After writing the first part of a critique on Venezuela’s present economy, I was busy preparing some bemused mutterings about the current foreign exchange regimen when I suddenly realized Bloomberg had beaten me to the punch with this article dated September 3^rd 2007.

As befits a news agency with a reputation for unbiased and informative journalism, the headline was understated and non-partisan: “Chavez Economy Unravels as Bolivar Devaluation Pressure Climbs”

There followed an article from Alex Kennedy and Matthew Walter about how bad things are in Venezuela. We are told that:

• “Annual inflation has risen to 16 percent.”
• “..consumers face shortages of meat, flour and cooking oil.”
• “Chavez may have to devalue the bolivar to reduce the gap (between the official exchange rate and the unofficial parallel rate) and increase oil proceeds that make up half the state’s revenue.”
• We are also reminded that Chavez calls capitalism “evil” and he’s currently on a “march to socialism”. Thanks guys.

There’s plenty more where those came from, but let’s start here. The present inflation rate is 15.9%. This compares to 17.2% last month and 16.5% at the beginning of 2007. If we look back at previous Augusts, we see August 2006 at 15.0%, August 2005 at 15.3% and August 2004 at 21.2%. Presumably our commentators …..oops sorry reporters wished to make it clear they were comparing a year over year inflation rate and that gaping 0.9% gap was suitably newsworthy.  Even so, they can’t go too far back as inflation is in fact substantially lower now than in previous years.

Now the food shortages. Helpfully, Kennedy and Walter explain further down the op-ed OOPS… SORRY AGAIN!! …the report that goods (and I quote) “have disappeared from store shelves in Caracas at times this year”. Worried about this alarming turn of events, your correspondent took time out to contact acquaintances in Caracas. Dear reader, rest easy. It would seem that the present time is not one of “those times” and the supermarkets have adequate supplies for the moment. Apparently mayonnaise stocks are a tad low, but the aforementioned staples of meat, flour and cooking oil are all in stock. Phew! 

As for the given reason why Chávez (not his administration or government, of course, but good ol’ Hugo himself) may have to devalue, it sounded a little odd. Why should Hugo have to devalue while running a balanced budget? Am I missing something? Is it to do with the amount of money one analyst speculates that Chávez will spend in the run-up to the constitutional reform vote? Is it because devaluation eases inflation…no no!! That can’t be right! Ok, is it because the parallel market is only 10% of all forex trade? No!…that can’t be right either! Hmm, so is it because… No… sorry… give up. 

And then there are the quotes. It would seem that Kennedy and Walter have a useful list of contacts for Venezuelan economy quotes. 

• “For the macroeconomic house of cards not to come crashing down, the price of oil has to go up at double digit growth rates…” (Richard Hausmann, teacher of economics at Harvard)
• “It’s like our director of marketing, our director of sales, our director of manufacturing is President Chavez,” (Edgar Contreras, food manufacturing executive in Caracas)
• “We can’t go on like this.” (Edgar Contreras)
• “People are invoking their right to circumvent what are very, very stiff (foreign exchange) controls..” (Alberto Ramos, Goldman Sachs)
•  “A devaluation is a foregone conclusion. The only question is when.” (Richard Hausmann)
• “The growth in imports is so out of whack that it’s choking off the local sector…” (Teodoro Petkoff, publisher of Venezuela’s Tal Cual newspaper)
•  “The engine of growth isn’t the real economy. It’s the government.” (Teodoro Petkoff)
• “This has been the worst managed oil boom in Venezuela’s history..” Richard Hausmann)

In the spirit of balanced journalism (they are after all journalists, not commentators, please remember) they gave us one quote from government circles:

• “We’re not going to devalue no matter how much they pressure us,” (Finance Minister Rodrigo) Cabezas told reporters in Caracas on Aug. 31. “The so-called parallel market doesn’t dictate our fiscal, exchange or monetary policies.”

Now as a matter of fact, your correspondent happens to agree with some of those quotes and disagree with others. That’s fair enough, debate is a healthy thing etc. But when one sees so many voices giving a negative view of current affairs and only one supporter of the government who happens to be the very same finance minister pushing through these policies, it all seems a little lop-sided, does it not?

If this were the only example of this kind of journalism from news sources on Venezuela then I could rightly be accused of being just a bit too touchy. But to give just two more examples (from a list that would take up far too much RGE monitor bandwidth if expanded upon): 

• On 25^th January 2007, in the London Financial Times article “Cheap Petrol May Be Victim of Chávez’s Socialism”, reporter Andy Webb-Vidal told us “Venezuela‘s inflation rate is already running at close to 25 per cent per annum”. In fact, Venezuelan inflation hasn’t been that high since early 2004. Today’s rate of 15.9% may not be the best of situations, but there’s no need for such …ahem… exaggerations.
• On September 1^st 2007, Bloomberg reported the latest macroeconomic figures from Peru and Venezuela. Under the happy headline “Peru Inflation Slows in August as Bus Fares, Fuel Prices Drop”, Lima correspondent Alex Emery noted Peru’s month on month rate rose and the year-on-year rate dropped. Meanwhile, under the worrying headline “Venezuelan Inflation Accelerates on State Spending” Caracas correspondents Theresa Bradley and Steve Bodzin noted Venezuela’s month on month rate rose and the year-on-year rate dropped.  

Why not read that last one again and play spot the difference?

Back to those quotes, and to choose just one of them, “This has been the worst managed oil boom in Venezuela’s history,” said Ricardo Hausmann.  It’s an opinion, and a strong one at that, but that’s fine with us. Hausmann is eminently qualified to speak on the subject and his viewpoint is noteworthy. However there are plenty of achievements that counter such a comment. According to accepted and reliable sources, poverty levels have dropped dramatically. School attendances have quadrupled. The middle class is growing as a percentage of total population. Health care is now widely available where it was once scarce. Unemployment levels have dropped significantly. Salary increases have outstripped inflation in the last 3 years. All these improvements and more are arguably attributable to that oil boom, even without considering the political pressure of an attempted coup, a crippling oil strike and a recall election that stripped away development time between 2002 and 2004.

To hear that spending oil boom money on the poor constitutes bad management is all well and good, but why can’t we at least hear an opposite view from another eminent economist? It is of course a rhetorical question, but I feel like answering it anyway. It seems to me that we are not given balanced articles on Venezuela because reporters, controllers and editors are not interested in balanced articles on Venezuela, not even in the quality services like Reuters, Bloomberg, DJNW, WSJ, FT and all the rest. We are told Chavez has taken $17Bn from the central bank reserves, but we are not told about the Fonden reserve set up with a very large chunk of that money. We are told that Chávez has threatened to take over cement makers when all he said was the government wanted to look into said cement maker’s environmental record. The list goes on.

My conclusion is a simple request to the newswires: When it comes to Venezuela, more facts, more balance and less spin. Please. There are already enough opinions of all colours, flavours, sizes and shapes about Chávez without otherwise reliable services adding their two cents. I’m now going back to my charts and stats to try and write a real part two.

Venezuela from Below

In her essay Latin America & Twenty-First Century Socialism (published as  an issue of Monthly Review last year), Marta Har­necker presents a description of “some features” of a decentralized, self-managed socialism based on direct democracy in workplaces and neighborhoods — a picture congenial to libertarian socialists. She also pro­vides an interpretation of the Bolivarian Movement — the movement led by Hugo Chavez — that suggests it is embarked on a transition to this kind of socialism in Venezuela.

Rafael Uzcategui’s book marshals a lot of evidence to challenge that interpretation. Uzcategui argues that a continuation of capitalism is a more likely outcome of the Chavez government than a transition to socialism. Uzcategui also rejects the right-wing fantasy of “Castro-style Communism” being set up in Venezuela.

Uzcategui cites with approval the view offered by the radical Uruguayan journalist Raul Zibechi (author of Dispersing Power). Zibechi believes that leftist governments in Latin America (including Venezuela) tend to draw off the organic militants and organizers of popular movements into the leftist electoral and party projects…leaving a diminished capacity for independence and combativity among social movements. Given the poverty and discontent in Latin America, Zibechi argues that this is the only way for capitalism to survive in that region. This is also how the book under review sees the movement led by Hugo Chavez. To provide a critique of the Chavez government from the Left, he interviews and quotes a vari­ety of people in labor, environmental, indigenous and other social movements.

Rafael Uzcategui is the primary researcher for the non-profit Venezuelan Program of Education and Action on Human Rights (PROVEA) and a member of the collective that produces the anarchist newspaper El Libertario. His book uses interviews, statistics and reports to provide a picture of the real sit­uation on the ground in Venezuela. The English edition adds material for a North American audience that wasn’t in the previous Spanish and French editions. In this review I’m only going to touch on some of the topics that are covered in this very detailed study.

The Caracazo and a Crisis of Legitimacy

To explain the emergence of the Chavez movement, Uzcategui looks at the new social movements that came forth in the ’90s and the growing discredit of the political parties that had governed Venezuela since the beginning of “representative democracy” in that country in 1958.

During the first half of the 20th century Venezuela had been governed by a succession of dictatorships or authoritarian regimes. When “representative democracy” finally came to Venezuela, it was still a fragile growth. The parties that alternated in power from the ’60s through the ’80s — Acción Democratica (AD) and the Social Christian Party (COPEI) —  wanted to ensure that popular discontent didn’t lead to the overthrow of this new arrangement through another military coup or popular insurrection. Thus successive governments used the country’s oil income to build a welfare state. To ensure a solid hold on the income from hydrocarbon extraction, an AD government nationalized the country’s oil industry in 1976. The welfare state constructed in that era included:

• a Social Security system that provided unemployment benefits, pensions and disability payments
• a free public health care system
• subsidies for the construction of public housing
• subsidies of public utilities, gasoline, and food prices
• free public education at all levels

The Chavez government’s various initiatives (called “Missions”)  to provide social benefits in areas such as health care, literacy, subsidized food provision and housing follows in the footsteps of the earlier populist initiatives of Acción Democratica governments.

In the late ’80s Venezuela began its slide towards neoliberalism with the imposition of an International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustment Program. The AD president in power at the time then imposed drastic increases in transportation prices. This provoked a popular rebellion on February 27, 1989 — known as the Caracazo (“Caracas blow-up”) . This took the form of riots and looting of warehouses. The army committed various massacres in suppressing this rebellion. Hundreds of people were killed. Thus neoliberalism and repression were the starting points for a crisis of legitimacy for the old parties. Independent social movements grew in the ’90s and these became the major source of protests and demonstrations. Meanwhile, participation in voting plummeted from over 90 percent in the ’60s and ’70s to 56 percent in 2000.

The author describes a variety of social movements that were present in Venezuela in the years before Chavez came to power — from women’s groups and the Union of Revolutionary Youth, to indigenous and environmental groups, and union struggles — such as a fight in defense of social services in 1996 that brought together more than a hundred unions. Poorer neighborhoods were often participants in protests such as street blockades or riots or local “civic strikes” that resulted in shutdowns of shops and transport. A particularly significant movement in the early ’90s was the Assembly of Barrios in Caracas in which more than 200 neighborhoods were represented. That Assembly was a space for discussions and debates about the various struggles of particular neighborhoods.

Says Uzcategui: “In the 1990s, the visions of a different world were fragmented and isolated, without pretensions of totality. Mobilizations were, mostly, defensive reactions against government policies….The internal dynamics of social struggles in Venezuela involved the development of relationships among the oppressed, which among other things allowed them to ensure their survival.”

Chavez’s first political vehicle was the Bolivarian  Revolutionary Movement (MBR-200) which grew out of his participation in a failed military coup in 1992. MBR-200 was a conspiratorial vanguard dedicated to taking power via insurrection and advocated abstention in electoral politics. In 1997 Chavez switched gears and decided to run for president. The wide array of social movements, broad social discontent, and support from sections of the Left then “translated into votes for Chavez” when he was elected in 1998. The Chavez victory did reflect the loss of legitimacy of the old parties and the level of discontent, but the Chavez government was not a product of an existing, organized social base. Two attempts of the Chavez forces to build a social base from above were in the labor movement and in the creation of the community councils.

Community Councils

Marta Harnecker writes:

“Since, in Venezuela, the inherited state didn’t make enough room for popular protagonism, Chavez had the idea of encouraging new forms of popular organization and began to transfer power to them….One of the most original creations of the Bolivarian revolutionary process was the communal councils, which gave decision-making on a range of matters to the inhabitants of small territorial spaces.”

“The Law of Community Councils was approved without any input from the grassroots,” Uzcategui points out.

Creating the Community Councils (consejos comunales) from above was a responsibility given over to army general Jorge Luis Garcia Carneiro, who announced a fund of $982 million for community council projects. Community councils are rather small in scope, grouping a maximum of 200 families in urban areas, 50 families in rural areas, and as few as 10 families in indigenous areas.

The Community Councils were not the first foray of the Chavez government into local governance. The first initiative was the creation of Local Planning Councils. Because these were given certain powers over local budgeting they were perceived as a direct threat by mayors and city councils. The mayors began to undermine these councils in various ways including appointment rather than election of the erstwhile community representatives.

Chavez got around the local elected government leaders by setting up the Community Councils with no relation to the local government. The community councils receive funds through a chain of regional and national committees that get their orders and funding ultimately from the office of the presidency. The community councils lack a horizontal form of association among them and are fragmented through their linkage directly to the state.

Uzcategui acknowledges that this program has resulted in many small-scale good works throughout the country, such as sports fields. But his argument here is that the Community Councils are a means to build a subordinate local movement, incorporated into the state.

Uzcategui cites the study of the Community Councils conducted by researcher and environmental activist Maria Pilar Garcia-Guadilla:

“The objectives and rhetoric from most of the political, social, and governmental actors about Community Councils do not correspond to practice,” Garcia-Guadilla writes. “While the president’s objectives and rhetoric concern empowerment, transformation, and democratization, the observed practices point to dependent clients, cooptation, centralization, and exclusion for political reasons.”

In her report (1), Garcia-Guadilla says that the dependence of the Community Councils on the executive of the central state mean that those whose projects fit in with “the president and his project receive promised resources while those who oppose him must pass through innumerable bureaucratic procedures that disguise the reason for the refusal to receive their final application” (my translation).

She cites a number of cases where Community Councils have become defunct because of lack of continued participation. In the town of Sucre, where there had been 150 community councils in mid-2007, a later report indicated that “40 percent were disabled…by defection of their members.”

As a member of a human rights organization that is concerned with problems of police and military involvement in extra-judicial killings, Uzcategui is particularly concerned with the policing and military functions assigned to the community councils. He points to a major meeting of community council representatives in Caracas that was sponsored by DISIP (the political police) and the concerns of the police and government authorities to make the community councils their “eyes and ears” in the local communities. Community Councils have also been pressured to integrate themselves with the initiatives emanating from the Chavista party, PSUV.

Uzcategui cites one of Garcia-Guadilla’s conclusions:

“The Community Councils…lack the capacity to enrich social and cultural identities, and to contribute to the pluralism of urban ways of life because they do not impel movement towards an autonomous, alternative, and pluralistic society, one separate from the state that” implements top-down control in the sphere of “social transformation.”

The study by Garcia-Guadilla is a good start to a critique of the Community Councils but I think Uzcategui would have made a stronger case if he’d provided more concrete case studies.

Unionism Top-down

Another top-down base-building strategy pursued by the Chavez government is the creation of labor organizations “from above and by decree.” This is another case where Chavez follows in the footsteps of the earlier top-down populism of the Acción Democratica. The Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) had originally been created in 1947 in a top-down fashion. AD instigated a union congress that created a CTV executive committee made up solely of AD party militants. “When Hugo Chavez assumed office,” writes Uzcategui, “his intent to control the labor movement was evident from day one.” In Venezuela a government body controls union elections. Elections for leadership of CTV were delayed for two years while Chavez’s forces built the Bolivarian Workers Front as an internal electoral caucus in the CTV. Huge state resources were deployed in the campaign to gain control of CTV. A mass meeting was held in the Caracas Polyhedron — a large venue — and “participants were transported from all over Venezuela in thousands of buses.” Despite these efforts, the Accion Democratica slate won the elections.

After that defeat, the Chavez forces then moved to create a new union federation, Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT — National Union of Workers). When UNT was created, all of its directors had been appointed from above. According to leftist union current Opción Obrera (Labor Option), “there were few authentic directors from a labor background.” A congress was not called for three years. In 2008 Opción Obrera wrote,

“The internal crisis of UNT persists and worsens to this day….The pro-government CTV practices that were criticized are now being repeated by the leaders of UNT who deliver themselves unconditionally to the government.”

The incorporation of labor organizations into the Chavista party, PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), has been another tactic for control of the labor movement. In March 2007 Chavez said in a speech:

“The unions should not be autonomous…It’s necessary to do away with this.”

Orlando Chirino is a revolutionary socialist and former unionist in the textile industry who was the first National Coordinator of UNT and a leader of one of the leftist tendencies in it: Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria y Autonoma (Class-conscious, Unitary, Revolutionary and Autonomous Current). Chirino had been active in the fight against the right-wing coup against Chavez in 2002 — in which CTV supported the right-wing opposition — and thus had gotten involved in the effort to form a new national labor organization. But he very quickly developed conflicts with the appointed directors and eventually broke with the Chavez movement. Chirino is particularly critical of the Chavez government’s dictatorial stance towards workers in the public sector, expressed in the unwillingness to negotiate with the worker organizations:

“I want to indicate the most important collective accords that have been violated. We’ll start with the public workers, approximately two and a half million workers. It’s been five years, from December 2004, since their contract standards have been discussed, and this is very grave. This has resulted in 70 percent of public workers being minimum-wage workers, which is to say that we’re a country of minimum-wage workers. It’s been three years since the educators’ collective bargaining agreement expired; the electrical workers, approximately 36,000 of them, had their contract expire last year; and the petroleum workers over the last ten years have lost important gains.”

Wages at the state oil company (PDVSA) were frozen from 2007 to 2009 while inflation was 66.5 percent. Uzcategui quotes an oil worker (from the leftist website laclase.info) on the result: “Many workers hold second jobs such as taxi driver or cleaning product salesman.” This oil worker mentions other problems at PDVSA:

• Failure to supply safety equipment
• Elimination of overtime pay
• Inequities and discrimination in payment of wages
• Criminalization of labor demands by the workers

The government has also refused to allow new elections for union representatives at PDVSA. About a year ago I interviewed another member of the El Libertario collective, Rodolfo Montes de Oca. He is a young lawyer who was working at that time with the radical oppositionists in the oil workers union (anarchists, Trotskyists, and so on). He says they had  petitioned five times for new union elections and each time they were denied. He said the head of the union was not regarded as very effective by the radical workers. He believed that the government wouldn’t allow a new election because the union head was a Chavista.

The Caracas Metro provides another example of Chavez labor policy. The workers there had held negotiations with the government representative for a year and a half and reached an agreement. But Chavez and his new director of the Metro refused to accept the new agreement. If they were to strike, Chavez said he would militarize the Metro and fire the workers. The Chavez government had two police agencies, DISIP (the political police) and DIM (military intelligence) participate in these threats. Community councils were mobilized against the Metro workers as well. Chirino describes what happened then:

“And so, without consulting with the workers,…the directors of the union who were members of the PSUV [Chavez's party] went along with the government demands and rolled back most of the previous gains won.”

In his interview with the author, Orlando Chirino says that in his 34 years in the labor movement, he’s “never seen the extreme to which we’re arrived today with the criminalization of protests….For example, when you’re…handing out flyers at a factory gate,  speaking through a megaphone, participating in an assembly, they use the repressive bodies of the state to detain the leaders, take them to jail, and while in jail they accuse them. This ends up with union militants being prohibited from going near the businesses where they do their political work, under the legitimate rights of free expression and organization.”

Partial De-nationalization of Energy Resources

Uzcategui points to the partial de-nationalization of Venezuela’s energy industry under Chavez as an example of Chavez’s accommodation to capitalism. An oil industry expert who Uzcategui quotes at length is Pablo Hernandez Parra. Hernandez Parra had been jailed back in the ’60s for his participation in leftist armed struggle groups. He was a founder of the Marxist-Leninist group Bandera Roja (Red Flag). He became part of a group set up in 2002 to defend the state petroleum industry at the time of the employer and CTV strike against Chavez. At that time the bloated managerial bureaucracy at PDVSA — Hernandez Parra calls them the “meritocracy” — were participating in the strike. According to Hernandez Parra, the introduction of “mixed enterprises” in the oil and gas sector since then is a change that is taking place “behind the backs” of the workers at PDVSA.

Since the nationalization of the oil industry in 1976, and until the Chavez government, PDVSA’s relationship to the big private oil companies had taken the form of simple service contracts: The government paid for services while continuing as the absolute owner of all oil and gas produced.

The introduction of “mixed enterprises” is an innovation of the Chavez government. These are companies that typically have 51 to 60 percent ownership by the state and the major energy firms own the rest. During the ’90s, politicians in Venezuela had said it was necessary to involve the multi-nationals to increase oil revenues, but it wasn’t til the election of Chavez that “mixed enterprises” were created. This arrangement allows ownership and profits to private energy firms. For example, Chevron boasts that it is the largest private producer of oil in Venezuela. In Zulia state it has partial ownership in the mixed enterprises Petroboscan and Petroindependiente. In Anzoategui state Chevron is the private partner in another mixed enterprise, Petropiar, which produces heavy crude and refines it into synthetic petroleum. Chervon also has various offshore operations, and the government has also invited Chevron to participate in a rail line to carry liquified natural gas.

For the old guerrilla, Hernandez Parra, the Chavez government’s mixed enterprises implement “the empire’s petroleum policy.” He described the concessions granted for mixed enterprises as “the greatest delivery in the country’s history of petroleum, gas and coal concessions” to the trans-national companies.

“Socialist” Maquiladora

In May 2009 Chavez announced that the government would set up a factory to produce cell phones with many features and sold at the low price of $15. “This telephone will not only be the best seller in Venezuela, but in the world.” Cell phones are very popular in Venezuela and are, says Uzcategui, a status symbol in third world countries. The cell phones would be produced by a Vetelca. Vetelca is another “mixed enterprise.”

According to the Minister of Science and Technology, Jesse Chacón, the Vetelca plant “is a model of socialist production with ‘integral’ workers who perform different jobs on a daily basis, in order that each will know the steps of the production process and the complete function of the plant. In addition, they participate in the planning of the production process, which clearly shows the difference between this and the capitalist model.”

To reduce labor costs to the minimum, Vetelca followed the path of so many high-tech companies to China. The parts are produced in China and assembled in Venezuela. This talk of “integral labor” is merely a cover for the multi-tasking that is a common feature of the Toyota or “lean production” model of capitalist production. This was merely an assembly operation, using parts made in China. The labor itself did not require lengthy training. As Uzcategui put it, the plant “is a simple maquiladora that serves the needs of the state cell-phone company.”

Workers were asked to do long overtime because Chavez wanted 10,000 phones ready for Mother’s Day. According  to one of the workers at the plant, Levy Revilla Toyo, “It was necessary to labor far into the night; this labor was done without logistical preparation, which caused dismay among some comrades because of lack of nourishment and trouble with transport.”

The law on working conditions approved by the government in 2005 allowed for the election of safety delegates and three were elected at the Vetelca factory. On July 7, 2009, however, Vetelca fired eight workers, including the three safety delegates who had been elected at a worker assembly.  Later, Vetelca management asked the National Guard to protect the plant from the workers. The company fired 56 workers who were forced to sign resignation letters to obtain their final pay.

In fact  these workers were fired for trying to form a union at the plant. The manager of Vetelca said this to the press: “These fifty-six persons had the intention of creating a union…and with an aggressive, instigating attitude.” The manager also stated that the company was going for form a “security” group “because in a socialist enterprise there’s no room for the word ‘union’.”

A Fragmented Health Care System

Uzcategui describes the Chavez initiatives in health care as the most important of the “Missions” established by the government. The idea is to have medical personnel living in the communities they serve (hence the name “Barrio Within”), create a network of people’s clinics, and provide high-quality diagnostic centers. Uzcategui cites a report by a non-profit that notes an inequity in the distribution of resources between different parts of the country with a very high concentration of doctors and resources in the capital district (where Caracas is located).

According to a report by Marino Alvarado, the coordinator of the human rights organization PROVEA:

“Since the government proposed Barrio Within, PROVEA has supported it; but it doesn’t appear to be an adequate program….The nationality of the doctors doesn’t matter to us but rather that they be where the poor people reside. However, Barrio Within has been manipulated to not only engage in health care but also in political proselytization. The government promised to construct thousands of health modules in the country, but has constructed only half of them….But it’s necessary to emphasize the positive in the government’s policy of providing free health care….For us, the problem is the limited coverage.”

However, the Barrio Within program is separate from the traditional system of public hospitals. This has created a fragmented system of health care with resources stacked in favor of the programs initiated by the Chavez government. People can go to a local clinic if they have a broken bone, or fever but they have to go to the underfunded, understaffed public hospitals for more complex procedures.

A hospital worker interviewed by Uzcategui is Johan Rivas, who works at Dr. Jose Ignacio Baldo Hospital. Rivas is a member of the Revolutionary Socialist Collective. Rivas points out that the health care Missions “have the same bureaucratic structure as the traditional system, a system constructed from the top down where there’s no true participation of those below….The communities only advise and the workers have no say.”

Rivas believes that the funding and emphasis has shifted to creation of a parallel system because the old health care system “is a refuge for the political opposition — most of its managers are tied to the opposition parties.”

A large number of the workers at the hospitals are hired on precarious individual contracts. Says Rivas:

“I can cite cases of women who were discriminated against because they became pregnant, and so had to abandon their contracts. Infirmary workers who’ve worked three or four months receive their wages a month or two late….People wait up to two years for a contract and permanent and receive pressure…not to participate in such-and-such a political organization…..There are presently more than 25,000 workers in the health sector in Caracas and more than half of them are” temps.

Meanwhile, the government refuses to negotiate with health care worker unions. Says Rivas: “Health care workers, in the case of common laborers, have worked for 15 years without a collective bargaining agreement. The other workers have worked for five years without an agreement The government  has not had a policy to improve the quality of life for health care workers.”

As result of their criticisms of the Chavez government, Johan Rivas and the Revolutionary Socialist Collective have been labeled “counter-revolutionaries” by the Chavistas. This behavior is part of the polarized “us versus them” dynamic in Venezuelan politics. Uzcategui calls this tendency a “false dichotomy” because it crowds out and suppresses other viewpoints. But the ability of ordinary people and participants in social movements to debate freely and develop their own path, from the bottom up, is necessary for the autonomy of social movements.

Social Movements as Revolutionary Subject

Top-down state initiatives, a movement headed by a charismatic caudillo (top-down leader), benefits provided to dependent clients, attempts to control and coopt unions and other social movements, hundreds of military officers holding posts throughout the government, repression towards those who stray outside the permitted path — these elements suggest that the Bolivarian Movement is following in the tradition of Latin American populism. For example, the “revolutionary nationalism” of General Lazaro Cardenas, president of Mexico in the ’30s, also included “socialist” and “anti-imperialist” rhetoric and an occasionally pugnacious stance towards the USA — for example, violation of the Neutrality Act in giving support to the Spanish Republic or nationalization of the oil companies. But the “revolutionary nationalism” of Cardenas was no threat to Mexican capitalism. On the contrary, the Mexican “revolutionary nationalist” leaders crushed the independent, revolutionary labor movement of the syndicalist CGT — a significant service to capitalist interests.

Uzcategui suggests that a rising level of protests and demonstrations in the last couple years shows that the social movements in Venezuela are beginning to recover their autonomy. Populism is a danger to the autonomy of social movements as it works to incorporate and control such movements through the party and state structures and clientelist relationships. For Uzcategui, autonomy is essential for social movements if they are to be the basis for a liberatory transformation of society. We can think of autonomy as both independence from parties, the state and top-down forms of control, and also the ability to plan out and decide on their own course of action through the self-management of movements by their participants. Uzcategui sees autonomy as necessary if movements are to develop the “combativity” to challenge the existing order and press for changes.

However, he rejects a class struggle perspective as somehow no longer valid for the anti-capitalist struggle and substitutes the vague idea of the “multitude” — drawn from Hardt and Negri’s Empire — as his conception of the revolutionary subject. If we acknowledge the diversity of the various social movements and forms of oppression, there is then the question of how these can come together and form a unified force to challenge the powers-that-be. A weakness of Uzcategui’s perspective is that he never addresses this. Uzcategui doesn’t consider the idea of the various oppressions and movements as still within the ambit of the working class, and thus capable of forming a working class alliance.

The Dual Character of Self-management

In her interpretation of the Bolivarian “revolutionary process,” Marta Harnecker presents a concept of transition to self-managed socialism in which the bureaucratic, “inherited state” co-exists for a long time with what she describes as a “new state.” “New state” is her term for the emergence of the new system of neighborhood councils and worker councils that would be the basis of control by the masses over the work, their communities and the society. She writes:

“The fact that the state institutions are run by revolutionary cadres, that are aware they should aim to work with organized sectors of the people to control what the institutions do and to press for transformation of the state apparatus, can make it possible…for these institutions to work for the revolutionary project.”

This is in reality the old idea that somehow the liberation of the oppressed and exploited can be brought about from above by enlightened leaders controlling the state. What we see in the case of the Bolivarian Movement, on the other hand, is how these “revolutionary cadres” in control of the state work to coopt and control social movements.

A self-managed socialist society is not likely if it isn’t a conquest won by self-managed mass organizations of the oppressed and exploited. Thus self-management has a dual character: self-management of struggles for change, and self-management of the gains won through struggle.

Through self-management of struggles within the capitalist society, against employers and in other areas of oppression, people change and gain various capacities….increased commitment and organizing skills, increased knowledge of the system and of other groups in struggle and their issues. Self-management of movements itself is developed through struggle because because people learn the importance of controlling their own movements. Self-managed, organized mass movements are needed if the oppressed and exploited are to develop vehicles through which they can control — self-manage — the process of change and the building of new institutions through which they can power. For example, actual worker control over the production process is not likely to come about except through a workers movement that has developed the aspiration for more power and the capacity to run its own movement.

Uzcategui quotes with approval the well-known passage from John Holloway:

“If we rebel against capitalism it’s not because we want a different system of power, rather it’s because we want  a society where power relations have vanished. You can’t construct a society without power relations through conquest of power. Once you adopt the logic of power, the struggle against power is already lost.”

But this is a very misguided way of looking at the process of social liberation. Liberation from capitalist domination and exploitation can’t happen if workers don’t gain the power to control the industries where they work. Liberation from the state and various forms of oppression also requires re-organizing decision-making power so that the oppressed gain the power to make the decisions that affect them. This is not elimination of “power relations” but a change in the way power is organized. Authentic popular power is itself a form of social power.

Obama Delivers Critique of Venezuela

President Barack Obama on Monday criticized Venezuela, expressing his “concern over measures that erode the separation of powers,” ahead of elections that are to be held next year.

Over the years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been an outspoken opponent of the United States, while expressing solidarity with Iran and Cuba, where he received cancer treatment earlier this year. Chavez is up for re-election in October after 13 years in office.

Obama said Venezuela’s links to Iran and Cuba “have not benefited the interests of Venezuela and its people.” His comments were in response to a written question-and-answer interview for Caracas-based daily El Universal.

 

Related Articles

• Venezuela Opposition Candidate Attacked

He noted that in other Latin American countries, there has been a transition “from living under dictatorships to living in democracies.” However, in Venezuela, there are restrictions on press freedoms, and the government has been eroding “the separation of powers that are so necessary for democracy to flourish.”

 

“Moreover, it’s unfortunate that the Venezuelan government is often more interested in revisiting the ideological battles of the past than looking forward to the future that we could build for our citizens,” the president added.

Venezuela Opposition Candidate Attacked

Video footage released on Sunday purports to show a gun attack on Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate, María Corina Machado.

The video starts out with Machado talking to local residents after she threw the first pitch at a softball game. Around 30 seconds into the video, gunfire breaks out, prompting Machado and other people to run toward a van.

Machado said that she plans on continuing her campaign, according to the El Nacional newspaper. “These attacks further strengthen our spirit and that of all mothers who are prepared to defend our families. My commitment is to continue and with more reason,” she said in a statement.

She is running as an independent candidate against longtime President Hugo Chavez.

“The government has absolutely lost control and, in many cases, has been complicit with the criminal gangs,” she said, adding that the current government has armed some of these gangs with weapons, according to CNN en Español.

 

Related Articles

• Venezuela: MLB Catcher Freed From Kidnappers

The El Nacional newspaper published a photograph showing two people on a motorcycle, with one wearing a red shirt. The man on the back on the motorcycle was pointing a gun at the van.

Obama criticizes Venezuela’s rights record, ties to Iran and Cuba; Chavez calls Obama ‘clown’

By Associated Press,

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Barack Obama’s sharp criticisms of Venezuela’s human rights record and its ties to Iran are heightening tensions with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who on Monday responded by calling Obama a “clown” and telling him to mind his own business.

Obama appeared to stiffen his stance toward Chavez in his remarks, which were published Monday by the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal. Some of Obama’s Republican opponents have also been strongly critical of Chavez, and analysts expect the Venezuelan president could become a popular target of criticism as American politicians feud over foreign policy ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election.

While Washington has long criticized Chavez, Obama’s remarks were some of his hardest to date. He pointedly raised concerns about what he described as threats to democracy in Venezuela.

“We’re concerned about the government’s actions, which have restricted the universal rights of the Venezuelan people, threatened basic democratic values and failed to contribute to the security in the region,” Obama said in written responses to questions from the newspaper.

Chavez wasted little no time in responding. He said on state television, “Mr. Obama came out, attacking us, but that’s not out of the ordinary for us.”

The Venezuelan leader added, “Obama, take care of your own business, focus on governing your country, which you’ve turned into a disaster. Leave us alone.”

Miguel Tinker Salas, a Latin American studies professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, said he expects more of such talk in 2012.

“I see Venezuela coming into the sphere of American politics during the election year,” Tinker Salas said. “Once the candidates turn their attention to foreign policy, I could see Venezuela being manipulated into becoming an issue even when there are more pressing issues in the region such as the drug war in Mexico.”

Like Obama, Chavez is up for re-election next year as he seeks to extend his 13-year presidency in the October vote.

Without mentioning Chavez, Obama also referred to a need for fair elections in the region.

“In Venezuela, we have been deeply concerned to see action taken to restrict the freedom of the press, and to erode the separation of powers that is necessary for democracy to thrive,” Obama said. “In all countries of the region, we want to see elections that are free and fair.”

Obama added that “it’s unfortunate that the Venezuelan government is often more interested in revisiting the ideological battles of the past than looking forward to the future.”

Obama told El Universal he hopes to eventually have a better relationship with Venezuela: “I look forward to the day when our governments can work more closely to advance the aspirations of our people.”

Chavez has repeatedly accused the U.S. of trying to meddle in Venezuela’s affairs and even to overthrow him.

The leftist leader has crusaded against U.S. influence in Latin America and has built close ties to other antagonists of Washington around the globe such as Libya and Iran. U.S. officials have expressed particular concern at Chavez’s growing ties with Iran, and also have said Venezuela isn’t doing enough to combat terrorism or drug trafficking.

In his statements, Obama said the U.S. government doesn’t intend to dictate how Venezuela should handle its international affairs but said, “I would argue, however, that the Venezuelan government’s ties to Iran and Cuba have not served the interests of Venezuela or the Venezuelan people.”

Obama reiterated U.S. concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and allegations that Iran’s government supports terrorism.

“Ultimately, it is up to the Venezuelan people to determine what they gain from a relationship with a country that violates universal human rights and is isolated from much of the world,” Obama said. “Here in the Americas, we take Iranian activities, including in Venezuela, very seriously and we will continue to monitor them closely.”

He noted that earlier this year the U.S. State Department slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company for selling gasoline components to Iran.

Eduardo Gamarra, a Latin American politics expert at Florida International University in Miami, said the Venezuelan leader’s re-election campaign could actually receive a boost if U.S. politicians take on Chavez directly.

“It can help him at home and in the rest of Latin America, where it’s a sport to take on the Americans,” Gamarra said.

Chavez and Obama shook hands at a 2009 summit, but relations have since cooled.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas has been without an ambassador since July 2010, with Chavez rejecting the U.S. nominee for ambassador, Larry Palmer, and accusing him of making disrespectful remarks about Venezuela’s government. That led Washington to revoke the visa of the Venezuelan ambassador.

Chavez suggested Obama’s stances toward Venezuela are a campaign ploy.

“He’s looking for votes,” Chavez said. Addressing Obama directly, he added: “If I could be a candidate there in the United States, I’d sweep you away.”

___

Associated Press writer Ian James contributed to this report.

___

Wave of child deaths strikes indigenous community in Venezuela 22 April 2011

•  

Six children in one Warao indigenous community in Venezuela have reportedly died within the space of ten days in April, as a result of malnutrition, disease, and poor health care.

Vomiting, diarrhea, fever, respiratory problems and dehydration were some of the symptoms that led to the deaths, according to Venezuela’s Institute of Public Health.

The Warao of Cambalache community in eastern Venezuela live in appalling conditions close to a rubbish dump, upon which they now depend for food and materials for shelter. They have little access to clean water.

Oil exploration in the area has led to the pollution of the Warao’s rivers, the spoiling of their environment and a marked deterioration in their health. The Warao were not consulted when the oil concessions were granted.

The lives of many more children are at risk as the community is rife with disease, many children are malnourished and the Warao are not receiving adequate health care. The authorities have been slow in reacting to the situation.

Antonio Valenzuela, a Warao representative from the community, said, ‘How long will we have to live next to this rubbish dump? … We don’t have money… we are suffering, and look how dirty the place is… Children are dying, they’re finishing us off and we don’t want that… that’s what the government should be there for’.

Around 20,000 Warao live in the Amacuro Delta region of eastern Venezuela. Many live in thatched houses built on stilts to withstand tidal fluctuations. They have a close connection to the river water, on which they rely for drinking, food, transport and washing. Fish is a crucial part of the Warao’s diet, and they make sago from the ‘moriche’ palm.

http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/7243

 

Mercosur Bloc Presidents Agree to Raise Tariffs

By REUTERS

MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - Presidents of the Mercosur trade bloc on Tuesday agreed to individually raise tariffs on imports to shield their industries from a flood of cheaper imported goods stemming from the global economic crisis.

At a meeting in Uruguay's capital, full members Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay said the plan to hike duties aims to protect industries from what Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called "an avalanche of predatory imports that jeopardize growth and employment."

During Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's first official trip abroad since undergoing cancer surgery in June, Mercosur countries also pushed for Venezuela's incorporation into the trade bloc.

The 57-year-old socialist leader aims to quell concerns over his health after doctors removed a large tumor from his pelvis and gave him chemotherapy. He plans to run for another six-year term in an October presidential election.

"I've overcome the most difficult phase of this cancer," Chavez told reporters upon arrival in Montevideo. "I'm fully back on my feet and here to make a strong play for Latin America's integration and unity."

Venezuela has been aiming for full status in the trade bloc for years, but congressional approvals have been slow to come and Paraguayan legislators continue to block the move.

Chavez appealed to the bloc's smaller members, saying "the day we have full membership in Mercosur, Uruguay and Paraguay will be able to sell much more to Venezuela."

Earlier in the day, Ecuador President Rafael Correa also said his country hopes to become a full member of Mercosur.

The summit was interrupted earlier on when Ivan Heyn, Argentina's deputy foreign trade secretary and a member of the country's delegation, was found dead in his hotel room. Uruguayan police said it appeared to be a suicide.

BAN ON FALKLANDS

In an act of solidarity with Argentina, Chavez and his counterparts said vessels sailing under a Falkland Islands flag would be banned from docking at Mercosur ports.

The South Atlantic islands are a powerful Argentine national symbol and the government often reiterates its sovereignty claim over the archipelago almost 30 years after Argentina and Britain went to war over it.

Britain has in turn protested to Argentina over its interception of UK-licensed fishing boats in disputed waters near the Falkland Islands.[ID:nL5E7N63R0]

But the summit's focus was on safeguarding the region's prosperity. South American countries have been growing at fast rates in recent years but their expansion could be reined due to the global economic slowdown.

"We have reasons to be worried over the prospect of a global recession amid a brusque contraction," Rousseff said, adding that Mercosur members must act swiftly to protect their industries and avoid imports from flooding the trade bloc.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/12/20/world/americas/international-us-venezuela-uruguay-chavez.html?ref=americas&pagewanted=print

Hugo Chávezlong-time supporter Noam Chomsky has issued renewed appeal to the Venezuelan president to free a judge who was controversially jailed two years ago, prompting criticism from human rights activists and academics.

Maria Lourdes Afiuni, 48, has been imprisoned since December 2009 and is currently under house arrest in the capital, Caracas.

In an open letter to the Venezuelan president, Chomsky, a linguistics professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, urged Chávez to "correct an injustice".

"This is an appeal for the release of Judge Afiuni on humanitarian grounds after two years," Chomsky told the Guardian on Wednesday in a telephone interview. "As the letter says I hope President Chávez will release her. Presumably these are regular Christmas pardons."

Activists, including Chomsky, have made repeated calls for Afiuni's release, partly on the grounds of ill health. Afiuni is a cancer patient who underwent an abdominal hysterectomy while in jail.

But a series of high-profile interventions – including a previous Chomsky letter, published in July – have so far fallen on deaf ears. On 13 December a judge in Venezuela extended the house arrest by two years, leaving supporters and relatives despondent and prompting the latest appeal.

"President Chávez himself is in a courageous fight against cancer. For this reason, he is certainly in a position to personally understand the importance of receiving adequate treatment and marshalling your inner strength for survival," Chomsky writes in his latest letter.

"The Christmas-time pardons are an appropriate occasion for President Chávez to correct an injustice and avoid greater damage to her health by a humanitarian release," he added.

Afiuni's troubles began on 10 December 2009 when she granted bail to Eligio Cedeño, a businessman and banker with ties to the Venezuelan opposition. Cedeño had been jailed on charges that he had evaded currency controls and, on release, fled to the United States.

Afiuni's ruling triggered a furious public reaction from the president. Chávez took to the airwaves claiming the judge deserved 30 years in prison and suggesting that in another era she would have been hauled before a firing squad.

"This judge should get the maximum penalty … that judge has to pay for what she has done," he said.

Afiuni was arrested and packed off to the Los Teques female prison on the gritty outskirts of Caracas where she was reportedly met with squalid conditions and death threats from inmates she had sent to the jail.

In February this year – following a barrage of criticism from human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch – Afiuni was transferred from the prison to her home, where she has remained under house arrest.

"We don't expect much because this country's justice system is biased," the judge's brother, Nelson Afiuni, said this month. "Most prosecutors and judges respond to the interests of the government, and it's clear the government wants my sister to remain isolated."

In his latest letter Chomsky highlighted the physical suffering that Afiuni, who is a single mother, is said to have undergone in jail.

While in prison Afiuni "experienced grave abuses that led to a severe deterioration of her physical and psychological condition", the American linguist wrote.

While the judge was now under house arrest, "she is prohibited from speaking to the press and from receiving solar rays".

Chomsky added: "After more than two years in custody, there are no guarantees of a fair trial. I am convinced that Judge Afiuni has suffered enough and should be released."

Chomsky's letter is part of a renewed but diplomatically worded push for Afiuni's release.

Speaking to the Guardian on Wednesday, Charlie Clements, director of Harvard's Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, said: "We hope that given that this is the time of year that the president makes pardons, and that he himself was released under this same scheme, he decides to free her."

"I sincerely hope that the judge and her daughter don't have to suffer any longer," added Clements, who said he was speaking in a personal capacity. "For the Venezuelan judicial system this should come as an international embarrassment."

Leonardo Vivas, a fellow at the Carr centre, described the latest appeal as "a very cordial call for Afiuni to be freed on humanitarian grounds".

"We don't know what the reaction will be," he added.

Despite his appeal for Afiuni's release, Chomsky has been critical of the media's coverage of the case. On Wednesday he suggested the case had received so much media attention only "because Venezuela is an official enemy" [of the United States].

"I am involved in these appeals all the time but I get no calls unless it is an enemy of the US," Chomsky said. "This is more a comment on the media than on the case."

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/21/chomsky-chavez-free-judge-letter/print