June/July
The
Disinformation Society
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Talk
RV: No Evidence Required
Robert Jensen
Muting
the Conversation of Democracy
Bill Moyers
The
Path of Self-Limitation, Cooperation, and Sharing
Richard Heinberg
Biodiesel:
Growing a New Energy Economy
Greg Pahl
The
Parallel Revolution in Venezuela
America Vera-Zavala
Grassroots
Effort Creates Citizens Dialogue
Robyn Leor
The
Myth and Necessity of Genetically Modified Free Zones
Jeffrey M. Smith
From
Hurt to Heart
Eryn Kalish
Mudra
as Meditation
Andrea Luchese, M.A.
The
Klamath-Siskiyou Region: A Living Laboratory
Sue Parrish
How
You Can Help Protect Endangered Herbs
Laurel Vukovic
Cosmic
Calendar
Salina Rain
The Parallel Revolution in Venezuela
By America Vera-Zavala
On a parallel street, within walking distance from the presidential palace you can find an old office that has been taken over and is now being run by communities. It is very close to Bellas Artes, one of the most popular tourist squares in downtown Caracas, and the huge hotel Hilton, which nowadays also hosts Bolivarian conferences and friends of the revolution. A theatre rehearsal is under way on the Saturday afternoon when I visit the building. People of all ages are represented on that main floor, now a center for community activities but originally built to be a fancy reception area.
The building was squatted one year ago, and apparently there are quite a few central squatted buildings. This one has been flourishing ever since it was taken over. In this building people live, eat, make political and cultural meetings and most of the campaigns the president has set off are functioning there. El proceso (the process) as the revolution is popularly called, is at work there.
The proclaimed Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is a revolution made up of parallels. To win elections is not the same as to take state power and in Venezuela the opposition still holds many posts in various departments and state owned companies and media, and controls much of the economy. The cumbersome bureaucracy within the government, although not partisan, slows down the process as they go on doing things the way they always did, and they have not received an education in new Bolivarian public management.
In fact a new Bolivarian Public Management School doesn’t exist. Leaders of the revolution—governors, mayors, ministers, officials, bureaucrats, members of parliament—are persons that should be executing the paragraphs in the constitution and making them real, planning and organizing the process, guaranteeing that the objectives are met but for various reasons it doesn’t seem to be working as smoothly as it should. Together they constitute a thick middle layer in society making change hard. The president’s answer to that has been parallelism, a political strategy not yet labeled. Parallelism is being practiced by the president as well as on a grassroots level by the people.
An important part of what is actually being won in the process is created through parallels. If the health sector in the country is not willing to serve poor people, the president creates a parallel, brings in hundreds of Cuban doctors and lets them work. If the educational sector is working poorly and apparently has not been fighting illiteracy, he creates a parallel, developing education programs and making the communities responsible for their func-tioning. If the shops are not selling affordable food he creates a parallel—subsidized shops—and if people are still going hungry he creates another parallel, providing food and making the communities responsible for cooking and sharing the meals.
And the parallels are working. Soon illiteracy will be exterminated. The left-wing theory of creating parallel powers to break down and end the old order is being taken to new breathtaking heights.
President Chavez not only created a parallel bank, health and education programs, he is creating a parallel to CNN—Telesur. There is even a very popular soap opera, Amores de Barrio Adentro (which has the same name as the health program), about love over class boundaries set in the political Venezuelan atmosphere as a parallel to other soaps.
In the squatted building on the parallel street to the presidential palace, the community run revolution is effective. People come here to learn how to read and write, we coordinate the Cuban doctors and we provide food for poor people. We also have Bolivarian circles, popular education and cultural activities. I am an educator, and give courses on cooperatives. But we don’t want anything to do with political parties.”
The man who shows me around in the community center emphasizes that they are not political. On the walls there are several Che Guevara posters, Arafat’s face with a message of a free Palestine, Bolivar the liberator, and Chavez, of course. I smile and repeat: so you’re not political and nod at Che. “We are not political because we don’t like political parties,” he insists.
After the “No” victory in the 2004 referendum Chavez proposed that all campaign activists should become social activists. The people in the occupied house have successfully taken on that trans-formation. “In many places it has not worked, the electoral units have ceased to exist, but here we work even harder” the man tells me. Some time ago the squatted house faced a possible eviction. The municipality wanted to do something else with the house. “We called for a big assembly, to talk about the situation and decided to fight to stay, and until now we are here, making the revolution,” he says with pride.
The social missions, misíones, could be divided into four main areas: education, vocational training, health and nutrition. Misíon Robinson is for basic education and is the weapon to erase illiteracy in the country. Misíon Ribas prepares high school students for university education. Misíon Vuelvan Caras is to train workers and prepare them for future employment. Misíon Barrio Adentro has taken in Cuban doctors to serve in small, community built clinics in the barrios, the Venezuelan word for slums. Misíon Milagro (miracle) performs operations on patients with cataracts and glaucoma and makes people see again. Mercal is the name for the subsidized food shops you find all over the country. Another food program provides free food to barrios—community members prepare the food and give one cooked meal a day to children, single mothers, pregnant women and elderly people.
All the missions are run by communities. They organize the clinics and the education halls, recruit voluntary teachers, make schedules and solve thousands of problems that come up. They do it on a voluntary basis and reach out to many. The health program, Barrio Adentro I, was launched in April 2003 and has already passed over 100 million consultations. People who have never seen a doctor before in their entire life have now had multiple encounters.
The parallels and their effects are an important reason for the popular support of the process. Interviewing a community activist in the legendary neighborhood 23 de Enero, I ask what he thinks makes the process important: “The process has dignified people and given us an oppor-tunity to express what we think, without being ashamed of ourselves. The Bolivarian revolution has also succeeded in mobilizing people, and making us feel that this process is ours, we are co-responsible for it. If it doesn’t work I am responsible for that failure too. And we are included in education and health programs.”
On my way down from 23 de Enero I see a slogan, written big in red and black on a wall: Al pasado no regresaremos jamás! We will never return to the past! This seems to be very well rooted in people’s minds. They know things have changed, and to the better, that is why they are the ones making the revolution real, but not without criticism.
The opposition in Venezuela is called escualidos, and that term has been generalized to be used against anyone making the process difficult. People want the elected politicians, mayors, governors and officials to work properly for a common good. Too often they see things work in the bad old way, with corruption, positioning, and meaningless fights over power. The parallels are the new tracks created to go around the old ones—parallel lines never intersect. In that way, you avoid confron-tation in a country where opposition has been violent and people need time to consolidate and build. But people are impatient to see the parallels become the main tracks.
President Hugo Chavez is a pheno-menon, not so much for eight hour long speeches, which is rather old school, but for an amazing way of directly communicating with the base. Somehow he avoids the thick middle layer and puts forward the people’s thoughts and ideas.
President Chavez is the initiator, the developer, the ideologist and at the same time, the hardest criticizer of the process. The ideas he refines and puts forward in speeches are thoughts being formulated at the grassroots level. In the memorial speech three years after the coup president Chavez said that what has to die has not yet died, and what has to be born has not yet completed its naissance.
That is the core of the present Venezuelan parallelism—the old tracks are still parallel with the new ways. A change of tracks is not easy but it can be done. The squatted house is as close, or as far, as the various government institutions are to the presidential palace. If they are the ones stimulating the process maybe they should be recognized as a community center and fed with resources. The institutions slowing down the process should be put on a diet.
Reprinted with permission from ZNet (zmag.org). America Vera-Zavala, born in Rumania,, with a Chilean father and a Peruvian mother, is currently finishing his Ph.D. in the International History of Economics on Democracy and Globalization.
