World Social Forum, Venezuela: Another World Is Possible
03/10/2005
- Opinión
January, 2005, Brazil
President Chávez addressed the teeming Gigantinho stadium in Porto
Alegre, Brazil on the last day of the World Social Forum. The massive
crowd cheered wildly; thunderous applause explodes each time he
appealed for Latin American unity and denounces the Bush agenda.
I talked with him later that evening, wondering what it feels like to
be the most popular politician in Latin America in decades. "The poor
of Venezuela and of the entire continent are waking up. They are
building the dream of Bolívar to create a united Latin America free
of interference from the United States."
Something remarkable is happening in Venezuela. For the first time,
the President has challenged the business elite head-on, fighting -
and winning - a David-and-Goliath struggle to recapture the national
oil wealth from a tiny elite and put it to use to the benefit the
poor majority.
President Chávez was elected in 1998 on a platform to more fairly
distribute the nation's oil wealth, and to bring the country out of
massive poverty and inequality. The traditional elites fought back
hard, organizing a coup in 2002 which the US government was the only
developed country to endorse. (State Department, National Endowment
for Democracy, and declassified CIA documents would later reveal that
the U.S. government funded people and organizations involved in the
coup, and that White House and State Department officials were
knowingly making false statements after the coup when they tried to
convince the world that no coup had taken place).
A massive popular uprising brought him back to office within 48 hours.
An oil strike/employers' lockout later that year only served to hand
over control of the massive oil company from the traditional elites
to the government. And a referendum last year - organized by
unrepentant coup leaders, financed with support from the U.S.
government, and designed for his ouster - instead consolidated
Chávez¹s democratic mandate in a 59% landslide.
Flash forward to January, 2006, Venezuela
In recognition of the unprecedented changes happening there, this
year the World Social Forum is moving to the country with the most
mobilized citizenry and the most progressive government in Latin
America Venezuela (see
http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/722.html).
The World Social Forum has played a major role in uniting the world's
social movements, Indigenous communities, women's rights activists,
human rights organizations, environmentalists, intellectuals, and
students, creating the vision of Another World Is Possible, as well
as the space for us to build it together.
This is where the largest public mobilizations in human history the
February 15, 2003 protests against the war in Iraq were hatched.
Last year, over 120,000 people came from almost 100 countries around
the world to participate, including thousands of people from the U.S.
The World Social Forum provides a unique venue for learning from each
other's struggles across boundaries and for sharing strategies across
borders towards a truly global peace and justice movement. Latin
Americans have been mounting impressive victories electing
progressive governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina;
stopping the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); Bolivian
peasants kicking Bechtel out of Cochabamba; Uruguayans passing a
constitutional amendment against the privatization of water; Mexicans
defending the right of the most popular progressive presidential
candidate to stand for election next year.
And there's a new buzzword flashing across television and internet
screens across the continent: regional integration. Farmers across
the hemisphere uniting in the Via Campesina; poor people's movements
gathering in the network COMPA; debt cancellation activists in the
Jubilee networks; anti-"free trade" groups organizing together
through the Hemispheric Social Alliance.
Venezuela is taking this vision of people's integration and putting
real governmental resources into giving it a scope incredible to
imagine. Under the banner of the Bolivarian Alternative for the
Americas, Venezuela has developed a real alternative to the defeated
FTAA. The wide variety of ALBA projects prioritize real development,
social equality, and strengthening national economies rather than
structurally adjusting their economies around multinational corporate
interests. One of ALBA's first achievements is the health care-for-
oil program involving 20,000 Cuban doctors and nurses providing
primary, preventative community health care across Venezuela in
exchange for cheap oil that keep Cuban cars and factories running.
Chávez, along with President Lula of Brazil, led the effort for the
southern cone nations to unite with the Andean countries to birth the
South American Community of Nations last fall, a promising new
endeavor. Venezuela, along with Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina,
recently launched the first Latin American news channel, TeleSur, to
offer an alternative to foreign corporate media. And they are working
to establish PetroAmérica, the first fully integrated, Latin American
energy company.
Flash back to January, 2003, Brazil
I'm attending the World Social Forum for the first time. Glancing out
the window of our hotel, I'm surprised to see security swarming the
parking lot. Why on earth would the secret service stake out the
World Social Forum? It finally dawns on me: Chávez has arrived.
Stepping out of the elevator I see him, chatting amiably with the
crowd as he tries to make his way across the lobby. I know nothing
about Venezuela, and just take snapshots from a distance. Finally, I
screw up my courage. "Compañero Presidente!" I call.
He turns around. He talks with Medea Benjamin and me for a good ten
minutes. We are trying to stop the war in Iraq before it starts, we
say. (We failed.) He is fighting a war in his country against poverty,
he says. (He is winning.) He invites Global Exchange to bring a
delegation of women for peace to Venezuela.
Was that really the president of Venezuela?, I ask myself. He seems
like such a regular guy. Four months later, I'm on a plane.
The weekend of my first trip, we travel to a tiny village near the
Andean city of Merida to film Aló Presidente, his weekly four-hour
live traveling talk show. We visit a research facility for potatoes,
an Andean staple. He explains to me as we amble among the shoots, "We
in Venezuela import potatoes from Canada, while our own farmers don't
have work. Now we are investing in the necessary technical assistance
for farmers to produce food for our own people. That is food
security."
A scientist describes the "new varieties" being developed that fit
Andean soil and climate, resist disease, and produce prodigiously.
Ignorant of traditional plant splicing techniques, I inquire
skeptically about the process involved in developing these so-called
new varieties. The researcher looks confused. "She's concerned about
genetic modification of the plants because that leads to corporate
control of the food supply," Chávez tells the scientists.
My jaw drops to the floor. Here is the leader of the country with the
biggest reserves of oil outside the Middle East, and he sounds like
one of us. More important, except of course for the not-so-negligible
fact that he's the president, he acts like one of us. Challenging the
corporate, conservative way of thinking; visioning alternatives based
on people¹s human needs; and organizing for change. In fact,
Venezuela's implementation of land reform, credit and technical
assistance for small farmers, sustainable agriculture, and subsidized
food for the poor represents various aspects of the agricultural
model advocated by progressive communities for years. In Venezuela, I
learn, food is to eat, not just to export.
Another World Is Possible: And it is Happening in Venezuela
Traveling on a Global Exchange delegation a few months later, I
witness the beginning of a true revolution in education. I visit a
literacy center, and speak with 70-year-old Ana. "I'm learning to
read and write now because Chávez has called on me on all of us
to study. We old people need to be educated so we can participate in
the re-building of our country." Two years later, 50,000 Venezuelan
volunteers have taught 1.5 million Venezuelans to read and write, and
the country is now certified as illiteracy-free by UNESCO.
Later, I visit a high-school equivalency program for adults. Roraima
is a 36-year-old mother of two who has worked as a maid her whole
life. Now she has a future, she tells me. "I had to drop out of high
school in 9th grade to work, so my brothers could go to school. Now
I'm getting my GED, and then I will go on to the Mission Sucre [the
universal college access program] to study to become a social worker.
Then I will be able to help others, and give back to my community."
Her voice quakes with the honor of it all. Tears escape the corners
of her eyes as she tells me, "Do you have any idea, any idea at all,
what it means to me, a dropout maid, to become a high school graduate
of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela?"
The literacy campaign, the high school and college education missions,
the health care for all program; these are the backbone of a wide
series of missions putting oil money to use for the benefit of 24
million instead of a few thousand. Massive land reform and rural
assistance programs combined with subsidized food stores reach over
half the population are building food security and food sovereignty
step by step. And Indigenous and African descendent Venezuelans are
putting their newfound rights to use, gaining titles for traditional
lands and including AfroVenezuelan contributions to the national
educational curriculum.
Job training along with state investment in strategic industries is
building new opportunities for Venezuelans and diversifying the oil
revenue base. Rather than "stifling business" or "choking the
economy" as free trade fundamentalists predicted, employment has
taken a dramatic upturn and the economy is growing faster than any
other in Latin America. In fact the private sector has grown faster
than the public sector during Chavez' presidency, despite the big
run-up in oil prices. Bringing it all home: U.S. policy towards
Venezuela These ambitious programs have distinguished Venezuela as
one of the most progressive democracies in the world. Nonetheless,
the Bush administration continues to fund coup leaders in their
efforts to destabilize the government. Even the Organization of
American States and Carter Center's certification of the August 2004
referendum as free and fair, and presidential approval ratings
topping 70% this summer, haven't convinced the Bush administration to
back off.
While the Bush administration falsely charges Venezuela with
supporting terrorism, failing to crack down on drug trafficking, and
governing undemocratically, the real reason the Bush administration
is attacking Venezuela is the threat of a good example. It's
precisely because in Venezuela, like at the World Social Forum,
people engaged in participatory democracy are creating a world based
on life values, not money values and the movement is growing.
Venezuela's accomplishments have been achieved peacefully, while
preserving and even extending freedom of expression, civil rights and
liberties, and democracy. Despite the overt participation of the
major media in the coup, the media remains uncensored and is the most
anti-government media in the hemisphere. The elite that formerly
ruled the country have used their control over most of the country's
wealth, three-quarters of the media, and alliances with Washington to
destabilize the government at every turn, but the government has not
resorted to repression. In fact no respected international human
rights organization has alleged that civil or human rights have
deteriorated in Venezuela, even in the worst of the political turmoil
of the last 6 years (with the temporary exception of the U.S.-backed
coup government, whose first acts were to abolish the Constitution,
dissolve the Supreme Court and the National Assembly, and ban pro-
Chávez images on television).
After Hurricane Katrina, Venezuela offered to send 2,000 emergency
personnel to New Orleans to help, an offer that was never accepted by
the U.S. government. On a recent New York visit, President Chávez
visited poor communities in the Bronx, and promised to provide
discounted oil for poor Americans through the Venezuelan-owned gas
stations of Citgo. He denounced the illegal occupation of Iraq, and
received the largest applause of any speech at the United Nations
General Assembly meeting.
Now Venezuela, home to a peaceful revolutionary process that has
brought education and healthcare to millions through the
redistribution of oil profits, will host the World Social Forum this
January, 2006. When we dreamed during the first World Social Forum in
2001 that Another World Is Possible, we had no idea we would see it
within our lifetimes in Venezuela.
Here in the U.S., we couldn't stop the war against Iraq. But we can
be part of the wave of progressive values and victories spreading
across the Americas, and learn from a country where oil is a source
of social equality and development, instead of a cause for war.
And who knows, we might even learn how to get a better president.
---------
Deborah James, Global Exchange
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1004-22.htm
https://www.alainet.org/en/articulo/113183
Del mismo autor
- Trade and development backstory: the struggle over the UNCTAD 15 mandate 16/11/2021
- Las reglas del comercio digital 07/07/2021
- Digital Trade Rules 07/08/2020
- Big tech seeks to cement digital colonialism through the WTO 04/07/2019
- ‘Big tech’ busca concretar el colonialismo digital en la OMC 04/07/2019
- An overview of the 11th Ministerial Conference of the WTO 25/04/2018
- Un vistazo a la 11a Conferencia Ministerial de la OMC 25/04/2018
- OWINFS requests clarifications from WTO on representatives rejected by Argentina 03/12/2017
- Argentina arbitrarily revokes civil society participants' accreditation at WTO Ministerial Meeting 30/11/2017
- Argentina revoca arbitrariamente la acreditación ciudadana para la reunión de la OMC 30/11/2017
Clasificado en
Clasificado en:
FSM
- Sergio Ferrari 10/02/2021
- Sergio Ferrari 10/02/2021
- Sergio Ferrari 08/02/2021
- Celeste Serra 02/02/2021
- Sergio Ferrari 01/02/2021