A Gringa Diary

Taking over land, and women are strong

2010-03-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

We were pretty annoyed when we found out someone had occupied the land that we’ve been struggling for for over year.

It’s a piece of land that is within the area covered by our communal council and technically belongs to the mayoralty, but hasn’t been used for ages because it’s quite a long but skinny piece of land.

We want to build a communal house there, as we have nowhere to meet and such a building could also help solve lots of the other problems in our community- we would use it for the communal police and the monitoring system- as the community decided security was the community’s biggest problem. We’d also use it as a place for older people, for child care, for culture, for subsidised medicine, a community garden, etc. It’s been a typical bureaucratic nightmare to try to get this land, as we write letters to the mayoralty, the appropriate legal bodies, and so on, and wait for replies, and then we go and remind them, and we wait longer and so on.

We’ve also been working with architecture students to design the building.

Then this group comes along and occupies the land without even talking to us, and supposedly just for housing. Now that the Urban Land Law has been passed, such occupations are very common, but lucky for us, while the national priority is housing, due to the massive housing shortage, communal councils also have priority over individuals and other groups, and we have denounced their occupation and hopefully it will in fact speed up us finally getting the land.

M’s communal council, just down from ours, has also occupied (or as they say- taken custody of... since the term ‘occupied’ is more often associated with colonial occupation) various bits of unused land there in the centre of the city. They’ve put up banners, a few which have been taken down by someone not nice, and are maintaining a watch on the main one from 7am to 11pm. Each morning they set up a tent and table, coffee and biscuits, and members of the council hang out there in 2-3 hour blocks, keeping a register of who has done what shift in their notebook.

It’s fascinating how this project has massively increased participation in that communal council. Being in the centre of the city where there are a lot of shops, it was initially quite hard for them to even get the communal council happening. Now, people are coming up to them all day presenting them with letters of residency, as well as helping out with the watch. Of course a lot of it is sadly very self interested, people who had no interest in helping their community before, but now see the possibility of getting land and housing.

And it’s the same with the people occupying our land- they just want it for housing. The thing that bothers us is they aren’t from our community and they didn’t even bother talking to us, to the corresponding communal council and therefore the community representatives. It’s important that, even if in the end the community assembly decides we want to use the land for housing instead of a communal centre, that it be the community who decides that, not individuals! Also, the community knows its needs and its members, and knows who most needs that housing- single mothers living in one room, people living in risky housing on slopes, people in a situation where like 3 families are living in one small house etc. However these individuals are often people who already have a house and just want more property.

The other debate we’re having is about what to use the land for. Because on the one hand, the housing need is serious, but on the other hand, people argue that the city is already congested with traffic and housing and that the need for infrastructure like hospitals, and centres etc, is just as important. I can see this side of the argument, and I think in the end I agree, though I do think the implications of the first one is that basically all new housing is built outside the city and you end up with a situation where all the poor people (as they are the ones who need it most) are living far away from work, politics, culture, the big hospitals, and so on.

We talked about all this at our last communal council meeting, which was an interesting meeting. It was raining like crazy, thunder and all, and it turned out that the only people to turn up were four women. Of the four of us, we were all either sick or very stressed with everything we have to do, but we were there despite the rain. I felt proud. It just so happened I’d just started reading ‘Sandinos daughters’, where I read that under harsh living conditions- poverty, often being a single mother and having to care for their kids as well as sell stuff or whatever to survive- pushed women into being involved in the revolution there and also meant that these women had “developed tough characters. They were capable of making sacrifices”.

Well, the conditions are different in Venezuela, few are struggling daily just to eat, but the situation with women of course is similar. So it turned out at this meeting that the men didn’t turn up- put off by the rain probably, and we were there. And then 5 men came to the meeting to complain about a violent neighbour of theirs, and it was us women who were telling them what they can do about it.

Getting this communal council to work, we’ve faced a lot of obstacles, and it is hard to try to do something like this in a capitalist context where people still have to work, study etc, and have the capitalist mentality of putting family and themselves first, and of competition and consumerism rather than solidarity. But it is the women who have been most persistent. One, a teacher and mother of 6, said to me that in her house, even though her husband is fairly conscientious- helped with the communal council elections, has come to the occasional meeting- it’s always her that does the house work, and when for example, there’s cleaning or something to be done, he always has a headache or is tired or some excuse.

So I think that being a woman is hard, sometimes it’s so hard I wanna quit : ), but in the end, although of course it doesn’t matter, I’m glad I’m a woman and I do feel stronger for it. Women are quieter, we’re not heard as much, but we are strong, energetic, hard workers, and persistent, and revolutions need us.

The debates

2010-02-18T18:56:00.001-08:00

One comrade said, during our Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning study sessions (7am-9am!), “The situation in Cuba is really serious… and Cuba is depending on us, how full on..”

The debating is endless…its during the study sessions, its before communal council meetings, it goes for 6 hours during meetings of the teachers in the alternative school, its in the streets when you meet a friend, at parties, in the pub.

And the topics are endless too. So much to consider, so much to fight against, to change, to improve.. its overwhelming: The coexistence of capitalism right now, Chavez and the government working with companies… that the transition to socialism (or communism) takes decades, but that there’s a difference between peacefully coexisting with capitalism, and fighting it… the fact that the state governor here is Chavista but supports the bullfights, while most of Merida does not- do you protest that or not, and how…, about just what the communal council should do and not- if there is a guy in our community selling drugs out of his shop, is it for us to intervene, can we…should we, or don’t we have enough to do already?...The lack of electricity, is it the government’s fault, the bureaucracy, or isn’t it also the system and the model of consumption, where casinos use more electricity than a whole barrio, on lighting up their entrance and things?

…Environment and workers struggles- one more important than the other? …Incorporating teachers trained under the old system, into the alternative school? …How critical to be of Chavez… How much of the problems in the government are his fault, and to what extent do they prove that the revolution is not a revolution verses the fact that there will always be problems and obstacles when trying to change the system…Where does personal change come in?.. Is it more important to focus energy on the children, since they are the future, or on adults, as they are the present?
…Isn’t the PSUV just an electoral front with all the old bureaucratic vices of the past?... How important is it for movements and grassroots organisations to be independent of the government? (Here thinking of the local alternative radio that recently resigned from AMCLA, the national umbrella group of alternative media that is technically independent of the government, but that receives funding from it)… How to constructively criticise government institutions when they are really screwing us over? (“It took two deaths [here in Merida] for the electricity company Corpoelec to finally give us a schedule of blackouts, after 4 months of daily, unscheduled ones,” Everyone on the left is saying, or can’t help thinking..

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Meanwhile, crazy carnival time has just passed. I was coming back from a small informal meeting at one of the student residencies … planning a micro film about how to save energy…on the bus, and partiers in the street were throwing water and one water bomb went through the bus window and I got wet.
That was quite a day that.. I forget what happened in the morning, something busy.. then I had that meeting, then I caught the bus, which took for ever cos of the traffic, then came back to my house and quickly ate a carrot and an egg for dinner before going to a friend’s house to give a workshop on creative writing to our reading squadron group.

Yesterday was like that too- I went to our Marxism study group with Tatuy TV from 7am-9am.. we talked about the different stages of capitalism and all sorts of terms which I now know in Spanish but not necessarily in English :). Then I went to the alternative school in the barrio and taught the kids reading.. and it was great as well. They enjoyed it, most of them. Then I made lunch at home and tried to eat it really quickly, then went to the bank to withdraw some money to pay for the posada where my mum is going to stay. I got a ticket with a number, which said I was 389th in the queue! Ay! This is cos the banks and things were closed over carnival..
Well about 4 hours later, I went to the posada.. then walked down to the bus stop to go to the bus terminal and caught the bus, asked about buses at the terminal, went to the big supermarket to buy some things they don’t sell in the centre.. and went home. I was exhausted, and taking my shoes and socks off in the dark cos of the scheduled blackout.. when I remembered.. communal council meeting! Argh! I gobbled some dinner down again, put shoes back on, and went out to the meeting.
There was just five of us, but we got some stuff done and decided that next meeting we’ll talk about the reformed communal council law, and we’ll also aim to have all our surveys done. We’ve been surveying part of the community (a sample of 50 families out of the 200 families that make up our communal council) about security in the area, and the possibility of sticking in security cameras in the streets to deal with the crime. I’m not really in favour of the idea, but it seems pretty much everyone else strongly supports it, so what can you do.
But doing the surveys was fun..I really enjoy knocking on people’s doors and talking to them.. using the survey as a chance to remind them they can get involved in the council, or to come to the community assembly etc.

Man, there have been a lot of other things, but I can’t remember now.. there was a great concentration against the stupid bull fights, which the Chavista governor here, as I mentioned, actually supports.. he allocated money to the bull fighting school, helped get the bulls here and things. Disgusting.. really, especially added to how very not culture bull fighting is, what with the pleasures at seeing an animal tortured and so on… and most Meridenans are against it… especially the left. So there were quite a few concentrations against it. I only made it to one. There were bands, poetry reading, story telling, dance etc.. the idea being to show what culture we really want. And there was placard making in the plaza (see photo above), people holding banners, people painting anti bull fighting slogans on the backs of cars with shoe polish (as is the tradition here).

The battles

2010-01-30T06:11:00.000-08:00

Photos: 1) Burning tires and rubbish just down from where I live. In the photo there are only about 5 people, there were many more later on. 2) Puppets as part of the culture night for Haiti. Gosh I love puppets :)

Ah its been a while since my last entry and there is so much to write about. That’s the irony I guess- the more there is to write about the less time there is!

Well I’m happy to report that our communal council finally met (5 people last week, 9 people this week). And there is so much to do, just in the communal council- it’s overwhelming. There’s the hospital and how its been affected by the blackouts, as well as a few other things, and one of our reps is working with 5 other communal councils on that. There’s the surveys for the security project, the communal house we want to build, re-registering the council following the reform of the law, the wall we want to build to protect the houses on the slope, and it’s a long list, and I think that was part of what was de-motivating some people. So last meeting we decided for the next few weeks just to focus on the security survey and getting the council registered.

But urg the whole political situation is like that. I think the left needs to organise better to respond to the electricity situation. There’s bureaucracy to fight and denounce, there’s learning and ideology to be done, solidarity with Haiti, the list just seems endless and it can be overwhelming sometimes, and one is never doing enough or there’s always something else that *needs* to be done. Also, the feminist group has started up again, and I can’t not go to that, and there’s a study group from 7am-9am…a great bunch of people and a great start to the day. There’s the alternative school in the barrio, the reading group, work, writing, etc.

Last week in the study group, among many things, we talked about the media war. Take for example a recent cover of Pico Bolivar- a local private newspaper, and probably the most read paper in Merida, along with Frontera.The headline read, “Chavez: “There’s no electricity crisis”, making Chavez look like an idiot, like a president who denies the country’s problems. Later in the small print of the article you read that the full quote was, “There’s difficulty but there’s no crisis”. Then of course there’s the usual back page, every single day covered in photos of bodies- be it crashes or murders. That’s the side of the cover they always try to sell the paper with. And inside every day it has a full length picture of a digitally edited woman in a bikini, to go with the ‘health’ section.

The study group didn’t meet this week though, because one of their compañeros was killed during the protests on Monday night. He was 15, urg that is sad. He was shot by a sniper from Las Maries Residencias, funnily enough where I lived for a while. It’s got a good view of the university and the main road where the protests where.

Anyway the opposition started protesting on around Wednesday, perhaps earlier in other areas. It was about the blackouts, and then when RCTV had their right to broadcast temporarily suspended, it became about that too- leading to Monday’s events.

On Wednesday night there were opposition disruptions all over the place. Just around the corner from my house, then two blocks up from there and also two blocks down, people were burning rubbish and tires to protest the blackouts. I think they have all the right in the world to protest- while a good part of the issue has to do with the climate and climate change, a lot of it is about planning, bureaucracy, and utter lack of communication by the government officials involved (note I’m saying by the government officials involved, not Chavez and others- the mainstream media seems to think anything any government official does is really what Chavez himself is doing). But anyway,I talked to these guys who were burning stuff, and they had no idea WHAT the causes of the problem were. It was all about a bit of venting, adrenalin, and disrupting things, and the fact that they were further contaminating, in their own words, didn’t bother them at all. What made me feel a bit, umm, troubled, I guess was that there were more of them (perhaps 25) huddled around the closest fire, than there was at our communal council meeting that night (only 5 unfortunately). And all these people lived locally.

Anyway, the rubbish and tire burning and pot banging continued till Monday, on and off, in various parts of the city. I didn’t go to the protest on Monday though. Basically what happened was the opposition (or the violent, far right opposition… since not all opposition are like this) had blocked off main roads, were doing their usual thing, and some of the left- Chavistas, revolutionaries etc, marched for “peace” in the city, and marched to where the opposition were, trying to clear the road for people.

Last Friday night there was a culture event for Haiti, entrance was food, water or medicine donation. It was quite long, from 4pm till about 9pm, but people came and went. From about 5-7 though, there was no electricity, so the venue used a generator (most significant commercial places have generators these days. This place is owned by the university) just for the sound system etc but didn’t have enough power for the lights. The choir sung in almost complete darkness, and walked off the stage down the steps and up the aisle trying not to trip on each other. The oppositions complains, but I think its lovely and generous that Venezuela has sent a few hundred generators to Haiti, when we ourselves are short.

Finally, I had a lovely night last night in another concert- this time a street one. It was put on by the state government (which is Chavista but Marcos Dias, the governor, started off alright but has turned a bit crap in my opinion) and there were great bands, and despite the fact that the governor was supporting the event, the bands had no issues saying they are against the bull fights (which the governor is sadly supporting- by supporting the whole feria del sol “sun fair”). After the guarimba (riots/protests/violent clashes, destruction of a university department, burning of cars etc) on Monday there actually hasn’t been a black out, at least where I live. Also, the university and schools have been closed, in order to avoid further violence. The concert was part of that I think- to avoid the violence plus to do something publicly “for peace” etc.
Had a beautiful time dancing with M : ).

A time less smooth

2010-01-15T13:14:00.000-08:00

Well the year hasn’t got off to a great start. The electricity shortage is getting worse (while actually blackouts here in the part of Merida where I live are less- about one every 2 days now, there is now quite strict rationing of electricity in shopping centres, cinemas, casinos, etc as well as on advertising, which makes me very happy- they are the ones who do the most wasting of electricity!) but this comes at the same time as the government announced the devaluation of the Bolivar to half its worth, effectively, and there’s a fair bit of discontent.
In practice of course a devaluation only means something if one is travelling or purchasing things over the internet (im talking about for ordinary people not for business), but in practice its massive, because 70% of things are still imported, and those things are going to get more expensive (except food and medicine, which will have an exchange rate of 2.6) – that is, if companies do things the legal way, we will see the effects once they sell their old stock bought at the old rate and start selling their new stock.
Honestly, when I first heard the news, I was dashed. Mostly I was thinking about my boyfriend who has been working very hard on top of study so that he can try to get a computer, and in a few years, travel to Australia with me. The devaluation means that both those things will now cost about double the amount, making them almost impossible. Of course, later, after chatting to a friend, I put things in perspective and calmed down a bit. The measure is meant to encourage local production, which is an economic effect we’d feel in the long term, after going through inflation in the short term. I am not so convinced that this measure will work, but that’s the idea, and frankly I think “sacrifices” are worth it, in order to get the economy here less dependent on oil and more sovereign… and of course ultimately in the hands of the people.
I felt even less worse about it when I went to the dentist today, and unlike in Australia where such consultations would cost like $200 or more (I have no idea, I hardly went to the dentist in Aus cos they were so expensive), this one was free.. of course. So that’s the other perspective- social services, food, education etc, the important things are not effected- and that’s how it should be right? Paying more for the “luxuries” (its debatable how much a computer is a luxury for a student) but the important things are easily accessible.
Nevertheless, the measure is not popular, with only my most hardcore revolutionary friends really understanding it and supporting it, and many unions, and a range of other left organisations have come out against it- calling for a respective increase in wages.
Merida isn’t a very commercial city- there isn’t a lot of big billboard advertising and shopping centres, so it’s hard to know just what proportion of them are implementing the electricity saving measures. True, there are shopping centres out along Avenue Las Americas, frankly I just haven’t been anywhere near any : ). M and I did go for a walk to Plaza Las Heroinas- a place with artesania at nights and food stalls, a place to hang out late at night basically. And at 9 the police van started driving around telling the food stalls (which have lighting) to close. I’m guessing that was for the electricity measures, since they usually stay open quite late. Or maybe it was the heavy January security stuff.
Otherwise, its all just bits and pieces. Our communal council meeting didn’t happen again because for some reason its just tragedy time of year- with a few members looking after sick mums, an uncle that died, someone else very sick etc. I was also going to participate in a diploma of communal councils starting tomorrow but that’s been postponed as well. A shame, I was looking forward to it! Oh well, it’ll happen soon.
And then there is Haiti. Oh Haiti, bashed and bruised from all sides, yet one of the heroes of this continent for being the first to liberate itself from slavery, for constantly struggling despite it all. The youth of the PSUV have been organising stalls in the main plazas for people to donate medicine, food, and clothing, which will then be sent to Haiti. I think right now that is more useful than money. I have a lot to say about the Haiti issue, but this is not the place. Today though I walked down to the plaza with two big bags of clothes, some medicine and some food from myself and the people in my house.

Plazas for reading, stadiums for orchestras

2009-12-25T08:27:00.000-08:00

*Photos: At the orchestra concert, kids reading during our cultural day in Belen

Oh blah to Christmas, the streets full of people buying and selling and buying and buying and the traffic hardly moving and people being with their families and many of us not with our families.
Still, I’m trying to see the positive of it. Time! Time to write and read and watch some videos. Not that I didn’t have that before, but now there are big happy chunks of it.

The Bolivarian youth orchestra, the world famous one, famous especially due to that documentary about it and the program El Sistema that trains poor kids in music, is touring the country for Christmas doing free concerts, and came to Merida last week. With them came the conductor Gustavo Dudamel, also famous world wide, and a kind of national hero.
We changed our reading group meeting to 5, and at 6 rushed down to the big stadium, but it took 2 hours to get there because of all the traffic. Some people even turned back, thinking they wouldn’t get there on time or a decent seat. We got there just after 8 (when it was meant to start), and we were way off to the side. I’m guessing there were about 10,000 people there. Anyway I gotta be honest, I didn’t totally enjoy the concert most of the time, just cos the seats were so uncomfortable, haha, and the music (a lot of whatshisname? D…) was so relaxing I would have much preferred to lie down on the field :). But then they finished off with some dancy Venezuelan tunes, both the orchestra and the entire crowd dancing along, and fireworks, and that was cool : ).

What else? Ah our cultural day (of reading, dance, workshops etc, organised by the reading groups and the communal councils), well that was a bit of a mixture. We made the mistake of organising it for a Sunday, the idea being that lots of people just hanging the plaza would participate, but there was hardly anyone. And the second main problem was that the sound system that we’d organised to borrow from the alternative radio E, arrived about 3 hours late. Well, we were meant to get there at 12.30, to start things formally at 2, or at around 2.30-3 Venezuelan time. But the sound system arrived at about 3.30, then it was missing a chord, so we couldn’t start until about 4.15. That was frustrating, and we only did 3 of the 5 workshops we had planned, but they turned out alright. There was a clay making workshop, and J did a cooperative games one, which had people from kids to adults, from our community and from Pueblo Nuevo (which was visiting to do the dance performances) tying each other in knots and walking around four people tied at the legs, etc. Then we finished off with some reading games with the kids.
So the attendance wasn’t great, but it was the first thing we organised and I think we probably learnt a lot from the whole thing, and we did get kids reading in a public space, not a bad first step :).

Finally, on Tuesday, we went to an inauguration of a science centre in Pueblo Nuevo, something apparently they, the people of the alternative school and the communal council, have been struggling for for some time. We talked to a woman from the alternative school, who said they do games and didactic activities to teach around 17 kids the sort of things they would study in school. The kids are from sometimes abusive families or have problems at home, or have learning problems, and haven’t been able to enter or stay in a ‘normal’ school. Now they have a room with 5 computers, donated, or given or whatever, by Fundacite, the government fund for science and technology development, and which promotes computer literacy and open source software, among other things.

Organising in the Dark

2009-12-10T12:49:00.000-08:00

The dinning room during a black out.

The woman in the fruit shop gets the mechanical scale down off the shelf. “Ahh, the electricity’s gone,” she says, and the phrase or something like it is repeated up and down the street.
For the last few weeks the power outs have been almost daily, perhaps 5 days a week, they last for 2 hours and a few days have had two or three of them in the one day. They are a pain in the ass, to say the least, and dangerous frankly. Traffic lights don’t work, elevators stop, at night there is no street lighting at all, and then there is the more annoying side- fridge’s off, you can’t work (depending on your job), you have to just sit, or talk, and wait for it the power to come back.
It tends to just be bits of the city at a time, and you never have any idea when or if there will be one, so it is making it really hard to make meetings or events happen. This morning myself and a spokesperson from the community council went to the electricity office, the very place where they turn off the power, and we asked if there was any way of knowing in advance when the power outs would be. The guy explained that the plant runs out of energy, and then they have to cut the electricity, and they only know they are going to do it a few minutes before. We didn’t believe him. It’s by sectors, - a friend near the university might lose power at 1, and over here we might lose it at 5, and its not like each sector has its own plant.
Basically though, this is happening across the Andes in Venezuela, where there isn’t enough electricity supply to meet demand. The annoying thing is we are utterly impotent to do anything about it, partly, I think, due to the crappy management at the electricity company, and partly because this is the sort of thing you can only solve by 1) increased consciousness around not wasting electricity – something we can do about, but right now with the blackouts everyone is pretty well conscious 2) better electricity generation, preferably using alternative methods like solar power, but as if a third world country like Venezuela has the technology. I also read that due to “climate change” – or climate destruction, as the foreign minister more aptly phrased it, there are droughts here like never before, and the hydropower plants haven’t been able to produce what they are capable of.
Other people are saying its an infrastructure problem, and most people have a theory that gets stirred into the pot of rumours and so on. The problem is the management of what is meant to be a democratically run government electricity company, have done next to nothing to inform anyone of what is going on and why. Chavez says the electricity company has a lot of rotten people in it from the past- bureaucrats. Looks like it.

The last few days there have been protests about it as well- with the opposition protesting outside Corpoelec, and burning things etc, and the Chavistas protesting outside the office of the opposition mayor- not just about the electricity but about all the opposition violence in general.
They are really quite ridiculous, the opposition- they have been burning tires and throwing rocks outside the uni for the last week or so, just because they want to end classes early! And its even more stupid because most students don’t actually want to go onto vacations two weeks early. But of course with the roads blocked, students can’t get to class, teachers can’t- and so because of 15 or so young men full of adrenalin for some action with the police, the whole university finishes early each vacation and the students are really only there for a semester, in total in a year, as my housemate said.

Meanwhile, in the escuadra de lectura, the reading group, we’ve been trying to take advantage of the end of year and that people have a bit more time, to organise an end of year cultural event, with dance, writing and art workshops, reading games etc. Urg I’m a bit stressed about it coming together and about people coming along! But we’ve put up posters, made announcements on community radio, talked together and with others about how to do the different workshops, and we’ll leaflet the nearby communities in the few days before. So here’s hoping : ).

The communal council has died a bit over the last few weeks. I’m not worried about it being permanent though. It’s just it has been an intense few weeks for students- lots of exams and things, one member had a few weeks of dance festival to worry about, I was away, there have been the blackouts, one member’s brother died and he’s had a lot of work, another one has been quite sick. It’s a shame cos we would have liked to get a few things done before the year wrapped up. Yesterday, after a week without rain, it rained AND there was a black out, so there was just 3 of us at what we were thinking would be a last meeting for the year. Here’s hoping we start next year with a new burst of energy and with everyone in good health and the blackouts avoiding Wednesday nights : ).

The people behind the Bolivarian revolution

2009-11-24T17:59:00.000-08:00

...The people you don’t see, who don’t make the press, but who without, you couldn’t say that this was a mass process, and who are a range of beings as diverse, complex and contradictory as the process itself.

For example, there is S. I asked him what he lives for once, and he told me he lives to change the world. He’s 20 years old and studying political science at university. He walks in life with a lazy posture and an unashamed lack of enthusiasm. Sometimes he’s talkative and affectionate, other times he’s quiet and withdrawn.
He says both anarchism and socialism are too limited and right now he says the way to change the world is to change oneself.
On Saturdays he participates in a radio show run by history students at the Radio E, one of the thousands of alternative or community radios and other medias that have sprung up over the last 10 years. They talk about history in a way history isn’t usually talked about, as something to question, to rewrite from the perspective of the people rather than the powerful, as something not determined by individual heroes like Bolivar, but by movements, organisation, the economy, and unfortunate events organised by more than one person, such as war. During these sessions S becomes more lively. He says he’s nervous but it isn’t noticeable. His arguments are well thought out, constructive, original and thought provoking.

There is A, a member of my communal council who lives in a two room house with her husband and kid, the house on the edge of a slope that is suffering erosion problems and it’s quite risky. She had her child when she was 16, now she’s 24 and has just finished highschool and is looking forward to going to university.
She is cheerful and usually turns up to communal council meetings and activities, but sometimes she can’t and only her husband turns up, while she cares for the kid. Her and her husband are also in a church group, and they organise social and community events through that too.
People on the slope can be lazy with their rubbish, not wanting to walk all the way up the hill to put it in the street where it can be collected, and she expresses her frustration about this at the meetings. Her and her husband will re-visit these people with information about the rubbish system and try to organise a meeting of all of them to find a solution to the problem. Her family is also looking for housing, and at the meetings they inform us of what the state government is doing- petrocasas, and the mayor is doing- cheap apartments but you have to pay a lot it upfront, so that we can then inform the rest of the community.

L. At first L was completely against politics. He couldn’t see the point and he got frustrated sometimes when we talked about it or when we couldn’t meet him because we were at a meeting. Then he fell completely in love with a guy who saw revolution as the only thing worth fighting for, who saw a reason to talk about it any social context. At first it made L resent politics even more, but then he started to embrace it. Then he was wearing PSUV wrist bands and calling himself a revolutionary. But I’m not sure that he ever really got it. He came out recently. He goes out a lot, to pubs and things. His crush left and later he fell for someone else and I think in the end he is young, preoccupied with his own identity, and for now that interests him more than the rest.

Two guys I was talking to at the pub: They shouted me a drink and we talked politics. One was an art historian, the other worked in a bookshop. They declared they did not support Chavez. Why? Because he divides the people with his strong way of talking (he needs to stop talking in upper case, they repeated, use softer language, not talk about imperialism all the time). But the opposition are a small sector of mostly rich people, whereas those who support him are the vast majority of the country, and quite poor, do they think the country would be united if he just changed his discourse? Ah. And then, but things cost so much. We are a rich oil country, why can’t we buy more things? And then they repeated a lot of the opposition press rhetoric, Chavez supports the Farc! He spends too much time overseas, when we have our problems here to sort out first! Inflation. Ten years in government and bureaucracy and corruption are still rife! Well, I said, its true there are many problems, many things we need to work on, but don’t you think the widespread free education and health care, the communal councils where we directly solve our communities’ problems is more important than if we can easily buy electronic brands? Ah yes, these are good things, of course we support that! Then me, and don’t you think that not everything is up to Chavez, that where bureaucracy and corruption are a problem, rather than just complaining about it, it should be us, going out there and try to help fix these things? Well yes of course… they said, then went back to how Chavez needs to stop talking about imperialism so much…

The revolution here isn’t as simple as opposition verses red t-shirt wearing Chavez supporters. There are the people who dedicate a lot of time to the communal councils, just because they believe in their principles, but who probably wouldn’t call themselves revolutionary or Chavistas (though many would admit they voted for Chavez). There are those who do call themselves revolutionaries, but whose revolutionary work is limited to their job working for the government, or others who are in revolutionary groups but they focus most of their efforts on criticising the government. There are whole 10 member families who get involved in things, and there are couples made up of both “sides”, there’s the woman who makes chicha at the bus stop with the PSUV sticker on her cart, the guy with a computer collective shop who was helping organise the PSUV youth and who plays the guitar like a second lover, the CC rep who lost her mother and hasn’t been attending meetings lately, the other member who is always nervous, the Chavista students who are somewhat more motivated during elections and less so when they have lots of exams, etc etc.

There’s J, who’s organising a different communal council but who participates in our reading squadron. Despite his relaxed and fairly cheerful demeanour, I think he’s feeling a bit pessimistic right now. “Everyone in my communal council is waiting for the new law to be passed, we don’t want to do anything because the new law will make it all redundant. There’s too much apathy, people don’t come to things.” Are you in the PSUV? I ask. “Yes, I’m in xx patrulla. But we don’t meet. No one comes. Everyone’s very apathetic,” he repeats.

The small shock of going from Venezuela to Mexico

2009-11-04T18:36:00.000-08:00

photo- SME meeting

Super combative and democratic electric union and a 6 year old kid in a school uniform selling porn are the two things that have stuck in my mind (or heart) so far about Mexico (in my 1st week of a 3 week vacation), and although it’s a bit ridiculous to try and compare a city of 20 million with a very different history to little Merida in Venezuela, you can, and you do.

Unemployment- because of the crisis, because of NAFTA, because of Calderon- is getting much worse here in Mexico, and since there is little to no social security, people start selling stuff when they are unemployed. People (I’ve talked to all sorts of people, from electric unionists to a radical student band, to the CMR) say that the informal market has grown a lot but the amount of money people in it are earning has gone down significantly. Which makes sense, since the number of employed is the similar to the number of people with money to buy such stuff.
So that, unfortunately, is a similarity with Venezuela, although it does seem worse here, and certainly unemployment in Venezuela has not increased. In Venezuela, in Merida or Caracas, there are usually a few people who get on the long distance buses, sometimes even the local buses, trying to sell some useless thing like bracelets or stickers. Same in Mexico city, but its every carriage of every train- not exaggerating. Especially on trains it seems to be people selling pirated dvds. Then on the station stairs there are more people, spending all day repeating over and over ’3 pens for 10 pesos.’ God what a rotten life.

I’ve also now met with a range of movements, collectives and parties- though far from a majority of them, just a sample. While the electristas are fired up, and that’s mega exciting, the culture collectives Ive met (2 of them) seemed a bit dead or faded. One, fighting the battle of trying to inject culture in a barrio where, as usual, street markets of stuff and more stuff dominates, seemed to have about 5 or so main volunteers, who were all in their 50s or 60s, and who have been doing it for a while. They said they’ve gotten some resources from the city government (which is semi left, but which itself has few resources as the national government doesn’t want to give money to them), and despite it all- they are out there every Tuesday putting music on for people to dance to (seemed mostly very old people- which is fine, but clearly all the young people are sticking to their stalls) and conducting some classes. Frankly, as un politically scientific as it may be, what struck me most was the guy who talked to me. He was tired. He was repeating a schpeal he’s clearly said many times, and not with the animo of the average Venezuelan activist that you’ll come across- who you sometimes can’t shut up just because they are so excited and have so much to say.

Of course the whole electricity thing is on a different plain- and the groups who aren’t participating in this newly formed Resistance Assembly of movements who want to not just get the SME workers re-instated but finish with Calderon altogether- are making a big mistake. I’m talking about some of these collectives, and the Zapatistas.

So, it’d be lovely to see some unions as fired up as the Electristas here, in Venezuela, but of course its just completely different. The national government in Ven doesn’t go around firing 44,000 workers in order to privatise services. And then, I live in Merida, not in the industrial sector, where they probably do have such mass meetings like the one I went to a few days ago here.

Fascinates me that here some people believe what they hear about Venezuela too, one woman, a Mexican, in my dorm at the hostel saying she actually went to a highschool that was called Venezuela, but all she knows about it is that the president is a dictator and there isn’t a lot of freedom. I start telling her that education is free and medicine is free and there’s complete freedom of speech and she starts to ask more, because she’s trying to get a visa to the US to go live with her husband (who married her in Mexico), and has a whole folder full of documents for it and at least she has heard how expensive medicine is in the US.

So there’s a lot more I could say. Being here as a tourist just for a few weeks I’m bound to miss most stuff, though I am trying to talk to lots of people, I’m going out to the barrios, not just to tourist sites. I guess there is MORE to buy here- Ven, being a petroleum country, imports cost a lot and there really isn’t much variety of food, clothes, and products (relatively speaking of course. In terms of living, its more than enough). Here, you are bombarded with stuff to buy and at first it can seem nice- I found shoe laces so easily, or whatever. But eventually it gets tiring and a tad depressing.

Busy Times

2009-10-21T14:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, things have been so busy, that I’ve been fairly stressed, to be honest…and I only work part time!

On Monday we had an extra-ordinary meeting of our communal council. People there are getting a bit stressed too, and a bit demotivated. The council has existed for around a year now, and “we haven’t achieved any of our major projects”, complained one of the leading members (who is also feeling warn down because he’s one of the communal bank reps, finally after this long, we got a signature we needed, to open a bank account, but the lines each morning are horrendous, and he keeps going, seeing the long line, and saying he’ll go next time).
That, the lack of a bank account, has been one of the main things stopping us get much down (the three main projects we have are the communal house, a wall to protect some of the houses that are on the edge of a slope, and a security camera project). The other thing though that has been stopping us is the opposition mayor and the ‘sindico’, so that we can get legal title to some land.

This week is also FILVEN in Merida- International Fair of Books-Venezuela, and one of the main focuses this year is the Revolutionary Reading Plan. There are workshops every morning for reading promoters and a whole day on Saturday, plus book and artesania tents, poetry recitals, performances etc. I haven’t been able to go to a workshop yet because of work but tomorrow, the organiser told me the topic is promoting reading to children, and Friday- writing local histories, so those will be really great. On top of that, on Saturday we have our own reading squadran meeting to organise, and the ‘women and spirituality’ conference which links women’s issues with food production and the environment. Saturday I’ll literally be going back and forth between the two events.
I went to a poetry recital last night, it was half recitals and half speeches about the history and formation of an alternative publishing group, which was interesting. But the whole thing was very badly organised- as with FILVEN in general. My opinion (and I’m going to go more into depth about this an upcoming article about bureaucracy in Venezuela) is that the institutions aren’t linked, or communicating well enough with the movements, the councils, and the communities (from the fact that there was no publicity out about FILVEN before it started, to not involving us well in the decision making- myself and M attended meetings to organise FILVEN but the program and financing was all decided by the institutions before the meetings) and so it was the same old people at the poetry recital. To me, the point is to reach out, not just sell books. Of course, having a book fair in of itself is a great thing, and the talleres, but it could be so much better I think.

M and I, as part of our reading promotion, have been trying to do a small weekly activity with some kids from his street, who also eat in the food house, but it has been hard to get it started. Three of the kids are more keen than the other three (younger, I guess), but every time we arrange a time to do the activity, half of them aren’t there when they said they would be and so on. I guess I’ve learnt that we have to be more flexible- design activities for just half the group and go with it, or do it 2 hours later than planned and on other days (well, I’m ok there, though sometimes its hard, as me and M both have a range of commitments). We will get there, I think it’ll just take a while. As I said to M (though perhaps talking more to myself), it’s hard to promote reading to people who don’t read! Much easier to organise groups of people who already like reading, but that’s not really the point. And it’s not just that they don’t read, they (or more their parents) have grown up in a world that couldn’t care less about them, and its easy for them to then adopt a similar attitude about the world. Still, they are nice kids.

Then the other thing is that I’m going to take a few weeks “holidays” and go to Mexico, something I’ve dreamed of doing for a long time (in love with the political muralism there, among other things), so I’ve been preparing for that, and writing my novel, and argh! A full life, I shouldn’t complain.

Steep slopes, Uni classes, and community forums.

2009-10-08T20:01:00.000-07:00

*photo: cinema-forum in Belen

Merida city or Merida central is kind of on top of a mountain, well a small flat one, its hard to describe, but this mountain drops down into a valley that goes back up into taller mountains on the other side of the valley. People from our community and the one next to it live on the slope, along a twisting path that goes all the way down the valley.
We went to the Cuesta de Belen (slope of Belen) and going down was easy, and about ten minutes down, after asking at various houses, we found the house where two of the main communal council people for the slope live. They had a simple house with an upturned car on the side and about 4 kids playing on a sort of patio. The mother looked really young to have so many kids, one a young teenager. We talked to her about the women’s forum and she said she’d stick up posters along the path- only a few are necessary as everyone has to walk up by the same path. Which is the hard part, the walk up is exhausting, and we didn’t even go right down to the bottom, I don’t know how the old lady we saw does it.
Another day I went to Campo de Oro to do the same thing. For some reason Campo de Oro is one of the most organised areas of the city, I guess the nucleo might help (The nucleo is an area, in this case, with cultural centre and hall, community radio, internet café, barrio adentro health centre). They were having a combined meeting of various communal councils, there were about 40 people there in total, and the IMMFA woman motivated the women’s committees in general and I motivated the conference, and they were quite keen with lots of questions.
That was a full on night that, I meet the IMMFA woman at a meeting of paroquias, we then went to that meeting, then I went to what was left of my own communal council meeting.

On Saturday we had another taller organised by the ministry of culture for the reading promoters. There was more people this time, later the organiser told us he’d texted everyone that they could lose their libraries if they didn’t come (since so many people or groups who registered reading squadrons just got their libraries then haven’t done much, and even a few people have been selling the books from the libraries, which is just screwed).
The workshop was interesting, lots of discussion about the role of the teacher, and about what it means to read. We looked at the history and lyrics of the Venezuelan national anthem and discovered that most people sing it without really thinking about what the words mean, or necessarily meaning what they sing. Reading can’t be like that. Especially not when it comes to politics and preparing yourself to be a person who’s going to participate in changing the world :)

Then in the afternoon we set up for the cinema-forum. We had the projector from a friend of mine, and radio ecos lent us big speakers and a screen. In terms of using the forum to create a women’s committee, it probably wasn’t a success and on reflection probably not the best way to do it- its hard to form a committee in such an open atmosphere, with others there who don’t want to be on it, just watch the film, etc. But we did get some names down, and we can call them later.
As a community film night it was great- we had some great little cartoons about environmental problems, then a short doco about some enviro initiatives here in Merida, up the mountains. People sat on the fence behind, and on the chairs we’d set up, and I’d guess all in all about 60 people or so watched. There was some good discussion between films on what we can do here to improve recycling.
Then, just as we were getting to the last short doco on women, rain came out of nowhere and fell down heavily on us, and for a while we stood there in the middle of the plaza around the equipment with a floppy broken umbrella, then we moved to the church nearby where there was shelter, waiting for the rain to calm down so we could put things in the car. None of us had umbrellas which is silly for a country with rain so often :)

Finally, a few weeks ago I started taking a class at the ULA (University of Los Andes), in colonial literature- quite a useful and critical course examining the language of the invaders of South America, how they saw it and why, what role literature had in justifying and maintaining the colonisation, both in their eyes and foreign eyes. I enjoy it, because it’s been a while since I had the luxury of being a student, and the teacher is quite good, as a teacher. He has a good class dynamic- unusual for ULA where most classes are just the teacher talking. But, he’s incredibly right wing, to the point where he says racist things like the Chinese are going to end with the world (ya he said exactly that) and he constantly makes irrelevant jokes about Chavez and the revolution. First of all, I find it ironic, because his stance on colonialism is fine- no racism there, but when it comes to the current political situation he has all sorts of paranoid and stupid theories without any academic logic behind them, that the reason why there are black outs all the time in Merida is that the government is too centralised (sorry mate, the electricity system just doesn’t work like that!) or that the cheap books the government sells aren’t of good quality and the government bookshop closes too early- so its all screwed and a lost cause apparently ha. Its ok, it really just shows that the opposition are full of crap when they talk about being repressed, this teacher gets away with a lot more politics than most teachers in Australia could even touch on. I don’t mind either, I don’t have any opposition friends or listen to the opposition channels, so it’s a handy reminder of the fact that not everyone here is as revolutionary as the people I know.

Promoting Reading and Self Organisation of Women in the Barrios

2009-09-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

It was Friday night, young guys and students were drinking beer outside the barrio entrance, next to the main road. We met one member of the Milagrosa barrio, and walked past the drinkers, up a steep path until we reached a blue house.
A woman, almost 40, greeted us, and called up into the houses, until 4 more women came down to join the meeting. Two were housewives, two were social workers, another was a worker and another a pensioner. One woman was so shy she refused to sit in the circle, while another two women had a lot to say, were angry, and frustrated.
‘We’ were myself, helping to organise an upcoming conference for women in October, a woman from the Merida Women’s Institute (IMMFA) and a woman from the Women’s House.

The IMMFA woman told the group of women that the point of the meeting was to talk about setting up a women’s defence committee, which would make the law against violence (which recognises about 19 types of violence against women) known, raise awareness of women’s rights, and could organise a range of other activities. “We don’t just exist to have kids,” she said.

“We’ve been receiving a lot of denunciations, a tonne, and most of them are by young women,” she said.

One of the barrio women said, “I’ve been living here for 37 years and the truth is the people are very apathetic and we’ve tried to unite the community and we haven’t been able to.”

The others were equally negative, saying, but we’ve done this and tried that and had this problem, and this person behaved like this, and the bureaucracy….etc. Their pessimism was understandable, and it’s a common feeling in many communities, or for anyone, which would be all of us, who tries to get through the bureaucracy and achieve something.

The IMMFA woman replied, “I understand, yes, but capitalism has many vices, we’re changing them slowly, I wish we could change everything by tomorrow, but there’s so much.”

She also gave the group a lot of information- about when the people with disabilities meet, how to get help, equipment etc for people with disabilities, the documents needed to get an elderly person’s pension, and so on.
Then suddenly one woman laughed, “And this is why we need to organise, to collect this information and hep each other and the others.” Then she started complaining about problems with bureaucracy again.

The IMMFA woman agreed, “But why does this happen? Because there are a few people in charge of everything, that’s why we have to organise ourselves.” Then she gave out a range of pamphlets about the law, women’s rights etc, for the information to be “socialised” and suggested, “Why don’t we organise a cinema forum?”

When I got home that night, at about 9.30, it was pouring rain. There was no running water, and there was a blackout that lasted until early the next morning, part of the daily blackouts we’ve been having in Merida for the last few weeks.

-
Myself and a friend also attended a neighbouring communal council meeting yesterday to promote the women’s committees and the upcoming conference. This community council is mostly just three men who regularly meet, and after 2 years, have finally been granted some funding to implement a lighting and security project. These men were also frustrated and demotivated, and one man kept saying how he wished they had “young people like you (us)” in the council, as they are tired. He said ages ago Chavez had promised funding for communal councils, and they had put together a bunch of projects, but never received any funding so feel disillusioned.

It’s interesting though, because these guys are opposition. They are “anti-Chavez” but see the usefulness of the community organising itself to solve its own problems.

-
And last Saturday we had a meeting of reading promoters, or members of “reading squadrons” where we talked about what the point of such reading circles is, about participatory education and the role of the teacher. We read a story together which really moved me, about a boy whose family was quite poor, his mother was quite negative and assured the teacher he would fail when she enrolled him into school, and from then on the boy was always treated as a failure, and had little motivation to study. It was loosely based on a true story, the boy ended up in prison and was shot at a young age just after getting out of prison.

Talking to one friend who lives in one of the barrios and who’s being trying to promote culture there, he said few of the kids there read. You can understand why- poverty is a shitty life experience, it makes people negative, the teachers and schools are under-resourced and a lot of people and institutions judge you as a failure from the start.

And that’s why the communal councils and this “Bolivarian Revolution” aren’t just about material things- new roofing on houses, health, better rubbish systems etc, which, while being very important, is somewhat meaningless without food for the spirit as well- culture, music, personal growth, etc. Reading stimulates the mind, the ability to criticise and think autonomously, it makes our world bigger, puts us in the shoes of others, improves our creativity, awakens interest and curiosity.

And so promoting reading, both to children, their parents, and adults in general, is important, and it’s important we do it in a positive, fun, participatory and dynamic way.
We had our first reading circle last Saturday, where we discussed the new education law, each person reading a part to themselves then summarising it to the group. The law is so interesting that we all had a lot to say, and ended up talking together, constantly interrupting each other for 2 hours, instead of the forty minutes I had planned for, leaving us no time to plan our promotion of reading activities in the community. We’ll do that this Saturday.

Blackouts and books

2009-09-08T19:14:00.000-07:00

Wow there have been a lot of black outs lately. Around this time last year I remember, it happened as well, and a lot of meetings were disturbed and didn’t happen because of it. Then, it “got fixed” and we’ve mostly been fine, until this last week, when they have been every day- usually just for half an hour or an hour, but on a few days they were all afternoon or night. Of course, the speculation as to why is rife, with rumours of coups, blaming the opposition, blaming the government, etc. I am not sure what the real cause is, to be honest, though I also hear there is a union battle going on in the electricity sector.
It has been ok though. We had our communal council meeting on the school basketball court by the light of the moon one night when there was no electricity all night. We used our mobile phones to sign the attendance and read anything we needed to, and one member held his phone over my shoulder as I read last weeks minutes. And the FILVEN meeting, discussed below, we had next to an open window. That was during the day, so it was not so bad- but most of the culture ministry area doesn’t have windows for natural light, so we all had to squeeze in this corner next to the one window in that part of the building.

The new education law is still very much on people’s mind, and I love it how well informed (some) people are…before our communal council meeting the week before, one woman was explaining the law (article numbers and all) to one of the newer, less regular attendees of the meeting. Another man was saying how he had talked to his nephews. The opposition has got out a bunch of false versions of the law, and this man go his nephews to read the real version (“look, that article doesn’t even exist!”) and they were like, “oh that’s not so bad!”.

On Thursday I went with communal council members to Suncorp so we could ask yet again about that piece of paper that we handed in in order to register our communal bank (I’m simplifying, all the paper work is a bit more complicated than that). The woman from Suncorp wasn’t there so we took the advantage that we were all together to go up the road a bit to the architecture faculty of the university.
We talked to a teacher who is in charge of organising student/community projects, about helping us with the design for a community centre. We discussed with her the size of the land, and our ideas- to build something that not just functions as a community meeting and cultural space, library, but also for child care and old people care- where old people can go while the person who usually takes care of them is freed to go to work or take care of other responsibilities.

In around October is the Venezuelan International Book Festival (FILVEN). M and I went to the first organising meeting for the festival here in Merida, where we (Ministry of culture, Revolutionary Reading Plan, reading Squadrons, the Writers Network etc) discussed the starting stuff, like when and where. There was quite a discussion about where- whether to focus on Merida city, whether to try to get out to everyone and do it simultaneously (are there the people to be able to do that), to launch in Merida city then go travelling around the rest of the state, and so on. And whether to focus on areas where there are already reading squadrans set up (hold further training type workshops with them) or to areas where they aren’t set up, to try to spur that on.
Usually these book festivals are half stalls of books for sale and half workshops. I’m glad that people at the meeting emphasised that the point of the festival isn’t getting books sold, but rather promoting reading and facilitating it with all sorts of events such as poetry reading, plays, film, and so on. And that secondly, now that there are reading squadrons, they should play a big role in promoting the festival, and in the events themselves.

Responsibility for the Streets

2009-08-25T14:23:00.000-07:00

It seems the mayor and his staff often override what should be community council territory. The mayor is opposition, but I’m not sure if the problem is more that or, general bureaucracy and old habits.
For example, one issue that has been ongoing for our communal council has been the immigration office building- which is situated in our ‘territory’. It is more a house than a building, and since the government started speeding up the processing of passports (a good thing), they are now receiving 300 people a day and the queue is in the street, onto the road, blocking people’s houses and the parking blocks people’s parking. My house is included, and I have to say I don’t mind much – it just means having to walk on the road sometimes cos the street is blocked (not so bad in slow traffic Merida), and sometimes asking someone to move so I can open the house door. I worry more about the people in line all day, in the sun or rain. Anyway local residents are pretty concerned about it, and we had a meeting of 22 people with the director of Immigration in Merida and with a representative from the mayor. The director said they are waiting on a new building, with more floor space so people can queue inside. In the mean time, the best we can do get a pedestrian cop to keep things in order. There are also buhoneros (informal stall holders) who sell orange juice, arepas, etc. They got permission from the mayor to be there, but communal council people were angry, because both the buhoneros and the mayor should come to us before granting people permission to do stuff in our community- in this case it’s a business that results in a lot of rubbish in the street.
The mayor/municipal government has also made it really hard for us to get use of a piece of public land. It’s a small bit of land that was going to be used, originally, for a child care centre. For whatever reason, they changed their mind about that, and now its not being used at all, and we’d like to use it to put our community building on (which would have library in it, meeting space, security, etc). The more opposition leaning member of our CC got verbal permission for us to use the land but it’s been a six month bureaucratic and annoying wait to get any kind of written permission. It’s a shame, because that building would help us organise a lot of stuff and do a lot of stuff more effectively. At the moment we meet in the school on Wednesdays and any weekend meetings have to be in someone’s house.
On the other hand, the “reading squadron” is coming along…we had a first meeting in my place last Saturday, and I’m excited that we got enough people, so we filled in the form and chose our name (el grillo- the cricket), which I handed into the culture ministry, and I’ve organised a rep from there to come and help us organise our first activities.Yipee! It’s so awesome to be doing stuff and for meetings to be happening and things to be happening :).

I went to a Socialist Front meeting the other day- after a long time without going because of work and other reasons. It was great, a good re-orientation. Much smaller, but everything is right now because its “summer” vacation time. (I’m loving vacation, I’ve been spending a lot of time with M, cooking, sleeping, watching movies, a poetry recital in the plaza, catch up on reading…but I’m looking forward to it all starting up again).

Sometimes, we can get lost or lose perspective a bit, without a group like the Socialist Front, I think. In the patrullas (the new organising form of the PSUV), or in the communal council, there isn’t a lot of space for Marxist analysis (although that should happen in the PSUV, but if it does, its at a more basic level) or for constructive criticism of the revolution (or complementing the revolution as well). That is, basically, there’s no where for cadre revolutionaries to talk together. Well, in the absence of a good revolutionary party, the Front provides that space.
At this Front meeting, I liked one comment someone made, which was that you can say there is ‘consciousness’ when people start collectively taking responsibility for their community- be it their street, suburb, country, or the world. This is one of the reasons why I think the community councils are so important, it’s such an obvious but revolutionary idea- that we are responsible for what happens to our surroundings, not just for ourselves and our families.
Then we talked about how one strengthens consciousness- and it’s clearly a combination of ideology or theory (which the patrullas are meant to be tackling once a month now- a very good thing, beyond my basic gripe that it was a decision made by a leadership that is totally removed from our local circumstances) and experience. One CMR member said – well the reading squadrans are good, Alo presidente is good, but people have to start taking over their workplaces, taking real democratic control of them, and that’s the experience side. I think there are other types of experience, but he has a point- the PSUV is simply not promoting such things or even assisting struggles where that is happening. Or promoting/supporting any social movements really.

Mercals and Murals

2009-08-12T13:48:00.000-07:00

The Saturday before last we did community council stuff all day. We started at just after nine and painted the first layer of white paint on the wall, to do the mural, finally. Then while that was drying we cut up and wrote on leaflets, which we then handed out as we visited each house.
The idea of the leaflets was to raise awareness about the rubbish problem- here the system is that each Monday, Wednesday and Friday we put out rubbish in a bag in the evening, and it gets collected. But a lot of people put it out at other times, and some street corners get filled with garbage that won’t be collected for a while. Others don’t tie the bags well and dogs get into it and spread the rubbish around. Naturally, everyone complains about it but it’s always someone else’s fault (this was a comment we got a lot when we went to talk to people about it). So we got a leaflet from the mayor that specifies possible fines people can receive, and we went around visiting the houses making sure everyone was really clear about what hours exactly they can take the rubbish out.
We divided the streets amongst us, Me and M took the slope (literally houses built onto a steep slope of hill) and streets 13 and 14. A lot of people weren’t home or didn’t want to answer (they’d talk to us through their closed door, it was weird), others were very happy that something was been done about the problem, a few wanted to have a whinge about it, but frankly, no one was really interested in getting involved in the communal council. (Although, we’ve had a few new people since the mural, coming along saying they want to be regularly involved).

In the end we ended up having to pay for the mural paint out of our own pockets, but got it super cheap from the electronics/paint store in the plaza, as the guy there is communal council-sympathetic :).
It was great to have lots of people chipping in with the painting and the drawing and ideas and we did it during the day which mean the sun damn well killed us, but also that lots of people stopped and asked us what we were doing and showed interest. We added the meeting time and place at the bottom of the mural, so everyone will definitely know about it now.
J, a teacher, decided he couldn’t paint, so he watched for a while, while another J told him off (in a friendly way) for not helping out. Finally he cleaned up the edges of the letters with white and got one of those letter things to draw the lettering at the bottom. All fun, I like the chatter.
And then, we were painting in front of one member’s house (well 2 actually, who are related) and the mother cooked soup for everyone for lunch and kindly brought out yum pineapple juice and water.
And now I think the CC feels like its finally got something concrete done (2 things really). So many of our projects take forever due to paper work issues, financing issues, bureaucracy, etc, Not that it’s the first thing the CC has done- collected money and utencils for the school, other things I’ve written about before, and other things before I got involved…but the mural will help us get the message out about what we’re doing, plus the community can stick their stuff up too.

Then last Saturday, some social/community worker students had organised a mercal day. We handed out slips of paper notifying everyone in our area that there would be one… and there was meant to be the Mercal, and ID stall, and a doctor giving out vaccinations…but the last two didn’t come for some reason (one of the students had to go to hospital, that was probably part of it).
The Mercal was great fun though- they were selling powdered milk a bit cheaper than the Mercal store, plus fish and chicken, canned sardines and so on, and a big range of vegies and fruit…all for 4bs ($2) per kilo. You get a big bag and just fill it up with herbs and potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, guayaba, etc. That price is really cheap, especially compared to most vegie shops in the centre. Down at the big farmers’ market in Soto Rosa, on Saturdays and Sundays, you can get some vegies like potatoes, carrots and tomatoes for 2bs/kilo…but Soto Rosa is a bus trip away and hard for some people in our community, like the elderly, parents of multiple young kids etc. This way, the mercal was in the local plaza and a maximum of 4 blocks walk for anyone. (Interestingly though, although it was obviously organised through the government structure, it was a small cooperative who did the actual selling and who received any profits).

Creative Communities

2009-07-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

*photos: the dance class in la pastora, Caracas, and the Rincon de los Muchachos in Merida

They had whole big bins full of tizanna, a Venezuelan drink with lots of small pieces of fruit- a bit like punch I guess. The local community council had organised it for the Day of Children, which was celebrated all over the country and the city, and in this case in the Rincon de los Muchachos, one of the most beautiful playgrounds I’ve ever seen. It’s situated just on the edge of the working class suburb of Santa Juana, with the big green mountains in the background.
The man, Cesar Albanoz, who designed and helped make the park is a quiet, very old man who always wears a beret. He’s a poet and a writer, and he used all sorts of recycled materials to make the park. As you enter, there’s a martian type thing of all colours, holding a sign that says ‘by all for all’. There’s a giant boat with a bird at the top, a turtle, a train with a rainbow of birds painted all over it, swings and slides and see saws. That day there were also chairs set up in the shade for the parents and adults to sit back in while their kids plays, and about 8 tables with chess games, where adults and kids were playing….including one kid who must have been about 4, and had no concept yet of taking turns, and just moved his pieces about the board at random, while his adult opponent patiently played along. Then, on the left there is a large round building with a pointed roof, where they were handing out the tizanna and where kids sat in a circle, painting using water balloons. I wanted to join in :).
So it was cool, because people/kids from the community and from outside it were all mixing and playing together, being creative and just having a ball. Usually I don’t like sitting and doing nothing, but this day I just felt like sitting in the shade for hours and just watching, it was really peaceful.
The contradiction came when they handed out party bags, with pink barbies on the bag for the girls and something blue on the bag for the boys, and full of commercial sweets. So there was still very dominant values of consumerism mixed in with community and creativity.

A few days later I went down to Caracas to be with M and his mother, who was receiving cataract surgery. One site struck me, as I was sitting on the bus as it arrived in the city amongst hours of slow moving traffic- people standing on the pedestrian strip in the middle of the road, as they do- usually selling anything from kites to hand towels. In this case I saw people with signs around their neck saying ‘Artists movies’ but in their hands what was very obviously porn, full of pink bare bodies.

I took the opportunity of being in Caracas to go see my friend, who teaches modern ballet (I think it was) in her community and a few others, organised through the community councils. There’s a few key ideas behind these classes- to get the kids off the streets (in the drug using, smoking, not doing much etc sense), to get the women and girls doing something other than demeaning regaeton dancing, to build the sense of community, and to arm people with another method of self expression, and with self confidence.
It was beautiful really, the whole environment in the class (which was conducted in a hall next to the Mercal). I was there out of curiosity, but also to take some photos for the ministry, I think, and for my friend’s mum :). My friend is a good teacher too, in just a few months- perhaps four, she has taught her students (they were aged about 7 to 40 plus) to do beautiful things with their bodies. Good exercise too. And at the end of the class everyone walked out chatting amongst each other and with the teacher and kissing each other goodbye, walking down the street of the barrio together, back to their homes.

(And of course, all the dance classes and the activities in the park in Merida etc are free..)

Capitalism is death

2009-07-14T16:12:00.000-07:00

*photo: view of M’s bathroom window

“Capitalism is hunger” and “Capitalism is death” accompanied with images of various coups, military regimes, wars and so on, is one of the current ad campaigns on the Venezuelan government channel. Better if you could see it yourself, to believe me how effective it is.
A few foreigners have commented to me lately that the government media here is very propagandistic, and its true that, in order to counter the shit put out by the private media, a lot of the government websites, radio and TV do emphasise the various government projects and achievements. But its not true that there’s no debate (in fact most of the talk shows on VTV are some kind of debate) and frankly I think the Capitalism is Death campaign is great- its full of dates and events and facts about the current world situation that other TV channels, anywhere in the world, would love us to forget and to be otherwise distracted by not funny crap like Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever.
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The technology students came again to our communal council meeting and presented their plan to deal with crime in the area. Their idea is to put cameras on every corner, which would feed back to a computer which would be monitored by the community police, or people chosen by the community or the council. I have to say I was hella sceptic, it reminds me of big brother or 1984, with the obvious big difference being that the cameras are under democratic community control, rather than some dictator dude. Still, I said we’d have to hold a community assembly as there are privacy issues, and the rest of the meeting agreed, but everyone seemed pretty convinced that people would feel combating crime is more important.
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There have been a lot of meetings…I went to an anarchist meeting on campus, and have to say I couldn’t disagree more with the main speaker. But to the credit of anarchists, he was extremely negative about everything, criticised everything, and proposed nothing. I don’t think they are all like that.
Then there was a meeting with an Argentinian feminist- about 30 people turned up (7 guys), which is not bad for little Merida and for a country with a non existing women’s movement. The woman was said quite a few interesting things, and compared the history of women’s struggle in Europe to the one here in Latin America (though I disagree with her that you can so easily generalise about LA- Bolivia and Chile and Colombia and Guatamala are world’s apart). She said that here, women still occupy the private domain, and men the public, that there is no “new man” if there aren’t new male/female relations, that when you talk about revolution you have to start with democracy in the house or family, and that gender is the cultural expression of sexual differences.
There was also a rather cool puppet show and singing night put on by Argentinians as well, the other night in the cultural centre. Awesome music and a touching show- the way the woman moved the puppet around, giving him emotions through his posture, and how this puppet-man was meant to symbolise Argentinian history… that was definitely special.
There was the book launch of a book about INVEVAL, in which a CMR worker from there talked about the Revolutionary Front of Occupied and Co-managed Companies. He had lots of great ideas, but unfortunately at the moment they are only being put into practice in a few companies around the country. In the discussion one woman said that we should be fighting for democracy in the public sector as well as the private sector workplaces. She said she has worked for years for CNE (National Electoral Council) as a contract worker. Meanwhile a friend of mine works for the government workers rights institute, and she said that daily they get complaints about bosses not implementing laws, abusing workers and so on. Clearly the revolution is radicalising workers, has seen a few occupations and many more workers protests and so on than before, but its only touching the tip of the iceberg.

The Honduran coup was personal here

2009-06-30T16:45:00.000-07:00

I was really moved by the Venezuelan reaction to the coup in Honduras. On two levels… One was the way everyone (well obviously not everyone, there are always those who go about their shopping and drinking and soapie watching as if the world is not a bigger place..) but a lot of people were somewhat glued to their televisions, watching the events progress, and here in Merida a crowd gathered from 12pm in the plaza to protest. Eventually a large TV was set up in the government building, facing the plaza, and I remember the serious and solemn expressions on hundreds of people’s faces as they crowded around the TV, watching the ‘new president’ swear himself in (see photo above).
Clearly it brought back memories of the April 2002 coup here. But also it just felt like this coup was almost happening to us. A kind of sense that what happens anywhere in Latin America is personal. And that the possibility of future coups, here or in other places, is real.
The other moving thing is, damn the left governments here are uniting and becoming a powerful force. They’ve become a bit like a block, uniting and voting together to push through various left wing initiatives in what were previously US-controlled multilateral orgs like OAS etc. And they are all against this coup, and then how fun it was to watch the conservative governments of Panama and Mexico etc swallowing their tongues and saying, briefly, they are ‘for democracy’ (bullshit Mexico…) too. How weird too, for the US and for the UN to come out against a coup, an anti-left wing coup. Not that Zelaya is that left wing, but he’s clearly allied with Chavez in lots of way, and uses anti poverty rhetoric.
So, despite how things are looking now, for the moment I’m stoked and I hope that what comes out of this is a radicalisation of Hondurans and here as well, and even more stronger unity between the left wing governments of Latin America as they have seen how powerful they can be, working together.

I talked to some people at the protest here and noted what they said,

"Clearly US imperialism is getting scared," said Douglas Arauju

"We're here supporting the sovereignty of the people, we're counting on people waking up, we're not alone you know, we're a South American people," said Marilyn Osorio

"What happened was a coup just like the coup that happened here in April 2002, the military acted similarly in Honduras.. us as Venezuelans and having the experience of what we suffered in April 2002, we support the democratically elected president of Honduras," said Ismael Pena

"This is another coup by the oligarchy and the CIA against democracy...like what happened in Venezuela...but the people of Honduras will win. The truth will prevail," said Gladys Araque

"What happened in Honduras was a coup against democracy and the people, the armed forces and the oligarchy represented by the mainstream media conspired together," said Mauro Lamus

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Later, myself and two friends popped down to the barrio to a meeting organised by the Culture ministry, then we’d come back after to what really felt like a vigil. Today the TV is still in the plaza, and there’s a small crowd watching.

Anyway there were only about 8 people at the cultural meeting, for a variety of reasons – I guess the community is quite small, the meeting hadn’t been publicised that well, and clearly a lot of people were distracted (in a good way) by the coup.

Never the less, I was impressed. Basically the point of the meeting was to just talk about things like human development (that is, development for humans and the planet rather than for profit), values, morals and things. Nothing at all religious. But very much the sort of stuff that should be discussed more and that rarely is, in an organised way amongst communities. This community is one of the most… full on ones too, with a lot of confrontations, relative poverty, drug and violence problems and so on.
In so many third world countries, I think they don’t get around to talking about the environment, because there are always just more apparently pressing issues to talk about, like housing, food, water, access to medicine, etc. Here, the man from the ministry talked about how much water the world has, how non salty water will run out in 45 years, and this fisherman guy with few teeth and wearing rain boots got up and talked about how the future is important and that we have to look after the world for our children.
Then R, my friend from this community, a half indigenous woman with 2 children that she’s raising alone, got up and talked about the difference between morals and ethics. She was a bit nervous. But hurray that the ministry isn’t just doing all the talking, but rather encouraging new leadership and participation in the communities and getting them to give talks too.

Behind Walls

2009-06-25T16:25:00.000-07:00

Wow I’d never been to the school of music building before. And M’s choir was performing there for Fathers’ Day, so he texted me like half an hour before the performance, asking if I wanted to come…I got dressed, ran (well, walked fast) down, and into the building…and…woa… soooo beautiful!! I had no idea, walking past it from the outside for almost 2 years now…(and damn I didn’t bring my camera- next time)
The building is based around a big square patio, with 3 floors surrounding the patio in some ancient rustic grey design, old balconies looking out down on the patio. In patio corners there are gardens- a big jacaranda tree dropping its purple flowers on the patio, other crazy trees, some with the grey green beards. From the jacaranda tree there were strings with hundreds of origami cranes, and behind the trees, on the walls around the patio area, there was awesome grafitti art- good art. So the whole place is just full of colour, its incredibly peaceful.
A group of kids – tiny little 4 year olds and things, sang, and the 50 or so parents watched and clapped (and clapped and clicked along, as the kids instructed them too), then M’s choir (called voces oscuros- dark voices) sang too. They sold some deserts and stuff after (and hot dogs- oh god how gross- pink sausage, covered in chips- the packet kind- and then mayonnaise and tomato sauce- oh well, a good fundraiser) and the money raised was to help them go to Argentina in August for a Latin America choir festival there.

I’m still utterly impressed with my communal council. We meet yesterday even though it was raining and even though it was a national holiday (Anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo).
Our community put security as the number one local priority, so we have to talk about it and try to look at solutions. Unfortunately, I think its one really hard problem to solve with short term methods. One guy, an engineering student, came to the meeting with a proposal for security cameras. Well that would help to the extent that the robbers and so on might go somewhere else, but it would also be extremely costly. So we are going to talk other nearby councils and see what they are doing and see if we can’t do something with them (they have money, we still don’t have a council bank).
We also talked a lot about housing. It seems the government is building a block of flats nearby- with 2500 units (so more than a block I guess, more like a whole development). At the moment it seems they want half of these to be private, and the other half will be fully or partially subsidised housing for those who most need it. The communal councils will play a big role in working out who does need housing (as we generally know our community and have done door to door calls a number of times over different things), so we had a long discussion about how to get the information out and how to organise it all. Some people do have it pretty tough, even in the fairly middle class area where our council is- one woman was renting out just a room (I mean a room only) and was living there with her two children. Other places do that on a mass basis- one place has 10 bedrooms and just one bathroom. I doubt they get access to the kitchen (its rare here, when you are renting a room, that you get full access to the house). Hard. Also it seems that anyone applying for these units would basically have to be married. They (private or government builders in Venezuela) pretty much don’t even build housing or units for single people, despite how many single mothers there are. The dominant culture is (and I say dominant but its by no means everyone) that you live with your family and then you get married and live with your spouse. Its quite hard to live here without some kind of family.
So we decided a tonne of things…. we’re going to make a community notice board and a mural, so today I went down to INJUVEM (Merida Government Youth organisation) and asked about how we can get some paint. The guy there said they will actually come and help us paint the mural, all we have to do is decide on a date. Wow. Lets see how that goes..

What is Radio?

2009-06-16T09:20:00.000-07:00

“What is history?” was the theme of the ULA history students’ first show on Ecos radio.

“…it’s important to know who’s telling it…”

“…History is alive. It’s now.”

“…People use the past to justify the present. The past is very important.”

“…History is who we are, where we’ve come from..”

…They said and debated, and people texted in other comments which spurred the debate on further.

Radio shows are really not that hard. Later, some media and communication students talked to the group and asked me what I thought of it all. At the time my brain went blank (as it does when I’m asked to suddenly give my opinion, in Spanish, to a camera…) but later I compared the whole thing to Australia- or any other country really, where media- TV, radio, newspaper etc are very much seen as something you *receive*.

You receive entertainment, “news”, documentaries like you receive presents and I don’t think it occurs to many people to participate in media (beyond calling up to talk shows or to send out love and birthday messages).

Here, such forms of media still dominate, but the alternative and community media are becoming more and more accessible and popular and respected I think (slowly). The idea is that media is for the community to use to communicate with the rest of the community. To express opinions, announce events, and something that is accessible to everyone- not just people with “radio voices” and careers and connections. So the history students just decided they wanted to have a show and they talked to the guys at Ecos, and now every Saturday for 2 hours they question Venezuela and South America’s history and how it’s talked about and perceived. And as I said, its realllly easy to do. Why should such a powerful medium be limited to so few people?

As we waited for a few others to arrive, M talked to the Ecos guy and asked to learn how to use the controls. It took about 5 minutes to explain. There are these switches that turn on the various microphones, the phone, and the computer. There’s the computer program where you line up ahead various songs or community announcements. Similar to any winamp play list. So R sat in that room, and put on a song occasionally to break up all the talking, and we all sat in the other room around a table, where there were 5 microphones. And then, like that, you just have a discussion.

J got there at 11 and sat down to join in. He sells sweets and chips from a tray in the pubs until late at night, so was still tired. Half way through the discussion I went out into the other room to listen to it via the radio, and came back to tell them they were talking to close to the microphones. Then went back to other room and fiddled with a guitar. A girl walked in and sat down watching me, as if I had the vaguest idea of what I was doing. “Teach me to sing?” she asked. (Anyone who knows me knows how I really can’t sing :).

The communal council stuff is chugging along. We have so many things we need to do. We want to use some empty land to be like the community space- make it into a library and meeting area for whatever groups, things like that. Then the school needs food and cutlery and stuff. And we want to paint a wall with a mural and put up a community notice board. And to get these reading circles started. And then there’s the new community council law which we want to study together first, then organise some kind of social day or something where we can inform everyone of what we’re working on, encourage more people to get involved- at least in a committee or something, and talk about or debate the new law (which, I have to say worries me a bit- you need 20 or 30% - I forget- attendance to make a decision. Wow so in a community of 600 you need 120-180 people to come! Wo.)

Still, I was impressed. Wednesday it rained, but everyone actually came to the meeting! But then some people from the school came, and we ended up spending the whole meeting talking about creating links between the school and the community, and didn’t get on to anything else. So then we had an extra meeting on Saturday. And then on Sunday a few of us- the cultural spokesperson, the education spokesperson and myself met to talk about how to get reading circle promoters. We’ll stick up some signs, and the education spokesperson will write a letter to the school to see if any teachers can volunteer, and we’ll try to get people along to sign up before next Wednesday’s meeting.

Meanwhile, the very centre of Merida organised their communal council elections for last Saturday. A hard task given how opposition the area is and the lack of sense of community because the area is mostly shops. They held their elections in the cultural centre- had some photos stuck up of the people running, and a electoral register for people to vote. I think in total 120 people (community size- 650) turned up to vote, so that’s…well, not that bad. A lot of the people from my PSUV branch were running. They’ve decided to put their time into the communal council as the branch hasn’t met since last year, and beyond a core of 4or 5 of us, noone ever comes to the meetings.

Community reading

2009-06-04T07:49:00.000-07:00

About 20 people sat on chairs in a makeshift circle down by the plaza, and many more watched on from under trees and leaning against walls nearby. People walked past, stopped to listen for a while, stayed, or walked on. After a day of cultural activities organised by the ministry for culture (circus, forums, puppets, book stalls), now it was open mike time, and people talked about the media war. It started to get dark. Some kids performed a dance not very well, but got a lot of support from the crowd. Then everyone picked up their chairs and moved over a bit to where an outdoors cinema was set up. The TV collective showed a documentary they’d made based on an interview they did with Manu Chao.

The next day the ministry set up a mobile library in the same spot (basically a big van with shelves on the sides, mostly with children’s books), a tent and chairs, and throughout the day kids came along and had a bit of a read.
There’s something real sweet about reading outside. Also, it’s important to remember that public libraries are very much a first world thing. In Venezuela there isn’t much of a culture of reading, which is why I think they are emphasising reading for children, and you can see the advantage of reading in public like that.

In the same spot they also handed out this DVD with Venezuela’s real history (as opposed to the imperialist version of it), newspapers, magazines- also about Venezuela’s history, and these beautiful little boxes with ten small children’s books. They are so pretty, even though they’re for kids I want to read them.

Later, walking back home I saw an icecream seller, perhaps 14 years old, who had stopped work to read one of the little books. I took a photo, and it reminded me a bit of a photo I have of a policeman leaning against a wall, mesmerised by a novel in Cuba. Bugger work, bugger money, lets read : )

Anyway, I’m really excited about Chavez’s call for reading circles. I admit when I first read about it I was a bit sceptical, Chavez has a lot of cool ideas and sometimes he’s a bit ahead of everyone else with the things he calls for. But here they are, materialising. The ministries of culture and education are organising them, and I’m so happy to be one of the ones assigned to getting the reading circles set up in my communal council. We need to have at least 4 teacher kind of people signed up to being involved. Once we hand in the documentation for that, one of the ministries will send someone out to teach us how to go about the rest- how to set up the circles, what to do, how to get books etc.
Chatting to a culture ministry worker at the stall, he said that one of the reasons behind the reading circles was that despite all the books that have been given out- from children’s books, to novels, to books about history and political theory- most people just put them on their shelves and don’t read them. Doing it collectively like this I think will encourage some people to read the books and also maximise what we all get out of the reading.

Last night we were going to talk about getting the other 3 reading circle teachers at the communal council meeting but unfortunately the mother of one of the spokespeople died, so we went to the ‘salida’ (exit, literally) instead. I protested that I don’t know the person- the spokesperson hasn’t been to meetings in ages so I haven’t met her, but the other members said the point was to go as the communal council.
There was like 120 people or something there. It was a kind of service in the woman’s house, with an open casket inside, and a young woman led some praying.
Boy Venezuelans I think, at least outwardly, are quite different about death. They all walked past the open casket as if …I guess as if it wasn’t that big a deal. I’d be freaking out to see the dead body of a friend. They dress casually, they stand outside smoking or chatting in groups, kids run around playing, and although the mood was solemn, no one was really crying or particularly upset. It was similar at another salida I went to at the end of last year.

And how could I forget the symphony concert? It was the Merida youth symphony orchestra and choirs, and they performed in the cultural centre on Friday night. I was on my way to a forum about the media war in the same building, but then couldn’t resist the crowds and the ambience…literally a good 3000 people were waiting and queuing outside for what was a free concert. I loved it because it’s rare to see people that excited about classical music (including me) but the founder of the national program that teaches kids in the barrios to play musical instruments- Abreu – was there, and the theatre- packed with people sitting in the aisles and squeezing in doorways etc- all roared and cheered when he came out to speak. And then they did the same for all the songs. It felt like a rock concert, people were that excited- except it wasn’t, it was very brilliant classical music.
Including, a deaf kids choir- who sang in sign language- with white gloves on their hands. And a conductor who had cerebral pausy and the crowd just loved him and he had a ball too.
With all this going on in the main concert hall of the cultural centre, there were still people in the downstairs café learning salsa, and old men playing chess in the entrance area, and kids learning contemporary dance in the side bit…

Super cheap milk, boring opposition students, dance, and frailejones

2009-05-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

Photos from top: Super cheap Mercal milk, people queuing up to register or re-register in the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), clouds and frailejones in La Culata, street theatre in the main plaza.

Mercal- the government subsidised grocery store- is always an adventure. It seems to me that (at least the one near me, they do vary a bit) it mostly sells stuff at the same prices as everywhere else (since 11 basic foods are regulated) but then it always has a couple of surprise things super subsidised. It usually has the government sugar, and a few weeks ago it was selling jelly powder by the kilo. Today I got chocolate pudding powder by the kilo and a kilo of milk for BsF4.7. The regulated price is 13BsF, just down from 16BsF, although the supermarket up the road would always try to sell it for 17. Usually the deal is you have to buy at least one other mercal product, and its only one (one packet of sugar or of milk etc) per person, to prevent businesses buying it up cheap and using it for profit I guess.

I don’t buy fresh milk any more…its so expensive here (Bs2.4/litre – also a regulated price) and goes off all the time, where as the powdered stuff doesn’t, and a kilo makes 9 litres.

You can see in the picture that the milk is covered in government information/propaganda- the law on a people’s right to food, and it says in big text that it’s only for consumption in Venezuela- again people buy it up or are corrupt and leak it out and sell this sort of thing for a profit in Colombia.

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Ah what a crazy place the university is …for the last few days the right wing have been burning tires and blocking one of the main city roads that goes past the university- yet again. They never do or say anything. No placards with messages. Its up to one to guess and listen to rumours to know whether they want early holidays or are complaining about something more profound, such as the supposed government attacks on the right wing TV channel, globovision (verbal attacks that is). It- the tire burning, blocking streets and making things generally inconvenient – is getting boring now.
Although, I read in the local paper today that they also kidnapped 16 people- 14 of which were taxi drivers, wanting to exchange them for two fellow students who are in prison.

I’ve been trying to see if I can study at the university- its meant to be possible, there’s a system for ‘free students’- that is, students who pay a fee and study individual courses as they like rather than a whole degree, but no one seems to know how to actually do this and I’ve been sent from one office to another, to another, back to the first one, back to another one etc... I asked when semester dates are- September till January, the woman said vaguely. When in September? Oh… It just depends if there are disturbances or not.
Wow life at ULA is laid back, students (to perhaps over generalise) don’t seem too worried about passing and studying and they don’t seem to get a lot of assignments (based on the students I know). Plus teachers decide not to come half the time and it also sounds like a lot of them are pretty shocking, and when they don’t come, the students are just like ‘oh great, no class’.

In other uni related news- the left kicked ass in the recent elections, with the most ring wing, most violent group- m13- not winning any positions. Beats me where that came from.

-

I decided to chill a bit last weekend. Saturday night I went with friends to a contemporary dance performance. There were two things that I loved about it- the first was everyone’s familiarity and the audience support. Afterwards, half the audience stayed back to talk to the dancers (of various ages), congratulate them etc. The second thing was the dancing itself- there were a few boring traditional dances (girls- for they were about 12-16- in pretty, short dresses and frozen smiles) but the contemporary dancing was just amazing. Images in the background, sometimes voiced over poetry, and intense symbolism….around themes such as the struggle of the planet, how urbanism kills gentle beauty, or other things that were more abstract, like this one woman who danced alone and you could just see how liberated she felt, doing it.
The next day I went with a friend up the mountain to ‘La Culata’- a popular walking track lined with the Andean plant –frailejones- see picture. They are not THAT pretty, but they are really really soft to touch and there’s a mild amount of local pride over them. It was really peaceful.

The streets are flooding and blocked and the priests are a preaching…

2009-05-07T15:29:00.000-07:00

photo: view of the main (wet) plaza from the women's centre

It rained so much the other day that the roads were turned into racing rivers, and I walked around with my friend’s umbrella, wading in water at times up to just below my knees, bombarded by splashes from cars and water rebounding off roofs and bursting out pipes, it was great fun. But one woman died apparently, in the east of the state, and in Caracas there were earthquakes.
In the foreground to all this were left and right student battles with police. It seems to me that these come every 3 months, people stay at home, the schools are closed, there are traffic jams because roads are blocks, and then it all goes back to normal within a day or two. This time though, it wasn’t just the right wing causing disturbances, making a fuss over nothing, with no particular demands or aims. This time the left were involved in well. A student leader of the PSUV was killed by police the day before and so the right marched against budget cuts on the same day the far left got angry and burned some tires, trucks, blocked streets, wrote grafitti, and later burned Macdonalds. Ha, honestly, the burning of Macdonalds doesn’t bother me. The company stinks, and the actually restaurant, on the corner of the plaza, physically stinks. False hamburger smell, or something, plus a daily reminder of life back home, perhaps (the bits of it I didn’t like). However the left tactics disappointed me. I can understand their anger- their comrade was killed by police- the old police that still haven’t been reformed yet. Yet the movement must be more democratically organised and with a bit more a plan than plain adrenalin based destruction. Still, the police and national guard fired back- with rubber bullets that burn and hurt but usually don’t kill. The reform of the police is urgent, utterly long over due- although I’d rather a complete elimination of them and making of a new, different kind.

Later after the first day of violence (it lasted for about 4 days), I went to my communal council meeting. But the rain was already loca (crazy) and only one person came. So until that person arrived I sat chatting to the night guard, door opening person.
He said that when he went to church the priest encouraged everyone to go on the opposition march, during the service. Omigod! Well we all know how the church is, along with the universities, one of the main institutions supporting the opposition, but gosh I thought they did it more subtly than that! The guard guy continued, “If the priest takes off his uniform and wants to go into the street and do politics as a citizen, that’s ok. But not in church.”

In the fortnightly meeting of the women formation group, we talked about the church too actually- or specifically, women and religion. One woman said, “Priests direct everything here.” And I liked one woman’s comment that, “they are against abortion, but meanwhile the poor don’t seem to have the same right to life.” And I’d add- they seem to have no problem gorging on dead animals. Their position against abortion so obviously has nothing to do with being ‘pro-life’.

Anyway, last night’s communal council meeting was good. A couple of Mission Sucre students came to talk about doing some information collecting about people’s food needs, two other women dropped in to ask about what is being done to help the homeless people and about one crossing in our area where there are always crashes. It really beats me how people manage to have crashes in the centre of Merida, given how slow all the traffic moves. There are no traffic lights and the blocks are small and the roads are narrow, so cars and buses move one block at a time. We discussed putting a speed bump in (which is called ‘policia acostado – lying down police person- in Spanish. Hilarious.), but apparently they aren’t legal, and frankly I think the problem more boils down to awareness of safety practices.
We talked about a bunch of things last night, from petty stuff like a dog that constantly barks because it isn’t fed properly (petty yes but omigod that dog sounds horrible and barks at 6 in the morning) to bigger projects like converting some land into a house for old people etc.

Finally, for the last month or so there have been long queues going right past my house, which is on the same block as ONIDEX- the Venezuelan immigration/passport organisation. The government has started speeding up handing out passports, so that now these queues are a daily thing, to the point where two new shops have opened up a few houses down from us, plus a new photocopy place across the road, and another juice place diagonally opposite.

Free food and community control

2009-04-24T08:44:00.000-07:00

photo: the food house

University dinning areas

I went with M to the university dining area for dinner, where he used his student card and his mum’s student card to get us both the free meal. Dinner that night was two bread rolls, a kind of porridge type soup (atol its called), an apple, jelly, cooked sweet plantain, cheese, and lettuce type salad. All uni students can eat lunch and dinner for free during week days at these dinning rooms.
Suddenly everyone was banging their forks on the metal trays and yelling out. Apparently it’s some uni tradition- when someone drops a fork everyone else (well not everyone) yells out ‘Nuevo!’ (newbie!) and makes a massive racket.
After this M asked me what dinning areas are like in Australian universities.
“There aren’t any.”
“Are all the universities private?” he asked, surprised.
Ha, well the ULA in Merida is an autonomous university- its funded by the government but makes decisions about how to use that funding independently (and in this case the opposition rectors of the university buy cars and things). So you can’t really say the dinning areas are a result of the socialist government, since I think they even date back before Chavez. You also can’t use the excluse- well Venezuela has oil. Australia is hardly poor! Dinning areas are fairly common and expected here- and the government here has set up a lot of Bolivarian schools where the kids get breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack for free. That, though, is a result of the Chavez government.
After dinner M went around to all the tables collecting the breadrolls left by other students. He would use them for him and his mum for breakfast over the weekend. He called it ‘bread recycling’ which I thought so adorable : ).

Communal councils

My communal council meets in one of these Bolivarian primary schools, two blocks down from where I live (and everyone in the council just 2-3 blocks away). These schools are so cute, always covered in murals with various values painted on them- this one had various drawings and inside them ‘life is like music- its listened to better without drugs’ and a food pyramid, and then a chess board with various values like solidarity, respect etc. The school was either built or renovated by the government in 2005. A friend of mine- an ex student who studied to be a teacher through the mission sucre (free government university level education with an emphasis on community) is now teaching there.
I introduced myself to the other council members (actually all of them were spokespeople for various committees, who had been elected in a community assembly not long ago) and we all chatted as we waited for people to turn up. The topic was the law against violence on women, and I was really impressed with how much everyone new about the law and how the men talked in admiration that the law considered insults a form of violence. It was clear within minutes that this was a non opposition run communal council- I don’t say chavista because that’s a limiting word. A friend of mine in this council is a revolutionary who’s extremely critical of Chavez, to the point of not joining the PSUV, for example. Also, this council is quite new. The one just to the left of it is two years old now (and its come out that the opposition is trying to take that one over, as elections are run every two years, the opposition is trying to stack the assembly meetings to get control). But ours has just been formed, and is now legal, and all the spokespeople for the various committees are also considered legal representatives in the various fields (culture, food, housing, education, sport, auditing etc). However, we don’t have a communal bank yet.
The first item was a complaint by one of the community members. A mother and her around 30 year old son came to the council to talk about a dispute they have with a neighbour, whose house is joined to theirs (as most houses here are- all joined together) and whose water from the bathroom is causing their wall to rot. Now, the communal councils are the first step to dealing with any situations like this. Ideally, simply discussing it out will resolve the problem, sometimes the community can decide (once it has a bank) to contribute money to the repairs. But the spokespeople at this meeting were clear- they aren’t authorities who can go about forcing people to do things, they are simply community reps. If things aren’t resolved in the council, a representative will help the neighbour take the problem to the next level- usually the mayor.
In the community assemblies which set up this council, they had approved a list of norms of co-living. All communities create their own such norms, as it helps create a sense of community and it also means they can tailor the norms to their own different needs. As everyone lives so nearby to each other, most people know eachother- either by name or by appearance ‘the man in the shop’, ‘the house with the black car out the front’ etc. Also before the assembly was held, the council promoters had done a census of the community, so they know who lives where, what their main needs are etc- and this information proved to be useful in this case, as the neighbour with the leaking bathroom refused to talk to the other neighbour- we were able to send a rep from the housing committee down to have a look at the place.
After this item, I introduced myself and said that I thought the communal councils are an important way for communities to resolve their own problems and to take active control over their collective lives and that I’d like to help out anyway I can. The fact that I was a foreigner was nothing more than a curious fact- they were all extremely welcoming and said I could join the culture committee. I suggested the idea of setting up a women’s committee, which they loved- but I said perhaps it was something more for the future, once a few other things like the bank have been sorted out.
We are looking at calling another community assembly- to inform and discuss with the community various issues like the food house, a sport/cultural area and so on, and that will be an opportunity to elect a women’s committee (as these things can’t just be set up, they must be elected).
A range of other issues were discussed- some public work that has been stopped and we don’t know why, getting a bank account, another meeting one of the reps went to about water etc, and I was just so impressed with how much everyone know about the laws and which organisation to go to about what (for the number of organisations, funds, levels of administration, ministries etc in Venezuela is quite a minefield).
The last item saw a few people getting a bit emotional, one of the reps had been physically assaulted by someone outside the food house (a house which provides free food to homeless people, drug addicts, orphans, single mothers, ex prisoners etc) and she also claimed that the place was selling food on the side to non-needy people to get some extra pocket money. It was agreed to convoke the head guy of the place to the next meeting to talk about the issue.

I came out of the meeting utterly inspired. There were 12 people at the meeting, representing a community of about 1000 people or less, and they were extremely able, active and intelligent people. If you can generalise that across Venezuela, that’s 260,000 hard core quality community leaders. I also loved how serious they were about what they were doing, and how real it all was- community control- and how real they were seen by the woman who came in with the complaint. I also learnt a tonne about the few blocks I’m surrounded by that I hadn’t known.

We all walked out together, said goodbye as we passed each person’s house, and one woman invited me to pop into her shop- just a few houses down from where I live, to get a drink some time.
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The meeting the next week started off with the food house issue. The woman re-told her version of what had happened, then the director of the food house told his side, and also described how the whole place works.

This particular food house is linked to a lot of organisations. It gets some support from a church, whilst the government mercal provides food and pays the bills, but not the rent. There’s no rehabilitation centre in Merida so the house also sometimes pays for transports, and accompanies people to centres nearby.

The place makes 155 meals, and has 7 workers who receive the benefit of the food and a small scholarship from the government of 350BsF/month (about $160US).

In the discussion after the guy had gone, we decided it was important that there be some kind of security and vigilance of the place, ensuring that only needy people eat there, not paying workers, that the council monitoring committee and the food committee should monitor the place, that people who ‘disturb the peace’- in violent ways that is, should be sanctioned from eating there, but we also need to be conscious that the work done in the food house is hard work, important work, and we should get involved and help, and before any accusations or anything are made, we should work on facts, not rumours and so a monitoring plan is necessary.

Later there was also discussion of a range of other issues, such as the creation of a culture and sport space jointly with architecture students, and a few other things I’ve mentioned above already.

Free health care IS life or death to some

2009-04-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

Today (now yesterday) I am in my room working- sitting at the desk or sitting up in bed, typing about Manuel Rosales that worm of a man… And outside I can hear the traditional Chavez songs being played over a loudspeaker- perhaps its in a plaza or perhaps its one of those roaming trucks. It is the anniversary of the counter coup, the 13th of April that beat the coup of 11th of April, an inspiring symbol that for ever defeat of theirs against us we will jump up again- 2 days later or 100 years later, and take it back and make it better. I hope.

Other than that, it has been semana santa (Easter- from last Thursday till Sunday, but many having that whole week off) and its all been a bit- light. Light on news, few meetings, everyone out with their family, and nothing open but churches during the official Easter bit. A good time to get sick- I’ve felt like a wee hypochondriac these days. Tooth aches and headaches and sneezing all over the place and then a funny routine of pill taking. Sheesh.

So first I went to the local barrio adentro- a doctors surgery in what used to be a house, and perhaps still is upstairs, 2 blocks from my house, with a Cuban woman working mornings and a Venezuelan man in the afternoons (this set up is becoming quite common I think, as more and more Venezuelans start to work in the barrio adentros). I walked right in, sat down, and told the doctor about my sneezing (feeling like a fool cos it’s just sneezing! But it’s all the time and keeping me awake, for 2 weeks now) and he was heaps friendly, we chatted about stuff, and he gave me some medicine and wrote me a script with instructions about how often to take it. The script is in the photo- it says at the top… ‘homeland, socialism or death, we will win…popular medical centre, milla-central’ and at the bottom ‘the greatest amount of happiness for the people’. Love it!

A few days later I went down to the CDI- integral diagnostic centre, which I think is barrio adentro 2- second stage of health care. It has more equipment, an emergency centre, xrays, rehabilitation etc, and a dentist. The system with the dentist is you go down there at either 7am or 1pm, and the first 20 people get a number or get written down on a list (but don’t worry, there usually aren’t 20 people). I got there at 1, was written down as the 5th person on the list, and after 2 hours got to see the dentist. We got along instantly, I guess I was in a good mood and also often bond with the Cubans because we’re both doing the foreigner-living-in-Venezuela thing. She checked my teeth, told me the usual stuff, and said I should get one of my back teeth, a wisdom tooth, I guess, removed. I knew that, I should have got it taken out ages ago but dentists are so expensive in Australia and I don’t trust them either- all private, they tell you that you need all sorts of things that you don’t. I asked her- so what do I do to get the tooth removed? And she said, well just come back when you have some time off work.. Me: “Well how about now?” Her..”Ok.”
Ah shoot! I am one hell of a coward. Never had a tooth removed or any kind of operation in my life. Sat there squirming and not wanting to open my mouth. Oh well I eventually let her stick a few needles in then wiggle and pull my tooth out and it was over in 2 minutes. She gave me some anti biotics and told me to keep my mouth closed for half an hour- and done. No swelling or pain – well not much pain. Can’t believe I put that off for so long. But it was of course all free, including the antibiotics. Its massive when you think about it- about some people who have to go into debt in other countries because of their tooth problems, or in other countries, who just have mouths only half full of teeth, because dentists are not part of their world. In Aus I think you can see a dentist for free if you get treated by a Sydney University student, but I know from experience that the waiting list is 6-12 months. Made my wait of 2 hours not seem like much at all.

Community meeting in the plaza

2009-04-02T11:33:00.000-07:00

Photo: the 5 promoters at the communal council assembly

It was really sweet the way one of the communal council leaders stood in the plaza and using a loud speaker system, called on the people around him- sitting under the trees, standing in shop doors, walking past- to join the community assembly.

It was a full weekend- the Socialist Front had their annual two day conference with various debates, group discussions and plenaries, and the communal council of Belen (the sector just a few blocks from my house) also tried to call a community assembly- necessary to elect commissions etc of the communal council, and which requires a minimum of 10% (in this case 100 people out of the community of 1000) to be legitimate.

“Attend the meeting of the community! The assembly is where we can solve all our problems! It’s not for politics!” the guy said over the loud speakers.

They had set up chairs in the plaza, a white board, the speakers, and had enough copies of the community council laws, as well as a map of the sector that corresponds to Belen, to hand out to everyone. I thought it was great, because everyone could really see what was going on, and the plaza is so beautiful, and is the general meeting place of the area, so there was a nice atmosphere. People from shops who didn’t join the meeting, stood in their doorways and watched, while a few other people looked on from their balconies.

While we waited I talked with the loud speaker guy (J..) and he was really emphatic that everyone should participate, and should join one of the committees (sport, culture, education etc) but also that communal councils are not political, that it doesn’t matter whether you are ‘yellow or white or red’ (politically speaking) the most important thing is that you are committed to the community. Of course I agree and disagree- the councils are an initiative of the Chavez government, you can’t just forget that, but it’s also true that if by politics he meant *electoral* politics- that the PSUV (or whichever political party or organisation) is the place for that.

The meeting was the second assembly called so far. According to the law, if you don’t get quorum at the first assembly, you can call another, and if there isn’t enough at that you can call another, and that third assembly is legitimate despite the numbers.

Their first assembly only had 6 people. This one ended up having 32 people- not quorum but a big improvement and still impressive I think. The ‘promoters’ (a temporary committee of 5 set up simply to get the council going, once its elected the promoters dissolve) encouraged everyone at the meeting to be ‘multipliers’ (a common term these days in Ven politics) so that the third assembly would have quorum.

I was happy with the attendance- that is there was about half half gender wise, and a good range of ages- young, old, middle aged.

I was also impressed with how serious they were about following the communal council laws- diligently getting all attendees to sign in, checking that they were within the sector’s area, outlining all the responsibilities of the promoters, how elections work etc.

As it turns out, despite only living two blocks away, I’m technically part of a different communal council, but they still said it was cool if I come to the next assembly (which will be in 2 weeks) to observe, and later I talked to one of the leader's of my actual council and she's keen to get me involved in that.

Setting up women's committees in the councils

2009-03-26T11:37:00.000-07:00

Pic: (from the internet) Mothers of the Barrio Mission – a mission that recognises the value of women’s work in the home, recognising that many often do the work of two parents, and struggle in poverty. The mission is meant to help these women by linking them into other missions – health, culture, food and education etc and also gives economic help to the applicable families. The women are also meant to meet, creating solidarity between them and organising the implementation of the program- that is, helping themselves.

Thanks to J for suggesting we go to IMMFA (Merida Institute for Women and the Family) to see what the folks there are up to. Apparently they were pretty cool when they were first set up then there was a new ‘team’ and they started to just focus on domestic violence, and now there’s a new team again and some of the original team and they are getting more into the structural side of things, the active side of things.
At the moment the big thing is setting up women’s committees in the communal councils. We both said that we wanted to set up one in our communal council- and a woman gave us the information and documentation necessary, which we can then take back to the councils for them to discuss (finally my communal council in Belen is starting to meet- there’s a meeting on Saturday, lets see how it goes..).
The women’s committees should, according to the woman at IMMFA, organise workshops on self esteem, and have a social focus, create consciousness and ideology, not just be anti-violence. At least 5 women are needed to form the committee, which then elects a spokesperson, who becomes the committee’s link to IMMFA. But the committees are also supported by Banmujer (Women’s bank) and Mothers of the Barrio. Committee members must be “committed to the revolution and have human sensibility,” – that is, care about the community they’re involved in.
This is interesting, because mostly the communal councils have been quite apolitical – dominated by opposition or by Chavista but mostly organising things like local fairs and lighting and stuff, and I guess the fact that the Chavistas control the ministries, is a way to inject politics into them.
IMMFA also offered to send people to the councils to help with the setting up of the committees. The procedure is roughly- convoke an assembly (which needs a certain percentage of the community to attend in order for it to be legit- attendance should be taken), someone from IMMFA can address it and talk about the law of women and about the purpose of the committees because “the women need to know why the committee is necessary”, and I guess from there, elect the committee.
IMMFA is also in the process of making a new women’s shelter- good, there are very few of those.
I asked the women we talked to what socialism was for her (hehe my cheeky method for trying to gauge where a person or institution “is at” politically) and she said “it’s equality, quality of life.”
Later we talked to the president, and I asked her all sorts of bizarre questions (why is ‘family’ in the title of the institution, how do you feel about gay rights etc’) trying to put my finger on what was ‘not radical enough’ about the organisation for me.
On gay rights, she was clear that there should be no discrimination and that gay people shouldn’t be excluded but she made some weird comments about some of them being a bit wild and undisciplined in their sexual behaviour or unfaithful or something like that, which is a silly stereotype and has nothing to do with being gay or straight, and really promiscuity, if there’s no deception, is really not that bad a thing. It’s just taste. Basically though she said it all came down to culture, which to me is possibly true- just like sexism- but also a bit too wishy washy and dismissive. ‘Culture’ can so often be an excuse not to challenge things, kind of like saying ‘look that’s how we are’.
Oh well the law on equality should be passed soon, that will be awesome, lets see what affect that has. It deals with gay rights, right to marriage (wow) and there’s also the Law about the Right of Women to a Life Free of Violence which has some pretty full on stuff about violence against women- 18months to 6 years in prison for ‘psychological violence’ and a whole gammit of other classifications of violence.
As to the family part of the title, she said that was to “prevent aggressive minds” – the aggression that is passed on through generations and so on, rather than women’s so called main role in society being the family. Good.
She was also pretty cool on the whole beauty contest stuff, saying she was against it as it didn’t treat women has thinkers.
Lastly, she said that all the ‘first’ ladies of all the mayors were going to get together to do some campaigning and organise municipal based committees. Again, better than nothing, but it’s a bit strange, choosing people based on who they are married to, assuming that they are political because their husband is.

Coming back

2009-03-19T07:58:00.001-07:00

It was a 40 hour Sunday…yee gods, and I’m still jet lagged, after being back three days- waking up at funny hours and falling asleep at the drop of a hat in the middle of the day…

I spent a night in Buenos Aires on the way back. Not long enough to have an opinion right? But still, its so different to Venezuela. For a starters, almost everyone (in the city) is white(ish), and they sound like they are talking French and use funny words like vos and tenes. There was a cool street full of bookshops though. I was there Sunday night and most stuff was closed, but I wanted to get some political books you can’t get here, and had the name of an editorial. Although that was closed, the hostel guy suggested I got to Corrientes street, which had second hand and discount book shops, one after the other, full with classics, Marxist books, history of Argentinean struggle, anarchism etc. Mega cheap too. Pity I’m not a super human (in terms of carrying it all back to Merida), I would have bought heaps.

Arriving back in Merida was a relief. Not just because I’d spent the last 3 days/nights on planes and buses and not sleeping so good, but the amount of politics just hits you. The taxi driver from the Bus terminal was listening to revolutionary radio, then I went to stock up on vegies and had a che shirt on and the women there asked me about that and kinda wouldn’t let me leave, hehe. So much has happened in the last two weeks, in Ven news and local news, political life is so busy and I’m so excited to get back into it, although as usual it’s a bit overwhelming as well.

There isn’t much else to tell as I’ve mostly just been sleeping and trying not to sleep, washing clothes, seeing M again (mmmm : ) etc… but I did see my friend Z in Caracas, and to steal her story…she told me she’d been in the Mercal, where they had whole chickens for 5Bs ($2.5) and another woman in the queue chucked a tantrum because it turned out you had to buy a chicken AND something else and she said stuff about being oppressed like in Cuba etc.

Really shows how people can see things through the perspective they’ve already decided to have. Because of course the same woman wouldn’t scream about capitalist oppression if she went to a shop where there was a two-for-one sale (ie you *have* to buy two things to get the discount). Sheesh, and as Z said, its not like she *had* to buy the cheap chicken, she could have gone to a private butcher and paid more if she wanted!

Journies

2009-03-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

Photo: Bellas Artes, Caracas

It was holiday time....for me.. and for uni students, so me and M could take some time off
and spend a few days travelling around Venezuela. We went to sleepy and hot Coro, where it
seems that everyone is Chavista (even wearing election tshirts *after* elections, badges, hats and things, the bus and taxi drivers tuned into left radio station etc) and where it is too hot to walk fast. There are plazas every two blocks (as M commented, incredulous) and full of seats with people sitting and taking it easy, and I felt it too- the heat literally slows you down.

After a few days there (doing NO work at all, just cooking up amazing pasta sauce (hehe if I say so myself), reading in hamocks, checking out a waterfall, and sleeping...) we went to Caracas to see a few friends. We got lost straight away, Caracas doesn't have the convenient street numbering that Merida does and its so big... urg. Next day we went to Bellas Artes to meet Z, and it really does defy the stereotypes about Caracas. First you do not feel in danger there, unless you have been so affected by all the media that you just feel fear whereever you go.. Secondly, its quite beautiful. Murals really intricately done with awesome political messages, some even made out of mozaic. The road to the art museum lined with artesan sellers and secand hand and record sellers. The circle shaped plaza area infront of the museum full of jugglers, skaters, kids playing soccer, buskers, dudes doing tricks etc. Oh the night before was the 20th anniversay of the Caracazo, there were fireworks that echoed off the tall buildings around us and a movie about it on TV.

Then I was off to the airport to go back to aus-landia for a few weeks. Urg a 135B exit tax, shoot that was a surprise. A conversation on the way to Argentina with an opposition woman who works in admin for the government primary education system, and who says that chavez gives guns and motor bikes to criminals and the stats about poverty decreasing are "rubbish" and things are "worse than ever". Really, how can you be so stupid, really literally, swalling the right wing propaganda, and with passion.

Here in Australia, after about 1 year 8 months away, I didn't get the kind of culture shock I expected but a lot of things I was used to before I came to Venezuela did surprise me. I walk
around Sydney now with my eyes wide open, noticing everything...down to how everyone waits at crossings before crossing and how everyone has prams! I hadn't noticed until now that noone
has prams in Venezuela. It seems like such a luxury.

The most striking thing has been the consumerism, which I'm always grumbling about as being really strong in Venezuela (and it is) but here its kind of like you can't do anything at all without spending money- socialising must involve going to a cafe and buying food. The way people are all dressed up in the most unpractical and artistic (in the style sense not in the sense of expressing anything) clothing just to walk around in the street, making me feel relatively dirty or something in my casual and comfortable clothing.

Of course you notice the internationalism- there are different colours in Ven but everyone is pretty much Venezuelan in some way, or if not, from Colombia or something. In Aus, I guess being a developed country, it attracts people from mostly Asia plus other countries and walking around in UTS (University of Technology Sydney) you really notice that and its pretty cool, but we should always remember why... its not like Australia is some how better, its just that England fucked over a bunch of other countries, got rich, sent its criminals here, killed the indigenous, but with its wealth was able to build a country with somewhat better infrastructure and less poverty than the countries it stole the wealth from, so of course now lots of people want to come here.

Guys don't stare at you. It is much harder (and further) to find a free doctor. Chemists however, are much more helpful. But despite all the cleanliness and orderliness here in Sydney, despite all the wealth, there's this apathy and a feeling of anger (guy swearing to himself in the medical centre waiting room) that you do not find much in Venezuela.

The final main thing I've noticed that is different is marching. I went on the International Women's Day march today, and I felt like we had so much more of an impact, with all the people we passed staring at us in a kind of mixture of curiousity, shock, etc that never happens in Venezuela- for two main reasons I think- marches happen so often they aren't a big spectacle or surprise, and the content of marches is generally electoral rather than issue based. I imagine if a bunch of women marched down the streets of Merida, demanding to be listened to with the same kind of respect that men are, abortion rights and so on, there'd be a bit of gaping too. Oh and I guess the other thing is that marches in Venezuela are generally kind of celebratory- we've sort of won you know. Where as in Australia there's a demand, an anger, a breaking with the norm etc.

Or maybe I'm just too impatient :)

2009-02-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

Like when three bad things happen in a row and you call it a bad day, or two good things happen and you feel that things are looking up, lately I’ve been feeling that the Venezuelan left is too laid back and lacks a sense of urgency (and a sense of what this process means for activists in other countries).
Of course it’s not true, like any country or group it’s a broad range of people with various levels of commitment and seriousness.
What lead me to that conclusion though were two main events…
One was an anti-bull fighting protest. Every year in February, as I’ve mentioned before, is the ‘Sun fair/ Feria del sol’ with its two main features- the beauty queen contest and the bull fighting. People pop up all over the place selling (or wearing) those cow oy hats, and there’s a parade and lots of tourists and lots of shops and lots of spending of money, and a concert that was so loud I could hear the shouting at 3am from about 7 blocks away..
The whole bull thing is pretty gross- I don’t remember all the gory details but basically the bulls are given a bunch of drugs which makes them easier, I think, to chase and kill, but also disorientated and angry I think. Then they are killed and it’s a slow death and people drink and cheer.
(seriously, bulls are male cows right, as in cows...those peaceful, boring, all day-grass eating things, hardly natural fighters?)
So likewise, every year there are protests against it, although it sounds a bit like the women’s day protests- once a year, rather than an ongoing campaign (for animal rights or against consumerism or against the Spanish-isation of Meridenian culture etc). Leaflets are handed out, articles are written, grafitti is done, murals are made sometimes, and there was the march.
It was advertised to start at 9. Being used to Venezuela but not wanting to miss anything, I got there at 9.30. There was no one there, so I texted M, and he got me to go to his place where some people were still making placards. At like, 11.30 they/we left his place and went back to the plaza. There, ORCA- an animal rights group, had put out a bunch of banners along the path- which I thought was cool, people were stopping to read them. There were people dressed up as bulls (horns, black cape, colourful dagger things in their back) and radio Ecos – alternative radio- was being played over loud speakers, talking about the bullfights, how they are harmful to children and so on. I didn’t stay for long (had things to do) but M says they marched at about 12.30.
I’m not sure what annoyed me really- perhaps it was the time in general (not accessible for workers) and that people didn’t seem worried about being 2 hours late. In the end of course it doesn’t matter if you are late but it was the attitude, the laid back-ness off it all.
(which, I feel like repeating, isn’t at all generalised, there are people here who go to the extent of not allowing themselves a social life because they are so busy with activist stuff).

Then, later in the week, there was an anti-feria concert. It was organised by the anarchists but supported by ORCA and a few other groups like the CLAN (student far left collective). It took place in the courts in the barrio near the main city bridge thing, and it was a cool idea- its important to take back culture space in this way, and it was fairly visible to the public going past over the bridge, so it was making a public statement as well. The anarchists made vegie burgers and sold them to raise a bit of money, but the actual concert was free. There were some anti-feria newsletters and at the start the various groups gave short speeches.
The thing is, most of the audience- hmm I dunno what you’d call them- not Goths, but people dressed in black. Piecings... (And the clowns : ). That is they are clowns by day, busking in the plaza sometimes, and they were hanging out at the concert, doing amazing things with skateboards just for fun as people waited for the bands to set up). But the people in black are supposedly anti-system, anti fashion for example, yet they are as dressed up as anyone, just in a different colour- women in revealing clothes and things. (I’m not against revealing clothes in general but if you want people to notice more than your body and you’re against the objectification of women..).
At both events there was little effort to get people involved- organised in some kind of organisation, no matter what it be, but to get them to go beyond *attending* marches or concerts.
Finally, I was reading an anarchist newspaper- 'el libertario' and it got me angry too- because it was ONLY criticising the government. That is, it wasn't a mixture of constructive criticism and noting positive things, nor was it a mixture of criticism of the government and capitalism and the opposition. So for this reason, it sounded more like the opposition to me, to the point where I got suspicious and asked M where it gets its money from. It refers to the 'boliburgesa' (ie the Bolivarian revolution bourgeoisie ) and lied, frankly, about alot of the positive sides of this process- saying that there's so much crime because the government isn't fighting poverty, for example.
It's an ongoing struggle, one a bunch of us talked about last night- how to get a useful balance of healthy, constructive criticism but not romanticise this rather imperfect process/revolution either.

"WE WONNNNN" they screamed as they hugged eachother

2009-02-16T17:39:00.000-08:00

(photos: they aren't great quality, its hard to photograph moving red flags at night without strong lights, and the other one: I just love the look of the woman's face as we heard the results annouced- few could fit in the small room where the TV was, and she had climbed the window bars to see it better)

“And the yes option, with 6 million votes…” and all the people who had raced inside the headquarters of the PSUV office, including media, SQUEEZING inside, and outside, and hanging from the window bars, let off a cheer, quickly shushed by everyone…hence we didn’t hear the percentage, but we did hear that the opposition got 5 million votes and the whole crowd moved out onto the road to set off fire works and chant and chant and then a spontaneous singing of the first verse and chorus of the national anthem, fists in the air… and then I found myself on a motorbike…
But going back to the beginning... I had woken up at 5.30 (I WOKE up at 3 to the sound of the Diana, and went back to sleep). The Diana was still being played off the back of a truck at 5.30 and then at 7. I wanted to get photos of people voting as the sun comes up- the booths are meant to open at 5.30 though it depends when the booth workers (who are ‘conscripted’ in the same way jury workers are in Australia) get there. Unfortunately it seems the sun rises real quick, so I didn’t manage to, but I still saw people lining up at 6.30, at various booths, and going into vote.
I went back down to one booth at 3 and there were no queues outside. I think it was that experience (thinking that voter turn out was less, even though I knew it was simply that voting was much quicker) – and hearing that Caracas- where there are more Chavez supporters, had good voter turn out, which made me think we’d probably won. Later I heard some unofficial results, and at around 8, walked outside, and had to walk all the way to the PSUV building (about 20 blocks) cos there weren’t any buses, and unlike in the November elections, it was just cars and bikes with red flags going around the streets honking… and I just knew we’d won.
Even though I haven’t been that excited about this election campaign- in my opinion there are so many other things we need to be doing with our time- I still felt like running all the way to the PSUV. I guess it was the symbolism of it. Revolution victory over crazy, selfish opposition. And the fact that we haven’t had a victory like that in a while, and we so needed it.
The regional election was a mixed victory, and we lost the referendum in 2007. So boy were people proud and happy, and as I walked down the road people yelled at me ‘how did you vote?” and I said ‘for yes’ (a white lie, easier than stopping to explain that I can’t vote) and they cheered, and even taxis had red flags, and security guards up late working were cheering at the cars, like no one was afraid last night to come out again, politically, and say ‘yep I feel strongly about that, and we won!’.
A small crowd, perhaps a hundred or so had already gathered in the plaza and were watching the screen for the results, and chanting and whistling and high-fiving the honking cars that were going past.
I walked down some more, to one of the main booths, the one that had been empty at 3. Wow. I walked through people in red tshirts and people with red flags and people just all beaming and happy and chatting then suddenly I was in a different crowd, no red, no smiles. And I realised that the Chavez supporters were standing on one side, waiting for the results, and the opposition on the other. Boy did they look dejected.
The red side were trying to get some music going, and put a mobile phone with a revolutionary song on it to the megaphone. Then they gave up on that and just chanted and chanted and the opposition were so quiet. At one point a small group of them chanted, for like, 10 seconds, ‘No is No’ and I felt like saying sarcastically, boy how deep, you guys really have thought about all the problems in the world. Sheesh.
The red side started to move closer and closer to the booth, and it was a real physical example of how the results (still not announced) had given us confidence, to just take back our space. A lot of the opposition people left.
Then, finally, I did actually run down to the PSUV office. Because I felt like it- it’s nice to run on empty roads at night- and because I knew the announcement would be made soon.

From the PSUV office, after the announcement, a friend put me on the back of someone’s motorbike, as there were calls to go back to the plaza, where people were playing drums and dancing.
Motorbike guy honked all the way up there, literally, and we got mixed up with all the cars heading to the plaza, blocking up the road for like 10 blocks up. By now (about 10) there were a good thousand or so people in the plaza (that’s A LOT, for Merida, at least double the amount celebrating the 10 year anniversary of Chavez government, and it was just people living nearby, others went to their closest plazas to celebrate), red flags galore, the drums, ska music off the back of a truck and people dancing, people hugging (including strangers). Bloody awesome night (and not a drop of alcohol to be seen. Who needs alcohol when you have the sort of victory that they say in every other country, is impossible…)

Poor pride parade

2009-02-14T17:46:00.000-08:00

Two of our mates followed us on a motorbike to watch out for cops, and the four us (women, one older) drove around and stopping at various tempting smooth walls to spray ‘We exist to change the world not for the pleasure of men!’ and ‘Our bodies are not for profit’ and ‘objectification is the first step to rape’ and ‘Ferisol=machismo’ etc. Ha that was so fun. We did it in response to the annual Sun Fair (Feria del Sol= Ferisol) here in Merida which also involves a beauty queen competition.
Hopefully it was noticed in amongst all the other graffiti, one thing I love about Venezuela. The opposition writing ‘no means no’ all over the place and amendment supporters writing ‘si va’ which I can’t work out how to translate literally, I guess it means ‘yep the amendment will pass!’.
Gosh we’ve received so much opposition propaganda about the amendment- under our door. Some of it is so crazy;
-Cuba is the only country in Latin America where indefinite presidential elections exist (pictures of Fidel looking crazy and evil – a picture of him in 1959 and in 2009, stupid people he’s not even president anymore)-In Cuba the youth only have one exit: the sea
-do you think that the concentration of power in the hands of only one person is best for a democratic country (ie a bunch of arguments trying to say that getting rid of term limits=dictatorship. Funny, we have that – no term limits- in Australia, and unlike Venezuela we DON’T have the ability to recall)
-do you think its good for Venezuela that private property is eliminated
-Would you have voted for Chavez in 1998 if you had known he’d take us to Communism (I wish!! But not yet..)
-Do you think citizen security has been a priority of the Chavez government?
-Do you think the hate that this government has encouraged is good for Venezuela (dude they are the negative ones..)
Meanwhile, the PSUV hasn’t been so good with putting leaflets under doors, but they have had even more red tents than the elections last November, going all out handing out leaflets from those.
The closing motorcade yesterday made me happy. Cars and trucks full of people in red with flags and ‘si’ stickers and posters plastered all over their cars went past the plaza, and kept going and kept going, and I stood there for an hour taking photos and talking to people, and left to make a phone call and walked home and the cars were still going past, there were that many.
There were old and young and social mission people and I just love it that they were all SO HAPPY and blowing whistles and raising their fists and just so proud to be red, to be socialist, to be pro-Chavez. Proud of their politics. What it felt like at the time--- and I wrote in my diary, ‘Pride parade of the previously poor.’
Then Marcos Diaz (governor of the state of Merida) rode past on his bike, and he’s a big man so you notice him, but he was just riding along with everyone else, it was cool. I’m not too happy with the guy right now cos he’s supporting the Sun festival (and the consumerism, imperialism- Spanish culture- torture of animals (bulls) and sexism that it represents) but it was an awesome moment. The woman who walks around the plaza with a tray of rice pudding in little cups, selling them, just beamed when he rode past. “What a guy!”.
He gets around and everyone knows him and his politics are a bit wrong in my opinion but I also think he’s genuine and a good guy.

Telling, shooting, celebrating, resisting

2009-02-05T08:20:00.001-08:00

Telling Tales

Sometimes Merida feels like such a fairyland, I can never get over the purple night skies. Even in the Museum, with abstract paintings on the walls, in the middle the roof opens up, and there are plants and a fountain. The other night there was even a tiny blue humming bird moving amongst the flowers and the participants just like the fairy in Peter Pan…
Anyway it was Telling Tales night, and in one corner of the patio chairs were set up, and people got up and basically did just that- just told quick stories, a few poems, and others sang and played the guitar. Even a kid- she must have been about 9 or something, got up and told this weird story about earthquakes and a kid who didn’t want to do his homework, in full confidence. I liked it I guess because it wasn’t about performance and competition, it was just a nice night of sharing stories.

Student and police and National Guard violence

I didn’t see most of it, in fact I just saw the end, where the National Guard, in 3 tanks, moved slowly down the main road next to the law and humanities faculties of Los Andes University, seemingly shooting at the students (I saw this guy poke out of the top of the tank like a rabbit from its hole, and aim his gun at the students, but it must have been blanks or something, I don’t think they wanted to actually kill them, but rather scare them away) and throwing tear gas, and the students, from behind the fence and with their faces covered in t-shirt improvised balaclavas, threw large rocks and bottles back at the National Guard. My friend says he also saw them throw something like dynamite.

The whole thing seemed pointless to me- on both sides. The students were clearly not harming anything- that is they were not hurting each other nor property, (earlier, apparently they had been fighting directly with the police) so why didn’t the National Guard just leave? And then the students (opposition students) weren’t going to achieve anything by throwing rocks at tanks. Later they burnt tires, also more symbolic in my opinion, blocking the road and making fire…

Earlier that week Chavez had said that student violence would not be tolerated and students would be arrested, so it seemed like one big media stunt on both sides- to me. ‘The Chavez government causes instability!’ says the opposition. ‘The opposition is violent!’ says the Chavez government. And its true, the opposition IS immaturely violent at times, to cause instability, but I’d go for the opposite strategy and not provoke it further with tanks.

I went around taking photos quite close to both students and tanks (everyone always tells me not to do that, that ‘they’ll take your camera’ but they never do- I think the fear of the violent opposition is exaggerated and also, they are all adrenalin charged, unthinking, macho youth who wouldn’t do that to a woman…), and got a face full of tear gas quite a few times and later stupidly washed my face in water which just made it sting more.

(for a better chronology of the actual events and background see http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4148)

10th anniversary of the revolution

I have to admit I had kind of forgotten about the anniversary. There wasn’t a lot of build up to it, and some workers, who perhaps hadn’t watched the news over the weekend, were taken by surprise on Monday morning when they found out they didn’t have to work. Most shops, banks, restaurants etc were closed.
As I walked down to the main plaza and could see the crowd of red and hear the music, I started to feel a bit elated. There were many more people there, than for example the Palestine solidarity protests, and there was this environment of celebration.
On the other hand, a lot of activists I know weren’t there, I really don’t think it was built that well. 10 years of- what ever you want to call it- revolution, opposition to imperialism, dignity for the poor, progressive government- is something to really be excited about, something really special. There should have been balloons, live bands, dancing, many more people.
I guess all the leadership, organizer type people are bogged down in the amendment campaign. Most of the speeches were directed to this- to making sure that there can be another 10 years of Chavez government, of the kinds of things that were achieved in the last 10 years.

After that I invited a friend over for lunch, and she cooked hehe, whilst I sat with her kid at my computer- a 4 year old who told me how to find her favourite ‘princess game’ online and who, when I opened up the paint program (lacking any other games or tiny child friendly stuff on my computer), told ME how to use it.

Hippies shut down

Outside the Bolivar library (literally a Bolivar library- with a bunch of his books and letters and things), the hippies sell their really amazing artesenia- mostly hand made jewellery, bags, scarves, little animals made out of wire or coke cans.. And truth be told, some of them also sell pot.
Recently they disappeared. Apparently they were shut down, most likely by the local police, ordered to do so by the opposition city mayor. Since then, they have come back, with large signs stuck to their stalls saying that they are buhoneros- informal stall workers, just like anyone else, with children to feed and rent to pay.
Man, the hippies are part of the arty life that is Merida, and pot is not a harmful drug- only if its abused, just like beer can be abused. (Of course, selling pot is illegal in Venezuela, but being a buhonero in general is illegal- that means all those road side hotdog and burger stands that pop up at night, or the people selling fresh orange juice in the morning. All of them are trying to survive and in my opinion add to street life, and should be left alone).

Like sitting in half-shade

2009-01-28T05:21:00.001-08:00

(photo: a plaza in Cucuta)

Well I’ve just been working, writing, studying, walking around in a bit of a frustrated daze, wondering what is holding us back and why.

I think on the one hand, with the voting on the amendment coming up, everyone is very orientated- clear about what the priority is (drop everything for the voting), and on the other hand rather disorientated.
We had one election, and then another, and it sounds a bit spoilt perhaps- but I’m a bit sick of elections (and I’ve only been here for a bit over a year- compared to the other activists here who’ve done like 11 elections (or 12?) in 10 years..).

One thing I noticed after the regional elections at the end of last year, is people suddenly became more open about their criticisms- they didn’t like this candidate, x is corrupt, we need to reorganise, we need to do this and that, - and then the amendment election was called and suddenly all those things were put aside again.

Although it would definitely vary according to location, I think the PSUV branches (as opposed to the leadership) have been the least involved in the amendment campaign. More it has been the missions, the communal councils, and the organised left. By organised left I guess I mean the socialist front, the PPT, the PCV, some of the community radio people, some of the youth. In the socialist front- which is meant to be an open discussion space for the various cadre socialist parties, community activists and individual committed revolutionaries- there has been a lot of debates about its purpose.

People like me are frustrated. The PSUV (here in Merida city) doesn’t take a lot of initiative (ie it was the socialist front, not the PSUV who called for Palestine solidarity rallies) and so some people were proposing at the meeting the other night that the socialist front set up committees and elect positions (very similar to what the PSUV has- fundraising, logistics, environment committees etc), and others argued strongly against this, suggesting we shouldn’t be setting up a ‘parallel party’ and that the PSUV branches are where we should be doing things.

But most branches aren’t meeting! I guess I feel frustrated because we have been handed this massive opportunity that doesn’t exist in other countries- where the word ‘socialism’ is household talk, where- no matter where people are on the political spectrum, at least they are somewhere and politics is relevant and discussed and important, where we have money, resources, government logistical support- for the ideas of socialism, but where we are caught in this constant cycle of elections, rather than I guess taking over workplaces, media, or deepening general ideological knowledge- including awareness of women’s rights, the environment- basic grassroots initiative.

(Elections do have the potential to embrace a lot of these things- to get people more organised, to deepen people’s experience and ability as protagonists, and to have debate that deepens consciousness – but my experience is that has been limited. The debate around this amendment could be about what real leadership is, about the role of the individual verses the organised collective and so on, but instead has been simplified really to pro chavez or not and maintaining the achievements of the revolution- a valid thing for sure but not overly empowering in my opinion).

Probably it’s my fault- I’m too impatient. Like in most countries, perhaps the revolutionary task right now is more propagandistic and ideological, and it’s not the time for taking over workplaces etc.

Oh well. Last Tuesday we had a ‘thank god Bush is gone’ type party. Ha it was fun. E made a card and everyone wrote ‘farewell’ messages to Bush that were full of spite, hatred, and hope ‘We will win’. Ha.

Then Friday I went with P down to the border as I do every 3 months, and spent a day in Cucuta feeling depressed because its centre is basically a giant shopping centre (with a couple of nice plazas I guess- including a giant iguana that was walking around and people in the plaza threw water on it, taking care of it- which I thought was sweet).
But god, some streets of Cucuta its like- shops, and then more ‘shops’ on the side of the street, selling socks, stationary, underwear, singlet tops, over and over again, and you walk through it and think it will stop soon and it just goes on forever.
Fashion in Venezuela and Colombia for women is very much tiny brightly coloured singlet tops, fitted t-shirts etc. Its fine, whatever, I don’t really care- but if a woman wants to look like she’s doing anything but going to a disco, it’s a bit hard to find stuff. Hmm.. I think it was P who was saying that he’d seen a poster for one of the few women governors or mayors who got elected, and she had bright red lipstick on. We shouldn’t have to decorate ourselves like that to be taken seriously!

There’s something weird going on with the exchange rate too. If you change Venezuelan Bolivars in cash in the shops in Cucuta you only get half of what they are officially worth- so its strangely profitable to withdraw Colombian pesos from an ATM if you have a US or Aussie bank account for example, then change them into Ven Bolos. My point on this is not to give everyone a tip about how to make money, but rather the massive economic impact this has.
Venezuelans who manage to obtain a credit card daily cross the border to shop in Cucuta or to buy stuff and then sell it for a profit back here.
While I was in Colombia, funnily enough so was Chavez, meeting up with Uribe and one thing he said was that about $6 billion changed hands between Colombia and Venezuela last year. I have a feeling a good part of that is going from Venezuela to Colombia. Meanwhile Colombians come here to get free medical care (for things like when they are pregnant). Its like you want the capitalist advantages, you go to Colombia (*things* here are quite expensive and there isn’t a lot of variety), and then for the socialist side of things you come here.

Anyway, I guess it was my every-3-month reminder about how dead life is under capitalism- obviously Cucuta is a bit of an exaggeration, most cities have a bit of culture, a bit of criticism and debate, something else to life than shops.

The one place where abortion isn’t taboo

2009-01-18T06:16:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday I went to a meeting of the “Ideological formation and attention for women centre”, which as far as I can tell is the only decent feminist organisation fighting for women here- the rest are all wishy washy organisations that do what ever Chavez says (or see supporting Chavez in elections as feminist activity), and mostly see feminist stuff as fighting against violence and poverty (which it is) but not challenging women’s role in society (mother, active in the background only, cooking, caring, object of beauty) and generally against abortion. As the woman who was telling me the history of the group said “We organise activities for women’s rights, not for women as mothers or as housewives.”

This group was formed in 1992 and has always been independent of the government, constantly battling to stay alive financially, obtaining office space (for meetings, teach ins, and sexual assistance- abortions, gynaecology consultations as well as an open space where any women with problems could drop in, and constantly getting kicked out of that office space, as well as internal political disagreements that saw the group split awhile ago into a ‘Women’s house’ in Ejido, and the more campaigning and education oriented group in Merida.

On top of that people have constantly abused what money they did receive- such as donations from Belgium where the woman in charge misspent the money on other things. In general they have survived by paying for things out of their own pockets.

This meeting had 6 women at it, 3 of which have been in the organisation pretty much from the start, and 2 somewhat younger women, plus me. There were 3 main points of discussion:
*things to buy (a sign to put down stairs: the office is conveniently located right on the main plaza, but upstairs and out of sight, a few more chairs etc)
*publicity: organising a campaign against sexist imagery and language in the papers. A lot of papers use virtually pornographic images of women- supposedly next to an article about exercise or something, to sell themselves. Combining this with a campaign against the beauty contest that is a central part of the annual Feria del Sol, coming up next month (see my entries on that last year).
*workshops: We decided on a range of themed workshops which would be aimed at teenagers, including: sexual education, the (new) law against gender based violence, rights of women, sexist language, religion and women, women and revolution (which was assigned to me to give, eek), women and community organisations and cooperatives…

We also discussed meeting with a range of the women’s organisations to coordinate some of this, and 8 March (international women’s day).

Frankly, it was one of the best meetings I’ve been to in a while, with lots of concrete decisions made, little venting, and it was just really nice to be around women who talk about the right to abortion as if its obvious (where as my experience has been, even around supposedly revolutionary people, that it’s a pretty taboo topic and generally opposed). Apparently a lot of doctors here will say that they don’t do abortions, but if you come back offering a decent amount of money, they will.

We finished off the meeting with some cheap Champaign to celebrate getting active again.

-

Then...“Come to the vigil for Palestine in the Plaza”, my text message said at 9.30 last night. Ok! The radio collective people had put up a screen in the plaza and were displaying photos and commentary about the struggle in Palestine. It’s a neat idea- people walking past can stop and watch, and then the organisers can talk to them. It’s just that buses stop at about 9.30 here (depending, sometimes as late as 10.30), so there weren’t so many people about.In front of the screen they had arranged candles in the shape of the Palestinian flag.

Big meetings, medium protests, tiring bureacracy

2009-01-09T17:25:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday the campaign for the amendment was officially launched, with people from missions and communal councils around the state coming in to the city (second photo).. Ahh we were told it started at 10 and I knew that I could safely arrive around 10.30… by 12 people were still queuing to register and getting stamps to enter, which no one checked : ). We were given lunch and water and booklets about the achievements of the revolution, and also most got some t-shirts as well (that said, ‘those who care about the country, come with me’- Chavez).
A young guy, kind of head of the communal councils, gave a speech about the stages of the campaign and he said all the communal councils should form ‘yes’ committees – and he asked ‘who’s here from a communal council’ and a good 100 hands went up, he called on one guy to stand up ‘which one are you from?’ ‘…some place…Tovar’ (which is a good 2 hours away) and he said he needs to make a promise, a kind of commitment, to the campaign.
Another regional leader who’s also in the FFS spoke. He’s a real down to earth good guy, it was weird to see him wearing the characteristic red pocket style chavez shirt.
“We want Chavez to stay in power because we want to the people to continue ruling,” he said.
Similar such events were going on in other states, and a talk by Chavez was transmitted to the meeting.
Yesterday, we had a protest against the Israeli bombing of Gaza (top photo). It was a different group of people at this event. For a starters- a lot less- probably all up 3 or 400 (as people arrived and left and different times- the rally went from 2 till about 5). Mostly cadre type people- the sort of people who’d be revolutionaries even if all the Chavez stuff hadn’t happened, or who don’t get excited when there is free stuff and who do it all because its important not because its their job.
Anyway there were speeches, an open mike, some singing, a large banner in the street where people could write messages, some flag burning- first in the road next to the plaza, then outside Macdonalds (of the Israeli flag and the US flag), and people also handed out leaflets and wrote on the backs of taxis and cars ‘free Palestine’ and so on. Ska-P music and other current bands played in the background. Apart from one guy getting carried away and chanting ‘death to the jews’ – which I’m gunna talk about with him next time I see him (and at the next meeting I also intend to briefly raise the issue that some people are confused between Zionism and Judaism- they aren’t the same)- it was a pretty decent protest, in the sense that there was a lot for people attending to do. Protests where people give speeches and everyone just stands there and listen annoy me a bit- I think its good to have people actively participating.

The other night the national TV station had an old Cuban movie about bureaucratism. It was part of tribute to the revolution, with a Cuban movie every night for 5 nights or something in a row. It was hilarious- this guy’s aunt needs her pension but can’t get it without a labour card- as a housewife, she doesn’t have one and her husband’s was buried with him. So because of bureaucracy she can’t get her pension and then they have to go through all this sh&t to get the husband umm…unburied…and then buried again, and its all very crazy.
It really really reminded me of ONIDEX (the passport/visa issuing government organisation here). Sheesh, I went to the one here and went up stairs to the ‘extranjeria’ for foreigners- asked again about what my work would have to do get me a working visa, and the woman was like ‘its all on the website’. I told her, no, I’ve visited the website, the information is NOT there (it really isn’t) and she insisted it was…no its not, I said, I’ve looked like 50 times…and she just wouldn’t help. What does the extranjeria exist for, what do the people in that room do exactly if they don’t know that? There’s only like 15 foreigners or something (excluding exchange students) in Merida. Seriously, what do they do in that room?

Three very different types of Venezuelans

2009-01-01T14:24:00.000-08:00

And they counted UP to 60…55, 56, 57, 58, 59…60! Which makes sense when you think about it, but caught me by surprise so it took me a few seconds to realise it was the new year in Latin America. Like a long lasting orgasm, the city went off in fire works…there was quite a show going off at the Chinese owned supermarket, there were fire works coming off our roof, some big ones from the road on the other side of the baseball court, little ones coming from all the different streets and building tops…then the clouds came down as the night got cold and it was hard to see much at all when they mingled with the dust from the fireworks.
This year as it changed to a new year, I thought about the Palestinians. I made resolutions and things earlier in the day, but I felt like being a bit more serious this year.
I actually felt like staying at home and reading about the events of the year, perhaps writing a poem about it…I wanted to pay a tribute to all the people who struggle and sacrifice silently to make this unjust world a better place, and never receive any kind of recognition…and to say that for me, this year, the fireworks are for them…but the internet was down and my boyfriend was really insistent that I spend the new year with him.
If I had known how that would turn out, I really really wouldn’t have gone. His mum is an evangelical Christian (he’s not) and Venezuelans generally feel a pretty strong moral obligation to spend new years with their family. Anyway I’m ok with people having their religions, their different beliefs, even when one guy said the only history worth studying was the bible, I was like…ok, don’t agree, but ok. But after the fireworks they started doing this kind of praying of a kind I have never seen in my life before, or anything close. It started off with one guy making predictions about the new year, (or what god had supposedly told him would happen next year) and it was this really mixed thing about how the financial crisis was caused by people not believing in jesus and how Venezuela and Merida have been chosen, and stuff about Israel being in conflict cos Jews don’t believe in Jesus and ohh…if it had stopped there it would have been ok. At least, its interesting to learn about different kinds of people…but THEN they started doing this thing where some of them stood up and they all closed their eyes and started saying “Thanks to god” outloud, with this guy talking in a language I swear he’d just made up (but it was god talking through him) and they started shaking and holding their hands in their air as god entered them, and then walking around each other talking half in Spanish and half in made-up-language, making each other faint and cry, and they were on the floor crying out about things and so on and so on and THIS lasted for 4.5 hours. It was painful and depressing. Later a few of them asked me why I don’t believe in god and stuff and I think I was pretty good at being polite in the way I responded, considering. They also said some stuff to M, my boyfriend, that made me feel they thought I was a bad influence on him and they had little respect for me, and on the whole I felt pretty horrible.
Well on the 26th, I also went with M to visit some of his relatives in a rural town 2.5 hours from Merida, and within the border of Zulia state. A different bunch of people entirely : ).
The town is pretty cute and laid back, its one of the main plantain (bananas used for cooking, making chips etc- I’d never heard of them until I came here although I understand they are more common in the US) growing areas. His cousin met us at her house and we ate the traditional Christmas-time hallacas. She used to work in barrio adentro as a nurse, and is now training to be a primary school teacher with mission sucre (although she has to travel in to El Vigia to do it- about half an hour away) and her and her family also run the Mercal next door. Despite all that she didn’t seem passionately political and isn’t involved in her communal council ‘because it doesn’t function very well’. Her brother is in the national guard and has a kid by a girlfriend and another kid by his wife, and another girlfriend, and is about 20. He also wasn’t that political, preferring to talk about his new mobile phone and his computer and what kind of phone does M have, and his cost 600Bs and so on.
Then we hopped in a truck (and they picked up some bananas on the way to sell) and went over to the ‘abuelo’s place’ (abuelo literally meaning grandfather but used in this context to mean old guy- some relative, but not M’s grandfather). He has a pig farm. Yuck dude. Pigs are really big!! These must have been some other kind of pigs to what I’ve seen in Australia. Urg. Anyway, good for them I guess. They also had a bunch of fruit trees in their yard.

That night I hung out with, finally, the third group of ‘different’ people- fellow revolutionaries and members of the FFS. At first the conversation bothered me a bit- it was mostly gossip, or speculation, about who is in the group for real, and who is just in it for the connections, in order to get jobs with the state (Chavista)government. A story about how one of the guys there had been approached by someone who wanted work and had heard he had connections, this guy- the one asking for work- had worked for the previous governor as well. And the FFS guy responded, well, we can always use help, volunteers, there’s a lot to do.. hehe. Anyway I guess I understand… we never talk about this kind of stuff at meetings and to vent about it once a year or so is a reasonable necessity.
Then the conversation got more interesting- about the problems of the revolution (which isn’t a revolution, or is more a (contradictorily) peaceful revolution) and the involvement of the Cubans, and what will happen if the amendment isn’t voted for and so on. One comment that worries me is that the elected PSUV regional leadership (8 people and 8 substitutes) almost all have other positions now- as mayors, mission leaders and things, so they aren’t so available to be doing regional organising. It was really good, sincere, useful criticism and sort of exploded my head a little with all that needs to be done and all there is to worry about etc.

Finally, I had a crappy experience with private chemists…I had brought some medication with me from Australia, and am running out of it. The Barrio Adentros provide it for free, but it’s slightly different, and so I went from chemist to chemist trying to see if they had the exact same stuff. They gave me all sorts of things, telling me they were the same, and yet when I looked at the ingredients they were completely different, and some went as far as to tell me the ingredients were the same, they just had a different name in Spanish (gosh I’m not stupid!!). When I expressed my shock at the price, they’d then say they had something else… It’s all totally a business! They weren’t at all worried about making sure the medicine was what I needed, just in selling me what they could!
God so it’s a relief the barrio adentros are here, it would have been crap being sick in Venezuela before they existed- the chemist medicine is really out of range for most people and they try their best to convince you you need more than what you really do.

Crazy Christmas and billy carts

2008-12-23T14:08:00.000-08:00

Mmm, it was a long night. At around 7, G came over and we ate fruit, drank ponche, and played cards. It was nice to just hang with a friend for once- no meeting, no agenda, no pressure. Sometimes the conversation was political, sometimes it wasn’t, sometimes we vented- and he mostly won at the cards, which I’m not used to :). Later, going on 9, we went to the plaza to meet M and walked down to Avenida Las Americas.
A part of the road, I’m not sure, maybe 200 metres, has been closed off for the last week for ‘Carruchas’. Basically a bunch of people, mostly aged between 3 and 30, riding bikes, skateboards, and billy carts- from tiny baby billy carts, to one we got on which could fit 90 people. Haha, it’s pretty crazy. Meat on sticks and other treats being cooked on the side of the road. People with big 2L bottles of sangria and packets of plastic cups- selling that. People hanging around, chatting, playing, and waiting on the sides for the long billy carts to arrive, and then within 2 seconds of them breaking, they are full again. Apparently 5 years ago the billy carts were free, it was all just a bit of late night fun. Now they are charging 3Bs/person. Quite a scam.
Then, a friend of ours was at a communal council christmas dinner, so we walked back to the city, to that. The dinner was organised by the Belen communal council for the community. There were tables and chairs arranged inside the hall of a small school. There was food, music, and perhaps speeches before we arrived. We got there when people were finishing up. I sat down at one table and started chatting to people. I found out when the meetings are, so perhaps I can start going to those instead of waiting for a council to be set up where I live (I conveniently live on the border of about 3 councils, so I have a bit of a choice). I tried to ask people what projects the council had been up to, but I think they were more part of the invited community rather than regular attendees of meetings, as they didn’t seem sure. One mentioned a project to put up security cameras, which doesn’t sound too exciting.
Then everyone moved into a hall type space, and some kids (like 13 or 16 or something years old) played drums. That was pretty amazing. Fast rhythm, occasional singing by one kid, and kind of drum dancing where they would all suddenly stand up, or cross arms over and beat the other drum, or pick the drum up between their legs and jump forward, as they maintained the rhythm. The singing guy kept calling out for ‘chicas’ (women or girls) to get up and dance but few wanted to. It annoyed me that he didn’t get the men to dance, and that the women dancing was pretty sexual. Well I’m of two minds about that- the rhythm, so fast and intense was pretty sexual too, and it was fun. It was the way it was only women I guess, that got to me, and some that did get up and dance were real young- 11 or 12. Women, taught to perform for men from very young ages. Still, its hardly the exception.

Meanwhile, it’s crazy Christmas time, with more people in the plaza buying useless blow-up spidermen dolls than you ever see at the big meetings. The meetings though, go on, with the FFS planning their annual conference for early next year- but I just keep getting sick and haven’t been able to make it.
In fact I’ve had to go down the CDI (central diagnostic centre- kind of like barrio adentro 2) twice, as my local barrio adentro (just 2 minutes walk away) is being repainted. First time I went, it was a Saturday and noone was about and it was so quick and easy- the doctor gave me the medicine I needed without even asking for my name or address.
The second time was annoying- this time I was meant to be working and actually did feel a bit blech. I guess because it was Monday morning- with the centre closed on Sundays and Christmas holidays coming up, it was really crowded, and I had to wait a while and didn’t feel like I could really ask the doctor questions because there were so many people waiting. So I walked out with a prescription for 4 things, not entirely sure what they were or why I needed them. Luckily, my friend’s mum is a nurse, and my friend was real kind and rang me up and explained what was wrong with me, and not to get x medicine because its too harsh, but to get y instead- which also works out cheaper, and so on. Nice.

seen: this big dog rooting a tiny white fluffy one in the street, and a woman walks past them, ahead of me, and mutters to herself sympathetically, ‘ay pobrecita’ (aww, poor little thing).

The need to stop, in order to start

2008-12-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas (the religious holiday or the end of year break, either way) is here- there are loud bangs all day and all night (as I was walking to the phone, about 4 electric workers gleefully lit a cracker in the street, setting off all the car alarms nearby…”another one, another one!”), Christmas trees are going up on campus, in offices (including public ones- no laws against that here I guess), there’s one in the hallway of my house (a first for me), and people are having end of work and study dinners etc. I missed about 3 that were happening all at once the other day because I had to work.
But despite that, the signature collecting to get the constitution changed to allow for more than one re-election continues.
It officially started on Thursday. There were FOUR red tents in the plaza on different corners, music (the new Ska-p song about Chavez), people speaking on the megaphone, and the tents were full all day with people wanting to sign.
The idea is that the COEs (the electoral commissions corresponding to each PSUV branch) have to seek out as many signatures as votes that were obtained in the recent elections. Someone with kids at the meeting pointed out how in school a lot of the teachers are already speaking against the amendment. That is, although the National Assembly hasn’t yet passed it through discussion, the campaign on both sides has already started.
The way people have become immediately ‘animated’ around this has surprised me- both those collecting signatures (yelling out, “Friend! Have you signed for the amendment yet?”) and those signing.
I help out for a while on one tent, folding some leaflets, handing out the newspaper, chatting to people and watching what’s going on. Nearby, a happy short old woman walks around shouting ‘Que viva Chavez!’. (Later she tells me that Chavez was given to us by god..). C, an old but energetic and passionate lawyer, picks up the megaphone and puts the siren on and points it at people gleefully, almost cheekily, before starting to spruik, “for the petrocasas! For the missions!” then he shoves the microphone at passes by and asks them what they think.

On Friday I went along to the last lecture of the diploma in ‘marxism and revolution’ at the University of Los Andes. Organised by a bunch of ‘activist academics’, there was a series of lectures on Marx, Gramsci, the Russian revolution, etc. Friday’s topic was ‘dialectical materialism’. I admit I hadn’t gone along before because…well I’ve kinda studied it all before (but hey study never stops, we never know everything) and because I’m against the lecture style (1 person talking, 80 people listening, isn’t exactly a socialist education method), but it wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined.
Most of the people were quite young, mostly male, but there was a really healthy amount of interrupting, discussion, and my boyfriend came out of it not wanting to go to the party that was on, but back to his house to study up some of the ideas (but we went to the party anyway : ). At one point, an 8 year old kid put his hand up (in response to the question by the lecturer, ‘what is the central contradiction of capitalism?’) and started to explain to everyone, with all seriousness, what the difference between socialism and capitalism is. Ha, it was hilarious! He got quite a round of applause when he finished.

Finally, on Saturday we had another PSUV branch meeting, but unfortunately this time only 4 people turned up. And those 4 people were pretty frustrated (well apart from me, I think I’m getting jaded or something, or used to my frustration. I also had a killer headache, which they all just assumed was a hangover, and two of them went out to buy me Gatorade, haha so sweet). “We need to DO something!” was the overall sentiment. One argued, if we don’t stop shutting up about the right being mixed up into the PSUV and in everything, the contradictions and problems will keep getting worse. Someone else made this point the other night at the party- there keep being elections, and so much stuff, including proper criticism and ‘cleansing’ gets put off, and put off…

Stumbling in haste, confusion, and enthusiasm

2008-12-08T14:59:00.000-08:00

Fascists turn up to teleferico protest??
Ha, THAT was weird. Friday was a ‘toma cultural’ (cultural capture?) of the teleferico, which has been closed for 4 months now. Lots of not fully grown women dancing in ‘dresses’ the length of t-shirts, some singing, some indigenous ceremonies. The taxi drivers came out demanding the teleferico reopen, as well as some of the craft/souvenir stall holders. I’d heard about the event from the Monday FFS meeting, so I was pretty surprised when the (fascist student movement) M13 turned up, holding placards as well about opening the teleferico, and then Lester himself, the new opposition city mayor also came and gave a speech. Blech!
I have to admit I DO NOT understand the teleferico issue. It can’t be coincidence that it was closed during peak season and surely it doesn’t take over 4 months to check that all is in order, and why are both sides protesting its closure: who closed it exactly?? (photos above)

First PSUV branch meeting after the elections
Seven people turned up to what was our first branch meeting in ages (remembering that branches are based on communities of about 400 people) in the government printing company, INMECA (which has a big meeting room and a hall full of printing machines, and the meeting room has a bunch of paintings on the wall, a good half of which are Bolivar).
There was some post election venting/analysis, where people wondered and debated about how we lost, and for the first time people showed their real colours about Carlos Leon. Before, while the elections were on, people kept their opinion of him to themselves, but now they are over and he lost, people are on about how he mismanaged everything, was corrupt etc.
D made a good point, that Lester wont govern badly because he really does *want* to govern, plus he has the church, the media, the middle and upper classes and the University on his side.
People’s main concern was the restructuring of the branch, as most of the people with elected positions weren’t fulfilling their job. We decided to call an ‘assembly’- notifying all the registered members in the branch (300 eek) plus putting up signs for those not registered but interested. We thought we have to do this, before we go into constitution amendment campaign mode.
Gosh the meeting was a bit chaotic though. I guess its only natural, some people have more experience than others. One women works for Banmujer, another is a lecturer at the university, and another man was trained by the Frente Francisco de Miranda, and went to Cuba with them years ago. Those guys run the meetings- that is, they try to give them a bit of structure, an agenda, take notes of proposals, attendance and things. The other guys who are not so used to meetings, tend to interrupt and talk over each other in excitement, vent a lot- just talk about people they’ve talked to and experiences they’ve had, and move from one topic to another without concretising anything.
We did touch briefly on the ‘enmienda’ (amendment) campaign, with FFM trained guy suggesting that we campaign around the achievements of the revolution to say why Chavez should be re-elected, spray painting slogans such as ‘uh ah barrio adentro no se va’ / ‘uh ah mission sucre no se va’ and things like that (a play with the ‘uh ah chavez no se va chant- chavez isn’t going).

A war less silent

2008-11-30T11:32:00.000-08:00

Post elections
It was a week ago now that the election results came out, but I’ve been caught up with the aussie brigade visit and work etc. I was sure that we would lose city mayor, although I have to admit that I thought so because I thought the red vote would be split between PSUV and the communist party. After 6 when many booths were closed, me and M walked down the road looking for food and people in opposition colours were racing around the block on their motorbikes. Suddenly I felt really down. Chavistas followed a bit later doing the same thing, but there were less of them. For some reason it killed me- the opposition celebrating. It was still a bit of a shock though, when I found out by how much they won- a good 20% more- meaning that the split red vote didn’t even make a difference, the two groups combined wouldn’t have gotten close. Some say it’s not a loss, cos the old mayor wasn’t really socialist anyway. I hope it’s a stick in the ass to all the leaching bureaucrats who use the PSUV as a career ticket, talk socialist but act capitalist. I guess in practice little will change- the old mayor did deals with companies and so will the new mayor. But now the opposition has the university and the city. I guess we’ll see what they do with that. Aussie brigade- some highlights Then on Tuesday the aussie brigade arrived, and with R, we spent the next 5 days taking them around to see various aspects of the revolution and to talk to people with a range of degrees of support to critical support of the process. I wont recap everything because a lot of things I’ve covered previously in the blog, and there’s too much, but some of the highlights…

Youth discussion (3rd pic)

the rain hadn’t ceased (today is the first day in ages I’ve woken up and the mountains were clear of clouds, you could see the sky) so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when the youth from various organisations that I’d contacted were really really late. Oh well, they arrived in dribs and drabs, and even a bunch I hadn’t invited came in to join in the discussion. The last hour was more of an interchange, which eventually got a bit heated as each person with their various ideological tendencies struggled to have their turn to speak. They also asked us about what we’ve found to be the biggest obstacles, building the youth organisation in Australia, there was a bit of disagreement about how you build women leaders (it’s not done at all consciously in Venezuela) and so on. I think it’d be great to have more such interchanges of experience- with more countries. Especially those across Latin America.

Los Curos Communal Council projects (4th pic)
The communal councils in Los Curos have really come a long way. They have their power point presentations all ready, showing the distribution of the different communities, the numbers of houses and families to each council, this whole ideological presentation about socialist values and communities etc- which I’ve seen this guy give 2 times now, each time with careful enthusiasm. Plus they have a proposal for a 5 stage plan about how to transform the councils into communes (where things like food distribution are linked up with the communal councils). We saw the ‘grandparents’ kitchen where poor elderly people get a healthy lunch, and another building which has a bunch of things in it, including the engineers who are designing the houses with new non-asbestos roofs, or two floors to make use of space and have a second family living above, and also a child care full of happy tiny humans.
We also visited a CDI- centre of integral diagnostics, which apparently had been threatened earlier by oppositionists (as they have been doing to various barrio adentros and missions, mostly in states they have won).

Chats in the Plaza (2nd pic)
We met the people of Paso de los Andes in the plaza where they sell the paper each Saturday (one sold about 25 in half an hour) and we stood and sat around them as they talked about the paper, election politics, and internal, informal fractions that exist within the PSUV. I thought it was cool just because a bunch of passers by of a range of ages also stopped to listen in on the discussion. Some couldn’t help but intervene, and when R didn’t translate they talked to whoever was nearby, arguing or emphasising what the Paso guy was saying, and then taking the argument to other people standing around. I guess I love it cos it just shows the involvement, with passion, that people are starting to take in politics- whether they agree or not.

Tatuy television collective and Ecos community radio (1st pic)
At the radio in Pueblo Nuevo, the town near the centre, down the by the river where people are a bit poorer than those up near the plaza, they were having a jornada (never worked out how to translate that properly- a day of activities I guess) training community members to ‘make’ radio rather than just listen to it, and with discussions with other media groups like Tatuy about the role of media, how to make it more effectively distributed and so on.

My mate A, made a lot of great points as he talked to the Australians about the Tatuy TV collective. He said they (those with power) own reality because they create the news. His collective aims to teach people to use cameras and edit films and therefore to break with the paradigm where people believe you need to be a professional (and therefore of a certain higher class) to be able to participate in media. Then they also show films in the barrios, such as the news that the community makes themselves. A said there is media war against Venezuela (and against the poor, against any alternative thought etc), “they conquer people’s minds”, so the collective is ‘arming’ people with cameras.

Everyone knows the elections are coming

2008-11-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

(Thursday)
Oh yeah, its election time alright! My god, despite the rain there are red tents all over the place, even the PCV (Communist party) have a tent, one tent has a live band on it, people have got their red shirts on all ready for the closing ceremony this afternoon. My mate in the newspaper office even has a red hat, a flashing red broach, and red jewellery.
Everyone is pretty stressed, there is a tonne to do and coordinate, and so I’m also a bit late with this blog entry cos I just haven’t stopped. Work, meetings, the concert on the weekend (see my article about that in the analysis section of http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/), helping to organise the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity brigade, etc.
The opposition are virtually invisible. They have their posters up and they had their campaign close yesterday (which I didn’t see cos I stayed at home working) but that’s it. They themselves aren’t in the street. I guess here its basically certain that we’ll win governor-which is also why Chavez didn’t come to Merida. First he was going to come like 2 weeks ago, then on Monday, then Wednesday, then last Monday, but obviously there are other states which are less sure and that’s where he needs to be. Still, it made it a bit of a nightmare to organise stuff.

Ah the closing ceremony was…ha, rainy! (see photos above) .Walking down there I was like, yay, Merida is red! People in red t-shirts everywhere. The speeches though were rained out a bit. Its been raining forever, it stops for a bit, then starts again. Still, hundreds of people stood in the rain or crowded under the shelter of the bridge to listen. After the speeches there were some fireworks and a band started, but by then it was pouring. I spent about an hour there, hoping the rain would stop, chatted to a member of my PSUV branch, “We’ll get the branch off the ground after the elections” he assured me. He’s going to spend election day going around to people’s houses and getting them to vote. A lot of the PSUV is organised to do that. For a while I did a survey for the Paso de los Andes about what the governor should do in his first 100 days. That was a good idea, everyone wanted to fill it out and they took it pretty seriously. Then I went back to the Paso tent and we drank a bit of rum (uff it feels good, especially on crappy rainy days) and left.

(Friday)
And then today, when election campaigning is forbidden, its like I suddenly lived in Colombia, haha. Well apart from all the posters on the walls. Suddenly there was no political activity, no red t-shirts, no one handing stuff out in the plaza, people taking advantage of the day off to go out and get ice cream…
I went to the electoral office to pick up my press accreditation so I can observe the elections, and there was a class going there preparing community members to run the electoral booths. I am not sure how people get picked to do that, I think it might be a bit like jury duty (only 100,000s of people are involved). I know a couple of my old students who got chosen, and they are taking it on proudly.

Finally, looking back on the week- apart from all the racing around, writing, tasks etc, …
There were a couple of things that impressed me at the meeting on Monday. It was brought up that the mayor has approved the construction of a supermarket (called “Sambil’ - it’s a chain). I loved it how outraged people were that they weren’t even consulted. I think in other countries we don’t even expect consultation. Something closes, something is built, something is knocked down and we go ‘oh’.
Similarly, there have been reports that the structure of the Yuan Lin supermarket is crappy and it could collapse. Merida has tiny seismic activity daily, which apparently could trigger such a collapse. I really doubt it to be honest, but still, people called for a team to at least investigate it. It represents another thing that I think is too uncommon elsewhere, the responsibility people feel (are starting to feel) for their community, their surroundings, and the self initiative to do something about it without any individual self benefit.

Chop down the slums of Venezuela

2008-11-11T14:17:00.000-08:00

He found it hard to write, he wrote each letter slowly and they got bigger and slanted down as he finished the word.
He was just one of about 300 people registering for the 2 day school called ‘builders of dreams’ aimed at teaching people from all over Merida state about how to build the petrocasas in a community and socialist context.
Uff the petrocasas make me happy! Using leftovers (PVC) from oil production, they arrive in trucks, ready to be assembled. Women, men, and children from the community chip in to put the house together, pouring concrete into the PVC frame, and in 7-10 days they have a house. The idea is that these houses replace the ranchos (slum housing). They are amazing- quality material that keeps the heat out, is earthquake, fire and bullet proof, and all houses have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (not sure why 2!), dining room, etc. Dignified living is such a big deal, and organising it yourself (well at least half way, obviously the state own company PDVSA does the material end of it) is awesome.
It was just great to see the happiness on the faces of the people attending as they watched videos about the petrocasas. (After one of them a really old guy started yelling out from the back emotionally ‘que vive el presidente!’ (long live the president).
After helping get people registered I just stuck around for the opening bit of the school where ministers and governors and candidates and things gave speeches after the videos. I know (or I believe) that there’s a bit too much speech giving (compared to doing) in Venezuela, but I still think its cool, and different, that such ‘important’ people take the time out to talk to such poor and generally marginalised people. All the speakers were greeted with heartfelt chants, ‘Saludos solidarios y revolucionarios!’ (Revolutionary and Solidarity greetings).
The first dude to speak was Jose Luis Parada- the president of urban development section of PDVSA. He said that he was involved in PDVSA before it ‘had a soul’ (before it was nationalised) and now it is so different-how it works with the community and its resources go to the people.
Soul Amelich, president of PEQUIVEN (Petrochemicals of Venezuela) also spoke and gave a bit more detail about the plans to construct actual plants in Trujillo state and Merida state. It was moving the way he described the ‘ranchos’ as symbols of poverty (its true) and how he said to the audience that they have ‘to help us get rid of them’. (Ideally I think it should be the other way around though I have to admit- the government helping the people do stuff but for now I’m happy).
He said that until now house construction had just been by private companies- who obviously just want their profits and so cut corners massively when building houses.
Finally, the PSUV candidate for governor, Marcos Dias spoke. It was more a rousing speech than anything useful but it was cute how he put in bits of poetry and finished off with chants of ‘Venezuela belongs to you!’ and ‘no volveran’ (the coup plotters wont come back).
The whole event was transmitted live to the community radios.

(ps I have dreams of..the revolution going beyond Venezuela and petrocasas replacing the slums of Peru, Mexico, India...uff can you imagine?)

Are Venezuelan elections different or not?

2008-11-05T07:24:00.000-08:00

Is election fever in the air? Blocks of posters for the various candidates cover many street corners, bus stops and any spare paste-up spaces. Trucks with speakers on the back drive around playing the PSUV election song, or songs of the other parties. There are semi-permanent ‘red points’ (tents with desks with PSUV candidate leaflets, how to votes etc, usually attended by about 3 people, often come with loud speakers and music) on some of the main corners, in the plaza and so on. There are more cavalcades and concerts planned. Every day Chavez seems to be in another state of Venezuela giving speeches about the candidates (He talks SO much! Turn on the radio or the TV and he always seems to be giving a speech. Whatever he eats to get stamina like that, I’d like some…).
But something is missing. Whilst I know that people are organised into COEs (electoral battle groups based on the branches of the PSUV) and that these elections are different to any elections held in the US, or other countries- there is also too much in common with the old ‘4th republic’ or capitalist way of doing elections. The propaganda (here, I can’t speak for other regions of Venezuela) is mostly quite superficial on both sides- without content. There hasn’t been a lot of intense, thought provoking debate. In the media, there has been a lot of finger pointing- at Manuel Rosales, at Chavez.
One good initiative here in Merida has been the ‘plan of government’. This started out with 40 groups from different areas (rural, women, food, disabilities etc) meeting and writing up their agenda for the new Chavista governor. The idea being that the platform on which he is elected is not as an individual with personality or who spouts the right chic phrases, but as a person representing a program that came from the bases. We are hoping to present that plan on Friday. It is a big book but all was not smooth- the women’s stuff (the group I was involved in) didn’t get in there. I haven’t read it, but just bits and some of it is more concrete and other parts are more general and based on the government’s plan (from when Chavez was re-elected).
Still, the polls show that we’re going to lose the mayorship here. One person at a meeting on Monday night who has been involved in conducting the polls said that there is apathy because the current (chavista) mayor hasn’t achieved much and that Chavez says a lot more than what actually happens. There was a sense of urgency at the meeting and a slight division of opinions, with some saying we need to go all out, house to house etc and win these elections, others saying that this ‘win vote’ attitude is 4th republic- that is, the style of talking to the person, getting their vote, and then leaving. I guess obviously you need a combination of both- practically speaking we need to win these elections- long term speaking, we need to go beyond the old way of doing things and deepen the politics and broaden involvement and participation generally.

There are 1-3 CNE (Electoral council) stalls in the main plaza, showing people how to vote- how to use the machines, etc. You can see the large posters that are being handed out to people which show them what candidates and parties they’ll be able to chose from- and they have been turned into how to votes by the PSUV just by colouring in the circle that corresponds to the PSUV candidate (photo above).

Last week was the Venezuelan cinema festival. My boyfriend rang me and we went to plaza Milla to watch a free outdoor film on Francisco de Miranda. It was sweet and surreal- the plaza nearby is loaded with lit up animal shapes and pirates- I don’t know why : ), and beard trees and the sky was its red purple that it is when the clouds are low, and we were watching a free movie about the liberation of Venezuela and a man who took books with him when he travelled but not clothes. About 50 other people watched it too, and a light drizzle began but most stayed, watching the movie in the rain.

Yesterday I worked in the Paso de los Andes (pro-revolution newspaper)/ Socialist University office. Mm that was nice. I was just transcribing some interviews for the newspaper (in Spanish, I’m proud : ). People came and went from the office- teachers, collective leaders, mayor representatives and things. Some guy brought us coffee and chatted for a while. Said that I should have brought soft toy kangaroos here : ).

It all changed when the Mayor walked in…

2008-10-28T18:48:00.000-07:00

It all changed when the Mayor walked in…
I was really impressed last Tuesday, with the organisation of a meeting of youth delegates of the PSUV for libertador municipality (Merida central). It was the first of such a meeting and the aim was to start really driving stuff locally. Before, we had organised (or tried to) the teams to elect delegates to the founding conference, which was a month ago. Now we have to make those teams real and get the youth really organised, busy, and learning.

Anyway we met in a big hall in the mayoral buildings. Everyone got a folder with a small book on ‘aspects of socialism’ in it, a proposal around the PSUV’s position in relation to the Communist Party candidate, and a detailed agenda! Omigod.
On the agenda were report backs from the founding conference, ideology, organisation of transitional youth teams, mobilisations, agitation, statutes, the press statement, next meeting. At the start there were about 50 young people, and over the next half hour it grew to about 70 or 80. Most were spokespeople or delegates from their PSUV branches (for youth), and there were some from missions. Lots of '78' people (a student group which is a bit more reformist/careerist/opportunist/administrative but Chavista).
A good comrade of mine (NOT 78, CMR actually) got up and said that although the electoral campaign is the first task, “the most important task is making the youth a pillar of the revolution”.
There was also a really interesting proposal, which Merida put to the founding conference, of having youth teams not just based on party branches (ie on regions) but also on ‘environments’- that is university, work, missions, cultural etc. Also coming out of the conference was that all youth have the responsibility to enrol in the popular militia and actively defend the country (revolution).
As for work ahead, the gist of the proposal was that until the elections, we are focussed on that, and then from January (as December tends to be pretty dead what with Christmas and paraduras etc) to deepen the organisation of the youth. I think this reflects the plan within the PSUV as a whole.
Hence, transitional commissions were proposed (to function until they can be properly, democratically elected, I think) of electoral, finance (generating our own resources), organisational (forming and consolidating the youth teams), propaganda (visual, internal communication, emails, etc), mobilisation and events, ideology (formation), and a permanent commission to oversee the coordination of all this and report to the party leadership. Unfortunately we didn’t get much into this, as Carlos Leon (current mayor and PSUV candidate for mayor) walked in with about 40 people who filled the room, and he pretty much took over.. Even though the chair kept the call list going, once it was Leon's turn he talked for like an hour, noone stopped him, and he made a bunch of proposals that basically ruined our agenda (such as forming an electoral committee with representatives from the various groups- 78, missions, etc and JUST doing electoral stuff until the elections are over).
He spent that hour motivating the election campaign in general- which was silly since it was mostly youth leadership there- and the gist of what he had to say was ‘the opposition is a terrible threat and so we have to do everything we can to prevent them getting in’. True, it’s a big deal if the opposition wins, especially in Merida where they have a heavy base and it is the rector of ULA (University of Los Andes) running- but that is exactly what the opposition is doing- Basing their campaign on their opposition to Chavez rather than offering alternatives of what should be voted FOR.
The PSUV’s election slogan in Merida is ‘for peace in Merida’ – ie against the violence of the opposition and the violence in general. Its really weak I think. The poster has a photo of the garbage truck the opposition students burnt recently and ‘Do you want this for Merida?’. No, and good point. But damn, there is so much you can do with local government representation.

So that was really annoying, but on the other hand…I think back to life in Australia- we never even knew who are mayor was, and s/he certainly wouldn’t meet with community groups, and there would never be a protocol, like there was at this meeting- where people did get up and interrupt the Mayor’s speech to correct him, ask for clarification, and disagree.

Interestingly enough, the Mayor was also a member of 78.
-
Otherwise there was this cute moment at the FFM meeting yesterday, when a member walked in and said ‘two new people- some north americans’ and people looked to the door expectantly and in walks a latino looking guy and a black guy. They both introduced themselves, saying how they “believe in socialism”. It was sweet because although I’ve never been to the US, I’ve heard so much about the racism there, cute to have people of different colour loving socialism together : ).

Another cute moment was when we were discussing the mercal mafia (Mercal being the government subsidised markets, and mafia make money out of them- not telling customers the prices of the food, charging too much etc) and it also came up about restaurants who don’t pay their taxes or who have been closed for bad hygene habbits, which ones are corrupt and should be avoided, what to do with bad and old food and someone joked “give it to the opposition!”. Hehe.

A thin line between two countries

2008-10-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

The first time I crossed the border into Colombia I didn’t see the ‘wanted Farc’ posters in the Colombian immigration. This time I did, and you can see in the photo all the young ‘wanted terrorists’ who have died (crossed out and it says ‘muerto’).
I have already written about the slight shock one gets going from Venezuela into Colombia. This time instead of staying in Pamplona I stayed in Cucuta- the border city (where as Pamplona is more of a university mountain town). The difference is subtle- there are plazas, ATMS, arepa shops, bakeries, people drinking, just like in Venezuela.
It is the emptiness that I feel most. Urg big shopping centres. Shop, shop, drink, shop, buy. No murals, no political graffiti, no one debating, no interesting t-shirts.
A journalist friend of mine, however, wanted to check out the poorer areas.
There are still people living in pretty shocking housing in Venezuela. I admit that living in Merida I tend to forget that, but once you catch the bus during the day and get out of the city you pass the towns with houses that are small, concrete, often without glass in the windows, sometimes a bit run down. Similar type houses line the hills of San Antonio and San Christobal- the two closest cities to the border going in that direction.
And whilst the poor barrios of Colombia are not like India, they are a big change from Venezuela. The taxi driver told us a doctor visits these areas once a fortnight for 2 hours only, and just because it is part of his/her training- 1 year’s obligatory community service.
The driver also explained that despite the poor Colombian peso- Venezuelan Bolivar exchange rate, many Colombians cross the border to Venezuela to get more stable work, and women cross the border to give birth for free.
We stopped in one of the poorest barrios- an invaded land one, and one woman invited us in to see her house (bottom two photos). She has 3 kids who all go to school, but her house is basically one room and a bit of another room, a roof that constantly leaks water onto her clothes, she said, a floor that is the ground- dirt, one bed for the whole family, an outdoor ‘toilet’. Sometimes the house gets flooded.
On the way back to Merida the bus got delayed several times as trees had fallen across the road from the heavy rain. The rain has been pretty full on across the country- with about 9,000 people severely affected by it (having to leave their home, or damaged homes). Some of the rivers here have risen quite high, and the town at the base of the mountains has had some flooding. Despite that for the last 9 days or so we’ve constantly been with out running water- sometimes just a few hours each day.
One person theorised that it’s because the infrastructure is so old, that when it rains like this leaves and bugs and things get in, so they just simply turn it off.

Socialist libraries, racist Christians

2008-10-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Librarians have a key role to play in their communities. This is one of the main ideas I got out of the closing forum of the book festival, and something I have to admit I haven’t thought about much, despite my passion for literature.

The forum was called ‘The book in the construction of Bolivarian Socialism”, and there were 3 speakers- a librarian, a teacher/writer, and someone from the ministry of culture. It was in the main cultural centre of merida (“the most creative concrete structure” as a friend called it..) with about 200 people in the audience, including some school groups.
The speeches were short and there was lots of time for discussion, in which a number of people got up and made proposals. A good format I think : ).
The librarian was the one who most interested me because he had just come from a convention of librarians and rather than talking grandiose, he mentioned a number of programs in formation, proposals, and concrete things that we should aim for.

Librarians should have a new role in society. In other countries to qualify as a librarian you study information methods. When you work as a librarian you file books, enter information about the books in the computer, check them in and out. Sometimes you do organise talks, or events for children, help kids with homework etc- which I think is great, but as this speaker said, librarians need to have a social role, where, in Venezuela, they are committed to those who are/were excluded.
He said a library consists of two things- the infrastructure, and the librarian (libraries in third world countries have little or no books. There are two public libraries in Merida and they are mostly just tables, the papers are supplied for reading each day, and there is a small archive of ancient books. There are also mobile libraries, caravan size, which do have books).
So librarians here must be committed to books and learning, and to the community, as they are the people who set up the tables, and bring the books to where they are needed.
The librarian conference approved a number of proposals which he read out, and which I couldn’t write down all of them fast enough, but they included:
-Librarians must be readers, more importantly than they must be professionals
-Librarians should be connected with artists, psychologists, teachers etc in their community
-Librarians should be community leaders, involved in the community councils, and they should guarantee knowledge to the community.
Only by being involved like this, can a librarian know the learning priorities of their community.
Love it! I wanna be a librarian! Oh I’d organise reading circles, writing groups, story telling and all sorts of things… mmmm

Well on the crappy side of things, firecrackers alerted me to the fact that the opposition was marching past my house on Saturday (see photos). It was a big march, but judging by how long they took to march past (about 20 minutes) I don’t think it was as big as the Chavista one a while ago.
But damn you notice the difference when you watch these opposition marches. They are so obviously middle/upper class, they are WAY more white- percentage wise, and whilst some of the young are quite vibrant- with drums and music etc, a lot of them are so clearly uncomfortable with marching. Of course they are- what are they marching for and what are they angry about? A amplifier on the back of a truck blurted out bullshit about how the new laws are just a way for Chavez to gain more power.

Further on the crappy side of things, NOTHING happened in Merida for Indigenous day (at least not in the city). How disappointing. The mayor managed to organise stuff for the anniversary of the founding of the city, but did not mark the genocide and resistance of the original people here. There was stuff organised around the country in other states however, (see my article on http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/ : ) but even that seemed pretty tokenistic.
There was, however, in Merida, a march of about 1000 Christians celebrating the arrival of Christ to the continent. Disgusting. (also see photos).

Merida turns 450, or does it?

2008-10-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

Since I got here almost a year ago there have been banners and signs and things going on about Merida’s 450th birthday.
Well that anniversary happened, on Friday I think, although I seemed to have missed it. Maybe I was at home working, but whatever they did, I didn’t notice anything except a big blown up finishing line being deflated (for some kind of race, I guess).
Along with the beauty contests though, this anniversary is one of the things on my list as to why I don’t like our (Chavista) mayor. Merida is not 450 years old. Indigenous people lived here way before that. It was founded, by the Spanish, as a city 450 years ago, with little respect for local populations. Not worth celebrating in my opinion. Which a lot of people didn’t. But I wanna talk to the mayor one day and see just how deep his understanding of ‘imperialism’ goes.
Meanwhile, a student and COPEI leader was killed in the state of Zulia- so far suspects have been detained but not named. The opposition students here (Movement 13) used it as an excuse to be annoying and burn stuff. On Thursday it took forever to get to the bus terminal because the road outside the uni had been closed. I saw a few tires burning. The next day (I heard, but did not see- just photos) they stopped a public garbage truck, kicked out the drivers, and burned that, then did the same with a privately owned milk truck. Oh good work. They are so immature.
Whilst I wouldn’t rule out the idea that Chavistas had killed the student leader, or that it was political- I highly doubt it. Just because such strategies- the chaos, the bad publicity just before elections, are not very chavista or useful, and why do such things when we so easily mobilise thousands in the streets?
Pro-chavez ULA students handed out a leaflet in the plaza against the murder and calling for a quick investigation.

But what I had been looking forward to for ages this week, was the book fair! MMM! It went from Friday until tomorrow. I have managed to go to a few workshops- one by a Cuban writer about narrative techniques, and another by an Ecuadorian writer who talked a bit about the latest in Ecuador and about a project he’s involved in- of taking writing, reading and art to the communities.
Whilst not ALL of Merida turned out, it was pretty well attended, especially by young people. There were about 30 stalls lining the plaza, representing various book and printing organisations, and a few private book shops as well.
I just loved the vibe, watching my friends go from stall to stall, picking up books and showing each other with ecstatic expressions.
At a book launch, the writer said that his book wasn’t meant to be read in closed rooms, but discussed and debated in the street. Things like this make it possible for me to imagine a world where an excitement for learning replaces the global passion for passive entertainment. I think that if Venezuela keeps going on this path (and I wont exaggerate, its only right at the start) I think this will be a people who will never by fooled again, who could never again be enchained by media lies.

jubilant start to the election battle

2008-10-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

The car and people I went with
' Real revolution' and someone watching the caravana

Walking home at 6 am in my pyjamas and a blanket, and being squished into an old car with 6 other people waving red flags are probably the two highlights of this week : )

Friday was Merida’s launch of the electoral campaign. About 3000 cars and trucks of people queued up in the hechicera (a lovely green part of Merida about 5 km from the centre) from 9 am and eventually left for the ‘caravana’ or parade thing at 2.30 (and I thought I was being so Venezuelan getting there at 11, trying to arrive ‘on time’. Humph. ).
Well so in those 3 or so hours I went around getting vox pops, listening to lawyers (who damn have the gift of the gab!), sticking red balloons and flags and stickers on cars, and getting sunburnt (eh just a bit).
And suddenly, uff… the cars were off and I stood there next to chatty lawyer guy from the FFS wondering which one I could get into. Then this old car pulled up (see photos) with some people from his community council etc, and so we squeezed in- 4 people in the back, 3 in the front and a discreet bottle of something (whisky? Rum?) passed around and handed out the window to other friends and comrades met along the route.
The driver kept turning around and telling me to make sure I write about the parade, that I tell people back in my country that Venezuela is no dictatorship and “Look how happy we are!”
There were so many cars it pretty much blocked up the city and took until 5.30 to get to Ejido.
Lawyer guy kept asking me, “but what do you do in your country for elections? Don’t you have caravanas?” Haha.
All good. We keep mobilising great numbers and the opposition has done squat, I actually am feeling less worried about the governor elections in Merida.

The pyjamas: Well this story could probably happen in any country, and more likely in somewhere like Australia where the taxis are just out of the price range of most working class people. All that happened was I got suddenly very sick and my housemates kindly took me to the ‘seguro social’ (social security) hospital at 1 in the morning.
I’m not sure what type of hospital it is, but it was all free, and if you have insurance you get the medicine, and if not they give you a prescription and you buy it from the pharmacy (which was what I did).
There is something about hospitals- I can see why there are so many dramas about them and how Solzhenitsyn managed to write a whole (very good) book about one. The nurses and doctors are courageously cheerful for the middle of the night, next to me a woman was in agony, which was gut wrenching and so I tried to talk to her to distract her- but finally she went to sleep. And I sort-of-slept there too, wondering what was wrong with me, trying to get comfortable with a drip stuck into my hand.
Finally it just turned out to be some mega reaction to food I’d eaten and I was fine, which meant that at 6am that morning they discharged me, and having left the house that night not really with it- all I had was my pyjamas, a blanket, my passport (I remembered that, but not my keys) and standing on a main road trying to get a taxi back but none stopped, probably because I looked like I’d just escaped a mental hospital….
So, I held my breath so to speak, caught a bus to the centre and walked 10 blocks in my thongs and blanket back to my house, to my comfy bed and finally got some sleep..

The sexiest thing

2008-09-23T14:07:00.000-07:00

Revolution is not just economy, organisations and elections…it’s also people changing, evolving as the society evolves.
And so the other day I saw possibly the sexiest thing. M, my new boyfriend, is quite young, and has pretty much grown up- turned into an adult -over the period of Chavez. The creation of who he is has happened in the context of a society (mostly) positively constructing and reconstructing itself, its awareness of its own latin American, indigenous, and local and regional identities and culture being reborn. He has a light in his eyes and an intense excitement for everything- art, music, information that I couldn't say is true of all Venezuelans, but that is more true here than in most other countries where apathy reigns over the youth and everyone.

So picture this: In my room; gorgeous, dark, young Venezuelan, his top off, dancing unselfconsciously to music, he sees a book on my shelf called something like ‘new socialism’ and takes it down excitedly and browses through it, still dancing, “this is great stuff!” and he starts reading out chapter titles, “have you read this?”.

Socialism… no longer something just for ‘old’ people. Whilst I dunno yet that the real ‘revolution’ has begun, the word is out there. And to me that is one of the sexiest things- that combination of raw humanness, serious desire for revolution, with music.

Speaking of music, there is no election, stall, or mercal day here without it!

On Saturday I was flat out as about 5 things were occurring all at once. At 9am the PSUV candidate for governor gave a speech in Belen (a suburb to one side of where I live) and there was a Mercal day- people line up early to get meat, various packaged goods, vegetables etc. There were also free vaccinations, a mobile clinic and pharmacy, and a jumping castle. Over the loud speaker- a new ‘Carlos Leon’ song. Haha. (That is, a song about the local candidate for mayor).
From this I dashed down the road to the main plaza to help out on a red point. Red points are basically red tent like things that the party uses to do whatever- build campaigns, promote candidates in elections etc. In this case we were handing out information about the 26 laws, promoting the candidate for governor, and collecting signatures for a petition in solidarity with Bolivia.
It was also the ‘one day’s wage for the revolution’ – where the PSUV raised about US$500,000 in donations towards its election campaign (yep, no government funding, or obviously business or anything, its purely member funded). So there were cheques available as well at the red point where people could make donations.
The people from ‘Paso de los andes’ – the only left wing/revolutionary paper in Merida- were also there and collecting vox pops. They asked me what I thought about the fact that Nixon has been given protection by the Vatican. It’s disgusting. This guy is accused of rape, was involved in the 2002 coup, and is (was) an opposition leader, with pretty violent strategies. Still that’s the side the Church takes, just like Human Rights Watch (see http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/ for more information on that). Wouldn’t it be nice if third world countries got together a ‘human rights’ organisation to go over to the US and so on and tell THEM all the things they are doing wrong. In my opinion there is way more oppression over there than here.

National companies v Private companies.
Well this is a very trivial thing…but today I had to post a document- 8 pieces of paper- to Australia. First I went to a private company, and they told me it would cost 180Bs (A$90- although I often wonder about the usefulness of showing such conversions given that people are paid way less here). Can you believe it??? Then I went to the government postal service- Ippostal, and it cost 2.5Bs. Haha. People are like, you probably want the private companies because they’re more secure…but I don’t know why there is this presumption that government companies are less reliable. Especially in the current global/US financial context : )

((Photos: red point, mercal queue))

A random, exciting, and worrying week

2008-09-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

With the national youth conference, a planned coup revealed, students going back to uni yesterday, and the campaign to discuss the laws as well as for the elections heating up, it has been quite a week.

Tuesday – My friend texted me that her and some of our comrades were going to a meeting about the waste plant NOW (see photo above). So I dashed out of the house and sat frustrated in snail like traffic for half an hour. She texted me at 6, I got there at 6.30, the meeting was an hour and half’s drive away, and was officially starting at 6 : ). However we made it on time, as everyone else was in the same situation- coming from work and so on.
Ever since the workers tried to take over the recycling/sorting plant (that is, rubbish was sorted and some of it recycled), and then the bosses sabotaged the equipment etc, (summarising and leaving out a lot of detail), Merida’s rubbish has been taken to Puente Viejo- a town, as I said, about 1.5hours from the centre.
The meeting was mainly between local community members, some PSUV reps, and Mayors from the relevant municipalities. Unfortunately the community members (or their community council) were only really concerned about their own situation. The dump is uncovered and the smell affects people. One woman basically took the stance that ‘we don’t care which company deals with this, we are just sick of having meeting after meeting and nothing gets resolved.’ They didn’t seem very interested in broader issues of the environment or of workers’ rights, however they did make one good argument, I thought, that it is all of Merida making the rubbish, so it shouldn’t only be the community council near the rubbish dump that is handling the issue.
Whilst the mayor of Merida Centre, Carlos Leon, was his usual self- trying to put off doing anything by saying they should meet with the environment minister etc, I still think its cool that such meetings even happen. The right of community to meet and argue with the mayor (as many did), to demand stuff, is kinda taken for granted, and people don’t feel like they have to wear a suit to have an opinion… mothers, workers, old people- they all got up and had their say.

Wednesday – Across the country meetings are being organised so that people can talk about the new 26 laws. One such meeting was planned for Merida on Wednesday. About 60 people turned up. We were all given pamphlets about the laws and a CD with the laws on them. Power point was set up. A lot of the people from my local PSUV branch were there. But then there was a power out (they have been pretty frequent lately). We waited for about 45 minutes, chatting in the dark or outside, and finally the delegate for the area gave a quick speech, announced some mercal distrubtion days and so on, and the meeting was postponed.

Thursday – We had tried to organise a youth meeting for a day other than Saturday, given the number of local young people who work Saturday’s. Unfortunately only 4 young people turned up (2 of which were new, which is good- if you include all the people have turned up I think there are about 11 of us, the trouble is finding a time when everyone can make it). We decided rather than organising another meeting for now, to do some mural painting. I gotta find out where we can get the materials.
After the meeting I went out with one of the young people. I don’t know if it’s true of all branches, but people in my branch are really friendly and there’s this thing that you should get to know each other- not just talk politics, organise stuff, and say goodbye.

Friday – Well after the plan to kill Chavez etc was shown on TV there have been a lot of concentrations in the main plazas across the country. I got a text about one starting at 3 on Friday. By about 4 people started to arrive in bigger numbers, and they actually stayed there (or left and new people arrived) until about 8 or 9 at night.
From about 3-6 a guy from the ‘movement of professionals in the PSUV’ stood on a brick fence and talked about the new laws (see photo above), the need for people to meet and discuss them. And I stood there handing out the ‘decalogue’ about the laws- which summarises them and counters the opposition lies. However, because the professionals had paid for the photocopies they didn’t want them handed out willy nilly, so I was holding them up and waiting for people to specifically request them.
So cool. There are few countries where people want to know about their laws (or where the government makes an effort to inform them).
“Let’s read the President’s laws!” Someone says to their kid as they take a copy.
Another woman shows me the PSUV logo on the copy and proudly says “I’m in this!”.
“Is this the laws? Can I have a copy? And one for my friend…Thanks” said over and over. It was no effort to get rid of about 400.

Sunday – People had mobilised in the plaza again, from about 10- to protest the coup plan and also to promote the PSUV candidate. By 6, there were still people there. Some in red t-shirts with the governor candidate’s name. Chavez songs (the never tiring ‘uh ah chavez no se va’ etc blared loudly over a truck speaker system. Apparently the candidate came to speak a bit later, but I met a friend and we went over to Pueblo Nuevo, where he had a meeting.
According to the lonely planet, Pueblo Nuevo doesn’t exist- its just a river. It’s actually one of the poorest and most Chavista parts of Merida city. Unfortunately there is bit of drug trading (or buying) going on there, some robbery, and murders are frequently reported. This friend, M, is a bit new to politics- he’s in the youth team of my party branch, but also in this anarchist group. Next to radio Ecos- the community radio station, is a kind of anarchist library/meeting space.
But the anarchists here seem pretty cool. They were mostly talking about Cuba, and then organising a meeting against prisons, and a bit about the rising costs of renting for students.

Things will turn around

2008-09-09T12:29:00.000-07:00

“Imagine if there was a revolution in Australia, today. Can you see everything- people’s way of thinking and habits, the economic structures, the education system – can you imagine that changing in just a few years? That people would go from how they were before, to suddenly political and participating in society?”

This is what my friend, A, said to me at a party on Friday night. It is hard to be patient, but he’s right. (It was a sweet party by the way…R made sauce for crackers, and salad, I drank sangria, others drank rum and beer, all the women danced salsa with eachother, and one of R’s workmates watched for a while from a hammock then sat next to me, and drunkenly ranted for ages about what makes a dedicated revolutionary, and the different types of chavistas at his work. At 2am, everyone piled into one car to go to a discoteca, and me and a friend walked all the way back to the centre, talking about all sorts of things).

((having been here a while now sometimes I forget what its like not to live in a country where the revolution is talked about all the time, every day. Getting a lift home, at meetings, at parties, visiting friends, bumping into people…its an on going discussion, and always interesting and meaningful. It’s great))

The day before I went to two events at exactly the same time. That was quite funny. My housemates had been working with kids- for a holiday program- teaching them dance, games, drawing etc. The kids were doing a performance in the museum. Next door, in the cultural centre, there was a double book launch. While meeting a member of my branch in the street to do some quick organising earlier that day, we bumped into someone, who invited us to the launch. So I kinda felt obligated (and interested) in both- and went to the first one, watched for a bit, ran out and into the other one, talked to L for a while, went back to the first one and so on.
I like book launches. There were 4 very short speeches, and then a band played. About a hundred people attended. The 2 books were by some local authors- one about the right to health, and the other a small collection of poetry (published by the government printing company and the national network of writers of Venezuela).

Saturday, I’m excited to announce, we finally got together a good bunch of young people into a meeting for the youth of PSUV!! 7 people!! (the first one had 3 people and the second attempt 2). Boy talking about trying everything and being on the verge of giving up, when things finally pick up!
One guy brought his guitar and people took turns playing it, as we waited for everyone to assemble. He works with the cultural mission and for an internet cooperative. So does his friend, who was there. There were 4 students, and a guy who works for the ministry of education. Plus some back up from the branch. There was a great level of politics, great discussion, and we made plans of how to finally get the 10 people required to officially form the team.
Looks like the founding conference has been suspended- so we have the time.
(they were all guys though, I’ve got to say. I’ve also seen the list of delegates that were elected (about 40 out of 57 circumscriptions managed to elect delegates) and I reckon about 70% or so were guys there too. Nerf.)

Inside the walls of Merida

2008-09-02T12:05:00.000-07:00

(100th blog entry!)

In order to build the youth team meeting in our community, we (myself and a representative from my branch) went through the list of 102 young people registered for the PSUV, and visited each house, systematically going up and down the avenues.
The first house we visited was really fancy- the kind with furniture you don’t want to sit on, little pretty ornaments every where, and they gave us coffee served in teacups that ought to be in a museum. Ok exaggerating a bit, but you get the idea. Their kids weren’t home but the husband and wife said they’d been on the left for ages but would only vote. They were really clear they didn’t want to participate in meetings and all that. Then they talked about Arabic countries for ages (their background is Syrian).
The next person, a young woman, was at work and said she couldn’t do anything because she was working all the time. The next person said something similar, about having to work on a stall on Saturdays- it seems a lot the young people (as applies to the Ven population in general) work on the informal stalls.
Another family- with a cat and dog chasing each other in the background, said they (the daughter and her friend) would come, but a bit late.
Then they guy I was doing this with has diabetes so he had to go back to his house for his injection and he invited me back for dinner.
His house is definitely not so fancy, with a roof made of corrugated iron and so on, but homely. His mum was great and wanted to talk about Obama, and she’ll make the chicha for the meeting on Saturday. He’s a great, funny guy. Spot on with his politics (in my opinion), knowing where the problems are but also how to stay motivated, but so modest, always saying “and well I’m not a really experienced revolutionary… but”
As we left to keep doing the house calls, it started raining and the rain was smudging the ink of the contact list and we couldn’t see the building names cos it was dark, and we had stopped under a ledge, and he got carried away, talking about how a revolution is sometimes a step forward, sometimes two steps back, that it’s a daily struggle.

The next day we met a bit earlier, in an attempt to beat the rain. As we walked about D knew EVERYONE. We would stop every half block as he bumped into someone- and there’d either be a brief handshake, or a middle of pavement conversation- about how this person was going (eg one guy was trying to sell lolly pops, and clearly had a drug problem), or about the upcoming political tasks, or about x’s mother etc.
As we walked down Avenue 1, which is on the edge of the centre, therefore much poorer so to speak, he bumped into one of his old students from the Mission Robinson, “he taught me to read” she says proudly and gives her old teacher a big hug, and they- the ex student and her mother- invited us in and of course you can’t say no so we popped in for a minute.
What a range of different living conditions there are in one small area. From that fancy first house, to this place, with barely any furniture, stairs of wood, creaking plastic couches and a stereo on a brick that was falling apart. One of our main problems was that most people in this area live in apartments- many of which had locked entrances doors, so we couldn’t get in (and having lived in a similar apartment myself, I always wonder how mail gets delivered). Some apartments had lifts, some we got into as someone else who lived there was going in, others were peeling and had no lifts, and we joked about getting a lot of exercise.

For three nights we visited people like this- often having to be a bit like detectives to work out where their house was (with addresses like ‘Avenue 2 house next to fruit shop’- but Avenue 2 is covered in fruit shops. We got a range of responses, from polite but clearly not interested, to friendly, talkative, but also clearly not going to get involved at all beyond voting, to helpful and enthusiastic. In most cases we had to leave messages with parents or residential owners, as the young people were out, or working, or away on holidays.

The actual meeting on Saturday was disappointing, for me. In the end 7 people came from the batallon- as support- which was great (especially as this batallon has had trouble meeting and getting more than 6 to their meetings), but no new young people, just me and C. So half the point of starting these youth teams within the branches, is to get the branches happening again- and the discussion turned to that, meaning it was still useful.

Yesterday there were black outs all day (3 of them lasting an hour or 2 each), which made it hard for most people to work, and then the last one was at night. The streets were pitch dark and there was chaos on the main roads, which actually have traffic lights- but which of course weren’t working, so suddenly small street rules applied where people just kinda edge into the intersection so they can get through it.
In one of these intersections, where my bus got wedged into intersecting buses and cars, I got out and walked the rest of the way to the PSUV house, for an FFM meeting. After hanging outside and marvelling that we could see stars (you usually can’t, not just cos of the lights but also because Merida’s always covered in clouds from the afternoon on). Then someone said, “We don’t need light to meet!” and we all went inside and started the meeting in the dark, joking about how romantic it was and how on earth would we work out who wanted to talk.
Half an hour or so later, the light came on- to cheers and jokes.
The main discussion was about election intervention- at the moment the PSUV mayor and governor candidate are going around to each parroquia (municipality, roughly), and each day there is a rally in a different area.
There was a really awkward moment in the middle of this discussion- the first like it I’ve ever seen, where a woman suddenly got up and pointed at a new comer (who she knew through her work) and accused him of being opposition. It felt horrible- although she was probably right, I pitied the guy in case she wasn’t, as he had to introduce himself to everyone, defend himself, and a debate ensured about just how open the meetings are. The guy ended up leaving.
Then a few women from the National Police came and talked to us. There is a new university of Security, where the national police are to be trained- the idea being that they are much more community linked, not corrupt etc, than the current police. They are recruiting young people aged 18-25 to form socialist cuadros (blocks?) within the police force, the idea being that young people would become future leaders of the force and have lots of ideas etc.

Today when I went to the comedor, there was less of a queue, and the price had gone up (4.5Bs from 3.5Bs- eat out anywhere else- 10Bs+). I met a friend of mine, an ex Tupamaru who’s now all into meditation and martial arts- not the typical image one has of a Tupamaru:). He’s started helping out with Mission Nevado (I think he called it) where they go around collecting all the street dogs, feeding them, and finding homes for them, or giving them to the police etc. He’s also going to start a course soon in disaster administration- mostly trying to prevent disasters- structurally (houses etc) and ensuring that people are educated in what to do when one happens. Interesting timing given the hurricane that just went past the Caribbean.

Quotes:
D: “The people like the money, not the revolution”
T: “Carlos Leon is not the problem, it’s us for not making him accountable and responsible.” And “I prefer an honest esqualido (oppositionist) to a corrupt Chavista”

“We’re tired…”

2008-08-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

Wow, talking about a field trip just get a form, to elect the spokesperson for my youth team (that corresponds to my branch of the PSUV).
I had to go to the ‘sala situacional’ – kinda like a logistics centre, which has lists of all the branches, spokespeople, circumscriptions (group of 10 branches) etc. That was a bus trip away and I couldn’t work out which bus to get. Finally I got there, and normally what most people would have to do is go there with the spokesperson from their branch, sign, and they get their form with spaces for all the people who were present at the election and guidelines about holding the elections. However, my spokesperson was sick, and as it turned out I knew the guy working there, and someone else had already collected the forms for my circumscription.
Fine, so I rang them, ‘x has them now’, I ring x, ‘y has them now’ etc.
(there are arguments for and against such bureaucracy- against being that it makes it real hard for people to actually elect their spokesperson, especially people from the outskirts of Merida, but for being that it also makes it hard for people to just fake a list and get themselves nominated artificially).
It didn’t matter in the end because we didn’t get the 10 people we needed. Of all the people I rang, just 1 person came, then there was the other guy, C, who’d also rung some people, and a mate of the spokesperson- who was previously in branch 3, but has been excluded from that branch (like not told when meetings are etc) because he has declared he wont vote for the PSUV candidate (the one most people are against, but who most people have decided they have to vote for because to not do so is to let the opposition win).
So the 4 of us and the spokesperson met in the house of the dude who’s been excluded- sitting on his bed and leaning against the stove- and we nutted out a better plan to build the first meeting of the youth of our branch. We’re going to show a film, have discussion, have traditional Venezuelan food, and build it going house to house, because its hard to motivate stuff in a short phone conversation. We’re going to start doing that tonight, which should be interesting, I’ve never done anything like it.

Saturday at 3 was the circumscription meeting (photo)- where all (8) representatives from the 10 branches meet. Ours is in INMECA, the government printing company, which has a big meeting room in it, and a garden behind full of banana, orange, and pomegranate trees.
About 30 people turned up (out of 80), and the delegate raced through various issues- the youth teams, 13 September ‘one day of wage’ day- to raise money for the PSUV election campaign, and then ages was spent on division of labour, switching people around the various commissions (of things like propaganda, security, electoral, logistics, mobilisation etc) and organising the voting patrols.
(The patrols are the Chavistas’ ingenious vote-winning strategy, where each person commits to get 12 other people to vote).
At the end, time is allotted to ‘discussion’- mostly people got up and talked about the need for unity, (given all the divisions there are right now in the party- something that is normal, but also a barrier) and a new image for Carlos Leon, and a guy from my branch said that propaganda is needed to explain the 26 laws.

Honestly, I felt frustrated. I realise the importance of the upcoming elections- we really can’t let the opposition win, they’ll only use it to destabilise the revolution- but I also think the PSUV has got to be about more than that, it can’t fall into just electoralism. But when the level of consciousness is so low, voting seems to be the easiest thing.
Still, I think raising consciousness is one of the main roles of the branches, (that and information dispersing etc), as there is little practical to be done in a branch that covers just 6 by 4 blocks (and the practical stuff is done more at the workplace level, in the community councils and in the missions).

Saturday night there was the PSUV Youth concert, with a stage closing up Avenue 4, and a small crowd of about 100 young people. It was an awesome concert though, I’m starting to really get into Venezuelan music. In between songs one of the youth promoters would plug people enrolling to vote and participating in the new youth teams. At 9.30 it started to rain but some of the hard core people kept dancing, and me and a friend went to the pub, where among other things she talked about how demotivated she was feeling, “I’ve been supporting Chavez since he came to power….but these days I just want to finish my studies and get ajob…”. She feels like this because of all the ‘hacks’ or reformists/bureaucrats that we have to deal with in everything.

On Monday I ducked out to have lunch and go with my friend to check out a place, as he’s struggling to find a place to live. He’s involved in an alternative media collective- which had 12 people in it, but only 3 people are doing all of the work. He’s also feeling like a bit of a holiday :)

Gosh its been a bit of a gloomy blog entry…but to be honest, that’s kind of the mood right now.

Building from the ground up, almost quite literally…

2008-08-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, through another friend/comrade, I met C- and over yoghurt and fruit, we discussed starting the youth team of our PSUV branch.
He is a student who moved here from Falcon state, where his family is. He’s one of five siblings and he told me how his dad had 2 siblings to a previous girlfriend, left his mother when he was 10 and has another 5 kids by a new wife, but does nothing to support the other kids.
This guy was interesting, he’s almost finished studying and works as well. He hasn’t previously been active because he didn’t have the time, but now that he has almost finished studying he wants to get more involved.

It was fun going through the list of 311 people who are registered for our branch of the PSUV, because they all live so close! The area our branch covers is basically about 6 blocks wide in one direction and 4 blocks in the other. It makes going to branch meetings and meeting people really convenient :)
Of those, 102 had I.D numbers greater than 14,000,000, which means they would be within the age range of the youth- which has a limit of 28 years old. That’s a lot of people to call!
C and I talked about how we could build our group- he works in a CanTV shop so when his boss isn’t there he can call all the people with that brand of phone number, and I’ll call the other half, who mostly have Moviestar phones. And we talked about what the first meeting should cover. He had a lot of ideas- about helping homeless people for example- who get food help etc through the kitchens, but who really need psychiatric help most of the time. After about an hour talking we had a lot more ideas than we’ll ever be able to handle- but we’ll take them to the meeting that we’ve called for this Friday.

Our plan was to take these proposals to our branch, which was meant to meet later that afternoon. It has been meeting fortnightly, but didn’t meet last week because of the march. It didn’t meet this Saturday either. I called the spokeswoman of the branch- and she was sick. The substitute spokesman didn’t answer. The person in charge of organisation said he was working.
On Monday night I met with the spokeswoman- who really was very sick, and is over worked as she is part of the regional leadership, and there is always pretty much a queue to talk to her when she’s in the PSUV office. But she is as worried about the branch as me, and we will also try to call the other members, and get a good meeting together for this Saturday.

So C and I as far as I know (being new to the area I can’t be sure) were the only ones who turned up. We went and got churros (where his old housemate works, so we got quite a few for free, and the most amazing thick hot chocolate :) and kept discussing politics.
He’s a bit into his church, but also really aware of the problems of the revolution, the role of Chavez and so on.

So today I called people with Moviestar numbers to invite them to the first youth meeting. It wasn’t so easy, because all phone calls are paid by the minute here, people are used to talking really fast, saying the bare minimum, and hanging up (including me- calling 50 people is not cheap!). So a lot of people said they would come, but I didn’t really get to motivate the meeting, or ask them questions to gauge how they felt about the PSUV and their own participation.
(Still, no one could not come because its not convenient- the meeting will be in the Bolivarian Library which is within about 4 blocks of everyone’s house ;) On the other hand, its holidays, which means a lot of young people have more time, but also a lot were away- out of the city with their family).
Chavez has been emphasising how important the elections will be and that everyone should go ‘house to house’- which would definitely make it easier to chat to people, work out their sincerity (and hence if its worth calling them again or not)- but I think its better to have this first meeting- work out a few projects and things that we want to do, and then visit people with something concrete for them to get involved in.

Gangs
My friend’s cousin was killed, most likely because of his gang activity. The increase in violence and gang activity in Venezuela is something I can’t fully understand.
Why do you think people join gangs? I asked him.
“Because of the easy money, respect, and power,” he responded. That makes sense- you don’t really get respect, power, or much money as a worker.
Still, I’ve always believed that good, participatory education and lack of poverty were good solutions to that. Unemployment is down. Community power is up. Why the violence?
Guns and drugs are part of it for sure. It would not surprise me if the CIA were in here selling guns and drugs (indirectly) in the poor barrios. They have used such strategies before.
He also said, “They need to feel valued and important…have possibilities…and feel useful.”
Which is where the community councils etc come in, I think. Obviously we have a long way to go, and I also wonder if it is also the generation they come from- that is they grew up before this revolution and Chavez.

P.S- the photo has nothing to do with anything. I walked out of my room this morning and was amazed to see that whilst it had rained down here, it had snowed up on the mountains. Stuff like that makes me happy.

Red in quantity if not quality?

2008-08-12T09:44:00.000-07:00

“You know, in Australia, sometimes when we needed placard material we would drive around in a van and steal the ‘for sale’ signs from people’s yards,” I explained to my friend, R.
She laughed. Such finance issues aren’t a problem here.
We (and 4 other members of the promotion team for the PSUV youth) were making those flag things- they have a name in Spanish but if there’s one in English I don’t know it. I’m talking about when you hang rope above a street, between buildings, and it has lots of little triangle flags.
For Merida, the PSUV had 5,000 of the little (plastic-ish chemical smelling, red and white) flags made (although on Thursday we only had 2,000, I’m not sure if the rest arrived), and we had to staple them to the rope. That was fun, it was nice to do something more hands on.
You can see in the photos how it turned out :)
In the youth meeting before that, we talked about our intervention in the march. Where to meet, distributing information about the youth-PSUV, sound, drums, making a banner etc. Lots of neat ideas, but on the day (I think half due to the massive size of the march and half to disorganisation) the contingent was pretty measly. I guess the other thing was many young people chose to march with their local branch contingent or mission, rather than the youth contingent.
So that leads me to Saturday’s march. It was massive! It felt like I was back in Caracas!
The point of the march was to launch, I guess, the PSUV campaign for governor of the state of Merida, (and similar ones happened in other Venezuelan states) and to deliver Marcos Diaz to the CNE (electoral office) as he registered as a candidate for the PSUV.
EVERYONE was in red, shoot, except me!- I’d forgotten about that, and felt like a total esquilida! (oppositionist). Rather than a protest, it was more like a celebration. Which makes sense.
There were clowns on stilts, balloons galore, music, dancing, conversations and a feeling of excitement.
My guess is 15,000 in the march (and I have a fairly good idea cos I stood on one of those road divider things taking photos of the various contingents, as the march took forever to go past me). That is pretty darn good for Merida, which is really more of a town than a city. Given that the elections will be really close here, it is a great start.
People came from all over- there were the PSUV branch contingents- with the different municipalities they were from written on their banners, lots of mission contingents, especially the education missions, a really inspiring ‘disability’ contingent – with people with movement problems, sight disabilities, missing limbs etc, going the whole distance of the march (at one point there was this guy with one leg, whose crutch got caught in a grill and broke- and his mate got him to lean on him and they did the second half of the march like that), a massive motorbike contingent, and more.
We met at 10am, the march left at 12, and we arrived at the end of the march at about 4 (we really marched from the top end of central Merida to the bottom), where Marcos Diaz gave a speech and it started raining (haha, two unrelated events J.
Now for my grumbles: The march had no politics apart from the general purpose of it (which was not un-useful). At the youth meeting on Thursday someone proposed that there be a speaker on solidarity with Bolivia- given the recall referendum the next day, and it was said straight out, ‘no’. There were only 2 speakers, it would have been good I think to have that politics, that gesture that would deepen the march into something a little more than electoral.
That many of the branches are only active when there are elections- of candidates or whatever- is a problem.

Sunday I moved. I love my new place- it really feels more like a home and a mini community, than the other places I’ve lived, where I was really just renting a room off people seeking to make a bit of money. Here there is a guy from Global Exchange, a woman, the owner and her kid, a gay guy (I mention that just because being openly gay is not so common here, and I miss it), and one empty room that should be filled soonish. There’s a place to watch TV (I got to watch the recall results in Bolivia, oh I don’t like TV but I did miss the news!), a study area with computers (massive for me, I can work somewhere other than my bedroom) etc. Its beautiful, and people seem to cooperate and share more, are more friendly. Hurray. Coincidently the same day (as I moved out on Sunday but IN on Monday), I started a new job (writing regularly for www.venezuelanalysis.com) Very happy :)

Finally, last night we found out they are closing the teleferico ‘indefinately’. The teleferico is kind of what makes Merida on a national and international scale- it’s the longest and highest in the world, and takes you up to Bolivar Peak. Right now is the absolutely worst time of year to close it because its holiday time- for Venezuelans and people from northern hemisphere countries, and it’s the one time of year that there’s snow on the Peak.
With its closing, goes a lot of jobs and tourism, one of Merida’s main incomes. People went down to Plaza Heroinas (near the teleferico) to protest this morning. People were saying last night that they suspect it’s been done deliberately to make the PSUV candidates look bad. I’m not sure how that’d work since it’s actually owned by the government. The newspapers this morning said they’re going to fix it so that it lasts the next 50 years, and that this will take a year. Why that would take a year is beyond me. Everyone’s very angry.

After some minor start up problems, its on!

2008-08-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

I’d been sick for over a week with the cough (hence a lot of staying in home and not so much to report this week) so finally on Sunday I made myself go to the doctor. I rang my friend, who’s a med student, to find out what barrio adentros might be open and where. He really kindly offered to come with me to the diagnostic centre which is a 5 minute bus trip from where I live.
He has been doing his prac work there and so knew a lot of the staff, and while we were waiting he got out one of those blood pressure things and helped out with other patients.
I didn’t have to wait long to the see the doctor, even though she’d been out on lunch. She just asked me for my name, my address and age, asked some questions and listened to my breathing, then told me I had bronchitis. She gave me two types of medicine, told me how to take it, asked me where I’m from (she’s from Cuba), and that was it.
I walked out grinning (in contrast to being like a ‘floppy flower’ as my friend said, and all tired, before) and my friend asked what I was smiling about.
“It was so easy! She just gave me the medicine!” And the doctor was friendly. There was definitely no sense of the doctors been in a rush to get through a crowd of people like there is in the public doctors’ surgeries in Australia.

Little bits…
…like on the way to the prefectura, where someone was waiting for me (so I couldn’t stop) there was a joint protest of police and the Tupamaros, for dignified wages for the police. Haha its not often you’ll see the left supporting the rights of police :)
…or on my way to the comedor (communal dining room) today I bumped into a friend who’d being studying tourism and he was so eager to tell me all the different routes they cover. He was in a fruit shop and a friend of his gave me a banana. Lol. Very handy for coping with the long comedor line. (I think I’ll resolve to start giving people bananas, what a way to bright up someone’s day).

The theme of Monday’s FFS meeting was ‘revolutionary protagonistic democracy’ :). Mouthful hey, but it started a good debate about real democracy, where it is working and where it’s not etc. Someone pointed to the lack of leaders in the revolution, that ‘there’s just Chavez…and everyone waits for him to propose things’. Then there are the communal councils, one woman criticised that their activities are promoted well- through out the community, but its always the same people who come and you really only get a bigger crowd when things like scholarships are being registered for.
And the first copy of ‘Paso de los Andes’ (named after one of Bolivar’s military campaigns) was distributed. Yay! Finally an alternative newspaper, produced by a collective made up mostly of the FFS bunch and the Socialist University.
Then we spent a bit of time planning Saturday’s march- where we’ll march about 3 km to the CNE (Electoral centre) as the PSUV candidate registers to compete for position of governor.
The battle is on!
The PSUV house was a hive of activity, with meetings in various rooms and people making banner/poster things by the hundreds- promoting the PSUV (and with the rather empty slogan, in my opinion, of ‘we all go together- towards victory’), which they were loading in trucks to stick up as we finished our meeting. I so would have gone with them if I hadn’t been wearing a skirt :).

And it looks like I’ll be spending most of this week there-in the PSUV house- due to ceaseless meetings. The youth are meeting all this week to do press conferences and banner paintings and workshopping of the various commissions, last minute organising, and also to organise a contingent for the protest on Saturday.
I’m pretty worried about it. Before tonight’s meeting I met with members of my (new) branch to discuss organising our youth team/branch and they didn’t even know the deadline was this Sunday. All the people were 30 something and up. I talked with one guy and I’m going to work with him to try to ring both previously active youth and those who have never been active youth (after all its an opportunity to get more involved as well) and urg here’s hoping. I guess its very Venezuela to do things at the last minute- the organisation commission at tonight’s meeting reported they’d tried to call most of the spokespeople of the various branches, - but we have like 5 days left!

(funny memory: walking with some friends and one of them asks me to do something with a ‘koala’ on her back, and without giving it proper thought, the aussie in me coming out, I’m looking at her backback for an actual koala- but it turned out ‘koala’ is the name they give here to ‘bum bags’ or ‘fanny packs’- as the crazy North Americans say :)

A revolution stained by the capitalism that lives on

2008-07-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

We- that is some of the revolutionary youth of Merida- had scheduled our next meeting for 5pm on Friday, but for various reasons it looked like it might not happen. However, at 6.08pm I got a message from C, “We’re going to meet now.” The meeting is in the PSUV building, a short bus trip away, so I drop everything, pick up my bag and keys, and dash out the door.

In a room with a long table, red chairs, red framed windows, and a painting of Chavez on the wall (his lips too pink) about 15 of us meet and continue the debate about how to start this construction of the youth organisation. We know the outlines- the 10 people per branch etc, but the problem is that many branches aren’t meeting, and we also want to ensure that this youth organisation is specifically revolutionary (rather than reformist). Someone will take the manifesto and proposals to the candidate for governor of Merida (Marcos Dias), we will talk to the people in Caracas….and then, right now, the INJUVEM (Institute of Youth, Merida) are also having a meeting: Do we join then? There is that ever occurring debate over unity and strengthening our forces, or maintaining the ‘purity’ of the group as made up of only ‘real’ revolutionaries.

It’s decided to go to the INJUVEM meeting, and we rush off to catch a bus, as it started a while ago. We go over similar stuff- some of the practical confusions we have, like if a young person is a spokesperson in the branch, are they automatically a spokesperson and so on. Outside there are some loud bangs and some arguing, everyone stops, alert, like meerkats for a second, then the speaker clears his throat ‘Ah, ok…’ and we continue. It happens again. M argues that too often the PSUV branches just meet for elections and that we have to play a role in turning this around.
This meeting was mostly students, and we have a long way to go. We still need to involve the non student youth, and young people who live further out from the city.

In a way that summaries the pace of the last week and a half…I’ve been racing around doing interviews for an article, working early in the morning (teaching English over the internet), going to a lot (too many) meetings- and then been sick for the last few days.

Oh, and I turned 26 :). It was one of the most beautiful birthdays I’ve ever had. Despite the fact that I’ve only lived here for almost 9 months, I got a bunch of warm birthday messages. The PSUV youth insisted I come out and celebrate with them. I met them at 8.30 in the registry where there was a meeting about delegates to the Legislative council. Unfortunately, 2 hours later the meeting was still going, and then after that everyone had stuff to do there. Venezuelans are cool with this- happy to sit around chatting while they wait for friends to do stuff. They also love it when you come with them or when they can come with you as they do tasks- shopping, or dropping off a kid, or whatever. Which I think is sweet, and generally I’m adapted to that, but this night I decided not to wait anymore and go back home (which brought on a round of protestations) as I had to work at 6.30 the next morning.
The next night I’d organised to cook Thai for some of my close friends. I had done the treasure hunt that is required to find all the ingredients, and after interviewing someone, dashed from the town up the hill, caught another bus, and arrived at my friend’s loaded with vegies and noodles, ready to cook. But, it turned out she had already cooked dinner, as well as a cake and salad, and prepared this amazing Venezuelan cocktail which consists in a variety of fruits and rum. Ah, she is an amazing friend! What a surprise! Her daughter went around painting people’s faces, and we played dominoes and chatted. They sang happy birthday in Spanish and English, it was awesome.

Yesterday there was another meeting, in the PSUV building. It has become a hive of activity lately since we’ve been meeting less in the ‘house of the people’, as the Tupamaros (who originally took over that building) have been bringing in reinforcements over a dispute about the ‘education zone’- where the director- one of them, was replaced by another director- one of us. It’s a really sad and silly dispute in my opinion. It shits me no end when the left fight amongst each other, especially over positions and things.
Anyway we arrived at 9am, but didn’t get to actually meet until 12. The purpose of the meeting was to present our (the revolutionary youth) manifesto for constructing the youth wing of the PSUV to the party leadership. However, they had a lot on their agenda I guess, including seeing a range of other groups, so that’s why we had to wait so long.

After that, one of those youth, M, invited me to her house. She lives in a ‘residential house’ – where you have about 20 houses inside a wall, with a park in the middle, a swimming pool etc. Sounds fancy, but such communities are very common here, fairly ‘middle class’ and I like the idea. You get to know the other 19 or so families well. The houses were built by a collective.

Her father actually, is currently a legislator for the state assembly, and was running in Saturday’s elections, but is pretty sure he lost- against the more reformist candidates. He told me he doesn’t have much faith in the process, that its ‘not our time’ and that these days everyone is going around stabbing each other in the back for positions. M, too, is feeling a little un motivated- she said in the PSUV meeting on Sunday, which I couldn’t go to, there were people from AD and COPEI (right wing parties) walking around. They just put on their red shirts to try to get positions.

I'm becoming very convinced that too many vices of capitalism- greed, competitiveness, individuality, corrpution etc- have crept into the revolutionary process. And that doing everything through elections is not enough. At some point we will need to really make a break for it and take over the media, factories etc. And that the PSUV is too dirtied by corrupt, and or right wing or reformist or careerist people, to be as effective as it should be.

What place would we be in if debating ended...

2008-07-20T19:18:00.000-07:00

Communal councils
In an old hall next to the Sor Juana Hospital (A Bolivarian hospital named after the amazing woman of 17th Century Mexico who argued that women have a right to learn) representatives from almost all the communal councils (of which there are 22) of Merida city meet every Tuesday. I’ve started to go to these meetings, as people talk about what their communal council is doing, and debate the current political situation.
The hall is big, with seats in lecture like formation and a giant “Welcome” on the stage at the front. At the start there are 60 or so representatives, and by the end more like 80. The majority are women, and middle aged. Children scatter about on laps and playing in the aisle. A woman, dressed in a doctor or nurse’s uniform, opens the meeting. She has piles of the PSUV ‘bono’ stickers, which spokes people will take away with them to sell in their PSUV branch meetings, in order to raise money for the PSUV.
On today’s agenda is the formation of electoral centres and trying to get as many people as possible involved in them, as well as the upcoming legislative elections.
“The important thing is that the branches (of the PSUV) get reactivated,” one person contributed. Another person stood up and argued for the need for social activities and programs, as the PSUV is not just an electoral party.
Then people report back on their communities’ activities- one, Santa Ana, is having a ‘social takeover’ the following weekend, a day of Mercal, vaccinations, barrio Adentro, various missions present, as well as change of address and id card processing.

Youthful intervention in the revolution
Wednesday afternoon until Saturday afternoon, I spent with some revolutionary youth in the camping area in the high (and wet, cold and mosquito swarming) Andean area called ‘La Mucuy’ (where the INJ camp was some blog entries ago).
From the minibus there, until late into Saturday, including many nights until 2am, the debate barely stopped (although interrupted occasionally like urgent rain by spurts of domino matches, meals, typical Venezuelan waiting around for people to arrive, and a bit of sleep).
Following the call for the formation of a youth wing of the PSUV, students from various faculties of the University of the Andes, as well as from various missions, and the INJ (Nation Youth Institute) and the Frente Francisco de Miranda got together to debate the current International, national, and regional political situation, the role of youth in the revolution, and the program and structure that this new organisation should have.
Within this discussion (both in its formal and informal version) there were contained many other debates: the reformist or revolutionary form of the PSUV and the revolution, a class analysis of the university students, to support Carlos Leon or not, I had a long one with a friend over lunch about if a women’s movement is divisive or not, and if such arguments should be internal only, or public as well.
About the role of youth, I will leave that for now as I’m in the middle of writing a long article, and you can read about it properly analysed when that comes out :).

I have to say though that I was moved by both the warmth and inclusiveness of the people who attended (they took me under their wing and almost forced me to participate in discussion and working groups) and their open mindedness- their preparedness to criticise Chavez or how the revolution is going, but in a constructive way. It gave me a lot of hope.

On the first night, there were some highschool students around the age of 14 from a Caribbean costal town, staying at the camp site. They were not used to any weather that is not very hot, and got a bit of a shock by the climate in La Mucuy. A few of them got hypothermia, and were carried into the cafeteria area in fits and half crying, half trying to breathe. This had its psychological affect, and student after student fell into the same thing. The youth who had come for the conference helped out straight away- a medicine student helped out with the sick students, others went around chatting with the other high school students, telling stories and jokes and trying to maintain a bit of calm and good spirit.

Another night, some similarly aged teenagers from one of the missions came up, and we all watched a political movie together. Afterwards, there was debate, and you could see again the older students ‘training’ or teaching the younger ones, but in a way that wasn’t patronising at all. I thought it was a really sweet kind of relationship to have.

(And I just have to put this in, although it has nothing to do with anything: Venezuelan’s are so funny with their sauces. At the camp (this seen many times over), after putting tomato sauce and mayonnaise on pasta, a guy goes, “Uf, que rico!” –‘Yum!’ basically.)

Street battle in Merida

2008-07-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

At 5pm I got a text from my friend saying he couldn’t make it because “there are protests in the centre and they are shooting, I even had to run when I was at the bus stop.”
I went home, but passed street 26, where a large crowd was gathered, and decided to have a look.

A block down there were about 4 police, and a block down from there it looked like about 30 opposition students with their tshirts off and over their heads like balaclavas, firing and throwing rocks at the police, and the police firing back. Amongst them, scattered garbage bags (Friday night is one of the garbage pick up nights).
The police had shields, the youth had one of the Carlos Leon (mayor of Merida, chavista) billboards. The youth would throw something or fire something and the police would respond or duck, and the crowd edged close and closer to watch (still a good block away), and the police near the crowd made a half attempt to keep us back.

I walked a block over, and then down to where the fighting was. Stupidly, it wasn’t until I was right amongst the opposition that I realised I had a red tshirt on and my camera was very obvious (they don’t like being photographed). Oh well, I got out a pen and took some notes. There were a good 100 or so opposition people there- all men, young, and most of them covering their faces with balaclavas or improvised t-shirts. They had empty glass bottles, rocks, broken bricks and guns.
They also had 2 old blue ULA (Los Andes University) buses, which they drove around recklessly, frequently driving up to where the crowds were, skidding over corners, turning around, and heading back to their crowd.

The battle between the police and opposition/movement 13 went for ages. Soon it started to get dark and cold and a lot of the crowd went home. The police were getting a bit over it I think (they were not armed, they only had guns which fired these plastic gas canister things), and one cop walked back up to the crowd looking sad, “I was hit here, and here and here” he said, pointing to various parts of his leg. Most of the crowd was sympathetic and moved into listen to him describe what was happening. I think it was about then that people started thinking they should back the police up.
The police started pulling out and the opposition was turning on the crowd, throwing rocks. People started chanting “Alerta, alerta, alerta que camina, la espada de Bolivar por America Latina” (Warning, those who walk, the sword of Bolivar goes about Latin America), and picking up bricks, breaking them on the ground to make throw-able rocks, and going back after the opposition. It had become a Chavista/opposition battle now.

The opposition would retreat, collect their rocks, glass bottles or bits of glass and I think Molotov cocktails (it looked like they were throwing fire at us), then suddenly line up and attack, we would run back a bit, then people found rocks and would chace them and throw stuff back. The ‘line of battle’ would move up and down the street, and at one point when the Chavistas were running back, I turned down a side street instead, but found the opposition following and suddenly I was caught amongst them. I guess being female, they decided to completely ignore me, so I sat huddled against a wall as they kicked at shop doors, threw rocks at just one guy who’d done the same thing as me, and yelled out “hijo de puta” at him and the chavistas (son of a bitch). Rocks were flying everywhere, another chavista woman with her boyfriend yelled out ‘family’ to the opposition, signalled to me to come with her, and we ducked out back to where everyone else was.
By now it was pretty dark, too dark for photos. The shooting was constant. The police had completely gone- down a few blocks away, sitting down with their truck. Amongst the Chavistas it was almost only men left (and people I knew kept coming up to me (as a women I guess) and saying ‘be careful’ so I told them to be careful too). The police waited for people to disperse more, then they made a line behind their shields and started walking towards the opposition, with us behind them. There were almost no opposition ‘fighters’ left, they retreated behind a tall fence, and the Chavistas started chanting ‘alerta…’ again. There was a sense that we had almost won, we had made them leave ( I should add that by now there were probably about 100-150 Chavistas).
The police line continued down the road, advancing a block at a time. At one point I went up to the police line and looked around the corner where I think a small opposition still was, it was full of tear gas- from which side or why, I’m not sure. I put my notebook over my face (not that that helped) and walked back again and felt the tears coming, my eyes and face stinging, my throat hurting.
The line of police walked down another block and everyone yelled out ‘lets go’. We were now walking over where the opposition had been. Large street lights and poles were knocked right over on the road and smashed. The road was covered in broken glass, rocks, half bottles, toilet paper for some reason, burnt out tires and other unrecognizable burnt things. We arrived at the uni campus/student centre where the two opposition buses that they had been driving crazily around, were parked. Some people went in and started taking the air out of the tires and doing something to the engines. One guy threw a rock and broke a glass window and everyone got angry at him and told him not to do that.
There was little media. Before there were a few people filming and one guy from a newspaper, now there were just the TAM (Andean Television of Merida) media. No doubt Globalvision (very openly pro opposition TV channel) will say some crap about violent police attacking students, but they weren’t even there.
It was over. The Chavistas chanted “The people united will never be defeated” and one guy gave a speech, “…Today we defended the city and the people…the movement 13 don’t respect human life but we will defend it…Fascists don’t rest and neither will we…we are chavista!” and more chants of “We are the Chavistas of the university!”
Then there was “Venceremos!” (We will overcome) and everyone left.
-
Yesterday, Saturday, the Chavists mobilised in Plaza Bolivar ‘in defence of the Revolution’ – basically a show of numbers to prevent any further violence.
We used the opportunity to chat and catch up and exchange opinions about the previous days events…and then as it started to rain a few hours later, people went home and to meetings and the day finished off peacefully.
I noted down a few people’s opinions, although I really should have got more. One friend, a Tupamaru, said the Chavists shouldn’t have fallen into doing what M13 does- that is, throw rocks back etc, and that “The governor had a role in it all, he didn’t send enough police on purpose…and anyway the police don’t want to go out in the street because they are angry with Chavez because their wage is still very low.”
When I suggested to a different friend, from the CMR, that the slashing of the tires of the M13 buses was a bit over the top, he argued that strategically it was useful, to prevent them taking those buses out again and causing havoc and destruction like they did yesterday.
Another friend, from the Fuerzas Socialists argued that, “the opposition have done this under the inefficiency of the authorities, which has opposition members among them.”

Most of the people at this mobilisation were also young men. It was a ‘student battle’ so on one level it makes sense, but I’m also starting to sense a sort of age delineation, with the communal councils and the more theoretical and debate type meetings mostly attended by middle aged people and up, and protests like the anti-Uribe one- which didn’t have Chavez’s support, is mostly youth.

The M13 left their mark though, literally, all over the bridge from the centre and down Avenue Las Americas (one of the main roads on Merida), with painted outlines of bodies meant to represent bodies- deaths by crime.

For background and an indepth explanation of events, see James Suggets article at http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3640

For more of my photos, check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/16992000@N03/?saved=1

What a battle we have on our hands

2008-07-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

The PSUV meeting
Marcos Dias (red shirt) and Carlos Leon, next to him
Petrol for sale on the other side of the Colombia/Venezuelan border

Opposition burning tires and closing roads (this one right outside my house)
Protest in Merida against the visit of Uribe
Poster by the opposition for their protest

Outside the far away church bells chime 2 o’clock, and closer, right outside my window in the main Avenue Las Americas, small fires and smoke rises from burning tires on the road and students are walking around with shields and balaclavas hiding their faces, making sure no one enters. They have closed off the road that goes to the university.

Last night as I caught a taxi from the bus terminal back home (because at that time there are no buses) the taxi driver told me about a student who had been shot by police. Rumours abound, and even people I talked to at another protest today- against the visit of Uribe to Venezuela, disagree with the Aporrea.com coverage of exactly what has happened.

And I was in Colombia, renewing my visa, so I missed it all. The opposition – Movement 13 (participated in the coup, violent etc) had organised an ‘anti violence’ ‘for more security/safety’ protest (see photo of the poster). Apparently there were also students protesting to demand intensive courses over the holidays, and the Movement 13 occupied an office so they could have more organising space, but the Movement 20 (also opposition) has come out against that. And then a student died outside the Faculty of Medicine, which was taken over by the M13. And perhaps as a result of that the opposition are closing off roads today.

The streets are full of riot police- mostly sitting around eating lunch mind you. This is pretty normal for the start or the end of semester- the opposition causing traffic chaos etc. But it seems to go deeper this time.

Colombia was a shock. I think mentally I was just thinking about the logistics of getting there and back, renewing my visa, and trying to lose as least time as possible in the process. I hadn’t thought much about the fact that I was going to a different country, and it had been a while since I’ve travelled like that, in unknown places where the currency is different and the vocabulary is different (same language, different words for some food etc). So it was a bit of a surprise on that level, but also entering Cucuta, the border Colombian town where many Venezuelans go for a day’s shopping to get things at cheaper prices, was a bit of a culture shock. This city is basically a giant shopping centre. Shops after shops and things for sale in the street. Combined with the complete absence of politics that I am used to – murals, graffiti, posters, red t-shirts etc, it felt like the sole purpose of these people’s existence was to buy and sell.
It depressed me.
Other notable differences that I noticed about Colombia in one night and one morning- all motorists wears helmets (ok there goes another bang- I look out the window, the balaclava people look at something down the road for a minute, then continue) and orange fluoro vests. A good idea I guess. People in shops and taxis etc are much more friendly and polite and chatty.
Things are cheaper than in Venezuela, although stuff that is regulated here, is about 3 times more expensive over there. Also there were a tonne of people selling Venezuelan (super cheap) petrol for a profit on the Colombian side of the border, from little stores on the side of the road. Everyone knows this happens. I think it was a little TOO easy to cross the border. I like it that the border is so fluid actually, in some ways – like because you can just catch a bus from the Venezuelan side to the Colombian side without even getting off or showing documents- it really felt like it made no sense to have it there. On the other hand, Venezuelan oil is not cheap so that it can be sold for a profit.

(There were a few other adventures which I don’t have time to tell….a road being blocked for about an hour so I got out and took photos of cows on green hills… a man who showed me his art work and collection of very old photos…eating a VEGIE burger –omigod its years since I ate a burger)

On Tuesday our group of Foreigners in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution spoke at a consejo meeting: this is representatives from the 22 communal councils in Merida city. However from the people and discussion there I got the impression its more like a Chavista faction – as some communal councils are controlled by the opposition, but they weren’t there. Anyway, the dude who had the key to the hall didn’t turn up, so we had our meeting standing around outside. We spoke about the myth of the American dream again, people asked us about Obama, immigration, and talked about the relationship between North America and Latin America.

On Thursday, there was a massive meeting with the PSUV candidate for governor and city mayor, plus the other candidates who had competed for these positions but not won.
The city mayor (currently, and candidate for the upcoming elections), Carlos Leon, is strongly disliked by many on the ‘real left’ and only got 30% of the vote by the PSUV to be the PSUV candidate in the November elections. (The candidate for governor however got a clear 62% of the vote). People are worried that most will not vote, rather than vote for a Chavista who is not really a Chavista.
So this meeting was very important. The House of the People was literally packed. When Marcos Dias, the governor candidate, walked in, you’d think Chavez himself had arrived with all the chanting and clapping. The same when Carlos Leon arrived.
All the candidates spoke, saying things like “I didn’t lose, everyone won,” and every single speaker emphasised unity. Already it is very likely that we have lost the elections here in Merida, and without unity it is certain. However, I sat there asking myself ‘unity around what?’ The speakers were very general, and there’s clearly a different idea of what socialism actually is within the PSUV.
“Merida is an embarrassment/shame- as a symbol of the opposition, and we have to rescue it” one person said.
One concrete thing that was talked about is that ULA (the University…currently blocked off by the opposition) should be of the people- the government gives it money, but as it is autonomous it is still closed to a large layer of (poor) people.
(And I was in a weird mood that night and was giving flowers from the nearby garden to friends and strangers. One of those strangers sat next to me during the meeting and sold PSUV ‘bonos’- stickers for 5Bs to raise money for the PSUV).
In a way it felt like a launch of the electoral campaign here, and despite my doubts I did come out of it inspired at least by the numbers and the enthusiasm and with a bit of hope.

That is NOT it. There is more, such as showing my friend around, and I’m now meeting another friend at the terminal to surprise her with a goodbye as she goes back to the US, and there was the small protest today against Uribe-which Chavez opposed. It was mostly youth, which is a good change. BUT there’s such a thing as blog entries that are too long :)

(later: I didn’t get time to upload this before I left, since then there has been a major street battle here-between hundreds of opposition and the police, then chavistas-shooting, glass throwing, rock throwing etc, it was full on- I will write it up and put up photos shortly).

Not just one way to make a revolution or be an activist

2008-07-03T19:27:00.000-07:00

The mechanisms of being a revolutionary or an activist or whatever in Venezuela are SO different to Australia or similar countries, that I feel it’s useful to give a sense of how things work here (and you’ll see I’m still learning too).
I think it was Friday that I went to the comedor (eating room- see photo) with some US friends- 2 documentary makers- and another friend who we happened to bump into. I also met a friend of mine who is a painter, is somewhat in the Tupamaros (but at the same time critical of them) and is not in the PSUV because he regards it as not qualitatively revolutionary. He’s often in the comedor, and also in the artists’ alley near the plaza, and I wanted to talk to him about some of my ideas- rather than ringing him, I knew this was the way to do it. So he said he’d be in the artists valley, and he’d see me there after lunch. We met, we talked, ‘we need to have socialism classes in the community’ I said, and he showed me how to do it.
In Australia we would call interested people, or perhaps put up posters- not like that here. No, here you need to make a proposal, with outlines, you have to go through the Mission Sucre and another organisation, he said we should design certificates so people are motivated etc, from there you take it to the communal councils. Its very formal and bureaucratic. On the other hand it guarantees you a different kind of ‘audience’- I mean, people who will turn up. There will be more of them, which is good, but often they will be less committed, at least at the start.
The other point is that, as the revolution is …more complicated here, to the say the least, the classes would need to be more in depth.
Anyway I also have another project I’d like to do- involving teaching creative writing in the communities (people rarely think they have a ‘right’ to write unless they are academics or something and I’d like to play a role in dispelling that, I think writing and communicating your story etc can be empowering and it’s a side of the revolution the outside world could hear more of too.) My friend suggested I talk to another friend of mine, who just happened to be down in the café, and we waved to him. I’d been calling him for a while now trying to organise to meet, but there he was, so that’s when we talked. That’s often how you have to do it. Having said that, he’s in the Frente Francisco de Miranda (which would be one way to organise the creative writing classes), which seems to be falling apart a bit- its hard to know what is true and what is rumours, so I won’t go into that for now.

Saturday afternoon it seemed like all of cadre-ised political Merida was in the Cultural Centre to hear Alan Woods (founder of the international Revolutionary Marxist Current) speak. He talked about his new book, and about the revolution, and I agreed with most but not all of it- but it was so general. And it went for 2 hours. And I think it is a little patronising to come to Venezuela and talk to people about what they already know, without leaving much time for even discussion so that all the interesting and experienced people who were there could contribute. And where are these people when we protest? A lot of them are there, and a lot are not. We need to analyse this revolution to death so that we can make it with clear heads, but we also need to do the making bit, even if it means not being paid.
Because I come from a country where it is usual to not be paid for being an activist, this is obvious to me, but its I think less so here. People think in ‘projects’ and they make proposals and expect funding. Fair enough I suppose, what better to fund than projects that people want to do, rather than consumerism etc.

And the revolution is always on the move- literally and metaphorically. You can not (well rarely) write in your diary, meet x on y date, make poster together, build meeting. Nope. It’s sure that something will come up by then. I am getting used to organising my life just the night before…

For example, as I headed to the Socialist University office today to help out, I bumped into someone- hey there’s a meeting tonight, you should come, and then a phone call, x has cancelled…lets do lunch, and I get on the bus, and as usual it is full, I stand in the open doorway, holding on purely by balance, and write all this down in 'bus writing' so I remember. I arrive at the office and there is little that needs to be done, just a bit of typing, but within half an hour JV (a lively man, black skin, white hair, and a light in his eyes, a pensioner, receiving the minimum wage for a pension- not bad) goes, “hey I’m going to do my radio program, wanna come?”
“Ok,” and off we go. It’s a short bus trip to El Campo de Oro, where there is a small cultural centre- a colourful place with a Barrio Adentro (free health service), a theatre, dance studio, class room and meeting space, and the community radio station, ‘Radio Horizonte’. Its slogan is, ‘Another radio and audience is possible’ and in one office a man with computers is recording, next door a woman operates the switchboard and audio button things (excuse the lack of technical knowledge :) whilst her child watches on. The other room is where people do their programs: on one wall a che mural and quote, and on a round table are two microphones and instructions as to how to start off a show.
And that is it, we walk in, say hi, sit down, and suddenly my friend has started his show- browsing through the day’s paper, commenting on the hostage ‘rescue’ in Colombia…(“all the mainstream papers are having a party” he says) and then suddenly introduces me (“she’s from...where?” “Australia” “Ah yes, a little young woman from the country of crocodile Dundee”) and asks me questions about what I think about this and that, and the revolution, and the crisis of capitalism etc.
About half the city receives the signal from this radio station, but probably only 6000 people or so listen to it, JV said that few people listen to radios, and there’s not much publicity about the station. Still, it’s good practice. Talking on (and operating) a radio is not easy- although Venezuelans do seem to have the gift of the gab :)

Things don't have to be like 'they've always been'

2008-06-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

It’s a different kind of university: called the socialist university, and formed in Merida just over a year ago, it aims to go to the communities (rather than people having to travel into the centre all the time) and teach about what socialism is, without falling into the schema of a teacher being the bright light who imparts the absolute truth to the students who just receive the knowledge. Instead, the teacher learns as well, acting more like a guide or mediator, and the students participate in a more active way.
That’s what it is, ideally. I went to my first meeting of the socialist university last Thursday. Most of the other members are lecturers at the University of Los Andes (although not all), and whilst they are organising courses, they were also organising a paper and commissions for the elections (which I’ll get to in a minute). Either way I was very happy because I’ve been thinking and saying for ages that this is very necessary!

Now, on Saturday, as rumour had spread like fire, or like email and word of mouth, Marcos Dias, the PSUV candidate for governor of Merida, was going to speak in the cultural centre. At 3 a heap of people had turned up, but not Marcos Dias. Apparently he had something else to do. Never mind, people decided to meet anyway. And good. Because as was discussed at the socialist university, what people should vote for in the end is not a person, but a program (hence the 40 or so commissions of women, transport, disabled people, older people, youth, sport, family, culture, housing, environment etc- to put this program together).
People got up and argued that its important that the PSUV branches keep meeting, that we don’t demobilise and further more there is a need for ‘social intelligence’- how many people are with Chavez, but not in the PSUV, how many women are there, for example, who are amongst the people who most care about the process, but can’t participate because they have to stay at home looking after their kids? (and that vice verse, the problem of those who do ‘participate’ are often those who least ‘care’ about the revolution).
“It is the people who make the government, and guarantee that the governors are committed to us,” one person said.
And because the meeting was spontaneous, there arose proposals around all sorts of things and it was really quite cool…I’m almost glad Dias didn’t turn up. As another person said, “Marcos Dias is important, but the people, we are indispensable” (to loud cheers).
Ah I love (and sometimes struggle with) the dynamics of these meetings. Someone makes a good point (“I propose the cultural centre be a centre of a people, so we shouldn’t have to pay to meet here!) and there’s a chorus of yelling and cheering and other people adding their thoughts to it, and then someone always yells out ‘discipline!’ and it goes quiet..And little Eva, soon to be 4, walks around between legs and chairs of the meeting putting her hand on each chair, some game going on her head, and she walks past the person speaking and pats him on the stomach, and he says “Hola mi amor, do you want to speak?” and she shakes her head with a happy smile.

So anyway, on Tuesday, I went along to participate in the womens’ commission for the electoral program. Oh my god what a relief! So far the few feminists I’ve met (apart from some of my friends), and a lot of the revolutionaries I’ve met, have been against abortion and haven’t really seen the women’s movement as that important and so on. Here, someone else APART from me was arguing against the numerous beauty competitions, the lack of male help around the house and even to the need for education about the diversity of ‘genders’ (ie including gay people, transvestites etc). God the only thing that worries me about this is, its great, a program like this is fantastic, but consciousness and equality etc is not something you can just declare, or give funding too (although it helps!) we gotta fight more, I think.

So its been a ‘hella’ week (as my US friends might say). Apart from this, I went to an INJ training day (for youth from all over the country, to then go back to their states and organise camps like the one I went to a few weeks ago- see a few blog entries down).
At the Socialist Forces (FFS) meeting, Freddy (something, I didn’t catch his last name), who is going to run as a Communist Party candidate for mayor against the all hated PSUV candidate, Carlos Leon, introduced himself. He seemed pretty cool but people within the FFS
are still pretty divided over ‘unite’ the PSUV and vote for Carlos, or vote for someone who’s not actually corrupt, but isn’t in the PSUV, but also doesn’t have much chance of winning. Although, people think we’ve lost under Carlos Leon anyway- people simply won’t turn up to vote.
Finally (actually not finally, there’s even a few more that I won’t get around to mentioning: it really has been a week of meetings!), this morning the Bolivian ambassador to Venezuela spoke at the science campus of ULA. There were about 100 or so people there, mostly students. He was great, really captured the role of the US in Bolivia and in South America (or instead of role I should say ‘intervention’ or ‘manipulation’ or something). That “what’s happening in Bolivia now could happen soon in Venezuela”- the US provokes confrontations to try to create civil war and to break up this wake up that is happening across Latin America.

Photos: meeting with the Bolivian ambassador to Venezuela, spontaneous meeting when Marcos Diaz didn't turn up, INJ training

Revolution: food for the soul not just the stomach

2008-06-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

Photos: In Los Curos: -Mural painting, the restored park, taking out asbestos ceiling

In Australia we have about 20 (or something- I’m starting to forget!) varieties of cereal, shops full of furniture and toys and books about becoming millionaires, we even have whole highways lined with car shops… In Cuba they have none of this. But from babies to realllly old people, they have music, poetry, art and dancing coming out their ears and bones, the pubs, and the street windows…
Capitalism sees *things* (and their production, purchase etc) as the building blocks of life and society. Socialism is, or should be, different. Yes, getting food, health, and housing to people is a priority. But as people are beginning to realise and discuss here, something beyond that is essential: a new type of person and community that aims to develop its soul (not meant in any religious sense: we have so many words in English for ‘money’ but how many words do we have for that side of us that wants to learn, create, think, nurture etc?).
I don’t know why, but this week this issue just seemed to keep coming up.

Once again I tried to go to my local PSUV meeting, but no one came except my contact there. She said people are disappointed and disorientated because of the election results- they don’t want to campaign for Carlos Leon. The meeting place- the school for deaf kids which I’ve mentioned before- she explained, was “all shambles before” but the government built it to be almost new. Good work :)
As we waited in case people turned up, we talked for nearly 2 hours about this issue of creative formation. Even the ministry of culture, she argued, is about producing art and theatre- where as culture shouldn’t be about competition and end result but rather self formation. Education is caught in this cycle too, teachers taught to teach like previous teachers and it’s still all about assignments, assessment and classes are based on age rather than mental age, she said.
“Everyone has these dreams, in the communities, and no one’s going around and collecting them” (she said a lot of quotable things actually, the problem is you feel weird writing stuff down in the middle of a conversation!).
It just made me feel that there is so much to do! I’d love to teach creative writing in the community, as well as socialist formation… then in general there are factories to take over and a new kind of economy to make, and education needs to be improved and corruption shaken out of the PSUV and bureaucracy out of the missions and elections to win…wow its pretty amazing.

That night, in the middle of a long black out (they are ok during the day but it’s a bit annoying at night) I watched a Venezuelan documentary called “Tocar y Luchar” (Play music and struggle)- about the youth orchestra of Caracas. Damn man it was moving. Why shouldn’t poor children play in orchestras and walk around their narrow concrete colourful streets with violins and guitars under their arms (as they did in the documentary). And there was an 8 year old kid in an old coastal town who was given a trumpet, and it changed his life and his self value, and another kid who kept his guitar right next to his bed..
I got up and looked out the window at Merida all totally black except for the lights of a few cars and the hospital. I’m glad, it must have back up generators or something.
Then, in the documentary, a choir deaf people singing together using sign language, their hand gestures gliding in a kind of synchronised dance. A band for the special schools- blind people, people with muscular problems singing stuff that made me teary. Finally, a society that values people and their development not just marks and careers.
(So like everything about this revolution, it’s a mixture. There is so much to improve, but so much amazing stuff that has already been started or achieved).

On Sunday I caught the bus up the mountain into the community of Los Curos, for their first ‘Communal Council Fair’. Organised by the local community, through the communal council, there was dancing, singing, food, wooden craft produced by local residents, a mobile library and books given out, theatre, traditional games etc. A few friends I bumped into explained to me that the park had been ‘recovered’ by the community council. There were also doctors there taking advantage of all the people out and about, giving them vaccinations. And one guy (also a local resident), gave me his book of poetry. It’s just a small community, but you see how its starting to come alive and create and take care of its own issues. All the people painting murals touched me the most. Young, old, artistically skilled and those not so much- working together and really making this community feel like their own space.

On Wednesday I went back there with a friend, met another friend who lives there, and he showed us around. He explained that 25 years ago the government had built houses but the ceilings had asbestos (and they were badly designed). He talked with the Land Committee and they made a proposal to the government, which then gave the community the resources to replace the asbestos ceilings. As we walked around it was clear that everyone (well the male half) of the community was chipping in, taking out the asbestos and putting in wooden ceilings. While they were at it, they were painting and fixing structures too. I could sooo live there! :) The brightly coloured houses, all in a line, on the other side of the pavement- avocado and mango trees, people walking around and popping in on each other- our ‘guide/friend’ knew everyone, people really appreciated the proposal he’d made. We visited one house to see it on the inside, the people there were really welcoming and we talked about how crap Bush is and where the revolution is at and all sorts of things.

No advertising, no water, no meeting... :)

2008-06-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Reading the news the other morning, there were photos of Japan- urg the streets are FULL of advertising. A collideascope, a mosaic, of ads and you can just make out the shop doors, and that’s it. I’d forgotten some cities were like that. Sydney is not as bad, but getting there. Caracas is not as bad as Sydney, but its got its share of giant billboards at least. Merida has a billboard or two along the 2 big roads. But at least there are no ads in the buses, no ads (apart from one on the bridge/viaducto near my house) blocking the sky line, no neon lighting or any of that crap. And I’m not saying its because of the revolution actually. And I’m not saying there’s no consumer culture here. Far from it.
But its definitely a lot more laid back than some countries. No one, ever, encourages you to buy stuff. Even the street stall people barely look up, when you browse their table. People even wonder off, leaving their stalls totally unwatched. Never the less, there’s still a real superficial attitude, a fetishisation of fashion, and the clothes shops go off without making an effort.
Still, if you forget about the shops (which is easy to do when you can’t afford to buy the stuff in them, just like not noticing where banks are other than your own), and the fact that I haven’t had access to a TV since November, means I feel like I’ve lost a few of the consumerist urges I had left. Eat, catch buses, pay the rent- what else do we need? And when you don’t have a permanent home to pile up all your bought objects in, it makes it even less tempting. I like it :)

Today there was no water. A lot of people didn’t have any yesterday either. I don’t know why. Actually it came on at about lunch time. Lucky. And then I had a shower, and now its gone again :).

Political conversation and meetings have mostly been election aftermath, reflection, analysis, strategy etc. The FFS have written a letter to PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) executive complaining about the procedure used in selecting candidates who weren’t automatically chosen (because they got less than 50% of the vote).
“only power can transform reality” one person argued, and another concluded later “and people aren’t going to give it to us”.
Disagreement over to what extent, or how much time we should ‘waste’- depending on your perspective, on criticising PSUV internal processes and structures. It’s a party under construction, so to an extent now is a better time than ever to do that sort of thing. On the other hand I kinda think a bit too much energy goes into these elections, when there is a lot more to do. Such as deepening the level of consciousness. We talked about having FFS meetings in the communities too- discussions around various themes.

Other than that, I’ve gotta be honest…It’s been a pretty uneventful week! I’ve loved it really. Time to stay at home and write and study, write an article, look for work, read even.
On Friday I tried to go to my circumscription meeting (spokespeople from 10 battalions- branches of the PSUV), it was a mission to find the place (like a treasure hunt: ‘Where is the Tancredi school? No idea. Las Sauzales? Ah, that’s down there… Down there they tell me it’s up there, past the traffic lights. Past the traffic lights- oh its over there. ‘over there’ and a pointed finger is a pretty typical Venezuelan direction. I found the school, it’s pretty nice and it’s a school for deaf people. Parents- whose kids were playing basketball- were having a ball honking the horn of a car, finding it hilarious that only one of them could actually hear it. Next time I should take a photo. I love it how all the schools here (that I’ve seen) are covered with murals about the rights and obligations of children.
Anyway, not surprisingly, that meeting didn’t happen- I texted my friend and she told me the president was swearing people in or something. Hopefully it will happen this week.

What happens when the enemy participates in the revolution

2008-06-05T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well this week was all about the internal elections of the PSUV for the candidates for the November regional elections. Although on Wednesday there were also elections for the rector of the Los Andes University, and I reckon there were more posters etc up for that- but then all those rectors are pretty rich :P
There were red tents - two to three, most days of the week in the main Plaza, handing out for different candidates. And the usual red motorcades with balloons and flags and people in red t-shirts hanging from the cars (photo- Javier came second, I have no idea who he is).
Ultimately good old Carlos Leon- the current mayor, got the most votes, but not the necessary majority.
We talked about the whole messy campaign in the regular Fuerzas Socialistas meeting. Let me describe these meetings, since I go to them once or twice a week! We meet in the ‘house of the people’, taken over 2 years ago by the Tupamaros. Inside there are murals on the walls, of workers working hard in factories.
At 7, when the meetings officially start, people begin to trickle in and chat informally, shaking hands, hugging, greeting, organising to help each other with various things, getting contacts… probably my favourite bit. By about 7.30 we start. There is a female chair, minute taker and attendance taker, although the majority are men. The chair constantly has to remind people who has the ‘right of word’. And its so cute, whenever their time is up, the chair says “time” and they always say, ‘para terminar’ – ‘and to finish’ and go on for minutes more!
There are a few dogs always hanging out there (just like the plaza, dogs here feel very comfortable to just park themselves in the middle of footpaths and fall asleep) and this dog has picked the middle of the meeting space to fall asleep and he makes the cold floor look real tempting.
We had been running a candidate in the elections- ‘the ghost’ (he’s more well known by his nickname than real name), came 3rd- but the campaign itself, of Carlos Leon specifically, was pretty dirty. 2 of our people were attacked in The Valley, and taken out of their houses. The meeting discussed how to handle this incident and other such things: meet with them, make a denunciation, a press release? One person commented, “We want to change the system and the political order and so of course there won’t just be debate but actual conflict.” It was decided to form a team of lawyers (of which about 8 out of the 60 in attendance put up their hands!) and write a press release.
Also, lies were spread, by Leon’s team I’m guessing, that ‘the ghost’ was running in the national assembly elections, so people shouldn’t waste their vote on him.
I shouldn’t be surprised, that Carlos Leon got elected, but I am. I seriously don’t know a single person who doesn’t think he’s corrupt and has wasted the city’s money.
As another person at the meeting argued, “They [Leon etc] are an electoral platform, but we aren’t, we’re political and elections aren’t the only thing we do, so it’s a disadvantage.” And another person pointed out, “[he] got the highest votes in the poorest areas, it’s not just an economic question but a question of education.”

I also spent this week trying to get an internet connection (difficult as you generally need a Venezuelan bank account) and I noticed that at Movilnet, the communal council spokespeople get special mobile phone plans!. Weird.

My friend called me at 1130 on Saturday night saying ‘meet me at the C.C’ and I was already in bed, but what the hell. I went down to meet her and she vented a bit then we went dancing. It was awesome, because before I’d just been to the salsa place. Here, it had great modern Venezuelan rock, much of it political and really really good, and you can ‘free’ dance- which I much prefer to the strict counting and moves of salsa. (ie you can be a shit dancer and enjoy it :).

Checked out the book fair on Saturday. It was massive and full of people and there were so many great books- classics, Chomsky, Venezuelan writers, political stuff- but pretty expensive. It made me miss having easy access to good books. There’s so much great stuff out there, not to mention all the newspapers and magazines, books etc (that I get given at events etc)- you could spend a lifetime just reading.

Friday was our (Foreigners in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution) first forum. Considering there was also an environmental forum and a poetry recital at exactly the same time in other places, and the elections were coming up, I reckon our attendance was alright (about 25, including some tourists, some contacts, people we’ve been working with, friends, and people I’ve never met). The theme was ‘the myth of the American dream’ and we talked about what life is really like in ‘developed’ capitalist countries. People were surprised about some of the conditions- uni debts, that 50% of Aussie workers are casual etc.

And on Tuesday I went with a mate to the electricity union to help a bit with the translation. I have literally 12 pages or so of notes from that and won’t put it all here, but one big problem people have been complaining about in Merida is that when they go to pay their bills the company doesn’t even have paper to print out the receipts. The workers have had to buy paper and fix vehicles and so on themselves. Hopefully when the co management (between government and workers) is formalised and organised such problems will be fixed.