"Now the community is the basic structural unit of
government of the new state, legally defined as 200-400
families in urban areas, around 20 in the countryside and
from 10 up for the indigenous population. The Spanish
political analyst Juan Carlos Monedero observed that the
main reason 20th-century socialism failed was a lack of
participation by the people. Communal councils may be
instrumental in the construction of Venezuela's 21st-century
socialism."
When Americans see the word 'socialism', they
think of dictatorships, collectivized farms, etc.
In Venezuela, and much of the rest of the world,
'socialism' simply refers to an equitable
economic system, of which there can be many
varieties. They are really referring to a
democratic process when they say 'socialism', and
they see the community as the basic unit in a
democratic society.
rkm
--------------------------------------------------------
Original source URL:
http://mondediplo.com/2006/09/13venezuela
Popular revolution, culture of impunity
Venezuela's promising future
Local councils - Units of Popular Power - are
being set up in the hope that their members, and
the small groups they represent, will take
responsibility for changing their lives.
By Renaud Lambert
JUAN Guerra, a lorry driver from Zulia state,
knew that he looked out of place in an office in
his dirty jeans and three-day beard. But he had
spent a week crossing Venezuela and he would not
be intimidated by a civil servant from the
national assembly. He slammed his fist on the
table and said: "No, we are not asking, we are
demanding that the comrade deputy transmit our
complaint to the citizen president."
Juan and his colleague Jhonny Plogar represent
700 lorry drivers. In 2000 they filed a complaint
against their employers, the coal haulage
companies Cootransmapa, Coozugavol and Coomaxdi.
According to the plaintiffs, the companies
"misused their cooperative status to benefit from
tax exemptions and state contracts". Over the
past five years the two men have been shunted
from office to office and Jhonny has a bulging
file of copies of letters written to ministries,
town halls, the state government and the
president.
When Venezuela's National Superintendence of
Cooperatives (Sunacoop) finally withdrew the
companies' cooperative status, the national coal
mining company continued to use their services.
The Zulia state governor and presidential
candidate, Manuel Rosales, who signed a decree
dismantling all bodies set up during the 2002
coup, is in no hurry to put Sunacoop's decision
into effect. The bosses are using the time to get
organised. Hired killers known as sicarios will
soon be threatening people.
This is a common situation in Venezuela. When the
two men reached the national assembly to present
their case, they found a crowd of other
plaintiffs with similar cases. All support Hugo
Chávez, the citizen president, and all demand an
end to bureaucracy and corruption. They are
hostile towards a government that they consider
inefficient at best, reactionary at worst. Chávez
himself has said: "Our internal enemies, the most
dangerous enemies of the revolution, are
bureaucracy and corruption" (1).
This language has been used before to blame
incompetent activists for not applying
presidential policies correctly. But the
"Bolivarian process" stresses popular
participation as a means of transforming the
state apparatus. In Venezuela it is called "the
revolution in the revolution".
Before Chávez was elected in 1998, two parties
shared power for 40 years: the Venezuelan
Christian Democratic party (Copei), and the
social democratic party, Democratic Action (AD).
They were adept at using petrodollars to deal
with problems. They handed out government posts
to calm social unrest but had to comply with the
neoliberal ideology of the North and the need to
limit public policies. The only way to offset the
bloated state apparatus was to organise its
inefficiency. With Venezuela's social divisions,
skilled civil servants often come from
backgrounds resistant to social change, sometimes
because of ignorance of the conditions in which
most Venezuelans live. Gilberto Gimenez, director
of the foreign minister's private office, has
said his solution was: "Diplomats will be
promoted only if they spend two weeks in the
barrios (working class districts)." He was
smiling when he said it.
Few political leaders are able to take an active
role in transforming the state from within.
Before the foreign minister, Ali Rodriguez (2),
got the job, six others had tried their hand
since 1998.
Not a political party
The Fifth Republic Movement that brought Chávez
to power is not a political party. After 1994 (3)
it grew out of a coalition of leftwing parties
and former guerrilla movements disgruntled with
their leaders, who some thought settled too
comfortably into the society they had struggled
against. Young activists trained by AD and Copei
quickly realised that the Chávez candidature
would open up new ways to reach power and many
joined his ranks.
In November 2001, when Chávez tried to pass 49
decrees to start social reform, Luis Miquilena,
who had been responsible for bringing the
Venezuelan left and Chávez together, decided the
decrees were too radical. He resigned as interior
minister (4) and his followers in the National
Assembly followed. "We lost a legislature,"
explained sociologist Edgar Figuera, "They were
passing those laws on the cheap. Venezuela is
still stuck in the legal framework of the Fourth
Republic" (5). Until the country could train its
activists, a revolutionary project was being
built with tools inherited from a state devoted
to perpetuating the neoliberal model.
At the December 2005 parliamentary elections
pro-government parties won all 167 seats in the
national assembly and no longer had any excuse to
delay legislative reforms. The 75% abstention
rate in the elections may have been the result of
a boycott by the opposition, realising that it
would be beaten and preferring to abstain. Even
so, it revealed dissatisfaction with a common
failing in the revolutionary process, one with
which Venezuela must deal: the replacement of a
bourgeois elite by a political elite that has the
same shortcomings and distances itself from the
daily realities of the people.
Without a real party, a solid state, enough
revolutionary activists or, for the moment, a
coherent social movement, the Bolivarian
revolution in Venezuela is no different from any
other experiment in Latin America. Chávez said in
2004: "The people must be organised and take part
in a new participative, social state so that the
old rigid, bureaucratic, inefficient state is
overthrown." He was referring to "missions",
programmes managed by the community, that
bypassed the old state to deal with social
emergencies. The creation of communal councils
this April is an important step towards building
the new state and the type of local government on
which it will be based.
A small house shelters the Unit of Popular Power
(UPP) at Vela de Coro from the sun that scorches
the Paraguana peninsula. A small poster explains
that communal councils "are a push for
participative democracy, for assisting social
movements in their quest for solutions to
collective problems and paying back the nation's
social debt". Here, the town hall took the
initiative to help set up these organisations.
Xiomara Pirela, UPP coordinator, said: "We just
supply the tools or help in the event of
conflict. Only a citizen's assembly can make
decisions."
The councils at work
The councils' task is to coordinate and integrate
activities of local missions, urban land and
cultural committees. Pedro Morales, director for
the Caracas region of Fundacomun, the
organisation that finances the councils, said
they do not "represent, but speak for the
citizens' assembly, which is the ultimate
decision-making body".
Xiomara Pirela showed us a pile of maps, some
drawn in felt-tipped pen. "People start by making
a social sketch of their community: houses,
inhabitants, their income, infrastructure, social
problems." This work contributes to the
"participative diagnosis" and highlights
priorities: water supplies, drainage, a health
centre. On that basis the communal council
suggests projects to citizens' assemblies, passes
them to relevant authorities and manages
resources allocated through a communal,
cooperative bank. Each project can get up to
$15,300; applications for more expensive projects
can be made to public planning councils or town
halls for the following year.
In Barinas, Mérida, Táchira and Trujillo, the
four most advanced states of the Occidente
region, more than $44.6m has already been paid
for some 3,000 projects. After 2007 half the
money allocated to the Intergovernmental
Decentralisation Fund and the Special Economic
Assignments Law for mines and hydrocarbons,
nearly $1.2bn, will be earmarked to finance the
councils. Town halls and states that used to
benefit from these funds will have to make do
with what is left over.
Some mayors are tempted to push their
sympathisers for election to the councils,
although it is illegal. According to Pedro
Morales: "The councils are not only a response to
the problems of bureaucracy and corruption; they
also increase the accountability of people who
were used to letting the state decide for them
and then complain about the result." The
population is more than ready to take on the
responsibilities.
On 16 July Block 45, a huge apartment building in
the 23 de Enero barrio of western Caracas, leapt
a political hurdle. After half a dozen
preparatory assemblies, they elected a council. A
resident pointed to the garbage piled carelessly
around the block. "This building is known as one
of the filthiest in all of South America," she
said, then added proudly, "but now people will
get a grip on the situation."
'No vote, no meals!'
Something similar happened further up the hill in
the El Observatorio district. A plastic sheet
pinned in a corner served as a voting booth, a
poster reminded voters "balloting must be direct
and secret" and a queue formed in front of the
cardboard urns, shown to be empty before voting
began. As is so often true, the local women had
taken matters in hand. The stakes were
considerable and the law clear. Notices said: "If
less than 20% of the community takes part (6) the
election will be invalid and no complaints will
be accepted afterwards. The women were confident:
"The men will come," one said. "I've told my
husband: no vote, then no meals, no laundry,
nothing!"
In a few months thousands of councils have been
or are being set up. Those that existed before
the law was passed are gradually being legalised.
There are already more than 500 in Caracas and
50,000 are expected overall. Upper-class
districts are also taking part - "that is, when
people agree to provide information on salaries",
said a resident of Prado del Este. Xiomara
Paraguán, an El Observatorio council member,
said: "At least they're taking part. Who would
have thought that possible a few years ago?"
Why did the government wait seven years to set up
the councils? Engels Riveira of the Camunare Rojo
council said: "If the mayors and governors had
done their jobs properly, we wouldn't have needed
the councils. In a way it's thanks to them."
The rush to set up the councils shows that they
cater to a need for democratic process.
Participation had already been encouraged in the
workplace, as co-management, self-management or
cooperatives (the number of these shot up from
under 1,000 in 1999 to more than 100,000). There
were local cultural committees. But political
arrangements were still needed.
Now the community is the basic structural unit of
government of the new state, legally defined as
200-400 families in urban areas, around 20 in the
countryside and from 10 up for the indigenous
population. The Spanish political analyst Juan
Carlos Monedero observed that the main reason
20th-century socialism failed was a lack of
participation by the people. Communal councils
may be instrumental in the construction of
Venezuela's 21st-century socialism. "If we get
the money," said Xiomara Paraguán. Another El
Observatorio council member countered, "If the
money doesn't come, we'll go and get it."
Since the elections things are moving in El
Observatorio. Paraguán attended a workshop on
social projects and showed off her diploma. All
council members will have similar training.
Faced with the inertia of some bureaucrats and
politicians, people have to rely on the vigour of
Contraloría (social control), a citizens' watch
that defends the process. Councils may be more
finely tuned version of the principle and help
Venezuelans get the means to exercise
co-responsibility with the state.
Juan Guerra is a grassroots expression of
Contraloría. After he finally got to meet a
deputy, he said: "Revolution is like an iron
fence protecting the bourgeoisie. If we, the
people, allow the rust to accumulate, the fence
will fall."
--
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