Accents
Comprehending the 'Bolivarian Revolution'
(Part 2)
Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) was the "George Washington of South America" who inspired the reforms instituted by Venezuela's current President Hugo Chavez. Below is the concluding half of last week's article and I'd like to reiterate the introduction I wrote to Part 1:
I'm yielding my space to Dr. Delia D. Aguilar, or Del, a friend and classmate at UP, who recently visited Venezuela with her husband, Dr. Epifanio "Sonny" San Juan, Jr. A homegrown Ilongga, Del is a professor in Women's Studies Program. She has authored books on feminist concerns and has written in peer-reviewed national and international journals. Sonny himself is the director of the Connecticut-based Philippine Cultural Studies Center. Del does the writing for this week's column -- A Visit to Venezuela, an article of great relevance to the Philippines as it touches on geopolitics and its economic ramifications on a Third World country that is very much like ours. Is the Venezuelan President's "Bolivarian Revolution" the panacea for the woebegone Bayan ko? Perhaps. Read on and have your say:
It was interesting to learn that as the new Bolivarian University is being developed, the old one is allowed to continue. The propertied send their children to the latter, while the formerly excluded, who now enroll for free, are recruited to the new University. The two institutions that we visited, the medical clinic and the university, represent the manner in which the society is being transformed. Parallel structures are set up alongside the old, rather than the latter being torn down. It is perhaps because of this gradual, peaceful process of change that everyone we met and talked to who openly admitted that they had some criticisms and that they were not "Chavistas" would nonetheless declare their support. "I'm with the process," is what we resoundingly heard everywhere we went.
Along with a few others in our group, I wondered about the absence of a party formation and what its ramifications might be for the endurance of this unprecedented revolutionary movement. There are no easy answers in response to this particular concern, of course. Needless to say, the total freedom with which people we approached spoke up and theabsence of a toe-the-line mindset was quite appealing.
Despite persistent negative publicity by the domestic media (80 % of which is privately owned), Hugo Chavez can count on the majority for support because of the tangible results his government delivers. "Government" here also means ordinary people, not an impersonal bureaucratic state, for indeed Chavez has many times called upon the historically disenfranchised majority to take power into their own hands. It is the misiones that are the embodiment of people's empowerment, because it is through these "Bolivarian circles" that people are being trained to administer projects on their own behalf. Through the literacy program, for example, well over one million people have learned to read and write in just seven years.
These community-administered efforts brought to mind, in stark relief, charitable undertakings such as that of Gawad Kalinga in Payatas where inhabitants have purportedly become middle-class citizens, thanks to the largesse of religious and business enterprises and good-hearted philanthropists. A world of difference separates those who have been turned into objects of charity (bestowed by now cleansed consciences) and those in the communities we observed where individuals appeared to be active participants in the re-making of their immediate environment. Among the latest misiones is that of poor single mothers who have organized to get loans from a special women's fund and who, under the new constitution, are entitled to financial support as caregivers.
Principal among the constitutional changes were the radical "49 laws" designed to regulate the production and taxation of oil, land tenure, the fishing industry, and to prevent the privatization of social security, to cite a few. Worthy of special mention is a constitutional provision that protects the interests of indigenous peoples, Afro-Venezuelans and those of mixed-race, a first in Venezuelan society. We visited Barlovento, a region founded by freed slaves. There we met poor Afro-Venezuelan students who were receiving free medical training as well as adults enrolled in a literacy program. Our guide was a professor, a specialist in the history of Afro descendants, who delivered a rousing lecture on this history. He described to us how masses of people in Barlovento went to Caracas to rally around Chavez during the attempted coup. They rode buses, cars, whatever vehicle was available. Many walked the 100 miles to Caracas, he told us, remarking that he himself couldn't help but be moved to tears at this completely spontaneous, massive demonstration of solidarity.
In addition to Hugo Chavez' own will to form a government for the people, he clearly has advantages that few Third World heads of state possess. Two that immediately stand out are Venezuela's oil resource and the special character of Venezuela's military. Although Chavez has not made a move to nationalize privately owned big industry--a hallmark of what we know as "socialism"--he is using oil revenues to finance his various projects. And he can bank on the military's allegiance because, unlike other Latin American militaries (indeed, unlike the Philippine military), Venezuela's military remains independent from US' influence. It has not, for example, sent soldiers for training to the infamous School of the Americas, now renamed, for cosmetic purposes, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security. In their classes, moreover, soldiers learn about their country's independence struggles. What Chavez has striven to accomplish, then, is a salubrious civilian/military melding in which soldiers work side by side with ordinary folks in their many people's ventures. Such mutual trust is particularly necessary in light of the very real danger posed by the small elite who, except for US superpower backing, would count for virtually nothing.
It must be remarked that Chavez' Bolivarian Revolution is completely indigenous and follows no existing model. Its heroes are 19th century Venezuelan figures: Simon Bolivar, independence fighter against Spain whose goal was national sovereignty and regional unity; Simon Rodriguez, Bolivar's mentor whose injunction was for Venezuela to construct for itself an original philosophical foundation for independence; and Ezequiel Zamora, peasant leader who fought against the landed oligarchy. Consequently, when those we talked to in Venezuela expressed their concurrence with "the process," they could speak with pride about their own history referring, furthermore, to a society in a transformational state whose direction is guided by the democratic participation of the people themselves (underscoring is mine to emphasize the kind that is freed from the shackles of trapos and political dynasties--JCL). No other leader in world history, after all, has Chavez' record of having won eight elections and referendums in eight years, the number of votes each time exceeding the ones before. Does this not reflect genuine people power?
The contempt with which Chavez is held by western media generally and by the Bush administration specifically is therefore highly suspect and questionable, if the concern were truly for democratic principles. Chavez himself has stated more than once that his assassination would be no surprise. The challenge seen in the Bolivarian Revolution inheres, without a doubt, in its innovation of an alternative system that lies outside the purview of neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. The country's oil resources allow Chavez this independence. Additionally, like the nineteenth century hero Bolivar, he has taken measures to forge Latin American integration: barter of services with Cuba, payment of Argentina's debt to international creditors, and endorsement of Bolivia's Evo Morales, among others. Venezuela has recently formally joined Mercosur, but Chavez has also set up ALBA, an alternative economic alliance envisioned to counter US free- trade policies and to create a new development model. In the cultural realm there is Telesur, a television channel established by Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba, and Uruguay that hopes to replace currently US-dominated programming with Latin American production.
In Latin America and elsewhere, progressives are rallying behind Venezuela's democratic and peaceful social transformation. Social justice-minded Filipinos can do no less. While Venezuela's revolution is not a template for other nations, we have a great deal to share with the Venezuelan people. Our history, like theirs, is replete with proud examples of resistance to colonial and neocolonial subjugation. We need only to be mindful of this history--deliberately revised and obscured as it has been in order to buttress a persistent colonial mentality and preserve our neocolonial status--to understand our present circumstances and to begin to take stock of ourselves as a people with an enormous capacity to change things. As the Venezuelan example instructs us, with an awakened and aroused collective consciousness, the possibilities for systemic change are thrown wide, wide open.
(Comments to lagoc@hargray.com)