Venezuela Speaks!

Voices from the Grassroots

Michael Fox, Carlos Martinez, JoJo Farrell

• Publisher: PM Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781604862942
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

For the last decade, Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution" has captured international attention. Poverty, inequality, and unemployment have all dropped, while health, education, and living standards have seen a commensurate rise. The international mainstream media has focused predominantly on Venezuela's controversial leader, President Hugo Chavez, who has routinely been in the headlines. But without the active participation of large and diverse sectors of society, Chavez's moment on the scene would have ended long ago.

Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots is a collection of interviews with activists and participants from across Venezuela's social movements. From community media to land reform; cooperatives to communal councils, from the labor movement to the Afro-Venezuelan network, Venezuela Speaks! sheds light on the complex realities within the Bolivarian Revolution. These interviews offer a compelling oral history of Venezuela's democratic revolution, from the bottom up.

Endnotes

Prologue

[1] For more detailed accounts of this transition, see, for example, William I. Robinson, Latin America and Global Capitalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 1-50 and Robert Brenner, The Boom and the Bubble (London: Verso Books, 2002), 16-93.

[2] The International Monetary Fund (IMF) did this by requiring borrowers to implement so-called “structural adjustment programs,” which meant privatizing state-owned enterprises, cutting back on social spending, eliminating environmental and workplace regulations, and opening their economies to “free trade” by reducing tariffs and subsidies. The IMF represented a “creditor’s cartel” because private banks would not lend to governments unless they had already signed an agreement with the IMF.

[3] World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001, 51.

[4] Mark Weisbrot and David Rosnick, “Another Lost Decade? Latin America’s Growth Failure Continues into the Twenty-First Century” (Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC, 2003), http://www.cepr.net/index.php/publications/reports/another-lost-decade-latin-americasgrowth-failure-continues-into-the-21st-century/.

[5] For a review of these social movements in Latin America, see Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E. Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker, Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-first Century: Resistance, Power, and Democracy (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2008).

[6] Patronage-clientelism refers to the ages-old practice where politicians use government resources such as jobs or material benefits to favor their own supporters against political opponents. Personalism refers to the tendency among citizens and political leaders to place greater importance on loyalty to individual politicians instead of loyalty to a particular political program. For a discussion of these and other problems, see Gregory Wilpert, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power: The History and Policies of the Chávez Government (London: Verso Books, 2007).

Introduction

[1] Marta Harnecker has contributed greatly to developing the theoretical concepts of participatory democracy and popular power. Marta Harnecker, trans. Coral Wynter and Federico Fuentes, “Popular Power in Latin America – Inventing In Order to Not Make Errors”(Closing lecture given at the XXVI Gallega Week of Philosophy, Pontevedra, April 17, 2009), Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, July 2009, http://links.org.au/node/1136.

[2] Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007).

Introductory History

[1] Early Spanish conquistadores were drawn there by the grandiose tales of the golden treasures of El Dorado hidden deep in the Venezuelan Amazon. In the 20th century, reports of vast oil deposits around the Lake Maracaibo enticed a new generation of treasure hunters. The quadrupling of the price of oil in 1973 provoked what came to be known as the oil shock in the industrialized countries of the North. While this produced fears of economic downfall for those countries, in Venezuela it created what has been referred to as a “petroleum euphoria.” In that same year, Carlos Andrés Pérez won the presidential elections with a large margin, campaigning as el hombre con energía (the man with energy), promising that he could now magically bring Venezuela into the future with oil. Fernando Coronil, The Magical State: Nature, Money, and Modernity in Venezuela (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press 1997), 237-238.

[2]Simón Bolívar was born on July 24th, 1783.

[3] As of late 2006, slightly more than 2 percent of the Venezuelan population of 26 million was indigenous. “There are some 28 different indigenous groups in Venezuela, but only four of those groups, the Wayúu, Warao, Pemón, and Añu, have populations in excess of 10,000 people.” Statistics, University of Maryland, Minorities at Risk (MAR) Assessment for Indigenous Peoples in Venezuela, December 31, 2006. http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/ assessment.asp?groupId=10102.

[4] “Cumbe is the name of the liberated spaces created by the cimarrones, or liberated slaves,” Luis Perdomo, Chapter 11.

[5] John Lynch, Simón Bolívar: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 76.

[6] Gregory Wilpert, Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (London: Verso Books, 2007), 10.

[7] As in two other highly US-influenced Caribbean countries, Puerto Rico and Cuba, the national sport in Venezuela is baseball, not soccer. Even Hugo Chávez jokes about how he tried out for the New York Yankees as a young man, but didn’t make the cut.

[8] The first democratic transfer of power from one party to another in Venezuelan history didn’t take place until 1968, and even then it was under the Acción Democrática– Copei power-sharing Punto Fijo pact.

[9] Wilpert, 10.

[10]There have been five republics in Venezuelan history. Venezuela’s Fourth Republic began shortly after the dissolution of Gran Colombia in 1831 and lasted until President Chávez came to power in 1999. President Chávez’ political party, which helped him to win the 1998 presidential elections, was called Movimiento Quinta República (MVR – Movement for the Fifth Republic). Despite the fact that the Fourth Republic lasted for more than 150 years, when most Chávez supporters now use the term “Fourth Republic,” they are generally referring to the forty-year period immediately preceding Chávez’ rise to power beginning with the Punto Fijo Pact.

[11] Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 234.

[12] Wilpert, 11.

[13] Wilpert, 13.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Chapter 15.

[16] Caracazo – Caracas+azo, the ending “azo” in Spanish means beating or hit. Venezuelans typically name their uprisings like this, i.e. Barcelonazo, Carupanazo, Porteñazo. Sacudón means “the big riot” or “the big loot.”

[17] Venezuela’s has an indigenous population of roughly 500,000. Chesa Boudin, Gabriel González, and Wilmer Rumbos, Venezuelan Revolution: 100 Questions—100 Answers (New York, NY: Thunder Mountain Press, 2006), 74.

[18] This power was granted to two presidents before Chávez. And the National Assembly granted it again to Chávez for eighteen months beginning in January 2007, during which time he decreed twenty-six laws.

[19] Pedro Carmona – the President of the Venezuelan Chamber of Commerce, Fedecameras, who assumed the Venezuelan presidency during Chávez’ absence. President Chávez calls him, Pedro “the brief.”

[20] Venezuela produces between 3- 3.5 million barrels of petroleum per day, roughly half of which is sold to the United States. Production during the lockout was next to nothing.

[21] Venezuela’s social missions are almost all named after Venezuelan “founding fathers” or important moments, events, or people in Venezuela’s revolutionary history.

[22] As of January 2009, there were 3, 105 Barrio Adentro I basic medical centers functioning throughout the country, and a total of 476 Central Diagnostic Centers (CDI), where more in-depth diagnosis and treatment is conducted. Tamara Pearson, “Venezuela. Launches 732 New Public Health Works For 2009,” Venezuelanalysis, January 28, 2009, http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4150. Colin Burgon, “10 Years of Progress in Venezuela,” Venezuelanalysis, February 6, 2009, http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4181.

[23] No Es Poca Cosa: 10 años de logros del Gobierno Bolivariano, pamphlet based on Chávez’ speech, February 2, 2008, 10-11.

[24] Ibid., 18-24.

[25] Bolivarian bourgeoisie – new bureaucracy.

[26] Certain “pro-Chávez” governors showed little interest in supporting the reforms that would drastically limit their powers, passing them up to Chávez and down to the Venezuelan people through the communal councils. In fact, on the eve of the 2007 referendum, many basic public services—such as trash pickup—simply stopped functioning, cluttering Caracas streets with debris, even more so than usual.

[27] In 2008, the Bolivian states of Pando, Beni, Santa Cruz, and Tarija in the country’s rich lowlands (known for the half-moon shape made by the states on a map) held referenda and asked their residents if they supported autonomy from the Bolivian government. The majority of the population of this region is of European decent, while the majority of Bolivian population is indigenous. The votes came on the heels of the election to power of Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales, who took steps to use the profit from nation’s energy production for the good of the poor majority, rathe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Praise for VENEZUELA SPEAKS!
• Map
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• PROLOGUE
• INTRODUCTION
• INTRODUCTORY HISTORY
• LAND & HOUSING REFORM
• WOMEN & SEXUAL DIVERSITY MOVEMENTS
• WORKERS & LABOR
• COMMUNITY MEDIA, ARTS & CULTURE
• INDIGENOUS & AFRO-VENEZUELAN MOVEMENTS
• THE STUDENT MOVEMENT
• COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
• Endnotes
• ADDITIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS
• Orginizations & Abbrevations
• Spanish Translations
• Author Biographies