Re: Venezuela
Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2021 1:38 pm
The Imprint of an Insurrectional Past: A Conversation with Iraida Vargas and Mario Sanoja
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 1, 2021
Cira Pascual Marquina
Mario Sanoja and Iraida Vargas (Escuela Venezolana de Planificación)
Two eminent anthropologists talk about Venezuela’s history and its relation to the present.
Iraida Vargas and Mario Sanoja are not detached social scientists, indifferent to what they investigate. Instead, their work in anthropology and archeology is overtly engaged, seeking to link Venezuela’s history and prehistory to its present, including to its current political projects. Their 2015 book, The Long March toward Communal Society [La larga marcha hacia la sociedad comunal], scours Venezuela’s history and prehistory for precedents to its contemporary socialist communes. In this interview for Venezuelanalysis, Vargas and Sanoja talk about the methodology they apply in their research and about the historical and cultural roots of the communes that Venezuelans are building today.
Although a historical perspective is important for both Marxists and Chavistas, some sectors of the left have failed to recognize the contributions of the past when projecting a post-capitalist future. However, in your practice as anthropologists, you insist that a society’s history must be taken into consideration when projecting a socialist future.
Vargas: Karl Marx’s analysis includes the study of historical events prior to the formation of capitalism. Marc Bloch developed a concept of progressive history where the starting point for studying the present would be in the past, and he argued: “the past is, by definition, something that cannot be modified. However, our understanding of the past is something that is in a constant process of change, in a constant process of transformation and perfecting.”
In a similar way, I would say that a dynamic and living conception of history is key to our methodology.
In the early days of our work as anthropologists and archeologists – and that was way back in the 60’s when the Rómulo Betancourt government was killing people – the best way for us [as researchers] to participate in the transformation of our reality was to engage in an anthropology for the here and now. What does this mean? In our archeological expeditions, we had a commitment with the present, but we did this intuitively.
That conception brought us to Gramsci, who thought that the past should allow us to imagine how to transform the present. Our methodology (and the methodology of the Latin American Social Anthropology school) developed assuming a theoretical position. In other words, we were not neutral, and we always defined the “why,” the “to what end” and (very important for us) the “for whom.”
We were formed by Federico Brito Figueroa, Miguel Acosta Saignes, and Rodolfo Quintero. These were three communist UCV [Venezuela’s Central University] professors who not only knew a great deal about Venezuelan history but were committed to building a better society. They taught us that as archeologists we had to have objectives relevant to the here and now.
While it is true that our study objects were generally buried under tons of dirt and couldn’t talk to us, there was still much to be learned. Let me give you an example: when studying the hunter and gatherer community that lived in Apure [south of Venezuela] hundreds of years ago, the archeological work showed that the women in that community established a norm that prohibited hunting baby chigüires. Now you can ask, is this really relevant today? As it turns out, that code teaches us about the environmental protection practices developed by the indigenous women of Apure, which is all too relevant nowadays.
We carried out our research and archeological expeditions looking for answers or seeking questions that would be relevant to our present. A relevant question to organize an archeological expedition today could be, how – from what we learn at the dig – can we develop practices of “good living” [buen vivir, the Aymara concept that was rescued by Hugo Chávez].
In short, in our methodology, understanding the social structures, practices, and values of a community became more important than “objectivity,” and this has much to do with our commitment to the present and even to the future.
The European colonial invasions provoked protests, riots, and rebellions. You argue that the legacy of these rebellions contributed not only to the independence struggle but also left a mark in the present with their emancipatory projects. Can you talk about this?
Vargas: Insurrections were continual from the early days of colonization, and the maroon rebellions are the better-known ones. Let’s take the Negro Miguel rebellion in 1553, where enslaved blacks and large contingents of Jiraharas [indigeneous population] rebelled against the colonizers, establishing a kingdom with its seat in Buría [Lara state].
Of course, the rebels always had a project, but historians often deny that because their interpretation is permeated by racist conceptions. They will say: Bolívar had a project, but what was the project of the Negro Miguel? In fact, he proposed to make a kingdom based on what he had experienced in Benin before being turned into a slave.
Sanoja: In the late 18th century there were black Jacobin insurrections influenced by the Haitian Revolution. They began in the West of the country, but they rapidly grew and challenged the colonial regime. The rebels had a project: establishing an all-black republic that would follow the “law of the French.” As opposed to the Negro Miguel rebellion, their aim was to annihilate all whites.
Later, in 1830, the country was rapidly swept, from East to West, by another rebellion against creole domination that also aimed to create a black republic.
All these rebellions had projects and they challenged the established creole order. They have left their rebellious imprint in the here and now.
In The Long March toward Communal Society you write: “The persistence of communitarian traditions of both aboriginal and black-Venezuelan societies contributes to supporting the development of extensive communal systems, both rural and urban, propelled by the Bolivarian Revolution.” This is interesting but could a culture as urban as that of most Venezuelans today really preserve elements of that communitarian past?
Vargas: If anything has been revived thanks to the Bolivarian Revolution, it is communal life. The Chavista people have put into practice Chávez’s slogan Commune or Nothing! and this, in turn, is a product of popular organization or popular power.
We see communal construction not only in rural areas but also in cities. To understand the phenomenon we should point to the fact that urban barrio cultures here have a campesino origin. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s people from rural areas came to the cities, and with them they brought vestiges of communal life. In fact, you can see this in the distribution of domestic spaces, which are somewhat reminiscent of the houses in the Llanos [center-south of the country] and Andes [Venezuela’s mountainous region] where common spaces with flower gardens are often found.
In Caracas barrios, rural forms of solidarity also express themselves in the cayapas [indigenous Caribe word referring to collective labor activities] and in other practices of mutual aid. In fact, the collaborative construction of houses in some Housing Mission initiatives [Campamentos de Pioneros] is a good example of mutual or collaborative work processes.
Communal solidarity also operates among women in the barrios. Those who work outside the community will often get help from other women to care for their children, who may even eat at the community canteens that offer food to those who need it. The canteens likewise maintain campesino culinary traditions.
Finally, when we think about the living traditions that we inherit from communal societies, we cannot overlook the festivities nominally dedicated to patron saints. These distinctive cultural practices have much to do with sharing, joy of life, and the love for music. Venezuelans tend to be cheerful, lively, and relaxed, and these are traits that don’t have their origin in the colonizers.
Sanoja: One case that is relevant to the debate about communes in urban spaces is 23 de Enero in western Caracas. Up until 1954 poor black communities inhabited Caño Amarillo [a part of 23 de Enero barrio] maintaining many practices of solidarity and powerful cultural traditions. As it turns out, 23 de Enero is an epicenter of communal organization in Caracas today. That isn’t coincidental: the vestiges of communal organization are a key factor.
When Chávez began promoting the construction of communes, the people in 23 de Enero were better positioned to advance. No doubt the recent history of rebelliousness against the governments of the Fourth Republic [1958-99] strengthened these communities. However, I am convinced that the pre-existing forms of communality and cultural identity also played an important role.
If you go to El Panal Commune, you will find not only a new political organization but also a radio, a TV station, etc. They have a socio-political project in which one can see past communal practices reemerge and shape the new society.
Vargas: In Venezuela, there is a socio-cultural movement that is very powerful and the enemy is generally blind to it. Collectivized life here is rather common even if it is not immediately evident. US sanctions have inadvertently promoted communal forms that were underlying in our society. The objective of the blockade was to end the revolution but, as it turns out, we have seen a growing identification between the people and communalized initiatives in recent years.
The Caquetío civilization flourished in the center region of what we now know as Venezuela through the 16th century. They lived communally, produced fine pottery, and grew corn. In that same territory, some of Venezuela’s most important communal initiatives are taking shape right now. You have argued that this is not accidental, that the vestiges of that society are important in the present.
Vargas: What is the first thing that colonizers do when they take control of a people? They break the value system, particularly the existing forms of communal life and solidarity. They do it because they understand that such value systems go against their interests. In turn, we should be aware that maintaining or recovering value systems based on solidarity, systems where the vestiges of communal life remain, is necessary if we are committed to a socialist future.
In fact, the story of the Caquetíos, who settled for hundreds of years where we now see cooperatives such as Cecosesola [a large cooperative union in Lara state] and communes such as Ataroa or El Maizal, is a good argument for our thesis.
Our archeological research allowed us to understand that today’s communes do not constitute an external implant in that territory. On the contrary, as shown by the anthropological and historical record, many manifestations of communal culture that we now find are rooted on aboriginal traditions.
Today the communes constitute one of the key territorial forms of popular resistance against capitalism. They are based on social property, on the collective accumulation of knowledge, on a non-capitalist socio-spatial organization of productive forces, and they embody a strong class and cultural identity. Many of these traits can be found in the socio-cultural organization of the peoples that inhabited the territory before colonization.
Sanoja: Indeed the concept of the commune is prehispanic. The Caquetíos people developed a very rich communal culture in what we now know as Falcón, Lara, Yaracuy, and part of Barinas [center and west of Venezuela], and it is in those territories where we find more communes.
In the 60s, we carried out excavations in that region, but we also got to know the local cultures. What we found is that, while the creole-settler socio-economic formations were the most visible ones, there was also an underlying communal substrate. We learned that communal structures were never fully erased, and that is why we see projects like El Maizal flourishing there.
In other words, the meeting of the past and the present is opening the way for new social, political, and economic formations in that territory.
Vargas: Communal living is defining of humanity, but capitalism destroys the commons. That is why the vestiges of communal life are so important in the projection of a socialist society.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/10/ ... io-sanoja/
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The Media Myth of ‘Once Prosperous’ and Democratic Venezuela Before Chávez
October 1, 2021
By Joe Emersberger & Justin Podur – Sep 28, 2021
Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur look at some of the mainstream mistruths about Venezuela.
The following piece is adapted from the authors’ new book, Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media and 20 Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela, published by Monthly Review Press.
In his State of the Union address on February 6, 2019, Donald Trump said:
We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom—and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.
Trump’s ridiculous comment was not considered controversial, because the Western media, including the anti-Trump outlets like the New York Times, have spent many years conveying a lie: that Venezuela had been very prosperous and democratic until Hugo Chávez, and then his successor Nicolás Maduro, came along and ruined everything. If readers believe that, then they may indeed wonder, “Why shouldn’t the US government help Venezuelans return to that prosperous state?”
But this attitude is the result of common deceptions about Venezuela’s economic history, and it ignores how the rise of Chávez actually brought democratic reform, not regression, to Venezuela. The story the Western media tell should instead make people wonder how Chavismo could have become the dominant political force if everything had once been wonderful in Venezuela.
‘Once the richest’
This vague claim about Venezuela’s economic history, in various forms—“once prosperous,” “once the richest”—has become ubiquitous in the Western media. A Nexis search of English-language newspapers for “Venezuela” and “once prosperous” turned up 563 hits between 2015 and 2019.
The “once prosperous” claim cannot refer to Venezuela’s natural wealth: The huge oil and gold reserves are still there. The clear intent of describing Venezuela as “once prosperous” is to suggest that living conditions were “once” those of a rich country.
So by what measure was Venezuela “once” wealthy? When exactly was that? What is the ranking criteria being used to say it was one of the wealthiest? Was it once in the top 10% (by whatever measure)? The top 50%?
It’s always implied that Venezuela’s economic glory days were in the pre-Chávez era, but the financial journalist Jason Mitchell has made this claim explicitly. Writing for the UK Spectator (2/18/17), he said, “Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world.” So Venezuela had supposedly enjoyed its wealthy status in 1997, the year before Hugo Chávez was first elected. That’s utter nonsense.
In reality, when Chávez was first elected in 1998, Venezuela had a 50% poverty rate, despite having been a major oil exporter for several decades. It started exporting oil in the 1920s, and it was only in the early 1970s that the biggest Middle Eastern oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, surpassed Venezuela in production. In 1992, the New York Times (2/5/92) reported that “only 57% of Venezuelans are able to afford more than one meal a day.” Does that sound like “one of the richest countries in the world”? Obviously not, but it is worth saying more about the statistics that can be used to mislead people about Venezuela’s economic history.
Income and distribution
Economists typically use GDP per capita to assess how rich a country is. It is basically a measure of the average income per person. If journalists cared to be at all precise when they say that Venezuela had once been “rich,” then that’s a statistic they’d cite.
The chart below shows World Bank data for Venezuela’s real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per capita since 1960, and it contradicts Western media’s relentlessly insinuated story that a transition from prosperity to poverty took place because of Chavismo. Real GDP per capita peaked in 1977, near the end of an oil boom, then went into a long-term decline. When Chávez took office in 1999, it was at one of its lowest points in decades. Then it was driven even lower by the first two attempts to oust Chávez: the April 2002 coup and, several months later, a shutdown of the state oil company—the “oil strike.” By 2013, real GDP per capita recovered dramatically, nearly reaching its 1977 peak.
Venezuelan GDP per Capita (constant local currency). (Emersberger and Podur / Extraordinary Threat)
Under Chávez, the poverty rate was cut in half, so there certainly is a correlation between GDP per capita and living conditions in Venezuela. But a country’s GDP per capita, by itself, says nothing about how income is distributed. And that can also make international comparisons very misleading.
For example, 1980 was very close to Venezuela’s historic peak in real GDP per capita, which ranked 32nd in the world that year when adjusted for purchasing power parity, as economists recommend for international comparisons. But its infant mortality rate ranked 58th in the world, far below Cuba, whose infant mortality rate was 28th that year. Infant mortality is a basic health indicator that helps reveal the extent to which a country’s wealth is actually being used to benefit its people. In fact, Venezuela’s infant mortality rate in 1980 was more than twice as high as that in Cuba.
Another revealing year is 1989, when the massacre of poor demonstrators later known as the Caracazo took place. In terms of GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity), Venezuela ranked highest in Central and South America—while its government perpetrated the most infamous slaughter of poor people in its modern history.
The massacre exposed the essentially fraudulent nature of Venezuela’s prosperity and democracy. It explains the rise of Chávez, and also reveals how the US government and media reflexively helped the Venezuelan government that perpetrated the massacre.
From Caracazo to Chavismo
It began on February 27, 1989. Venezuelan security forces killed hundreds, and possibly thousands, of poor people over a five-day period. The poor had risen up in revolt against an IMF-imposed “structural adjustment” program that involved stiff hikes to fuel prices and bus fares. The program was imposed by President Carlos Andres Pérez, a man who had campaigned saying that IMF programs were like a “neutron bomb that killed people but left buildings standing.”
New York Times photo (2/5/92) of the aftermath of Hugo Chávez’s unsuccessful 1992 coup. (New York Times)
US President George H. W. Bush called Pérez on March 3, 1989, while the Caracazo massacre was still taking place, to commiserate with Pérez and offer Venezuela loans. The US media’s Venezuela narrative suited Bush’s foreign policy. A New York Times article (11/11/90) about Venezuela by Clifford Krauss described Pérez as “a charismatic social democrat.” Not a word was written about the Caracazo massacre. The article focused on Bush’s gratitude toward Pérez for, among other things, boosting Venezuela’s oil output to help protect the United States from negative economic consequences after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
On February 5, 1992, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez first became widely known to Venezuelans by attempting a military coup. The day Chávez’s coup failed, a news article in the New York Times (2/5/92) referred to Venezuela as “one of Latin America’s relatively stable democratic governments,” and to Pérez himself as “a leading democrat,” despite the Caracazo massacre only three years earlier, which is never mentioned. The Times also quoted then–President Bush calling Pérez “one of the great democratic leaders of our hemisphere.”
Not another Pérez
When Chávez first took office after elections in 1999, the US government did not go immediately on the attack. When you consider the flashy anti-IMF campaign rhetoric of Carlos Andres Pérez—the president who then massacred people to implement an IMF austerity plan—it’s unsurprising that the US would feel Chávez out for a while. Maybe Chávez would be similarly phony—and therefore worthy of US support.
By 2001, the US government realized that Chávez was not going to be like Pérez, who made a sick joke of his anti-IMF rhetoric once he was in office. Chávez was actually going to try to follow through on his promises to change the system and assert his country’s sovereignty. Chávez aggressively opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan, and even said that the US ambassador came calling and disrespectfully asked him to reverse his position. That provoked Chávez to order the ambassador out of the room. This was a key event in the souring of Venezuela/US relations (Bart Jones, Hugo!, Steerforth Press, 2007, p. 297).
Domestically, Chávez also had a short honeymoon period with Venezuela’s old elite and middle class. As Gregory Wilpert put it in Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2006, p. 20):
When Chávez first took office, he enjoyed approval ratings of 90%, which would suggest that racism and classism for eventual middle-class opposition to Chávez could not be an important factor. Venezuela’s middle class had been sliding into poverty for two decades and supported Chávez in 1998 because they were desperate for change.
But soon enough, the old political elite, like the US ambassador, deeply resented Chávez asserting his authority. They had expected Chávez’s deference. His African and Indigenous roots, and his working-class origin, could be overlooked, until he shunned the usual power brokers when making his cabinet appointments.
The conflict intensified when a constituent assembly, elected by voters, drafted a new constitution which was then approved in a referendum. Transitional authorities were appointed under the new democratic order. As Wilpert described it (Changing Venezuela, p. 20):
The old elite then used its control of the country’s mass media to turn the middle class against Chávez, creating a campaign that took advantage of the latent racism and classism in Venezuelan culture.
By 2004, predictably, Chávez relied much more heavily on the support of poor people to win elections (Changing Venezuela, p. 268–269).
New constitution, new era
In the first year he took office, Chávez initiated a three-step process to give Venezuela a new constitution. In April 1999, he went to voters asking if they wanted to initiate the process by electing a constitutional assembly, and if they approved of the rules specifying how the assembly would be elected. His side won that referendum with 92% of the vote on the first question, and with 86% on the second (which specified basic electoral rules) (Changing Venezuela, p. 21).
Elections were held in July to choose the members of the assembly. Chávez supporters won 125 of the assembly’s 131 seats. The assembly then drafted a constitution and, four months later, it was approved by 72% of voters in another referendum.
The assembly also appointed a transitional body, known as a Congressillo (small congress), that appointed a new attorney general, human rights defender, comptroller general, national electoral council and supreme court.
In July 2000, Chávez went to voters again for a fresh presidential mandate under the new constitution and prevailed easily with 59.8% of the vote. But these were “mega-elections,” as Wilpert (Changing Venezuela, p. 22) put it, ones that “eliminated the country’s old political elite almost entirely from the upper reaches of Venezuela’s public institutions”:
Thirty-three thousand candidates ran for over 6,000 offices that day. In the end, Chávez was reconfirmed in office with 59.8% of the vote. Chávez’s supporters won 104 out of 165 National Assembly seats and 17 out of 23 state governorships. On the local level, Chávez candidates were less successful, winning only about half of the municipal mayors’ posts.
Ominously, a New York Times editorial in August 1999 already presumed to lecture Venezuelans and distort a very democratic reform process as a power grab:
They should be very wary of the methods Mr. Chávez is using. He is drawing power into his own hands, and misusing a special constitutional assembly meeting now in Caracas that is composed almost entirely of his supporters. Mr. Chávez, a former paratroop commander who staged an unsuccessful military coup in 1992, has so far shown little respect for the compromises necessary in a democracy, which Venezuela has had for 40 years.
Clearly, any genuine reform process in Latin America was going to be vilified by liberal outlets like the New York Times.
Key lies
The lies peddled about Venezuela’s past make US aggression against it possible in the present. It is worth summing up some of these key lies:
• Venezuela was “once prosperous” and ruined by socialism. In fact, Venezuela was an unequal country in which most people were poor despite the country’s oil wealth, which had generated huge export revenues since the 1920s.
• Venezuela was a democracy before Chavismo. In fact, Venezuela’s democracy was a gravely flawed system in which politicians alternated holding power according to an undemocratic agreement, and rammed austerity down the throats of Venezuela’s poor by committing massacres, such as the Caracazo.
• Chavismo ruined Venezuela’s democracy. Chávez indeed attempted to carry out a coup in 1992, but he came to power through an election in 1998, and afterward made changes through extensive democratic processes.
Featured image: Hugo Chávez swept to power in 1998. (Reference)
(Venezuelanalysis.com)
https://orinocotribune.com/the-media-my ... -chavez-2/
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on OCTOBER 1, 2021
Cira Pascual Marquina
Mario Sanoja and Iraida Vargas (Escuela Venezolana de Planificación)
Two eminent anthropologists talk about Venezuela’s history and its relation to the present.
Iraida Vargas and Mario Sanoja are not detached social scientists, indifferent to what they investigate. Instead, their work in anthropology and archeology is overtly engaged, seeking to link Venezuela’s history and prehistory to its present, including to its current political projects. Their 2015 book, The Long March toward Communal Society [La larga marcha hacia la sociedad comunal], scours Venezuela’s history and prehistory for precedents to its contemporary socialist communes. In this interview for Venezuelanalysis, Vargas and Sanoja talk about the methodology they apply in their research and about the historical and cultural roots of the communes that Venezuelans are building today.
Although a historical perspective is important for both Marxists and Chavistas, some sectors of the left have failed to recognize the contributions of the past when projecting a post-capitalist future. However, in your practice as anthropologists, you insist that a society’s history must be taken into consideration when projecting a socialist future.
Vargas: Karl Marx’s analysis includes the study of historical events prior to the formation of capitalism. Marc Bloch developed a concept of progressive history where the starting point for studying the present would be in the past, and he argued: “the past is, by definition, something that cannot be modified. However, our understanding of the past is something that is in a constant process of change, in a constant process of transformation and perfecting.”
In a similar way, I would say that a dynamic and living conception of history is key to our methodology.
In the early days of our work as anthropologists and archeologists – and that was way back in the 60’s when the Rómulo Betancourt government was killing people – the best way for us [as researchers] to participate in the transformation of our reality was to engage in an anthropology for the here and now. What does this mean? In our archeological expeditions, we had a commitment with the present, but we did this intuitively.
That conception brought us to Gramsci, who thought that the past should allow us to imagine how to transform the present. Our methodology (and the methodology of the Latin American Social Anthropology school) developed assuming a theoretical position. In other words, we were not neutral, and we always defined the “why,” the “to what end” and (very important for us) the “for whom.”
We were formed by Federico Brito Figueroa, Miguel Acosta Saignes, and Rodolfo Quintero. These were three communist UCV [Venezuela’s Central University] professors who not only knew a great deal about Venezuelan history but were committed to building a better society. They taught us that as archeologists we had to have objectives relevant to the here and now.
While it is true that our study objects were generally buried under tons of dirt and couldn’t talk to us, there was still much to be learned. Let me give you an example: when studying the hunter and gatherer community that lived in Apure [south of Venezuela] hundreds of years ago, the archeological work showed that the women in that community established a norm that prohibited hunting baby chigüires. Now you can ask, is this really relevant today? As it turns out, that code teaches us about the environmental protection practices developed by the indigenous women of Apure, which is all too relevant nowadays.
We carried out our research and archeological expeditions looking for answers or seeking questions that would be relevant to our present. A relevant question to organize an archeological expedition today could be, how – from what we learn at the dig – can we develop practices of “good living” [buen vivir, the Aymara concept that was rescued by Hugo Chávez].
In short, in our methodology, understanding the social structures, practices, and values of a community became more important than “objectivity,” and this has much to do with our commitment to the present and even to the future.
The European colonial invasions provoked protests, riots, and rebellions. You argue that the legacy of these rebellions contributed not only to the independence struggle but also left a mark in the present with their emancipatory projects. Can you talk about this?
Vargas: Insurrections were continual from the early days of colonization, and the maroon rebellions are the better-known ones. Let’s take the Negro Miguel rebellion in 1553, where enslaved blacks and large contingents of Jiraharas [indigeneous population] rebelled against the colonizers, establishing a kingdom with its seat in Buría [Lara state].
Of course, the rebels always had a project, but historians often deny that because their interpretation is permeated by racist conceptions. They will say: Bolívar had a project, but what was the project of the Negro Miguel? In fact, he proposed to make a kingdom based on what he had experienced in Benin before being turned into a slave.
Sanoja: In the late 18th century there were black Jacobin insurrections influenced by the Haitian Revolution. They began in the West of the country, but they rapidly grew and challenged the colonial regime. The rebels had a project: establishing an all-black republic that would follow the “law of the French.” As opposed to the Negro Miguel rebellion, their aim was to annihilate all whites.
Later, in 1830, the country was rapidly swept, from East to West, by another rebellion against creole domination that also aimed to create a black republic.
All these rebellions had projects and they challenged the established creole order. They have left their rebellious imprint in the here and now.
In The Long March toward Communal Society you write: “The persistence of communitarian traditions of both aboriginal and black-Venezuelan societies contributes to supporting the development of extensive communal systems, both rural and urban, propelled by the Bolivarian Revolution.” This is interesting but could a culture as urban as that of most Venezuelans today really preserve elements of that communitarian past?
Vargas: If anything has been revived thanks to the Bolivarian Revolution, it is communal life. The Chavista people have put into practice Chávez’s slogan Commune or Nothing! and this, in turn, is a product of popular organization or popular power.
We see communal construction not only in rural areas but also in cities. To understand the phenomenon we should point to the fact that urban barrio cultures here have a campesino origin. In the 50s, 60s, and 70s people from rural areas came to the cities, and with them they brought vestiges of communal life. In fact, you can see this in the distribution of domestic spaces, which are somewhat reminiscent of the houses in the Llanos [center-south of the country] and Andes [Venezuela’s mountainous region] where common spaces with flower gardens are often found.
In Caracas barrios, rural forms of solidarity also express themselves in the cayapas [indigenous Caribe word referring to collective labor activities] and in other practices of mutual aid. In fact, the collaborative construction of houses in some Housing Mission initiatives [Campamentos de Pioneros] is a good example of mutual or collaborative work processes.
Communal solidarity also operates among women in the barrios. Those who work outside the community will often get help from other women to care for their children, who may even eat at the community canteens that offer food to those who need it. The canteens likewise maintain campesino culinary traditions.
Finally, when we think about the living traditions that we inherit from communal societies, we cannot overlook the festivities nominally dedicated to patron saints. These distinctive cultural practices have much to do with sharing, joy of life, and the love for music. Venezuelans tend to be cheerful, lively, and relaxed, and these are traits that don’t have their origin in the colonizers.
Sanoja: One case that is relevant to the debate about communes in urban spaces is 23 de Enero in western Caracas. Up until 1954 poor black communities inhabited Caño Amarillo [a part of 23 de Enero barrio] maintaining many practices of solidarity and powerful cultural traditions. As it turns out, 23 de Enero is an epicenter of communal organization in Caracas today. That isn’t coincidental: the vestiges of communal organization are a key factor.
When Chávez began promoting the construction of communes, the people in 23 de Enero were better positioned to advance. No doubt the recent history of rebelliousness against the governments of the Fourth Republic [1958-99] strengthened these communities. However, I am convinced that the pre-existing forms of communality and cultural identity also played an important role.
If you go to El Panal Commune, you will find not only a new political organization but also a radio, a TV station, etc. They have a socio-political project in which one can see past communal practices reemerge and shape the new society.
Vargas: In Venezuela, there is a socio-cultural movement that is very powerful and the enemy is generally blind to it. Collectivized life here is rather common even if it is not immediately evident. US sanctions have inadvertently promoted communal forms that were underlying in our society. The objective of the blockade was to end the revolution but, as it turns out, we have seen a growing identification between the people and communalized initiatives in recent years.
The Caquetío civilization flourished in the center region of what we now know as Venezuela through the 16th century. They lived communally, produced fine pottery, and grew corn. In that same territory, some of Venezuela’s most important communal initiatives are taking shape right now. You have argued that this is not accidental, that the vestiges of that society are important in the present.
Vargas: What is the first thing that colonizers do when they take control of a people? They break the value system, particularly the existing forms of communal life and solidarity. They do it because they understand that such value systems go against their interests. In turn, we should be aware that maintaining or recovering value systems based on solidarity, systems where the vestiges of communal life remain, is necessary if we are committed to a socialist future.
In fact, the story of the Caquetíos, who settled for hundreds of years where we now see cooperatives such as Cecosesola [a large cooperative union in Lara state] and communes such as Ataroa or El Maizal, is a good argument for our thesis.
Our archeological research allowed us to understand that today’s communes do not constitute an external implant in that territory. On the contrary, as shown by the anthropological and historical record, many manifestations of communal culture that we now find are rooted on aboriginal traditions.
Today the communes constitute one of the key territorial forms of popular resistance against capitalism. They are based on social property, on the collective accumulation of knowledge, on a non-capitalist socio-spatial organization of productive forces, and they embody a strong class and cultural identity. Many of these traits can be found in the socio-cultural organization of the peoples that inhabited the territory before colonization.
Sanoja: Indeed the concept of the commune is prehispanic. The Caquetíos people developed a very rich communal culture in what we now know as Falcón, Lara, Yaracuy, and part of Barinas [center and west of Venezuela], and it is in those territories where we find more communes.
In the 60s, we carried out excavations in that region, but we also got to know the local cultures. What we found is that, while the creole-settler socio-economic formations were the most visible ones, there was also an underlying communal substrate. We learned that communal structures were never fully erased, and that is why we see projects like El Maizal flourishing there.
In other words, the meeting of the past and the present is opening the way for new social, political, and economic formations in that territory.
Vargas: Communal living is defining of humanity, but capitalism destroys the commons. That is why the vestiges of communal life are so important in the projection of a socialist society.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/10/ ... io-sanoja/
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The Media Myth of ‘Once Prosperous’ and Democratic Venezuela Before Chávez
October 1, 2021
By Joe Emersberger & Justin Podur – Sep 28, 2021
Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur look at some of the mainstream mistruths about Venezuela.
The following piece is adapted from the authors’ new book, Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the Media and 20 Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela, published by Monthly Review Press.
In his State of the Union address on February 6, 2019, Donald Trump said:
We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom—and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.
Trump’s ridiculous comment was not considered controversial, because the Western media, including the anti-Trump outlets like the New York Times, have spent many years conveying a lie: that Venezuela had been very prosperous and democratic until Hugo Chávez, and then his successor Nicolás Maduro, came along and ruined everything. If readers believe that, then they may indeed wonder, “Why shouldn’t the US government help Venezuelans return to that prosperous state?”
But this attitude is the result of common deceptions about Venezuela’s economic history, and it ignores how the rise of Chávez actually brought democratic reform, not regression, to Venezuela. The story the Western media tell should instead make people wonder how Chavismo could have become the dominant political force if everything had once been wonderful in Venezuela.
‘Once the richest’
This vague claim about Venezuela’s economic history, in various forms—“once prosperous,” “once the richest”—has become ubiquitous in the Western media. A Nexis search of English-language newspapers for “Venezuela” and “once prosperous” turned up 563 hits between 2015 and 2019.
The “once prosperous” claim cannot refer to Venezuela’s natural wealth: The huge oil and gold reserves are still there. The clear intent of describing Venezuela as “once prosperous” is to suggest that living conditions were “once” those of a rich country.
So by what measure was Venezuela “once” wealthy? When exactly was that? What is the ranking criteria being used to say it was one of the wealthiest? Was it once in the top 10% (by whatever measure)? The top 50%?
It’s always implied that Venezuela’s economic glory days were in the pre-Chávez era, but the financial journalist Jason Mitchell has made this claim explicitly. Writing for the UK Spectator (2/18/17), he said, “Twenty years ago Venezuela was one of the richest countries in the world.” So Venezuela had supposedly enjoyed its wealthy status in 1997, the year before Hugo Chávez was first elected. That’s utter nonsense.
In reality, when Chávez was first elected in 1998, Venezuela had a 50% poverty rate, despite having been a major oil exporter for several decades. It started exporting oil in the 1920s, and it was only in the early 1970s that the biggest Middle Eastern oil producers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, surpassed Venezuela in production. In 1992, the New York Times (2/5/92) reported that “only 57% of Venezuelans are able to afford more than one meal a day.” Does that sound like “one of the richest countries in the world”? Obviously not, but it is worth saying more about the statistics that can be used to mislead people about Venezuela’s economic history.
Income and distribution
Economists typically use GDP per capita to assess how rich a country is. It is basically a measure of the average income per person. If journalists cared to be at all precise when they say that Venezuela had once been “rich,” then that’s a statistic they’d cite.
The chart below shows World Bank data for Venezuela’s real (inflation-adjusted) GDP per capita since 1960, and it contradicts Western media’s relentlessly insinuated story that a transition from prosperity to poverty took place because of Chavismo. Real GDP per capita peaked in 1977, near the end of an oil boom, then went into a long-term decline. When Chávez took office in 1999, it was at one of its lowest points in decades. Then it was driven even lower by the first two attempts to oust Chávez: the April 2002 coup and, several months later, a shutdown of the state oil company—the “oil strike.” By 2013, real GDP per capita recovered dramatically, nearly reaching its 1977 peak.
Venezuelan GDP per Capita (constant local currency). (Emersberger and Podur / Extraordinary Threat)
Under Chávez, the poverty rate was cut in half, so there certainly is a correlation between GDP per capita and living conditions in Venezuela. But a country’s GDP per capita, by itself, says nothing about how income is distributed. And that can also make international comparisons very misleading.
For example, 1980 was very close to Venezuela’s historic peak in real GDP per capita, which ranked 32nd in the world that year when adjusted for purchasing power parity, as economists recommend for international comparisons. But its infant mortality rate ranked 58th in the world, far below Cuba, whose infant mortality rate was 28th that year. Infant mortality is a basic health indicator that helps reveal the extent to which a country’s wealth is actually being used to benefit its people. In fact, Venezuela’s infant mortality rate in 1980 was more than twice as high as that in Cuba.
Another revealing year is 1989, when the massacre of poor demonstrators later known as the Caracazo took place. In terms of GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity), Venezuela ranked highest in Central and South America—while its government perpetrated the most infamous slaughter of poor people in its modern history.
The massacre exposed the essentially fraudulent nature of Venezuela’s prosperity and democracy. It explains the rise of Chávez, and also reveals how the US government and media reflexively helped the Venezuelan government that perpetrated the massacre.
From Caracazo to Chavismo
It began on February 27, 1989. Venezuelan security forces killed hundreds, and possibly thousands, of poor people over a five-day period. The poor had risen up in revolt against an IMF-imposed “structural adjustment” program that involved stiff hikes to fuel prices and bus fares. The program was imposed by President Carlos Andres Pérez, a man who had campaigned saying that IMF programs were like a “neutron bomb that killed people but left buildings standing.”
New York Times photo (2/5/92) of the aftermath of Hugo Chávez’s unsuccessful 1992 coup. (New York Times)
US President George H. W. Bush called Pérez on March 3, 1989, while the Caracazo massacre was still taking place, to commiserate with Pérez and offer Venezuela loans. The US media’s Venezuela narrative suited Bush’s foreign policy. A New York Times article (11/11/90) about Venezuela by Clifford Krauss described Pérez as “a charismatic social democrat.” Not a word was written about the Caracazo massacre. The article focused on Bush’s gratitude toward Pérez for, among other things, boosting Venezuela’s oil output to help protect the United States from negative economic consequences after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
On February 5, 1992, Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez first became widely known to Venezuelans by attempting a military coup. The day Chávez’s coup failed, a news article in the New York Times (2/5/92) referred to Venezuela as “one of Latin America’s relatively stable democratic governments,” and to Pérez himself as “a leading democrat,” despite the Caracazo massacre only three years earlier, which is never mentioned. The Times also quoted then–President Bush calling Pérez “one of the great democratic leaders of our hemisphere.”
Not another Pérez
When Chávez first took office after elections in 1999, the US government did not go immediately on the attack. When you consider the flashy anti-IMF campaign rhetoric of Carlos Andres Pérez—the president who then massacred people to implement an IMF austerity plan—it’s unsurprising that the US would feel Chávez out for a while. Maybe Chávez would be similarly phony—and therefore worthy of US support.
By 2001, the US government realized that Chávez was not going to be like Pérez, who made a sick joke of his anti-IMF rhetoric once he was in office. Chávez was actually going to try to follow through on his promises to change the system and assert his country’s sovereignty. Chávez aggressively opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan, and even said that the US ambassador came calling and disrespectfully asked him to reverse his position. That provoked Chávez to order the ambassador out of the room. This was a key event in the souring of Venezuela/US relations (Bart Jones, Hugo!, Steerforth Press, 2007, p. 297).
Domestically, Chávez also had a short honeymoon period with Venezuela’s old elite and middle class. As Gregory Wilpert put it in Changing Venezuela by Taking Power (Verso, 2006, p. 20):
When Chávez first took office, he enjoyed approval ratings of 90%, which would suggest that racism and classism for eventual middle-class opposition to Chávez could not be an important factor. Venezuela’s middle class had been sliding into poverty for two decades and supported Chávez in 1998 because they were desperate for change.
But soon enough, the old political elite, like the US ambassador, deeply resented Chávez asserting his authority. They had expected Chávez’s deference. His African and Indigenous roots, and his working-class origin, could be overlooked, until he shunned the usual power brokers when making his cabinet appointments.
The conflict intensified when a constituent assembly, elected by voters, drafted a new constitution which was then approved in a referendum. Transitional authorities were appointed under the new democratic order. As Wilpert described it (Changing Venezuela, p. 20):
The old elite then used its control of the country’s mass media to turn the middle class against Chávez, creating a campaign that took advantage of the latent racism and classism in Venezuelan culture.
By 2004, predictably, Chávez relied much more heavily on the support of poor people to win elections (Changing Venezuela, p. 268–269).
New constitution, new era
In the first year he took office, Chávez initiated a three-step process to give Venezuela a new constitution. In April 1999, he went to voters asking if they wanted to initiate the process by electing a constitutional assembly, and if they approved of the rules specifying how the assembly would be elected. His side won that referendum with 92% of the vote on the first question, and with 86% on the second (which specified basic electoral rules) (Changing Venezuela, p. 21).
Elections were held in July to choose the members of the assembly. Chávez supporters won 125 of the assembly’s 131 seats. The assembly then drafted a constitution and, four months later, it was approved by 72% of voters in another referendum.
The assembly also appointed a transitional body, known as a Congressillo (small congress), that appointed a new attorney general, human rights defender, comptroller general, national electoral council and supreme court.
In July 2000, Chávez went to voters again for a fresh presidential mandate under the new constitution and prevailed easily with 59.8% of the vote. But these were “mega-elections,” as Wilpert (Changing Venezuela, p. 22) put it, ones that “eliminated the country’s old political elite almost entirely from the upper reaches of Venezuela’s public institutions”:
Thirty-three thousand candidates ran for over 6,000 offices that day. In the end, Chávez was reconfirmed in office with 59.8% of the vote. Chávez’s supporters won 104 out of 165 National Assembly seats and 17 out of 23 state governorships. On the local level, Chávez candidates were less successful, winning only about half of the municipal mayors’ posts.
Ominously, a New York Times editorial in August 1999 already presumed to lecture Venezuelans and distort a very democratic reform process as a power grab:
They should be very wary of the methods Mr. Chávez is using. He is drawing power into his own hands, and misusing a special constitutional assembly meeting now in Caracas that is composed almost entirely of his supporters. Mr. Chávez, a former paratroop commander who staged an unsuccessful military coup in 1992, has so far shown little respect for the compromises necessary in a democracy, which Venezuela has had for 40 years.
Clearly, any genuine reform process in Latin America was going to be vilified by liberal outlets like the New York Times.
Key lies
The lies peddled about Venezuela’s past make US aggression against it possible in the present. It is worth summing up some of these key lies:
• Venezuela was “once prosperous” and ruined by socialism. In fact, Venezuela was an unequal country in which most people were poor despite the country’s oil wealth, which had generated huge export revenues since the 1920s.
• Venezuela was a democracy before Chavismo. In fact, Venezuela’s democracy was a gravely flawed system in which politicians alternated holding power according to an undemocratic agreement, and rammed austerity down the throats of Venezuela’s poor by committing massacres, such as the Caracazo.
• Chavismo ruined Venezuela’s democracy. Chávez indeed attempted to carry out a coup in 1992, but he came to power through an election in 1998, and afterward made changes through extensive democratic processes.
Featured image: Hugo Chávez swept to power in 1998. (Reference)
(Venezuelanalysis.com)
https://orinocotribune.com/the-media-my ... -chavez-2/