Lea Murray (left) with fellow Reality Tours Venezuela delegation participants

The following post was written by Global Exchange Scholarship recipient Lea Murray who participated in a Reality Tours delegation to Venezuela last month. She shares her experience with us:

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Venezuela Vision: A Tale of Remembrance

I traveled to Venezuela for two reasons:  1) my friend and ESL student Lorena was going to be there at the same time that Global Exchange (GX) scheduled the Afro Venezuelan tour and 2) I was able to receive a generous scholarship from Global Exchange.

Had it not been for those two serendipitous events my life would be completely different from what it is today. I would have remained the same middle class American who is only concerned with those issues directly impacting my life.  Outside of my travels to Senegal and The Gambia in 2007, I hadn’t traveled to any place where it was obvious that people had financial need. I almost always traveled to resorts or timeshares in nice well-kept tourist areas.  I had forgotten my training in public health nutrition. I had forgotten how it felt to work with and be around people who are struggling to meet their basic needs.  I had forgotten my previous non-profit work with under-served communities.  This trip to Venezuela reminded me of my idealistic college days at UC Berkeley.

Many people in Venezuela love Chavez.  What a shocking revelation for someone like me who has only heard bad things about Chavez from some of the Venezuelans that I have met and taught in my English as a Second Language (ESL) classes.  Of course living in South Florida there is a very large Hispanic community mostly from South America and Cuba—mostly wealthy and white.  I heard stories from some of these people about how dangerous it is to live in Venezuela, and how Chavez is poisoning the minds of poor people so that it is unsafe for the hard working Venezuelan to travel in public places for fear of being attacked.

I heard stories of multiple kidnapping, theft, and political unrest.  That Chavez is bad for business and it is difficult to fire bad workers and employees who don’t have incentive to excel at work because they can’t be fired.  Chavez is crazy like Castro.

The many Venezuelans that I have met here in South Florida believe the USA is a refuge from the turmoil that they have endured in their homeland.  How was I to know any different?

But then I visited the missions, the university, the labor union, the farming coop, the black owned Cocoa plantation, and I heard and I saw what Chavez has done for the disenfranchised.  Chavez is making a difference in the lives of people who believed they were previously excluded from the benefits of living in an oil rich country.  Why didn’t I know this?

Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is Chavez in the eye of beholder.  It all depends on your perspective.  Now I know differently.

Now that I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears, what will I do? I will re-think my life. I have a new vision.  I want to see how other people live and experience life.  I want to travel to even more places where black Africans were dispersed during the slave trade. I will travel to Haiti and Cuba and examine the plight of my black brothers and sisters in these small island countries.  I will re-think my business.  Instead of solely working with those students who can afford to pay my hourly rate I will diversify and incorporate students with less financial means to pay for my services as an ESL instructor.  I will open my eyes—see the vision—and do something to make a difference.  I will participate.

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Lea Murray is a California native living in Florida and a part time ESL instructor with an interest in Latin American and Caribbean culture. Last month Lea participated in a Reality Tours Afro Venezuelan delegation, thanks to a Global Exchange scholarship.

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During Global Exchange delegation visit to Venezuela. Photo Credit: Blair Redlin

A Glimpse of Venezuela: Part 1

Ten yearsafter the failed coup attempt of 2002, revenue from huge oil reserves and widespread popular mobilisation are supporting grassroots change for many parts of Venezuelan society. Despite media demonisation of the Venezuelan experiment here in Canada, the changes are significant and deserve to be better understood — especially given the increasing importance of oil revenue for our country too.

In order to get a glimpse of the Bolivarian Republic in 2012, I recently took part in a fascinating “reality tour” of Venezuela organised by San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange.

The 10-day tour featured meetings with activists from many sectors, as well as a visit to the San Juan tambores festival in the Afro-Venezuelan Barlovento region. We spent time in the sprawling capital of Caracas, in the small Andean community of Sanare, in the industrial city of Barquisimeto and the Afro-Venezuelan town of Curiepe.

My main takeaway was of a population deeply committed to social change within the context of historic inequality and class divisions. The country has numerous problems, including poverty and deadly gun crime, but it was inspiring to see the energy and enthusiasm that both local communities and the government are bringing to bear.

Particularly striking are the efforts to circumvent bureaucratic obstacles to change through community based initiatives. Whether it’s the numerous “misiones” (to tackle poverty, housing, adult literacy and more) or empowerment of communal councils and co-ops, a significant theme of development in Venezuela is local democratic control.

Our group met with a variety of locally based mission activists, in addition to actors in the women’s, students, co-op, community media and labour movements. Here are a few of my impressions:

Progress on Inequality – the focus on reducing inequality and poverty is producing results. The United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reports that Venezuela now has the third lowest poverty rate in Latin America and is the least unequal country in the region. So-called “extreme poverty” rates have been reduced from 21 per cent of the population in 1999 (when Hugo Chavez first came to power) to 6.9 per cent by 2010. Venezuela had the second highest rate of poverty reduction in Latin America from 2002 to 2010, exceeded only by Ecuador.  Venezuela ranks 73rd out of 187 countries in the UN’s Human Development Index.

Gasoline Absurdly Cheap – given that the world price of oil is hovering above $85 a barrel, it seems incredible that the price of gasoline in Venezuela is approximately .05 cents/litre. You read that right. Less than one cent a litre. or pretty close to free. This represents a massive public subsidy of gasoline prices — an expensive policy that has to be making global warming worse. To an outsider, super cheap gasoline seems like a crazy way to spend scarce resources in a country with numerous social needs, but the historical and political context is important. In 1989, Venezuelans rebelled en masse against austerity policies imposed by the IMF that included a 100 per cent increase in consumer gasoline prices and a doubling of transit fares. That rebellion was dubbed the Caracazo. As a result of the Caracazo thousands were killed, former President Carlos Perez was removed from office, the IMF restraint policies were modified and Hugo Chavez began his political career. In light of all that, it is apparently politically challenging to raise gasoline prices today. Meanwhile, Venezuela is overwhelmingly dependent on oil revenues and its economy needs to diversify. Oil accounts for 90 per cent of export earnings, 50% of federal budget revenues and 30 per cent of GDP.

Women’s Rights a Priority (Except for One Key One) – in a region where the culture of machismo remains strongly embedded, it’s encouraging that women’s rights are a priority of the government. There is a Ministry of Women’s Rights and Gender Equality, a Mision Madres del Barrio for working and single mothers, a Women’s Bank and mass participation in International Women’s Day. But Venezuelan women are still denied the right to reproductive choice, as abortion remains illegal. The National Assembly has had a committee studying abortion reform since 2010, but no actual legislative change appears to be forthcoming. Our delegation met with representatives of the “Popular Feminist Circle” organisation in Barquisimeto, which provides a range of programs, including prevention of violence against women and children. They told us it has made a big difference that the President clearly identifies himself as a feminist, but until women gain improved rights to reproductive choice in Venezuela, full equality rights are a long way off.

Venezuela 2012 Photo Credit: Blair Redlin

A Glimpse of Venezuela: Part 2

Venezuela has been undergoing big changes since the failed coup attempt of a decade ago . The first part of this blog report discussed how the Chavez government is implementing change at the grassroots level through  “missions” and communal councils; the progress that has been made in reducing inequality and poverty; the context for Venezuela’s policy of  almost free gasoline; and efforts to promote the rights of women in a country where abortion remains illegal.

Here are some further reflections on my brief glimpse of Venezuela in 2012:

A new labour law for working people – on May 1 of this year, a new fundamental labour statute came into effect. Entitled the Organic Law of Work and Workers, the new law is the culmination of a major mobilizing effort by the National Worker’s Union (U.N.T.)  labour central that included over 657,000 signatures on a petition demanding a new labour law as well as the presentation of more than 20,000 specific legislative proposals to a 16 member special Presidential commission.

Important changes in the new law include: reduction of the work week to 40 hours from 44 and the requirement for a full two days off per week; 25 weeks of maternity leave for women, plus a guaranteed right to return to one’s job for up to two years after birth of the child; 6 weeks of paternity leave for men, plus the same employment guarantee for up to two years; a prohibition on out-sourcing; and restoration of a retirement bonus scheme which provides one month of pay for every year of service. The government has also instituted a 32 per cent increase in the minimum wage, taking it to approximately $700(U.S.) per month. This is now the highest minimum wage in Latin America.

The status of trade unions in Venezuela has been controversial and complex since Carlos Ortega, the former President of the Confederation of Workers of Venezuela (C.T.V.) worked closely with the U.S. in support of the 2002 coup attempt.

Ortega was sentenced to 16 years in jail for his role in the 2002 oil company lockout and coup attempt, but escaped in 2006 and was given asylum in Peru. Subsequent to the failed coup, the C.T.V. still exists and represents some 200,000 members, but it has been supplanted by the U.N.T. (with 1.2 million members) as the main labour central in the country. The U.N.T. is affiliated with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (P.S.U.V.) which is currently the governing party.

During our visit to the industrial city of Barquisimeto, we met with trade union leaders in a large office building (the “Casa Sindical”) housing many unions. The local labour council they are part of represents 80 different union locals from most parts of the private sector economy. The unionists told us the story of how they took over the union building in 2009, occupying it due to alleged corruption and lack of representation by the C.T.V.. They said they had found a “chop shop” in the building where stolen cars were dismantled so parts could be sold. When asked how they had fended off armed members of the C.T.V. who tried to take the building back, they said they had discovered 100 cases of beer in the building so they threw beer bottles at them from the upper floors until the police came!

Adult education a big priority, but easier said than done – in the small Andean town of Sanare, our group met with activists with two missions related to adult education. “Mision Robinson”  is based on a Cuban methodology which uses volunteers to teach reading, writing and arithmetic to illiterate adults while “Mision Ribas” provides remedial high school classes to adults who have dropped out of high school. For those who complete Mision Ribas, the government has also organized “Mision Sucre” to provide free college and graduate level education.

All this focus on adult education is bearing fruit. UNESCO’s 2010 Education for All monitoring report  and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics report that Venezuela has a literacy rate of 95.5 per cent for adults and 98.5 per cent for youth. The reports project that adult literacy will reach 97 per cent by 2015. In terms of adult literacy, the country is 55 out of 128 countries, while its standing in the Education for All Development Index was 59 out of 128 countries, up from 64 three years previously. Venezuela scored better than 18 other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

It was moving to see the enthusiasm with which adult education is pursued at the grassroots. We were told that in the small town of Sanare alone, they have graduated people as old as 89 years and that one 65 year old is now studying medicine. It was also striking that a big part of the Mision Ribas program was the requirement for a written report on development of a concrete community improvement project such as reforestation, improving the electric grid, building a new school, etc. We also learned of integrated linkages between the education programs and “Gran Mision Vivienda” which is building badly needed public housing throughout the country. Workers taught construction skills through Mision Ribas are subsequently paid as apprentices in the construction of new housing.

But we also discussed amongst ourselves the challenges of keeping children and youth in the basic education system. Despite laws requiring school attendance and banning child labour, we had occasion to  meet 16 children from one family who are all required to work on the family farm. Only one of them can read or write. This anecdotal experience helped us realise that family and cultural issues make education policy extremely complicated in a developing country like Venezuela. Adult education is in part necessary because it is so challenging to keep children in school. Still, high school drop out rates fell by half in Venezuela between 1998 and 2011.

Bolivarian University – speaking of education, our delegation paid an interesting visit with student activists at the campus of the main Bolivarian University in Caracas. During the failed coup of 2002, the state oil company P.D.V.S.A. assisted the coup plotters by shutting down the oil industry and locking oil workers out. After the coup was thwarted one government response was to convert the former headquarters of P.D.V.S.A. in Caracas into the main campus of the new Bolivarian University.

As with the unionists we met in Barquisimeto, the student activists in Caracas were very militant. They view their own personal educations and the activities of the university as key parts of the Bolivarian project. The university is closely linked to “Mision Sucre.” There is a central campus in nine of the country’s main regions, combined with Mision Sucre university level classes in most major towns. There are therefore 4,000 students at the main Caracas campus, but 350,000 in the  wider “Bolivariana” taking university and college level courses nationwide.

The Bolivarian University has a unique entrance requirement process. As opposed to entrance exams or acceptance based on previous grades, applicants must take a three month long pre-university course. If they pass that, then they are eligible to enter the university.

Given the intense debate in Quebec and Canada about tuition and the costs of post-secondary education, it was interesting to learn that not only are there no tuition fees at the Bolivarian University but the government also covers three free meals at day at the cafeteria, student housing, free health and dental care, transportation, insurance and other student costs.

As with Mision Ribas, students are expected to complete projects that contribute to the development of the country.

Afro-Venezuelans – one focus of our trip was the Afro-Venezuelan community, descendants of slaves who were in the main brought from the Congo and Angola. Today, Afro-Venezuelans are mostly concentrated in the Barlovento region of Miranda state, which we visited.

Cacao is the main raw ingredient for chocolate and Venezuelan cacao is among the best in the world. Many slaves were brought to work in cacao plantations, so it was interesting to visit a modern-day cacao plantation which has been farmed by the same Afro-Venezuelan family for generations. A state owned chocolate processing plant (“Oderi”) is nearby, as well as six smaller co-operative chocolate factories for artisanal products.

The Marquez family told us of several recent government steps to improve the cacao economy. In April 2011, cacao was declared a national strategic project. Chocolate processing has been nationalised through the Venezuelan Cocoa Socialist Corporation and a “fair price” is paid to farmers that is 20 per cent above the market rate. Many new co-operatives have been assisted and through the A.L.B.A. alternative trade agreement, new international cooperation and trade measures have been put in place to improve cacao markets. The Marquez family told us none of this has been popular with international chocolate companies, but the quality of Venezuelan cacao is very high, so the higher prices are being paid.

Afro-Venezuelans continue to struggle against racism. The 1999 reform of the Venezuelan constitution included significant recognition of indigenous rights, particularly land, cultural and language rights. However, no similar recognition was provided for Afro-Venezuelans. Particularly since the 1999 inclusion of indigenous rights, Afro-Venezuelans have argued for their own constitutional inclusion though — as Canadians know well — the land rights of aboriginal peoples are in a different category than rights for settler communities. In 2007, Hugo Chavez proposed a series of constitutional amendments that, among others, included significant recognition of Afro-Venezuelans. Unfortunately, those proposals were defeated by citizens in the subsequent referendum so the campaign for better constitutional recognition continues.

In 2011, the National Assembly passed a new law against racial discrimination and the new basic education law of 2009 included specific recognition of afro-descendants.

Final observations – 21st century Venezuela is deeply involved in democratic change at many levels, as evidenced by the big push for communal councils, regional assemblies and co-operatives. Of course, intensive electoral democracy is also key. Venezuelans have voted repeatedly over the last 15 years, in both general elections and constitutional referenda, and the next national election for president will take place this October. Despite a spirited campaign by opposition leader Henriques Capriles Radonski, most polls show a commanding lead for Hugo Chavez. Certainly, most of the people we met were very enthusiastic about the changes Chavez has been leading. This enthusiasm and mass participation is in marked contrast to the disempowerment and low participation rates that too often characterise politics in Canada.

An interesting side note . . . just as the long-time popular Latin American (and farm worker) slogan of “si, se puede” was picked up by Barack Obama last election as “Yes, we can,” so this year the main slogan for Hugo Chavez is “Pa’lante” which in English means “Forward.” Barack Obama’s main slogan this time out? Also “Forward.”

The efforts in Venezuela to fight poverty, reduce inequality, develop the economy and provide social improvements are largely funded by the oil revenues that are unique to Venezuela. But other Bolivarian countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia are also using the specific resources available to them to make improvements at the local and community level. All three countries, are working with Cuba, Nicaragua, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (and soon Suriname and Saint Lucia) within the alternative trading bloc called A.L.B.A. (“Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas”).

Unlike in Canada, oil and other resource revenues  are not being squandered on tax cuts or royalty reductions. In Venezuela and the other Bolivarian countries, secondary processing of resources is a strategic priority as opposed to the focus here on export of raw resources. And rather than corporate rights deals like NAFTA or CETA, the priority in ALBA is international cooperation and the raising of standards.

The changes in Venezuela are big and they’re happening right now in the real world. They deserve a lot more attention and understanding from our part of the hemisphere.

• Our “reality tour” to Venezuela was put together by Global Exchange, which did a great job. For information on future tours to Venezuela, or many other countries in the world, go here.
• Global Exchange helped publish a very informative book on Venezuela called Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots by Carlos Martinez, Michael Fox and Jojo Farrell. Go here to get a copy.
• One of our hosts in Venezuela was Lisa Sullivan, who is involved with School of the Americas Watch, a group that is having great success at persuading Latin American governments to withdraw military personnel from the notorious School of the Americas in the U.S..For information about the work of S.O.A. Watch, go here.
• Another host was the Prout Centre in Caracas. “Prout” stands for Progressive Utilisation Theory. Developed by Indian philosopher Prabhat Ranjan Sarker, Prout makes a case for economic democracy and localised development. For information on the new edition of a book by Caracas author Dada Maheshvaranda called After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action, go here. 

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Blair Redlin is a B.C. based trade union researcher, whose priorities have included privatization, trade agreements and local government. He’s vice-chair of the Board of Oxfam Canada. In the 1990s, he was a Deputy Minister in the B.C. public service.

Travel to Venezuela! To find out how you can travel to Venezuela with Global Exchange, we invite you to visit our website.

It is twilight and, as April and I sit back on their terrace sipping wine with John Pate and his wife, we enjoy a sense of tranquility hardly experienced in our almost three weeks in Venezuela.

Below us lies a verdant valley, framed by a wooded green mountain which mercifully blocks the down-at heels skyscrapers and ragged slum hillsides in downtown Caracas. In Venezuela this is heaven.

A few minutes earlier John had become excited as he drove us into his gated community. “Look,” he exclaimed pointing out the window. “See how these neighbors are able to take a leisurely stroll here without a bodyguard.”

***

John, 62, is an American lawyer, a graduate of Brown University and Boston University law school, and of Tufts University School of diplomacy, who heads a major law firm in Caracas. He has lived 34 years in Venezuela, the last eight of them in his charming hillside home with its tropical garden, decorated largely by Gertie, his professional-artist wife.

Yet, at a stage in life when most successful people are dreaming of retiring and enjoying the fruits of their labors, John and Gertie are seriously thinking of giving up their fabulous home, giving up the law firm, and fleeing their adopted country for the United States.

“Chávez is going after people like us,” he says, talking of the nation’s president, Hugo Chávez. “Many of this country’s successful people — and not just foreigners like us — have already left. Foreign companies, our clients, are pulling out their investments. And now Chávez’s new ‘socialism of the 21st century,’ is threatening us directly. Now he is saying that people with too much property should have to share it with others — i.e., the government would simply install strangers with us in our home,” like the communists did in Eastern Europe in the last century.”

***

Seven hours earlier we are in a taxi. Our driver is Tony Antonetti, Italian-born, who tells us he had come to Venezuela as a teenager 50 years ago. It is a long ride in typically stagnant Caracas traffic and Tony uses the time to give us a sort of political sightseeing trip.

“See that school on the right,” he says. “Chávez built that.” “See that old folks’ home. Chávez built that” “See that clinic. Chávez built that”

“Chávez is good for the poor people that nobody in power used to care about. He cares.”

***

Chávez, 52, who inherited the Latin-American country with the worst gap between rich and poor when he became Venezuela’s president in 1999, is regarded by many Venezuelans as their knight on the white horse, their new Robin Hood, the unchallenged, all-powerful keeper of the cash of the world’s fourth largest oil producer, who is capitalizing on soaring oil prices to elevate the lives of the nation’s long-neglected majority — impoverished people, the class into which he was born — with a new system he calls “21st century socialism.”

Other Venezuelans consider him an instigator of class warfare, a shrewd, ruthless and charismatic megalomaniac, an incipient dictator who is gradually whittling away the nation’s freedoms, an avowed Marxist-Leninist who is chasing away capitalist foreign investment and setting the stage for an economic catastrophe.

The United States considers Chávez’s virulent anti-American rhetoric and his successes in wooing friendships with several other Latin-American countries a threat to U.S. free-trade economic policies and political hegemony on an economically troubled continent already rife with anti-Americanism. And, perhaps most serious, it views him as a threat to U.S. oil supplies because Venezuela long has been — and still is — a major U.S. oil supplier.

***

Who is, really, this flat-faced, pudgy, former paratrooper whose mulatto features reflect Venezuela’s multi-ethnic history (indigenous, Spanish, African) and whose fame goes back to a failed coup he led in the early 1990s, for which Chávez did jail time? First elected president in late 1998 after his behind-bars stint, he was re-elected last December in a 63 percent landslide after surviving a coup in 2002 and a referendum in 2004. He defeated a state governor but the feeble opposition parties offered no candidate.

Just before Chávez first took office, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, shared a flight with him from Cuba to Venezuela. Garcia Marquez was later quoted as having said, “I was overwhelmed by the feeling I had been traveling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men. One to whom the caprices of fate had given him an opportunity to save his country. The other an illusionist who could pass through history as just another despot.”

***

Recently, the despotic side of Chávez seems to be emerging. Increasingly, his government has been making use of “the list,” the names of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who signed petitions in the early 2000′s that brought about the a failed anti-Chávez referendum. These people mostly are blacklisted for government jobs.

Last year, for further intimidation, Chávez’s rubber-stamp Congress added another crime — “showing disrespect for the president.” And it has imposed stiff fines on publications which violate this law, even for newspaper cartoons.

Chávez controls every major element of government. In January, Congress (for which the cowed opposition also ran no candidates) voted him the right to rule by decree until July 2008.

Then he is expected to demand — and get — replacing a constitutional clause setting term limits with one permitting him to become president for life.

Still, Venezuela is not a full-blown dictatorship. Critics will look in vain for concentration camps here.

A majority of newspapers are critical of the regime — although, critics say, government intimidation has muted their voices. The nation’s two largest labor unions outside of Chávez’s own recently rejected his demand that they dissolve and join his “unity” socialist union (although they pledged loyalty to him).

***

But he ran into big trouble the end of May when, its license expiring, he shut down the nation’s oldest television channel, RCTV.

The only TV station to criticize the president, it had parlayed a diet of schmaltzy soap operas, quiz show, talk shows, music, sports and a comedy program that often poked fun at Chávez to become the nation’s most popular station.

A poll showed 80 percent of Venezuelans opposed the shutdown. Chávez’s popularity ratings tumbled — from 63 percent on Election Day to 36 percent, according to Hinterlaces, a respected polling company.

Moreover, the shutdown brought to the streets a new potential source of anti-Chávez power — university students. Shunning cooperation with traditional opposition politicians, for the better part of a week banner-carrying students chanting “freedom, freedom,” many in black masks, their mouths taped shut to represent loss of freedom of speech, marched peacefully through the streets of Caracas and other cities — withstanding police detention and attacks by baton-wielding cops trying to beat them back with nightsticks, tear gas and water cannons.

The big question is whether over time, when the students have forgotten the loss of their favorite soap opera, they will retain their political ardor on behalf of free speech — or be permitted to.

***

RCTV’s shutdown, and the public’s overwhelming opposition to it, evoked an angry Chávez reaction that indicated free speech in Venezuela, such as it is, may not last much longer.

“The current battle is for media power,” Chávez proclaimed during his 40 hours of television fulminations during the student demonstrations.

The government now controls seven TV channels, and has subdued all the others into self-censorship except for Globovision, a news channel that was the only one daring to report the student demonstrations.

This did not escape Chávez’s attention. He told his TV audience, threateningly.

“I want to warn Globovision to measure its steps, or the same medicine for RCTV will be administered if it continues to incite violence.”

He reminded listeners, “Hugo Chávez is a son of the Revolution.”

A Chávez alter ego specializing in media, academic Marcelino Bisbal vowed, “Venezuela will not have the information TV channels that differ from the point of view and opinion of power.”

***

Until now Chávez’s power has come through the ballot box.

“He doesn’t have to be a dictator,” one journalist explained to me. “Just look at the election results.”

But. increasingly, as dissatisfaction over soaring crime, high inflation, vanishing products in stores and eroding freedoms spread, it appears that he may have to retain power through the barrel of a gun.

That’s because, despite a still-vibrant but sagging economy and continued economic progress for the poor, more of the public seems disaffected.

***

But Chávez, a former Army lieutenant colonel, has readied himself for a fight. He has greatly increased the military budget and military perks, as well as encouraging youths from the slums, wide-eyed followers of leftist heroes like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, to organize in militias that could bolster the military in a pinch.

“For all practical purposes this is a government of the armed forces,” Teodoro Petkoff, a former minister in a pre-Chávez government, a long ago communist who is an editor of Tal Cual (So what) said. “I didn’t divorce Stalin to marry Chávez.”

Chávez also has been diligent in encouraging the election of pro-Chávez local city councils who control police departments, assuring him of police support if push comes to shove.

***

One way Chávez woos police support, apparently, is to look the other way while cops commit crimes. Venezuela has long been Latin-America’s most dangerous country, and one hardly meets an urban Venezuelan who has not been a street-crime victim. I asked 23 Caracas residents if they’d ever been a crime victim, and 20 of them said yes.

In a poll, 89 percent of Venezuelans said their biggest fear was for their own personal safety.

A multi-year 57-nation UNESCO study reported Venezuela led them all in gun-related deaths.

The United Nations official who conducted the study called Venezuela “one of the most violent nations in the world.”

About half of the petty criminals are said to be police. Mostly wielding knives, they typically demand pedestrians open their wallets to them. His critics say Chávez is reluctant to crack down lest he need police backing in a counter-revolution. The police stand ready to do the regime’s bidding. When some of the more violent Chávez followers began seizing and destroying private farms this spring, the police stood by and did nothing. The regime then awarded the farms to the marauders, claiming the owners were not using the land to its fullest potential.

***

With oil accounting for 85 percent of the economy, until now there has not been a lot of emphasis on agriculture, which accounts for only 6 percent. Venezuela has to import, at considerable cost, a whopping 70 per cent of its food. Critics charge that Chávez has been squandering much of the country’s oil bonanza on ideological projects, and is not trying hard enough to diversify its economy should oil prices tumble.

On his socialist ideology, there are real questions as to whether Chávez has public support. A majority of the 63 percent which re-elected him in December are recipients of government benefits but this same majority, when asked if they would like a government like Cuba’s, resoundingly rejected the idea even though they appreciate having Cuban doctors at neighborhood clinics (whom Chávez obtained by giving Cuba cut-rate oil).

Chávez continues to make inroads on poverty. According to government figures, people living below the poverty line have dropped from 50 percent when Chávez first became president, and from a high of 62 percent in 2003 after a disastrous oil strike, to 44 percent at the start of 2006, last figures available.

And these figures take into account only cash income and not Chávez-introduce benefits such as discount food at stores in low-income neighborhoods and better education and health services. In the last three years. He has twice increased the minimum wage.

But the country is running big budget deficits. Last year it was 23 percent of gross domestic product (total of everything produced) and early this year Venezuela had to borrow $7.5 billion from Russia to pay its suppliers.

***

With oil priced at $60-70 a barrel, compared with $12 when Chávez became president, the economy is still strong but growth is slipping, from world-high of 17 percent in 2004 to 7 percent so far this year through May, and oil production is slipping too.

The government claims it produces 3.3 million barrels a day, but international oil institutions like OPEC and the International Energy Agency says the real number is about 800,000 barrels lower.

One reason is the government’s difficulty in attracting talented oil managers — the result of the disruptive strike over wages in 2003 and government’s taking control of most remaining foreign-owned oil operations in May. One foreign observer told us that, in a visit to several oil installations, he saw hardly anyone over 30 or under 50. Venezuela produces mostly tricky-to-handle crude oil which requires extra knowledgeable expertise.

PDVSA (Petroleos de Venezuela), the government oil company, funds and oversees many other governmental functions, particularly in social services and public information.

While world retail gasoline prices are as much as $5.50 a gallon in Europe and $3.50 in the United States, PDVSA sells a gallon to Venezuelans for only 17 cents.

To inflation-plagued Venezuelans, that’s a rare bargain.

Inflation, highest in Latin America, is 20 percent at midyear, far above the 12 percent target because of heavy government spending. Basic foodstuffs like chicken, cheese and eggs are vanishing from markets because producers won’t sell their products at low government-set prices, particularly in discount food stores.

The value of the bolivar, the local currency, has shrunk to about half the official rate on a lively black market, partly fueled by well-heeled Venezuelans stashing away dollars in anticipation of fleeing the country.

Even a waiter, speaking in a low voice as he savored a tip, told us he had his bags packed. Still, as Chávez rails against the luxury-loving rich and the middle class shrinks, some Venezuelans are richer than ever. Banks, the traditional targets of the kind of anti-capitalist rhetoric which Chávez spews forth regularly, have never had it so good.

The merchants of big-ticket items — cars, digital television sets, other fancy appliances — have found a big new market as government oil money poured into the economy funnels down to consumers.

***

Chávez says his ultimate aim is to mold Venezuelans into “a new type of person with a new mentality,” dedicated to their fellows rather than themselves. To this end he has been encouraging ideologically-motivated “21st century socialist” worker cooperatives and Venezuela is now said to have the most in the world. An economics expert told us two-thirds of them were failing, despite government efforts to throw them lots of contracts.

We decided to drop in on a few to see for ourselves.

In the countryside, on a bus trip, we stumbled into one being built on a vast grassland about 80 miles north of Caracas. It is intended for 2,000 people, mostly homeless and drug addicts who are expected to do a variety of work, from raising pigs to sculpturing to working computers.

They will receive “everything they need” for free, we were told, but will not be paid in money. It opened about six months ago with 100 residents, of which about 70 remain. The rest have left.

At another cooperative, which makes army uniforms on the outskirts of Caracas, the middle-age woman at the sewing machine stopped work briefly to answer my questions.

Does she like working for a government-financed cooperative better than a private boss?

“You bet,” she replies, a glow in her voice. “I’m an owner now!” “And your salary?” I ask her — “how does it compare with the minimum wage?” She hesitates. “Well,” she finally says, “it’s below the minimum now, but when we get more orders I think I’ll be fine.”

Banco de la Mujer (the Woman’s Bank) in Caracas, financed by the government, is not at all like the thriving privately-owned banks cited earlier in this article.

Its main purpose is to provide loans to fund the new cooperatives, especially those involving women.. The bank’s top officers, including the president, all women, told us about some successful cooperatives who’ve been given a start with the bank’s money.

But what is your default rate? I asked, for in normal banking excess losses on loans can put the bank out of business. The officers looked at each other uncomfortably; no one knew or had any idea. Finally one piped up. “I don’t know the figures but they’re high,” she said. “A lot of the people we loan money to don’t have much business experience so they can’t pay us back. But the government then gives us more money and we create a lot of jobs.”

To me, co-ops trumpeting “socialism for the 21st century” didn’t seem much different to me than Mao Zedong’s 20th century communes I had witnessed in China or Stalin’s collective farms in Russia or Israel’s we’ll share-everything kibbutzes. They all flopped, killed by bureaucrats who didn’t care and workers who didn’t work because, selfish or not, they didn’t see anything in it for them.

But, then, Mao and Stalin and the Israelis weren’t swimming in vast reserves of $70 a barrel oil to grease the skids. The ultimate fate of Hugo Chávez’s ambitious, but hardly new, experiment?

In a country notorious for its violence, some foresee a long succession of bloody battles to determine Venezuela’s future. Others aren’t so sure. But one thing is certain — no Venezuelans will be watching it on RCTV.

Just back from a two-week study tour in Venezuela with Global Exchange, I am inspired by what we heard and saw.

Many Venezuelans urged us to let people here know that “Democracy is alive and well in Venezuela”, “there’s no dictator here”, “for the first time we have hope”, and “we don’t need any lessons in democracy from the United States”.

In fact, region-wide polling by Latinobarometro shows Venezuelans nearly tied with Uruguay for first place in considering their country to be democratic, and again second only to Uruguay in their satisfaction with their democracy, as well as the most politically active of any Latin American country. These results, plus Chávez’ landslide victory in December with 63 percent of the vote (the highest of nine elections in Latin America last year), indicate that the government is delivering at least some of what its citizens voted for. Chávez, elected in 1999, has helped redistribute wealth and increased social services, including greater investment in education and health care and housing.

Nineteen of us, ages 24-75 (three social workers, two teachers, a law-yer, a union leader from Great Britain, a minister, and others), attended two to four meetings a day with the human rights commission, the major opposition party, the state-owned oil company, the women’s bank, three cooperatives, an adult education class, a health clinic, political scientists, a former Maryknoll missionary, the Afro-Venezuelan network, a community TV station, and more, in an attempt to see for ourselves how Hugo Chávez’ “Bolivarian Revolution” is working.

Images of Simon Bolivar, in all sizes, greeted us from many walls around Caracas as we crisscrossed the city: the great Liberator on his white horse, Simon with his girlfriend, Manuela, Bolivar with other Latin American heroes, José Marti and Miranda, and sometimes with inspiring quotations like “help me to speak truth to the strong and not to say lies to win applause from the weak” or another, “Be audacious when you plant, be prudent when you implement the plan.”

Some 47 percent of Venezuelans, mostly poor, buy subsidized food (40 percent off) at more than 15,000 “Mercal” centers established by the government. Much of the packaging has articles of the recently rewritten Constitution printed on it, to teach people their rights. On the soybean oil bottle: “The State guarantees to the elderly the full exercise of their rights, respects their human dignity, their autonomy, and guarantees them social security to assure their quality of life…” On the white flour: “Education is a human right and a fundamental social duty, democratic, free, obligatory… nourished with values of national identity and with a Latin American and universal vision…” Imagine our Bill of Rights feeling comfortable on the kitchen table! Imagine that we would all know our rights! “The Venezuelan people are now armed with ideas and the Constitution,” the former missionary told us. And indeed, at three different times, people on the street pulled out their copies of the Constitution to show us that they are participating in this Bolivarian process that is underway.

Organize yourselves into cooperatives and we will hire you, said the government. There were 800 cooperatives before Chávez, and now there are 200,000. We visited with some of the women making shoes at a co-op in Caracas and 70 others (former housewives) sewing shirts at a co-op in Barlovento. “We used to sit around watching our children grow up, then we took care of the grandchildren, and then it was time to die,” one woman with a gold-tooth smile related, and another woman chimed in, “We thought our future was set. We were hopeless.” A third quickly added, “But now we get to go out everyday, be with our friends, and bring money home. Now we are very happy here.” One woman got the others to laugh when she reported that her husband even has dinner ready for her when she gets home. (Minimum wage is $250/month.)

We also visited a cacao plant nursery coop, which grows replacement trees. The co-op members took classes in “cooperatism” (the common pursuit of the same goal) and work skills for 3-9 months and were responsible for the planning before the funding from the government came through. They will be responsible for the success or failure of their business, but the government buys most of what they are making, so there is some guarantee of success. The agricultural co-ops also sell most of their produce to the government, which distributes it to the “Mercals”.

Venezuela imports 80 percent of food needs. The government has distributed more than 4 million acres of state land to 200,000 families, along with credits and assistance and tractors and training, to try and increase the agricultural production of the country (which is only 6 percent of GNP). This is only half of the planned transfer of lands and people. Oil production since the 1920′s killed off other sectors of development, with 88 percent of the population now living in cities. Two thousand health centers have been created, staffed with doctors, mostly Cuban, who are available 24 hours a day. New houses and housing developments are everywhere and in every stage of construction.

We had an inspiring meeting with the directors of Bankmujer, the women’s bank, set up in 200l, modeled on the Bangladesh micro-credit model. The five women took turns telling us enthusiastically about their work: “This bank wasn’t created to make more capital, but to organize women and make them more productive. We are not interested in an increase of capital, but in social investment. The loan is like the hook to attract women. We are interested in the general development of women in this country. Our main interest is to promote solidarity among women so they can help each other. We help the most impoverished and oppressed and empower them to make the community grow. We provide education, self-esteem, and gender workshops. We have given 70,000 low-interest loans, created 292,000 jobs, and have helped 1,400,000 people. The bank is giving priority to agriculture and food security loans. Loans range from $1,000 for an individual to $83,000 for a cooperative.”

When I asked them to share their favorite stories, they positively beamed with pride as they told us of women who had never been in a bank before, of people who had been in debt forever and now had a thriving market business, and of women who received loans, who now have become Bankmujer representatives.

We had a very full and balanced report from the head of PROVEA, the human rights organization, who told us, “We have a democratic government with some authoritarian features. It is not a dictatorship, and it is not like Cuba. There is no surveillance here, and no intimidation of people by the government. No freedoms are restricted by this government.”

The annual report issued by PROVEA lists the positive changes which he recited to us: “The government’s policies are addressed to help the poorest people, levels of poverty have decreased, education levels are increasing, illiteracy is down, agrarian reform is underway, with lots of financial credit for small businesses. The government is promoting cooperatives, there’s a lot of political participation by the public, lots of freedom of expression. Chávez has not tried to limit speech. The Constitution is advanced on human rights.”

Then he went over the report’s negative findings: “The greatest threat to human rights is the concentration of power. The other public powers that could control Chávez are just doing what he says, which could lead to an abuse of power. There’s a strong presence of military around; police harassment has increased. It is hard to get a job in public administration if you are anti-Chávez. Violence in jails is terrible (but has always been).”

While we were there, the Enabling Laws were passed to accelerate what papers in the U.S. referred to as “Rule by Decree” and Chávez’ “Superpowers”. Venezuelans weren’t concerned. They explained that 4 or 5 presidents before Chávez had used this power, and that Chávez had also used it twice before to “deepen democracy” and to accelerate the social and economic development. He is still bound by the Constitution and 10 percent of registered voters can petition to rescind any laws.

Some of the colorful murals we passed on city walls had oil wells. ” Now it belongs to everybody” or “Now it is ours” was painted on each one in big letters. And indeed, when we spent four hours at PDVSA (“company of the people of the world”), the state-owned company with the largest proven oil reserves outside the Middle East and the most natural gas in South America (and the second largest corporation in South America), we discovered that oil revenues are being used as an instrument of development for the Venezuelan people. And it seemed that profit was not the motive. PDVSA’s goal for the next five years is to reduce poverty in Venezuela from 65 to 30 percent. (We spent a day visiting one of their 3400 social and economic projects, which included a large health clinic, employment training center, childcare center, shoemaking cooperative, and vegetable gardens.)

We were told, “It is also the responsibility of Venezuela to help poor countries afford energy and use oil to foster initiatives for regional cooperation.” Venezuela is building natural gas pipelines through Colombia and Panama, also to Brazil, Argentina, and Bolivia, and the Caribbean islands, to provide energy for South American development at discounted rates. Citgo, its subsidiary in the US, provides cheap fuel to some of our country’s poor communities.

Lots of people I talked with, mostly from the middle and upper class, were anti-Chavez, complaining about the police corruption (which has always been a problem because they are underpaid and under the control of the local mayors), poor quality of food and shortages in the state-subsidized markets, the lowering of educational standards now that there is a new community college system available to all, and the political polarization of the country.

“Venezuelans don’t like to work; they like to party. It’s a capitalist, consumer society, and socialism doesn’t have a chance here,” a computer-programmer told me. “People are hypnotized by Chávez and act like clapping seals,” confided the meticulous doctor I visited for a chest cold. The head of the opposition party, Primero Justicia, told us: “We are concerned that the international view is that we are allied with Cuba and that Chávez is buying political support internationally, instead of investing in Venezuela.” Several people who don’t like Chávez personally did readily admit that things were better for most Venezuelans.

With everybody talking politics, with people coming up to us on the streets asking our opinions and telling us theirs, I’ll share some of what troubles me. There is no strong women’s movement. No abortion is allowed, even in case of rape or incest. The air is filled with diesel fumes. Even with a fast clean subway, there’s always a traffic jam. There’s garbage in the ravines in the barrios. The toilets don’t always have enough water to flush. They speak Spanish too fast. The women are too beautiful. There are too many Simon Bolivar murals. But what troubles me most is that Venezuela is a thriving work in progress, a model of a participatory democracy, which deserves to have a chance, instead of having to fend off U.S. attempts to bring it down.

(Natasha Mayers is an artist and political activist who lives in Whitefield.)

PUBLISHED IN THE UK MORNING STAR SATURDAY 20TH MAY 2006

Charlie Hardy is a former US Catholic priest who spent eight years living among the poor of Caracas in a house of compressed cardboard without sanitation during the dying days of Venezuela’s ancien regime that were triggered by the Caracazo or social explosion of February 27th 1989 following a hike in the price of petrol.

His unpublished tales of the barrio entitled The God of Shit are a hard-hitting critique of both Church and State in a country that is the fifth largest oil producer in the world yet the top 10% of the population of 23 million receives half the national income while the bottom 40% lives in critical poverty.

Small wonder he celebrates the significant if precarious achievements of the Bolivarian revolutionary process that is transforming the lives of the poor since the election of President Hugo Chavez in 1998.

Yet as Luis Ojeda, a teacher with a Bolivarian High School in the mountains of the Yacambu National Park in Lara State, puts it, “Chavez is the feather that woke up the sleeping giant”. Popular movements, base Christian communities and local co-operatives have been a part of Venezuela’s social fabric for decades long before the idea of “endogenous” development gained ground promoting the economic stimulation of everything that is internal and indigenous.

The genius of Chavez lies in his ability to harness the collective will and energy of the poor that make up 80% of the country’s population and enable them to find solutions to their own problems with state support while building an alternative society based on justice, equality and sovereignty.

From building new homes and establishing integrated communities to the social programmes eradicating illiteracy, disease and poverty and creating sustainable enterprises meeting real needs the people are in the driving seat. And it is women who are at the heart of change both as users and participants in the promotion of these campaigns.

Where else would you find a Women’s Development Bank providing micro-credits for establishing small businesses or co-operatives or a constitutional right to a minimum salary for house-wives in recognition of their work as an economic activity that generates wealth and social well-being?

In forging a new future where Venezuela throws off its quasi-colonial status and reclaims its sovereignty in order to redirect its natural and human resources towards the interests of its own people and those of an integrated Latin America rather than voracious transnational corporations the Constitution of 1999 towers above everything.

Inspired by the ideas of Simon Bolivar, the nineteenth-century Liberator of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, and the theological vision of the Latin American Catholic bishops who expressed a “preferential option for the poor” at historic meetings in Medellin, Colombia in 1968 and Puebla, Mexico in 1979, this document claims to be the most enlightened of its kind in the world. It calls for “reshaping the Republic to establish a democratic, participatory, and self-reliant, multi-ethnic, and multicultural society in a just, federal, and decentralized State that embodies the values of freedom, independence, peace, solidarity, and the common good”.

Capitalising on a tradition of forming alliances between the military and civilians in national struggles stretching back to the days of Simon Bolivar, Simon Rodriguez and Ezequiel Zamora, Chavez believes in integrating the armed forces into the life of civil society. Soldiers now have a vote, engage in social work and participate in government so that they contribute to the development of the country both as citizens and as an institution.

Having survived the coup d’etat of April 2002 and an economic coup or oil strike in December of the same year at the hands of discredited politicians and trade unionists from the ancien regime, business tycoons, media magnates and the upper echelons of the Catholic Church, Chavez understands the historical importance of a people’s army that not only defends and supports the economic, social and political struggles of the people but is also prepared to confront the subversive and destabilizing activities of hostile external forces based in Washington.

According to Venezuelan-American writer Eva Gollinger the US was not only involved in both the coup attempts of 2002, a referendum called by the opposition in 2004 to oust Chavez, and an electoral boycott in 2005, but also continues to fund opposition groups in Venezuela to the tune of $1 million annually through the National Endowment for Democracy. This is on top of an additional $5 million for 2005 from the US Agency for International Development. Interestingly presidential elections take place in December of this year.

In many ways “the process” as it is called in Venezuela does not follow the classic definition of a socialist revolution in the making. With political parties and pliant trade unions totally discredited over the past forty years of corruption and repression, support for Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution has come from the majority of the people who were of black, indigenous or mestizo descent, disorganized and out of reach of traditional politics.

As a result it is the poor and disenfranchised, the peasants and the shantytown dwellers, who have been mobilized through ad hoc Bolivarian Circles, electoral patrols and educational missions rather than an organized working class in alliance with a wide range of progressive forces under the leadership of a vanguard party.

If the future is to be socialism with Venezuelan characteristics following an emerging national debate then the role of organised labour is crucial. The recently-formed National Union of Workers (UNT) will need substantial support as a rival to the reactionary Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) in organizing both the informal and formal sectors. Again while the social programmes or missions are producing incredible results a lack of national co-ordination leaves an uneven development across the country that could eventually prove divisive and self-defeating. And with 70% of the media in the hands of the 20% comprising the rich white former elite who are intent on undermining “the process” there is a danger that this imbalance threatens the very existence of a fragile experiment in a democratic revolution for the twenty-first century.

As Cuba’s national liberation struggle flowered into a socialist revolution a similar process appears to be taking place in Venezuela under completely different circumstances with two parallel worlds existing alongside one another in the hope that the new society that is now being painfully built amid the smoldering embers of the old will ultimately prove superior. In the face of considerable opposition Chavez is reaching out to all sectors in the interests of national unity while carefully crafting an alternative to the annexationist US-inspired Free Trade Area of the Americas together with Cuba and Bolivia based on solidarity, justice and a shared nationalism.

Meanwhile as the protest songs of Ali Primera continue to be sung at Mass, and the defeat of the April Coup four years ago is celebrated with religious fervour during Holy Week, the election posters read “Democracy, Participation, Christianity is Socialism”. For Carmen Jimenez, a mother of three children, from the barrio Libertad Simon Bolivar in Barquisimeto, this is no mere propaganda having mobilized fifty families to reclaim an expanse of waste land to create a warm and human community out of nothing. New houses will soon replace the tin shacks and a local church will have pride of place. It is just one more example of people power now that the sleeping giant has been roused from its sleep.

With or without Chavez Venezuela can never be the same again although the aim is 10 million votes in December’s presidential elections for the feather that is now tickling US imperialism to death. With a third electoral victory to celebrate Charlie Hardy would have plenty of material for his new book but with a less controversial title!

Geoff Bottoms joined the Venezuela: Democracy, Development and Regional Integration Global Reality Tour organized by Global Exchange in San Francisco, USA from 8 — 19 April 2006.Contact: www.globalexchange.org

Published in The News & Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina)

CHAPEL HILL–Venezuela has become a global hot spot. I have just returned from there, and want to share some information not readily available. I went with a group under the auspices of a Global Exchange study tour. We met with various government officials, including President Hugo Chavez and Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez, and with members of the opposition. We traveled to barrios, to agricultural co-ops, to clinics, to schools and to religious missions.

The last 60 years have seen many ups and downs in Venezuela, with parliamentary government interrupted by a dictatorship.

Major political parties were tied to the oligarchy and church hierarchy. Corruption and waste were rampant. A guerrilla movement and religious missions worked to improve conditions for the poor, laying the groundwork for an electoral revolution in 1998.

Venezuela has had a tumultuous seven years since that first election of Chavez as president. A new constitution was drafted, based on principles of “democracy from the bottom up,” with less emphasis on elected politicians and political parties. This has resulted in a surge of participation by ordinary people in transforming their lives.

A country with vast oil deposits, Venezuela had previously wasted this resource, with little of it going to sustainable development. Currently 30 percent of oil income is going to support social services for the poor. Education is a priority, with three “missions” named after past heroes.

Mission Robinson (named for Bolivar’s teacher) aims to eliminate illiteracy. In one barrio we heard a 45-year-old woman with 10 children brag about how the mission had taught her to read, beginning with how to hold a pencil. Mission Rivas aims to give everyone a high school education. We met six teenagers in Sonare who had dropped out of school but, under Rivas, were about to graduate from high school. Under Mission Sucre they were planning to go on to higher education and train to be teachers, an architect, a nurse and a doctor. Their pride was moving. A new Bolivarian University has been established to accommodate the rising number of college students.

Under a health mission, 20,000 Cuban doctors are serving in urban slums and in countryside clinics. We visited two of these. The Cubans are giving free care, including medicine, glasses and dental care, while training Venezuelans to take over. Mission Mercal distributes food to the poor at 30 percent of the market price through 2,000 government supermarkets around the country. Venezuela is working with Argentina and Brazil to establish ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) as an alternative to the Free Trade Area of the Americas advocated by the United States. The former is based on the concept of fair trade, not free trade. ALBA is intended to meet the needs of the less rich South American countries and protect their resources from corporate exploitation.

Not everyone is happy with the new regime. Members of the oligarchy have lost control of the oil monies and are nervous about empowerment of the poor. We met with opposition leaders, mostly from the upper middle-class, who expressed concern about “incidents of human rights violations” such as overaggressive police and aggressive Chavistas harassing journalists.

However, the opposition still speaks out, the media are openly critical and there are relatively few political prisoners.

Most of these are a result of the unsuccessful coup of 2002 that received support from the United States and which was reversed by a massive uprising in support of the constitution and Chavez.

Chavez and the press talk about an expected attack by the United States, based on statements by some State Department officials. It is hard to see how the United States could justify further efforts to overthrow a government that is working so hard to raise the living standard of the 80 percent of Venezuelans who are poor. It is better that we watch closely and hope Venezuela succeeds as an example of decreasing the gap between the rich and poor in a gradual, evolutionary way.

(Barry Freeman is a retired social worker, a political activist and frequent traveler to Latin America.)