is a unique school, all of the students have scholarships, but all of the professors have to pay their own way.
A former priest gave me a thousand dollars and with that I was able to pay my fare and pay for my lodging and so on, and it’s still that way basically today. It’s been an exciting thing – if you were to look at Narco News and the students that are there from India, Egypt, Argentina from Chile, from Mexico - all over the world. And then you look at the quality of the people who give the classes.
For me it was a real privilege. One professor was Alvaro Garcia, he is now Vice President of Bolivia.
Another professor was Gary Webb who wrote the ‘Dark Alliance’ that was about the CIA getting drugs into Los Angeles. He won the Pulitzer Prize for some other writing but because of the ‘Dark Alliance’ he was blackballed. Other major newspapers came out and said they talked to the CIA and the CIA said they never did that.
Eventually Gary committed suicide. It is one of those stories of one of those people who did his best to be an authentic journalist and maybe was killed in the act of doing it. I say maybe because he died with two bullet holes in his head.
Some would say that is not possible, but I guess it is possible – who knows?
All I know that for me it was a privilege to be there.
This may sound strange, but I wasn’t impressed because he got a Pulitzer Prize, because I think John Kennedy got a Pulitzer Prize because his father, as I remember, knew some important people on the committee. It is that kind of people that Al Giordano of Narco News has recruited to give their time and to be with young people. That for me is just a hopeful thing.
So, I was Catholic priest – it was 1965 when I was ordained and came out of the seminary. Someone once said to me that when a young man is going to be ordained makes a choice that will determine the rest of his life. That choice is, does he want to serve the people or does he want to be a bishop. I would say the same thing about journalists today.
Journalism schools or Social Communication as they call it in Venezuela, are full of people. It’s hard to get into those schools because they want to be on television, they want to be stars. So I think that same question applies to young people today who want to be a journalist – do they want to serve the people and get the truth out, or do they want to be a star on television.
I was observing a demonstration in Caracas, and there was a woman from one of the major television stations and I knew right away that she had never attended the NarcoNews School of Authentic Journalism because part of it is security for a journalist. I remember being told “Never wear sandals to a demonstration – wear shoes that are tight on your feet in case something happens.” So here was this woman in high heels, and when the police fired some tear gas she wasn’t in any shape to run down the street. So it’s that question – there are reporters in high heels and reporters in ties who stay in fancy five star hotels who tell us what is happening around the world, and that to me is not authentic journalism – it’s the people who get out and talk to the people.
I have the same concerns for the U.S. On CNN recently I saw about three ads for Colombia (South America) in about forty minutes. The ads basically said “When you go to Colombia there is risk –beautiful beaches, the wonderful people the history and so on. The only risk when you go to Colombia is you may never want to leave. Our word for foreigner is friend”. Ok that’s what I see on CNN, but I know that there are over 3 million people from Colombia in Venezuela. You don’t find Venezuelans going to Colombia. Why have the people left – economic reasons but there is also people that have been driven out by paramilitaries, etc. Within Colombia there are over four million people who are displaced, who have been driven off their land. So, okay the word for foreigner is friend, but I wonder what the word is for the people who live there? If there are so many ads on CNN from Colombia, what kind of balanced news are you going to get from CNN about Colombia? About Venezuela? Venezuela is talked about as a dictatorship, it is not. Again, I am a gringo that has lived there 25 years, but we have never had as much freedom as we have today. Whether it is radio, television or newspapers, Hugo Chavez is portrayed as a dictator.”
The Wall Street Journal and the AP have reported this week that “the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights strongly cites a lack of independence of Venezuela's judiciary, the closing of news media outlets that are critical of the government and political discrimination and repression under Chavez.” What is your reaction?
“Someone asked me about the taking of five media licenses, but over 100 licenses were renewed because the people handed in the forms they were supposed to and did the things they were supposed to do. In America, if someone loses their license from the FCC is it President Obama who puts them off the air? These five stations didn’t fulfill the requirements of law, and since that time some of them have come forward with the papers they need. But they make a big deal – it’s Chavez who did this.
Regarding the Judiciary – in Venezuela we have five independent bodies, the executive, judicial, legislative – there’s also the people’s power which includes attorney general, ombudsmen and the controller. Then there is the electoral power. Interestingly, the president is a male but the president of the congress, the chief justice, the attorney general and the head of the electoral commission are all women. But, gee (the critics say) it is probably because Chavez is beating them or something. Even though he doesn’t appoint them – there is a process involved. Yes at the present moment – most people in congress are supporters of the current government. But part of the problem is that the opposition pulled out of most of the elections. They could have won seats in congress, so you can portray it any way you like.
The InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights – in 2002 there was coup – Chavez was kidnapped, he was gone – they wrote a letter to the dictator who took over and said “We hope you support human rights” they didn’t ask about the resident – where was he? This is not an unbiased commission.”
What is the stance of the Catholic Church in relationship to the government?
“The Catholic Church is very much supportive of President Chavez, but not all the bishops are. I was once in Mexico with Bishop Samuel Ruiz – who was bishop in the area where the Zapatistas are in Chiapas. We were talking for an hour about the Zapatistas. And I asked him “Do you mind if we talk about the Catholic Church for a while?” and he said “I thought we were talking about the Catholic Church. If you want to talk about us Bishops, fine, but we are only a part of the Catholic Church we are not the Catholic Church.” I also remember that I asked him if “Liberation Theology still existed and he said “Is there a theology of slavery?”
Many on the American right frequently accuse President Obama of being socialist or even communist – what do you think of that since you are living in a socialist country?
“I think we need talk about Socialism for the 21st Century not the 20th Century. We have two competing theories in the world right now – Capitalism or Socialism. On the one hand- Capitalism is about money and corporations and Socialism is about people. We need to decide what we think is more important – people or corporations?”
Charlie Hardy’s talk was sponsored by American Friends Service, Holy Family Faith Community, Colombia Support Network, Peaceworks, The Loretto Community of Kansas City and The Cross Border Network.
KCTribune wants to thank Judy Ancel and the The Cross Border Network for their assistance in arranging this interview.
www.crossbordernetwork.org
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
The Bolivarian Revolution and the Caribbean by Fidel Castro
I liked history, as most boys do. Wars as well, a culture that society sowed in male children. All the toys offered us were weapons.
In my childhood they sent me to a city where I was never taken to a movie theater. Television did not exist then, and there was no radio in the house in which I lived. I had to use my imagination.
In the first boarding school, I read with amazement about the Universal Flood and Noah’s Ark. Later on I came to the conclusion that maybe it was a vestige that humanity retained of the last climate change in the history of our species. It was possibly the end of the Ice Age, which is thought to have taken place thousands of years ago.
As one might imagine, later I avidly read the histories of Alexander the Great, Caesar, Hannibal, Bonaparte and, of course, any book that came into my hands on Maceo, Gómez, Agramonte and other great soldiers who fought for our independence. I did not possess sufficient culture to understand what lay behind history.
Later on, I centered my interest in Martí. In reality I owe my patriotic sentiments to him and the profound concept that "Homeland is humanity." The audacity, the beauty, the value and the ethics of his thinking helped to convert me into what I believe I am: a revolutionary. Without being a follower of Martí one cannot be a follower of Bolívar; without being a follower of Martí and Bolívar, one cannot be a Marxist and, without being a follower of Martí, Bolívar and a Marxist, one cannot be anti-imperialist; without being those three things a Revolution in Cuba in our epoch could not have been conceived.
Almost two centuries ago, Bolívar wanted to send an expedition under the command of Sucre to liberate Cuba, which really needed it, in the 1820s, as a Spanish sugar and coffee colony, with 300,000 slaves working for their white owners.
With its independence frustrated and converted into a neo-colony, the full dignity of human beings could never be attained without a revolution that would end the exploitation of people by other people.
"…I want the first law of our republic to be the veneration of Cubans for the full dignity of human beings."
With his thinking, Martí inspired the valor and conviction that led our [26th of July] Movement to the assault on the Moncada Garrison, which would have never entered our heads without the ideas of other great thinkers like Marx and Lenin, who made us see and understand the very distinct realities of the new era that we were experiencing.
Throughout centuries, the odious latifundia ownership and its slave workforce, preceded by the extermination of the former inhabitants of these islands, was justified in the name of progress and development.
Martí said something marvelous and worthy of Bolívar and his glorious life:
"…what he did not leave done, remains undone to this day: because Bolívar has still much to do in America."
"Let Venezuela show me how to serve her: she has a son in me."
In Venezuela, as others did in the Caribbean, the colonial power planted sugar cane, coffee, and cacao, and likewise took men and women from Africa as slaves. The heroic resistance of its indigenous peoples, using nature and the vast Venezuelan soil, prevented the annihilation of the original inhabitants.
With the exception of one part of the northern hemisphere, the vast territory of Our America remained in the hands of two kings of the Iberian Peninsula.
Without fear it can be affirmed that, for centuries, our countries and the fruits of the labor of our peoples have been plundered and continue being plundered by the large transnational corporations and the oligarchies that are in their service.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; in other words, for almost 200 years after the formal independence of Ibero-America, nothing changed in essence. The United States, starting with the Thirteen English colonies that rebelled, expanded west and south. It purchased Louisiana and Florida, snatched more than half of its territory from Mexico, intervened in Central America and took possession of the area of the future Panama Canal, which would link the great oceans east and west of the continent via the point where Bolívar wished to create the capital of the largest of the republics that would be born from the independence of the nations of America.
In that epoch, oil and ethanol were not traded in the world, nor did the WTO exist. Sugar cane, cotton and corn were cultivated by slaves. Machines were still to be invented. Industrialization based on coal was strongly advancing.
Wars gave impulse to civilization, and civilization gave impulse to wars. These changed in nature, and became more terrible. They finally became world conflicts.
Finally, we were a civilized world. We even believed in it as a question of principles.
But we do not know what to do with the civilization attained. Human beings have equipped themselves with nuclear weapons of unbelievable accuracy and annihilation potency while, from the moral and political point of view, they have ignominiously retrogressed. Politically and socially, we are more underdeveloped than ever. Automatons are replacing soldiers; the mass media, educators, and governments are beginning to be overtaken by events without knowing what to do. In the desperation of many international political leaders one can appreciate an impotency in the face of the problems that are accumulating in their offices and steadily more frequent international meetings.
In those circumstances, an unprecedented disaster is taking place in Haiti, while on the other side of the planet, three wars and an arms race are continuing their development, in the midst of the economic crisis and growing conflicts, which is consuming more than 2.5% of the global GDP, a figure with which all the Third World countries could be developed in a short period of time and possibly evade climate change by devoting the economic and scientific resources that are essential to that objective.
The credibility of the world community has just received a harsh blow in Copenhagen, and our species is not demonstrating its capacity for surviving.
The tragedy of Haiti allows me to expound on this point of view based on what Venezuela has done with the countries of the Caribbean. While the large financial institutions vacillate over what to do in Haiti, Venezuela did not hesitate for one second to cancel that country’s economic debt of $167 million.
Throughout close to one century the major transnationals extracted and exported Venezuelan oil at infinitesimal prices. Over the decades, Venezuela became the largest world exporter of oil.
It is known that when the United States spent hundreds of billions on its genocidal war on Vietnam, killing and mutilating millions of the sons and daughters of that heroic people, it also unilaterally broke the Bretton Woods Agreement by suspending the conversion of gold into dollars, as the agreement stipulated, and launching the cost of that dirty war on the world. The U.S. currency was devalued and the hard currency income of the Caribbean countries was not sufficient to pay for oil. Their economies are based on tourism and exports of sugar, coffee, cacao and other agricultural products. A stunning blow threatened the economies of the Caribbean states, with the exception of two of them that are exporters of energy.
Other developed countries eliminated preferential tariffs for Caribbean agricultural exports, like bananas; Venezuela made an unprecedented gesture: it guaranteed the majority of those countries secure supplies of oil and special payment facilities.
On the other hand, nobody was concerned about the destiny of those peoples. If it were not for the Bolivarian Republic a terrible crisis would have hit the independent states of the Caribbean, with the exception of Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados. In the case of Cuba, after the USSR collapsed, the Bolivarian government promoted an extraordinary growth in trade between the two nations, which included the exchange of goods and services, which permitted us to confront one of the harshest periods of our glorious revolutionary history.
The finest ally of the United States and, at the same time the basest and vilest enemy of the people, was the fraudster and simulator Rómulo Betancourt, president-elect of Venezuela when the Revolution triumphed in Cuba in 1959.
He was the principal accomplice of the pirate attacks, acts of terrorism, aggressions against and the blockade of our homeland.
When Our America most needed it, the Bolivarian Revolution finally broke out.
Invited to Caracas by Hugo Chávez, the members of the ALBA committed themselves to lend maximum support to the Haitian people at the saddest moment in the history of that legendary people, who carried out the first victorious social Revolution in world history, when hundreds of thousands of Africans, in rising up and creating in Haiti a republic thousands of miles away from their native lands, undertook one of the most glorious revolutionary actions of this hemisphere. In Haiti, there is African, Indian and white blood; the Republic was born from the concepts of equality, justice and liberty for all human beings.
Ten years ago, at a point when the Caribbean and Central America lost tens of thousands of lives during the tragedy of Hurricane Mitch, the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) was created in Cuba to train Latin American and Caribbean doctors who, one day, would save millions of lives, but especially and above all, would serve as an example in the noble exercise of the medical profession. Together with the Cubans, dozens of young Venezuelans and other Latin American graduates of ELAM will be in Haiti. News has arrived from all corners of the continent of many compañeros who studied at ELAM and now want to collaborate with them in the noble task of saving the lives of children, women and men, young and old.
There will be dozens of field hospitals, rehabilitation centers and hospitals, in which more than 1,000 doctors and students in the final years of medical school from Haiti, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Brazil, Chile and other sister countries will be providing services. We have the honor of already being able to count on a number of American doctors who also studied in ELAM. We are prepared to cooperate with those countries and institutions which wish to participate in these efforts to provide medical services in Haiti.
Venezuela has already contributed tents, medical equipment, medicine and foodstuffs. The Haitian government has given full cooperation and support to this effort to bring health services free of charge to the largest possible number of Haitians. It will be a consolation for everybody in the midst of the greatest tragedy that has taken place in our hemisphere.
Fidel Castro Ruz
February 7, 2010
8:46 p.m.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Year of Resistance: Interview with Eva Golinger
by Cindy Sheehan
Listen to Sheehan's interview with Golinger:
Eva Golinger: Venezuela is a very wealthy country in oil and gas reserves. It's actually one of the largest oil producers in the world. It has over 24% of oil reserves in the entire world. That's a lot for a country of 27 million people. And of course it lies close to the United States. . . . It's only two and a half hours approximately to fly to Miami, and in fact Venezuela's maritime territory borders US territory: it borders the colony of Puerto Rico. So, this is a very strategic place.
Traditionally, there have been governments before Hugo Chávez who were subservient to US interests. In fact, over 40 years after the fall of the last dictatorship in 1958, pretty much the governments here in place were clients of the United States. It was a client state. By the time Chávez came to power in 1998, Venezuela had pretty much privatized most of its industries that had been public industries, including communications, electricity, basic social services, heathcare. And the oil industry was on its way to being privatized and of course it could be privatized and handed over to US corporations. So, Chávez comes to power and he changes all of that. And he actually wins with a huge majority in 1998. . . . The majority of Venezuelans voted for him precisely because they were sick and tired of the old corrupt system that had kept increasing poverty and basically destroying the country and its infrastructure. So this all begins to change when he gets power. . . . New laws are implemented, agrarian reform, redistribution of oil wealth and that of the whole hydrocarbon industry. . . . This begins to affect really powerful interests, not just in Venezuela but outside Venezuela. . . .
Throughout the 20th century, the US fought bitterly the rise of communism in this hemisphere. It has blockaded inhumanely Cuba for over 50 years and tried to isolate it. It installed dictatorships in the rest of the region in the sixties, the seventies, and the eighties in order to prevent the spread of communism. Now here we have a government in the 21st century with all its oil wealth, its tremendous popularity, talking again about implementing an economic system that prioritizes social needs and redistributing the wealth, at the same time maintaining its tremendous oil production and branching out . . . with other countries in the world like China, Russia, and Iran, in the end helping to change the balance of power and to lesson the influence and control of the US empire over the world.
All of this obviously affects tremendously these powerful interests, inside the United States particularly but also around the world, and they use their media power to control and try to demonize the image of President Chávez. It's much easier to try to remove a president from power or encourage regime change in a country if you can say that that head of state that you wanna overthrow is a terrible person, a demon doing awful things, a dictator. That's part of what this campaign against the person of Hugo Chávez in the international media has really been about. Here, I've been living in Caracas for over five years, and I can tell you this is the furthest thing from any kind of dictatorship. It's also not communism, whatsoever. We are on a path to implementing a new sort of social model that we're calling "socialism of the 21st century" but it's really a combination of capitalism and socialism. We're trying to figure out what works best here in Venezuela. . . .
My opinion is that Obama's administration is much more dangerous towards Latin America than Bush's was, because with Bush we didn't have military bases being built right next to Venezuela. There's been a rapid escalation in aggression towards particularly Venezuela but also Cuba. . . . We have the case of the coup in Honduras against President Zelaya. That was a total scheme concocted by Washington, with its allies of course, right-wing economic elite in Honduras and multinationals, and yet they used what they call "smart power" -- Hillary Clinton and Obama's new strategy, as opposed to "soft power" and "hard power" -- to confuse heads of state in the region and the media. They used this discourse of condemning the coup but not pushing for the reinstatement of President Zelaya, all kinds of things, really to buy time, in the process that went on so long that the coup eventually got consolidated, and the US in the end stepped forward as pretty much the only country that recognizes the illegal government in Honduras, funding and supporting it. Now it's all come out. But in the first few months a lot of people were very wary of blaming the Obama administration for any role in that coup in Honduras, which is incredible, because there hasn't been one single coup d'état in Latin America throughout history that hasn't been somehow managed and ordered by Washington. . . .
Eva Golinger is the author of The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela and Bush versus Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela. This interview was broadcast on 10 January 2010. Read Golinger's blog Postcards from the Revolution at <www.chavezcode.com>. Visit the Web site of Cindy Sheehan's Soap Box: <www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com>. The text above is an edited partial transcript of the interview.
URL: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/golinger130110.html
Monday, June 01, 2009
Bolívar y “la Misteriosa Incógnita…” Por Hugo Chavez Frias
1 jun
Ocurre así, exactamente, con el tema de la igualdad. Hagamos un recorrido de casi doscientos años, para constatarlo.
El pensador brasileño Theotonio Dos Santos en su obra Concepto de clases sociales (Ed. El Perro y la Rana), dice: “Tiene que ser parte de la ideología burguesa la representación de la sociedad burguesa como conjunto básico de individuos, que pueden diferenciarse en agregados (…) esta forma de representación expresa exactamente el interés esencial de la burguesía de ocultar el carácter de clase de su sociedad y postular su sociedad como ofreciendo oportunidades iguales a todos los individuos”.
Igualdad de oportunidades, cierto, pero sustentada en una cada vez más creciente desigualdad de poder económico, jurídico y privilegios materiales que reproducen sobremanera la desigualdad de condiciones.
Ciento veinte años antes, Carlos Marx lo decía en la Crítica del programa de Gotha, escrita en 1875: “Paradójicamente, lo que aparece como fin del socialismo es, precisamente, el desarrollo integral de la desigualdad entre los hombres, de la desigualdad de sus aspiraciones y capacidades, de la desigualdad de sus personalidades. Pero esta desigualdad personal no significará ya diferencia de poder económico; no implicará ya desigualdad de derechos o privilegios materiales. Sólo podrá extenderse en un clima de igualdad económica y material”.
Y nuestro Bolívar, cincuenta y seis años antes que Marx, lo señalaba con meridiana claridad desde Angostura, en 1819: “Mi opinión es, legisladores, que el principio fundamental de nuestro sistema depende inmediata y exclusivamente de la igualdad establecida y practicada en Venezuela (…). La naturaleza hace a los hombres desiguales en genio, temperamento, fuerzas y caracteres. Las leyes corrigen esta diferencia porque colocan al individuo en la sociedad para que la educación, la industria, las artes, los servicios, las virtudes, le den una igualdad ficticia, propiamente llamada política y social. Es una inspiración eminentemente benéfica, la reunión de todas las clases en un estado, en que la diversidad se multiplicaba en razón de la propagación de la especie. Por este solo paso se ha arrancado de raíz la cruel discordia. ¡Cuántos celos, rivalidades y odios se han evitado!”.
¡Estas son las razones por las cuales, mientras más estudiamos la historia de las ideas, mientras más profundizamos y comprendemos a los grandes pensadores de y por la humanidad, desde Cristo hasta Fidel, cada día, con mayor fuerza y arraigo, nuestra Revolución es más Bolivariana que nunca!
Cristo he dicho. Y Cristo digo, sin duda.
Era Jesús un verdadero pensador socialista. Y algo más importante, fue un consecuente luchador socialista hasta su último canto: “Todo está consumado”.
De una vieja enciclopedia que me acompaña desde mis días de teniente del Batallón Blindado Bravos de Apure, en aquellos días en que un pequeño grupo de jóvenes oficiales patriotas del Ejército comenzábamos a crear las primeras células del Movimiento Bolivariano, extraigo lo siguiente:
“En tiempo de gran tirantez interna y externa, a la vista de la creciente miseria de los pobres y la máxima concentración de la riqueza en pocas manos, aparecieron los grandes profetas y exhortaron a la reversión de aquellas condiciones.
En el año 765 antes de Cristo, apareció el más antiguo y acaso el más grande de aquellos profetas, Amós, y lanzó en nombre de Jehová su maldición contra los ricos:
‘Quiero enviar a Judá un fuego que aniquilará los palacios de Jerusalén… por ello, porque vendieron al justo por dinero y al pobre por un par de zapatos. Meten la cabeza de los pobres en el barro e impiden el paso de los míseros’ (Amós, 2, 5/7)”.
Y más adelante se puede leer:
“Idénticos tonos hallamos en Oseas y, sobre todo, en Isaías: ¡Ay de aquellos que añaden una casa a otra y un campo a otro, hasta que deja de haber espacio y ellos poseen sólo la región! (Is., 5, 7)”.
Y luego llegó Jesús a condenar a los ricos. He aquí el Sermón de la Montaña:
“Sed bienaventurados vosotros, los pobres, porque vuestro es el reino de Dios. Sed bienaventurados vosotros, los hambrientos, porque seréis hartos. Sed bienaventurados vosotros, los que lloráis, porque reiréis… Pero, por contra, ¡ay de vosotros, los ricos!, porque tenéis lejos vuestro consuelo. ¡Ay de vosotros, los que estáis hartos!, porque pasaréis hambre. ¡Ay de vosotros, los que aquí reís!, porque lloraréis y aullaréis”. (Luc., 6, 20-25).
A ti, compatriota, hombre, mujer, joven, que me lees en estas líneas de domingo, el último día de este mes de mayo; te digo: ¡El que tenga ojos que vea y el que tenga oídos que oiga!
El capitalismo pregona a los cuatro vientos la no existencia de clases ni desigualdad alguna, porque existe una supuesta igualdad de oportunidades que garantiza todos los goces, privilegios y derechos a todas las personas sobre la tierra, cuando sabemos que toda su perversidad se fundamenta precisamente en quebrar todo equilibrio posible entre legalidad y justicia, y aún más, en tiempos de crisis, al caerse las caretas, dejando al descubierto a muchos capitalistas como verdaderos capos: una costosa campaña propagandista ha sido lanzada por todos los medios de comunicación para hacer creer que nuestra Revolución Bolivariana te quitará tu automóvil, tu apartamento, bodega, arepera y cuanto tengas en justicia como propiedad, gracias a tu esfuerzo y trabajo.
Pero lo cierto es que, quienes esto pregonan, son los mismos que han llegado a acaparar, literalmente, lotes de automóviles y a especular descaradamente con la venta y alquileres de inmuebles. Si durante estos últimos diez años estos oligarcas que hacen vida en nuestro país han osado atentar contra el sagrado derecho de nuestro pueblo a la alimentación, a la educación y a la salud; no es de sorprender que por igual atentaran contra el derecho de los venezolanos a tener una propiedad, mueble o inmueble. Mientras nosotros estamos empeñados en arrancar la cruel discordia, como decía Bolívar, los medios al servicio del imperio y del sector oligárquico más corrupto del país la promueven para, precisamente, ocultar sus fechorías.
Es por esta razón que llamo al alerta y vigilancia revolucionaria, aún a aquellos compatriotas que no siendo simpatizantes de nuestra Revolución, padecen como consecuencia de la perversidad desbordada de quienes se jactan de ser sus defensores y representantes. Queda de nuestra parte seguir trabajando en el establecimiento y práctica de la igualdad, alcanzándola bajo el principio aquel: “De cada quien según sus capacidades, a cada quien según sus necesidades”, principio cristiano que hunde sus raíces en el más remoto, pero vivo cristianismo primitivo.
El tiempo, el transcurrir de la historia, ha demostrado que existe un proceso de maduración de los pueblos. Que la madurez política, organizativa e ideológica de ahora, no es la misma de hace diez años; hoy existe, como nunca antes jamás un sentido común popular y venezolano, una solidaridad eterna y una forma de organizarse y de comprender su calle, su parroquia, su barrio, su caserío, su historia.
Los acontecimientos “en pleno desarrollo”, como diría Walter Martínez, demuestran que los gobiernos deben acoplarse siempre a la madurez y altura del pueblo por el que trabajan. El aprendizaje es permanente, y hemos tenidos duros pero valiosos aprendizajes. Venezuela ha construido una historia de dignidad y de lucha, a pesar de tantas adversidades, y los hechos han demostrado el grado de madurez de este pueblo, madurez para gobernar y decidir por el pueblo mismo. ¡Estamos confirmando los poderes creadores que el gran Aquiles Nazoa reconoció en nosotros!
Ha llegado el momento de darle sustancia, fuerza y movimiento a la democracia comunal, la democracia comunera de Kléber Ramírez. La nueva etapa que ahora comienza en Venezuela, desarrollando una estrategia centrada en “producir alimentos, ciencia y dignidad” y fortalecer el dinamismo de la democracia participativa, socialista. Ha llegado la hora en que la comunidad comience su tránsito hacia un ejercicio pleno de poder y responsabilidad política. Tenemos camino andado, falta por caminar, pero ahí vamos, creando, como diría Mészáros en El desafío y la carga del tiempo histórico: “La creación de una sociedad verdaderamente equitativa exige el derrocamiento radical de las jerarquías estructurales explotadoras establecidas durante miles de años”.
Pero el modelo de comuna debe ser nuestro, debe surgir del saber popular, de la esclarecida comprensión de su territorio, de su vínculo con su historia y su nación. De lo que hace que nos llamemos pueblo venezolano.
Dinamizar la estructura de los consejos comunales, todas las mesas técnicas, incrementando su potencia participativa; hacer de la comunidad razón de Estado, ese es el camino. Siempre junto a Simón Rodríguez, a Bolívar.
“Si de nuestra historia no sacamos ninguna lección dinámica, no hay por qué suponer que la encontraremos en otra parte” dice ese gran maestro y bolivariano Augusto Mijares: se trata de concientizar “lo afirmativo venezolano”.
Tenemos en la historia grandes ejemplos que deben servirnos de referencia objetiva. La Comuna de París, la experiencia de las comunas agrarias en China, los comuneros indígenas venezolanos, colombianos y paraguayos, modelos que ofrecen claves para que nosotros hagamos ahora lo nuestro, siendo originales, como sostenía el Maestro socialista de América, Simón Rodríguez, quien por igual proponía una original Toparquía para nuestra América. Pero algo es cierto, y lo dijo Lenin en un breve artículo llamado En memoria de la Comuna: “La causa de la Comuna es la causa de la revolución social, es la causa de la completa emancipación política y económica de los trabajadores, es la causa del proletariado mundial. Y en este sentido es inmortal”.
Comuneras y Comuneros bolivarianos y socialistas: continuemos despejando “La Misteriosa Incógnita…”.
Con Cristo, con Bolívar, con Fidel:
¡Venceremos!
- Chilenos reciben al comandate Chavez en Santiago de Chile (Vea Video a los 3.01 min)
- La prensa española y sus vergüenzas
- Gobierno Boliviano teme enfrentarse a cívicos cruceños - ayudados por su “gran” prensa y sus unionistas, hacen y deshacen en Santa Cruz
- Britney no podra conducir mas con sus hijos
- saludos, la vida en los madriles, con sus mas y sus menos!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Venezuela: Not What You Think
by Robin Hahnel;
In the case of Hugo Chavez and the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution, the mainstream media and politicians in the United States have elevated their game of demonizing all who oppose US foreign policy and business interests to a higher level of absurdity than usual. According to the mainstream media, the only newsworthy stories in Venezuela are one sided diatribes lifted from the discredited, opposition-owned media in Venezuela. For example, we read about Chavez shutting down opposition TV stations. We hear that Chavez is rewriting the Venezuelan Constitution so he can be President for life. Chavez is a dictator, QED.
All the badly outgunned, alternative media in the US can do is try its best to rebut the bias in the storylines defined by the mainstream media. The tiny fraction of Americans who visit the alternative media discover that Chavez has submitted a proposal to change the Venezuelan Constitution in a number of ways, one of which is to eliminate term limits on the office of President. All changes will first have to be approved by the democratically elected Venezuelan National Assembly, and then also approved in a popular referendum before they become law. Only Americans who search out the alternative media discover that Hugo Chavez was elected President by a comfortable margin in 1998, survived an opposition-sponsored recall in 2004, and most recently was re-elected in December 2006 with more than 60% of the vote. International observers certified all three elections as fair and square. George Bush, on the other hand, was selected President by a partisan Supreme Court after losing the popular vote in 2000, and won re-election only because enough black voters in Ohio were disenfranchised by a partisan Republican official to keep the Buckeye State in the Republican column in 2004. Few observers believe Bush could survive a recall election today, but of course this basic element of democratic rule is not permitted by the US Constitution. Nonetheless, the only storyline ninety-nine percent of Americans hear remains: Hugo Chavez is a dictator and George Bush is the democratically elected leader of the free world.
Similarly, only the small fraction of Americans who access the alternative media learn that RCTV was not shut down because it campaigns openly against the government -- which it has for nine years. Instead, when its license came up for renewal, its application was denied because it had violated 200 conditions of its licensing agreement -- many violations having to do with its role in helping to organize a military coup that nearly toppled the duly elected President of the country. Moreover, the station continues to broadcast on a cable network, and the opposition in Venezuela still broadcasts on more major TV channels than there are channels sympathetic to the government. In stark contrast, the alternative media in the US cannot be viewed on any major channel. Consequently the vast majority of Americans receive all their news from a mainstream media which never questions whether the US has any right to dominate other nations, but only debates the wisdom of alternative strategies for doing so, and would never dream of questioning the desirability of an economic system dominated by their corporate owners. Nevertheless the storyline most Americans hear remains: Freedom of the press is dead in totalitarian Venezuela, but alive and well in the democratic United States.
It is important to distinguish between whether mainstream coverage of issues like amendments to the constitution and the TV license is biased, whether there are grounds for reproaching the Venezuelan government, and whether the policies are wise. Clearly the mainstream media has failed to report relevant facts and their coverage has been grossly unfair. From what I know, the procedure that led to non-renewal of the TV license was unobjectionable, and the proposed constitutional amendment will be decided by a thoroughly democratic process. So while there are ample grounds for reproaching mainstream media coverage in the US, as far as I can see there are no grounds for reproaching the Venezuelan government in either case. However, this does not mean the policies are necessarily wise. Those in Venezuela who argue that the revolutionary government would be hammered by the imperial press in any case are surely correct. On the other hand, that does not mean either initiative is good policy, independent of the news coverage it receives. Moreover, giving one's enemies an easy chance to focus on a negative storyline seems unwise -- unless the policy has important benefits.
Unfortunately, the fact that only a tiny fraction of the American public are ever exposed to balanced coverage of the Venezuelan stories defined by our mainstream media is only one problem. A larger problem is that practically nobody in the United States ever hears anything about truly newsworthy stories in Venezuela. Stories about exciting new political and economic initiatives that are dramatically reducing poverty and challenging popular myths about the abilities of ordinary people to make good political and economic decisions for themselves go virtually uncovered in the United States.1
I speak fluent Spanish, have lived and worked in Latin America on two occasions, and have traveled extensively in Latin America for over forty years. One of the few Latin American countries I had never visited before a year ago was Venezuela. I have now made two trips to Venezuela in the past nine months at the invitation of the Centro Internacional Miranda. I was in Caracas for one week in October 2006 -- before the December 2006 presidential elections that provided Chavez with a popular mandate to pursue a more aggressive socialist agenda. During that visit I met with officials in the Planning Ministry and faculty and students in the Planning Ministry school. I had long discussions with people at the Miranda Center working on projects in critical pedagogy, participatory budgeting, new models of production, human development through popular participation, new forms of political participation, and new models of socialism for the twenty-first century. I also visited health clinics, subsidized food distribution centers, community radio stations, and adult education centers in poor neighborhoods in Caracas. During a two-week visit in July 2007 I visited the rural state of Lara as well as Caracas. In Caracas I participated in numerous seminars and meetings at the Miranda Center, attended an adult education class at the new Bolivarian University, met again with officials in the Planning Ministry and students in the Planning Ministry school, met with officials in the new Ministry for the Communal Economy, and visited with workers in a "recuperated" factory and activists in a "nucleus of endogenous development." In Lara I attended meetings of three rural communal councils, a meeting of spokespersons from ten other rural communal councils, a meeting of spokespersons from all the communal councils in the town of Carora, and talked with citizen directors of a communal bank. I also met with the mayors of Carora (state of Lara) and Libertador (state of Carabobo) who pioneered participatory budgeting initiatives in their municipalities. What follows is an account of some stories I believe many Americans would find truly newsworthy.
Economic Progress
Like most Latin American economies, the Venezuelan economy deteriorated during the 1980s and most of the 1990s. From 1998 to 2003 real per capita GDP continued to stagnate while the Chavez government survived two general strikes by the largest Venezuelan business association, a military coup, and finally a devastating two month strike by the state owned oil company. However, after Chavez survived the opposition sponsored recall election, annual economic growth was 18.3% in 2004, 10.3% in 2005, and 10.3% in 2006, and the unemployment rate fell from 18.4 % in June 2003 to 8.3% in June 2007. Moreover, most of the growth was in the non-oil sectors of the economy, as the oil sector barely grew during 2005 and 2006. While this impressive growth would not have been possible without the rise in international oil prices, it also would not have been possible had the Chavez government not ignored the warnings of neoliberal critics and pursued aggressive expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.
At the height of the oil strike the poverty rate rose to 55.1% of households and a startling 62.1% of the population. However, by the end of 2006 the poverty rate had declined dramatically to 30.6% of households and 36.3% of the population, which compares favorably with a pre-Chavez rate of poverty in 1997 for households of 55.6% and for individuals of 60.9%. While much of this decrease in poverty was due to strong economic growth, it was also due to a dramatic increase in social spending by the Chavez government. Social spending per person by the central government increased by an average of 19% per year from 1998 to 2007. However, this does not include social spending by the state-owned oil company. If social spending by PDVSA is included, there was an increase of 35% per person per year since 1998. The most dramatic increase in social spending was in the area of health care. In 1998 there were over 14,000 Venezuelans for each primary healthcare physician, and few physicians worked in rural or poor urban areas. By 2007 there was one primary healthcare physician for every 1,300 Venezuelans, and many of the new physicians were working in clinics in rural areas and poor barrios that had never had physicians before.2 There are also now 16,000 stores in poor areas throughout the country selling staples at a 30% discount on average.
Building the Social Economy
Reforms First: For eight years the Chavez government went out of its way not to threaten the private sector. Despite relentless hostility and numerous provocations from the Venezuelan business association and the privately owned media, there were few nationalizations and the state sector did not grow appreciably. While the government did launch a serious land reform, the program proceeded more cautiously than government rhetoric and landowner complaints would lead one to expect. Instead, Chavez concentrated on redirecting profits from the state owned oil company to social programs to benefit the poor, and financing development of what the government called the "social economy." In addition to increasing spending dramatically on healthcare and food subsidies, the government launched a massive program of adult education. Millions of poor Venezuelans have now overcome illiteracy, and hundreds of thousands have received primary diplomas and secondary degrees studying in store-front schools named Mision Robinson I (literacy), Mision Robinson II (primary), and Mision Rivas (secondary).
But none of this addressed the high rate of unemployment and the most pressing economic needs of those who had voted Chavez into office. The business sector was hostile to the Chavez government from the outset and oscillated between economic sabotage and capital flight. So the private sector could not be relied on to increase investment, production, and employment. Nor was extensive nationalization an attractive option because Chavez wanted to avoid provoking the business community unnecessarily, and there was a shortage of competent officials who were also politically trustworthy to run more state enterprises. Moreover, neither Chavez nor his closest associates were enamored of the "state socialist" model. So increasing employment by expanding the state sector was also not seen as a desirable option. Determined not to renege on electoral promises to better economic conditions for his supporters as many populists in Latin America have in the past, Chavez launched a massive program to create worker-owned cooperatives in both rural and urban areas.
Cooperatives: New worker-owned cooperatives not only provided much needed jobs producing much needed basic goods and services, they also featured what was soon to become a hallmark of Bolivarian socialism -- popular participation at the grassroots level. When Chavez was first elected President in 1998, there were fewer than 800 legally registered cooperatives in Venezuela with roughly 20,000 members. In mid-2006 the National Superintendence of Cooperatives (SUNACOOP) reported that it had registered over 100,000 co-ops with over 1.5 million members.3 Generous amounts of oil revenues continue to provide start-up loans for thousands of new cooperatives every month, and the Ministry for the Communal Economy continues to spearhead a massive educational program for new cooperative members. However, the ministry provides more than technical assistance regarding technology, accounting, finance, business management, and marketing. It also teaches participants about cooperative principles, economic justice, and social responsibility.
Participatory Budgeting: Even before the December 2006 referendum provided Chavez with a popular mandate to deepen the social revolution, the government had moved ahead to add participatory budgeting and local economic development initiatives called "nuclei of endogenous development" to the educational Misiones, subsidized food stores, and worker cooperatives comprising the social economy. Three international experts on participatory budgeting in other countries were part of the Miranda Center work team during my visit in July. Richard Franke (USA) shared his research on the history of participatory budgeting in Kerala India, and Marcos Arruda (Brazil) and Daniel Schugurensky (Canada) shared their research on participatory budgeting in Brazil with those developing the program in Venezuela. What was clear to all of us was that while the practice of participatory budgeting may be more advanced in Kerala and Brazil where decades of experience have helped people learn how to deal with important practical problems like how to combine technical expertise about public work projects with popular determination about priorities, the prospects for participatory budgeting in Venezuela are much greater.
A hostile national government in India limits how far the left united front government in the state of Kerala can take the program there. And unfortunately the Lula government in Brazil has done little to build other elements of a "solidarity economy" to compliment participatory budgeting, and even damaged the reputation of participatory budgeting by using it to administer austerity measures. In Venezuela, on the other hand, the President and Congress are now fully supportive of participatory budgeting and busy building complementary components of a full-scale "social economy." In Venezuela, participatory budgeting is viewed by many not merely as a better way to make decisions about local public goods, but as part of a process to democratize all aspects of economic life. Not surprisingly some local officials have resisted participatory budgeting because it challenges their traditional powers and privileges. Others, like the mayors of Carora and Libertador who turned all municipal revenues over to neighborhood assemblies to use as they saw fit, have embraced the program as well as the changes it brings to the role of mayor.
Communal Councils: After the referendum in December 2006, a major campaign to organize and empower communal councils was launched as a new step toward building the social economy. The Ministry of Participation and Social Development, MINPADES, worked to establish the initial components of the social economy. In 2004 the Ministry for the Popular Economy, MINEP, was created to help build new components of the social economy. When the government decided to create communal councils in every neighborhood, MINEP was strengthened and renamed the Ministry for the Communal Economy, MINEC. After lengthy debate, it was decided that communal councils should be comprised of twenty to fifty households in rural areas and two-hundred to four-hundred households in urban areas. Since communal councils are the building blocks of a whole new political structure in Venezuela, it may seem odd that sometimes they are comprised of fewer than fifty families in rural areas. The small size was chosen to ensure that every family, even in rural areas where small villages are often distant from one another, would have a real chance to participate in the most fundamental political decisions that affect them.
All the rural communal councils we visited in the state of Lara had decided that housing was a high priority. Each went through the difficult process of deciding which families would get new houses since there was not enough to provide new houses for all. We asked the members what criteria they used. We asked about nepotism. We asked what happened to families who were disappointed and disagreed with the decisions. While answers varied, the major criterion taken into consideration was need -- the state of a family's existing housing and the number of children. While all tried to reach consensus, in some of the communal councils votes were taken, and in some cases those who were disappointed threatened to leave. A major difference between councils was how far they stretched their housing budget by providing materials locally, reducing the number of rooms, or providing labor. In one case, a council member was a builder himself who was able to oversee much of the building by community members, thereby stretching the housing budget the farthest. The builder did not receive one of the new houses because, we were told, his house was predictably in decent repair. He said he was not disappointed because he was confident he would receive a new house next year, or the following, after others whose houses were in worse repair got theirs. In another council the disappointed family who had threatened to leave was talked out of it, in part because they thought they had a good chance of getting a house the following year.
Other projects varied a great deal. One communal council built a facility to raise chickens -- against the advice of a government agronomist who thought they would be better off upgrading their facilities for goat herding. We asked who would work in the new communal chicken farm, how they would be paid, and how profits would be shared. It was clear from their answers that all of that remained to be thought through, although everyone agreed that not all would be expected to work in the communal chicken business since some had paying jobs outside the community that nobody expected them to give up. Several councils had mud roads paved over so people would be able to get out to a main road during the rainy season. One built a health clinic. Both these projects required coordination with outside agencies. Council spokespeople lobbied the municipality to pave more of their mud roads and only used communal council funds to pay for the remainder. The Ministry of Health had to be consulted about staffing the clinic. One communal council decided to build a community building for meetings and festivals.
The meetings we attended were well attended -- with representation from over half of the households. That was frequently not the case initially, as facilitators -- often municipal employees who had previously worked in educational Misiones -- had to help communities organize a second meeting after attendance was poor at the first meeting. Choosing more convenient meeting times, passing out more flyers, and knocking on more doors was often necessary, but making clear residents would forego significant funds unless they created a communal council eventually led to functioning communal councils in every community in the municipality. Every communal council had elected a vocero, or spokesperson, and a suplente, or substitute spokesperson, for each theme decided by the communal assembly (for example, health, recreation, electricity, etc.). Of the roughly two hundred spokespersons we met in rural communal councils and urban communal councils in the town of Carora, a disproportionate number were poor women of color with several children. Most of them had only recently become politically active. Almost all of them were strongly Chavista. A disproportionate number of facilitators in the municipality were younger women from working-class families who had some college education, who were also strongly pro-Chavez. One spokesperson we interviewed extensively was a middle-aged white man who appeared to be the wealthiest person in his community and was active in an opposition political party. His neighbors were fully aware of his political allegiance, which few of them shared, but expressed complete trust in his integrity and described him as the person in the community who was best at getting things done. For his part, he expressed strong support for participatory budgeting and communal councils for which he credited Chavez and the Chavista mayor of Carora. But he said he had no intention of quitting his opposition political party or becoming a Chavista himself.
Activists, Politicos, and Experts: While it is important to focus on what is happening on the ground, and what activists in different parts of the social economy are thinking, one should not ignore the influence of politicians and ministries that affect the social economy. More than anyone else, of course, Chavez has the greatest effect on the political agenda in Venezuela and especially on initiatives in the social sector. My impression from his speeches, and from what senior fellows at the Miranda Center who are familiar with his thinking have told me, is that Chavez is both the leader of the entire Chavista movement, but also the leader of its radical wing. Over the past nine years Chavez has frequently led the charge to deepen the process of social change -- often through new initiatives in the social economy. In this respect the role played by Chavez has been similar to the role Mao played in China during the 1950s and 1960s when he was both the head of government and the party, but also the leader of the left-wing faction within the CCP.4 What we might call the "Chavista camp" is an amalgam of small left parties and groups that initially included some small centrist and center-left parties as well -- all predating his election -- and a much larger diverse group of activists politicized by different campaigns and programs launched by his government. Although there is now an attempt underway to create a unified Venezuelan socialist party comprised of all who typically refer to themselves simply as "Chavistas," one of the defining features of the last nine years has been the absence of a unified socialist political party driving the political process -- for better or worse.5
While somewhat arbitrary and imprecise, it is useful to distinguish between two different tendencies within this diverse and loosely knit "Chavista" camp. The vision of the more moderate tendency includes left-Keynesian policies combined with further welfare reforms, but does not extend beyond a market system with a "mixture" of private and public enterprise. Since one of the two opposition parties representing the oligarchy, Accion Democratica, is officially a social democratic party and member of the Socialist (formerly Second) International, one has to be careful when using the term "social democrat" in Venezuela. But elsewhere this moderate tendency within the Chavista camp would be described as solidly social democratic, and mostly unmarred -- at least so far -- by retrogressive "third wave," or "New Democrat" tendencies. These moderates within the Chavista camp are generally less optimistic than those in the more radical tendency about the ability of ordinary Venezuelans to make good decisions for themselves, and therefore tend to be more skeptical about how well what we might call "power to the people" as opposed to "serve the people" initiatives will work.
The guiding vision of the more radical tendency in the Chavista camp reaches far beyond a mixed economy guided by left-Keynesian policies and humanized by a substantial welfare state. Most in the radical tendency describe what they are part of as the "Bolivarian Revolution," and call their guiding vision "twenty-first century socialism." Because these terms are unique to Venezuela, they offer little help to those of us outside trying to understand what they mean.6 Those in the radical tendency see what is happening as a revolution because they see it as a profound social transformation and dramatic change in power relations among social groups. They also believe this revolutionary transformation should continue until popular self-rule has been achieved in every area of social life. These "Bolivarian revolutionaries" call their vision "socialist," but they do not emulate any models of socialism developed by those who called their societies socialist in the twentieth century. For example, while they see Cuba as their closest ally, pay homage to Cuba for its lonely but steadfast opposition to US imperialism for half a century, and admire all that Cuban socialism has achieved for the Cuban people, they do not see Cuba, much less any other "socialist" country, as the model of socialism they aspire to. In particular, they make clear that their vision of a twenty-first century socialist economy is quite different from the Cuban economic system and the economic systems in all other countries that call or called themselves socialist. Instead, Bolivarian revolutionaries are socialist in the sense that they are committed to achieving what they believe those who have called themselves socialist dating back to the nineteenth century have all aspired to -- an economy qualitatively distinct from capitalism, where production is for use not profit, and where workers and consumers plan their own activities democratically and equitably.
One is tempted to describe these radicals in the Chavista camp as libertarian socialists because of their insistence on the centrality of worker and community self-management, and their rejection of any models of socialism where it is absent. But this would be misleading in important respects. Few Bolivarian Revolutionaries seem to trace their intellectual origins to libertarian socialism. Nor do many of them share the libertarian socialist critique of Marxism-Leninism. While Bolivarian Revolutionaries do not believe any who called themselves socialist in the twentieth century succeeded in achieving socialism as they envision it, most of them appear to believe it was the intent of socialists in Marxist-Leninist parties who achieved state power to do so, even if they failed to find the means, or got lost along the way. They also have a different perspective on reforms than many twentieth-century libertarian socialists. They see their Bolivarian Revolution as an evolutionary revolution -- feeling its way toward new social relations and new human values -- rather than as an abrupt reversal of class rule derived from a change in control over the means of production. As best I can tell, most Bolivarian revolutionaries also regard reforms in what is still predominantly a capitalist economy as positive steps in the revolutionary process. Libertarian socialists have often been inclined to view reforms within capitalism negatively, as distractions deployed by the enemies of "real" social change to forestall revolutionary momentum.
My ability to gauge the thinking of "experts" working in ministries involved with the social economy is limited. It is based on a few conversations I was able to have with officials in the Planning Ministry and the Ministry for the Communal Economy, on reactions to presentations I made at both ministries, and on my review of the curriculum students are studying at the Planning Ministry school. I was constantly surprised and invariably pleased by what these "experts" were thinking. At the beginning of my first visit, at the risk of never being invited back, I decided to take advantage of my opportunity to address the vice ministers, faculty, and first class of students at the Planning Ministry school to challenge the traditional conception of socialist planning. I began my talk by saying that if they thought their job was to make better and better plans, I thought they were wasting their time at best, and having a negative effect at worst. After an embarrassed silence, I went on to say that instead I thought the job of people working in the Venezuelan Planning Ministry was to help workers in cooperatives and consumers in communal councils and assemblies plan how to cooperate more effectively among themselves. To my surprise my audience agreed. Moreover, they said they understood this meant they rejected the foundation underlying previous conceptions of socialist planning, and had, in effect, accepted a new prime directive: "Do not plan for others, facilitate planning by others." Since I was invited back, I have had several opportunities to confirm that people at the Planning Ministry were not merely humoring a rude foreigner during my first visit. I have also studied the curriculum and read the texts being used to train those who will soon be key personnel in the Planning Ministry. It is completely different from standard curricula on national planning and reflects the perspective of "facilitator" rather than "plan maker."
At the new Ministry for the Communal Economy, the people I met seemed equally clear about what their job was. They are busy creating the basic elements of a social economy -- self-managed worker cooperatives, communal councils, and communal assemblies. They are busy teaching the elected leaders of these cooperatives, councils, and assemblies that they must work with one another on the basis of mutual respect and solidarity rather than treat one another as antagonists in commercial exchanges. And finally, they are trying to help cooperatives, councils, and assemblies find practical ways to plan their interrelated activities fairly and efficiently among themselves so the market system can be replaced within the social economy. The fact that nobody before has ever succeeded in helping large numbers of autonomous groups of workers and consumers plan their joint activities democratically, equitably, and efficiently themselves does not seem to daunt those I met at MINEC. They are sceptical of formulaic proposals and believe answers for how best to do this will emerge from trial and error over time. But they seem convinced it can and will be done.
A sum bigger than its parts: At present the social economy -- made up of educational Misiones, healthcare clinics, subsidized food stores, worker cooperatives, nuclei of endogenous development, participatory budgeting, communal councils, and assemblies of communal councils -- is the most rapidly growing sector of the Venezuelan economy and is the driving force behind the Bolivarian vision of twenty-first century socialism. Its typical promoter in policy circles is a new breed of left intellectuals thoroughly convinced that ordinary people can make their own economic decisions and determined to devise means to help them do so. Its typical face is a newly empowered, poor mother of color -- and make no mistake, she is a force to be reckoned with! It is in the social economy, not the state sector, that the future of Venezuelan socialism lies. The state sector is in many ways disappointing. Attempts to promote worker participation in state enterprises have been largely unsuccessful. There have been no serious attempts to plan within the state sector, as state-appointed managers are expected to keep their individual enterprises out of the red -- both economically and politically! What one must hope for in Venezuela is that, as the new social economy deepens and grows, its values and institutions will eventually absorb not only the private sector but the state sector as well.
What I found particularly impressive was how clear Venezuelan revolutionaries are for the most part about how they want their social economy to function, and why it must differ from both a market system and the kind of bureaucratic planning common in twentieth-century socialist economies. They have correctly identified the Achilles' heel of centralized planning -- failure to allow for self-management. Every component of the new social economy is self-consciously designed to give "direct producers" and consumers control over the economic decisions that affect them. There are no bureaucrats to tell workers in their cooperatives what to produce and how to produce it. There are no politicians to tell residents of barrios what local public goods to prioritize in the participatory budgeting process. The families in the new communal councils discuss and decide on their own spending priorities in open meetings, and spokespeople from communal councils decide on municipal spending priorities in communal assemblies. Communal banks, whose officers are members of the communal councils that the banks serves, allow communities to make their own decisions about who among them most deserve loans and can make best use of available funds. And nuclei of endogenous development are designed to organize local resources to meet local needs through local initiatives in ways that devotees of community-based economics in the developed capitalist world can only fantasize about.
But those building the social economy in Venezuela also reject the anti-social effects of commercial relations inherent in the market system. From the very beginning, those working with the new cooperatives worried that market forces lead worker cooperatives to prioritize their narrow self-interest at the expense of community and social interests. MINEP training programs for new members emphasized that cooperative values include serving the social interest. The decision to encourage cooperatives to join nuclei of endogenous development was intended to build community ties, involve cooperatives in local planning initiatives, and help cooperatives see themselves as part of a larger community. The vision for the social economy is clearly one where producers in worker councils, and consumers in communal councils, and communal assemblies plan their own activities and coordinate their interrelations among themselves equitably.
In his Alo Presidente program on September 14, 2003 devoted to the social economy, Chavez emphasized: "The social economy bases its logic on the human being," and its purpose is "the construction of the new man, of the new woman, or the new society." Popular participation, equitable cooperation, and solidarity -- the defining features of the social economy -- also permeate the new Bolivarian Constitution. Article 299 emphasizes the need to ensure "overall human development." Article 102 calls for "developing the creative potential of every human being." Article 62 declares that participation by people is "the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective," and calls for democratic planning and participatory budgeting at all levels of society. Article 70 refers to "self-management, co-management, and cooperatives in all forms" as examples of "forms of association guided by the values of mutual cooperation and solidarity."
Socialism for the Twenty-First Century
I was invited to work with the Miranda Center and speak at both the Ministry of Planning and the Ministry for the Communal Economy primarily because my chief research interest is how to make economic planning more participatory. As traditionally studied this subject has two subfields: Most researchers focus their attention on how to broaden and deepen participation of members within a worker council or cooperative, or how to facilitate participation of consumers within a consumer or communal council. A smaller group of us focus our main attention on how production and consumption units that are internally self-managed can coordinate their interrelated activities among themselves fairly and efficiently while preserving their autonomy. A unique feature of a theoretical model of a participatory economy7 I helped design is a "participatory planning" procedure which solves this problem without resort to either markets or a planning bureaucracy. The participatory planning procedure is designed to give worker and consumer councils autonomy of action while helping them discover and commit to an equitable and efficient division of labor among themselves -- with as little time wasted in discussion and meeting as possible. To what extent my research in this area proves useful to those building the social economy in Venezuela remains to be seen.
In my opinion, all the essentials for a truly participatory, social economy are already in place in Venezuela -- worker cooperatives, communal councils and assemblies, and participatory budgeting. A strong political campaign encouraging popular participation, economic justice, and solidarity is in full swing. And the search for practical ways for worker cooperatives, communal councils, and communal assemblies to coordinate their interrelated activities themselves -- democratically, fairly, and efficiently -- is on. From what I saw during my visit, a great deal is being discovered about how to coordinate effectively with other units in the social economy by those who are making participation within worker cooperatives and communal councils a reality. From what I heard, most involved in developing the social economy in Venezuela understand that traditional solutions to the coordination problem should be studied as negative, not positive, examples to learn from. And from what I experienced, those involved on both the grassroots and ministerial levels in the first, great social experiment of the twenty-first century have open minds about how best to coordinate semi-autonomous groups in their social economy, and are asking all of the right questions about the pros and cons of different options.
There is no guarantee that all of this positive momentum will succeed, and one does not have to look hard to find reason for concern. In the US, the foreign policy establishment, which includes the leadership of the Democratic Party, remains adamantly opposed to the Venezuelan alternative to neoliberalism. Prior to the rise of Chavez, socialist political parties were not as strong in Venezuela as in some other Latin American countries, and therefore socialist ideology is still quite new to most Venezuelans. The hostility of the oligarchy and opposition parties has not diminished, and it is possible that disagreements between the moderate and radical wings of the Chavista movement will create dangerous political moments in the next few years. And finally, while much of what I saw and described above is extremely encouraging, the process of building the social economy has been very uneven. While millions of Venezuelans have been deeply affected and undergone a profound political transformation, there are still millions who remain passive even if they have benefited materially from a government-sponsored program. Socialism is by no means yet secured in Venezuela, and "all the right moves" is a lot to ask for. But what is happening in Venezuela should make us all more confident than ever that "a better world is possible," and millions of people in Venezuela are busy building it now.
1 I intend no criticism of alternative media coverage of Venezuela. For the most part, the alternative media does the best it can given the restrictive conditions under which it operates. In particular venezuelanalysis.com provides high-quality, professional coverage of Venezuela on a regular basis.
2 For an informative report on the new neighborhood clinics where healthcare and medicines are free and the emphasis is on preventative medicine, see a three-part series by Rebecca Trotzky Sirr on the Upside Down World web site: upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/852/1/.
3 For a description of the cooperative sector in Venezuela, see Betsy Bowman and Rob Stone, "Venezuela's Cooperative Revolution," Dollars & Sense, No. 266, July/August 2006, Camila Pineiro-Harnecker in MRZine, mrzine.monthlyreview.org/harnecker051205.html, and articles by C. Pineiro-Harnecker, S. Wagner, and F. Perez-Marti at venezuelanalysis.com. For an excellent account of the role the "social sector" played prior to 2005, see Michael Lebowitz, Build It Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century, Monthly Review Press, 2006, Chapters 5, 6, and 7.
4 I am not likening Chavez to Mao in any other way, and certainly not suggesting that Chavez is a "Maoist."
5 A discussion of the pros and cons of attempting to organize a unified socialist party is beyond the scope of this essay. The initial local meetings of the five million Venezuelans who signed up to join the new party were beginning during my visit in July.
6 On the other hand, because the terms are new and unique to Venezuela, they do help us avoid the mistake of thinking that the process and associated vision can be neatly pigeon-holed into familiar leftist categories from the past -- which they cannot.
7 Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel, The Political Economy of Participatory Economics (Princeton University Press, 1991), and Robin Hahnel, Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation (Routledge, 2005).
Robin Hahnel is a Professor of Economics at American University.


