Report by Tamara Pearson http://gringadiary.blogspot.com/
I write this while I’m watching Chavez on TV in my friends’ apartment in Caracas. He’s giving the May Day speech (the night before May day) where he usually announces the new increase in the minium wage.
It’s amazingly relevant to the brigade that we have on at the moment and the discussions that we had today (I’m here in Caracas helping out with an AVSN brigade, 12 Aussie trade unionists here to learn about the revolution, with a focus on the trade union aspect).
We finished today off by talking to the vice president of the Latin American Parliament, Carolus Wimmer. He argued that in a way, Chavez is blocking the development of movements, because he keeps handing down change- that for example, the trade unions have little reason to struggle, because he keeps just giving them pay increases.
Everyone is coming down from their rooms because he’s about to announce the wage increase and people are debating how much it will be. The atmosphere reminds me a bit of the final announcement of Australian Idol. Chavez has a graph out, asking the cameras to focus on it, using a book as a ruler to draw lines on it. Such a funny guy, drawing lines and explaining the way wages are worked out, how you have to include the ‘basket tickets’ – food vouchers. Not to mention all the free services and subsidies etc.
A lot of people share his excitement. Often throughout the brigade people have gotten so into what they were saying that we had to interrupt them so we could translate.
Haha. Chavez announces that the raise is 2%, Everyone looks at eachother then suddenly laughs, including him “This is what a capitalist government would say.”
It’s a 30% increase. Higher than the rate of inflation. “it is justice, nothing more”
And now Venezuela has the highest minimum salary in Latin America. If you include the food voucher almost 3 times the average of Latin America.
Wimmer also said that “If we can say that Chavez is a military leader, he can’t fight without any army- on his own.” And he named “3 enemies of the revolution: corruption, bureaucracy and inefficiency.”
Before him we met with the president of BANMUJER- the ‘different’ bank for women- which gives micro credit to majority women collectives at very low interest rates and with a long time to pay it off, and with the objective of helping women achieve self sufficiency, and not of profit.
Nora Castenada is her name, she is NOT against abortion, and she spoke very generally. I asked her how she felt about the creation recently, announced by Chavez, of a minister for women, “The women’s movement demanded INAMUJER, BANMUJER (etc), and so we demanded a minister, and we demand a ministery… since it was created by the movement, it is good for women, and whatever is good for women is good for BANMUJER”. They are also campaigning for a compulsory 50/50% representation of women in any elected representation.
And this morning we met with Eduardo Pinata, National director of the FSBT, of one of the Teachers Unions, and also of Foundation of the Formation of Socialist Workers. At the moment teachers are working- teaching- 54 hours a week, with an average of 38 students in each classroom (bad but other South American countries are worse). They want to decrease both these numbers, to 36 hours of teaching face to face, with 6 hours of research and 4 hours of community work each week.
He was great, very nice, and interesting. He joked that half of Cubans are in Venezuela and vice versa (Venezuelan teachers went to Cuba for 15 days to observe their education system).
On Tuesday in the morning we visited NUDE- a nucleus of all sorts of missions and collectives. Walking past car repairers and factories, you suddenly arrive at a street with colourful murals on each side (painted by participants in the missions).
We saw a textile collective, It was great, the women (for they were mostly women working there) seemed quite relaxed. They have assemblies of all the workers once a year where they choose their new division of labour: who will sew, work in administration, run the factory etc. It changes every year and the people who do the ‘real’ work- the sewing, get paid more. They made some t-shirts for the members of our brigade right there, in under an hour :). Their wage is 30% of earnings, and sometimes they might need to work weekends or nights, when they have extra work- but it’s a choice each person makes.
We also saw a barrio adentro (dentist, 2 gyanacolegists, a farmacy, etc, all completely free), a Mercal- which sells food at a solidarity price- ie very cheap, and PDVAL- which sells it at cost price- but with per person limits to prevent businesses buying it to use for profit. All of these function under the rules of collectives.
After that we talked to some of the leaders of the Electricity Union. Boy was that an adventure! They talked about some of the difficulties of combining what was once private and public companies into one public company- the different regulations, pay scales, etc. They are currently working towards a law which will see the company have 50% state representation and 50% workers. Before it was nationalised like this, the 10 years in private hands meant that no infrastructure was built, there was no development. Now under Chavez, with all the wage increases and free services, consumption has gone up a lot and people have money to buy electrical goods like blenders, TVs etc. There’s also quite low environmental consciousness here, so the amount of electric consumption has gone up massively. So finally I understand all the blackouts! And the problems are worse in places like Merida because it is further away and further back in the ‘queue’.
Then, as we said our goodbyes, there was a blackout! Haha. Outside it was chaotic, as the traffic lights weren’t working, the trains had stopped and motor taxis quickly caught on and started charging 40Bs ($20). The buses were packed, with people hanging out, and the streets were full with people waiting for buses. Finally they just started walking, and it looked like May day had come early :). After 4 hours, we eventually decided we’d walk too (the centre was about 14km away), but just as we did the trains started again. They were PACKED and there were little shouts each time it stopped and more people tried to squeeze in.
There’s a lot to say :) I haven’t even got to the bureaucratic mess of ONIDEX which is where passports and visas are processed. And the cold bus ride down here where I was freezing despite wearing thermal underwear, shirt, jumper, pants and 2 skirts J and to top it off they played loud cheesy music from about 7 in the morning (it’s a 12-14 hour trip).
And the other world that is Caracas- it hits you in the face as you walk out of the bus terminal, especially as it is so different to Merida- the stall holders yelling out at you, all the concrete and towers and rubbish and humidity….(and stories of my friends who live here of being robbed and people being shot in gang fights during a party they were at)..
And the surreal experience of walking to one of these humid stations (god they are uncomfortable but at least the trains come like every 2 minutes…and are extremely cheap) and the stairs were covered in different coloured wool that went out into the street where people were playing with it and making music and doing acrobatic things- it seemed to coincide with Chavez’s announcement that day of a national circus and reminded me of that ad where people drag big balls of wool through the street- it was just like that.
It’s amazingly relevant to the brigade that we have on at the moment and the discussions that we had today (I’m here in Caracas helping out with an AVSN brigade, 12 Aussie trade unionists here to learn about the revolution, with a focus on the trade union aspect).
We finished today off by talking to the vice president of the Latin American Parliament, Carolus Wimmer. He argued that in a way, Chavez is blocking the development of movements, because he keeps handing down change- that for example, the trade unions have little reason to struggle, because he keeps just giving them pay increases.
Everyone is coming down from their rooms because he’s about to announce the wage increase and people are debating how much it will be. The atmosphere reminds me a bit of the final announcement of Australian Idol. Chavez has a graph out, asking the cameras to focus on it, using a book as a ruler to draw lines on it. Such a funny guy, drawing lines and explaining the way wages are worked out, how you have to include the ‘basket tickets’ – food vouchers. Not to mention all the free services and subsidies etc.
A lot of people share his excitement. Often throughout the brigade people have gotten so into what they were saying that we had to interrupt them so we could translate.
Haha. Chavez announces that the raise is 2%, Everyone looks at eachother then suddenly laughs, including him “This is what a capitalist government would say.”
It’s a 30% increase. Higher than the rate of inflation. “it is justice, nothing more”
And now Venezuela has the highest minimum salary in Latin America. If you include the food voucher almost 3 times the average of Latin America.
Wimmer also said that “If we can say that Chavez is a military leader, he can’t fight without any army- on his own.” And he named “3 enemies of the revolution: corruption, bureaucracy and inefficiency.”
Before him we met with the president of BANMUJER- the ‘different’ bank for women- which gives micro credit to majority women collectives at very low interest rates and with a long time to pay it off, and with the objective of helping women achieve self sufficiency, and not of profit.
Nora Castenada is her name, she is NOT against abortion, and she spoke very generally. I asked her how she felt about the creation recently, announced by Chavez, of a minister for women, “The women’s movement demanded INAMUJER, BANMUJER (etc), and so we demanded a minister, and we demand a ministery… since it was created by the movement, it is good for women, and whatever is good for women is good for BANMUJER”. They are also campaigning for a compulsory 50/50% representation of women in any elected representation.
And this morning we met with Eduardo Pinata, National director of the FSBT, of one of the Teachers Unions, and also of Foundation of the Formation of Socialist Workers. At the moment teachers are working- teaching- 54 hours a week, with an average of 38 students in each classroom (bad but other South American countries are worse). They want to decrease both these numbers, to 36 hours of teaching face to face, with 6 hours of research and 4 hours of community work each week.
He was great, very nice, and interesting. He joked that half of Cubans are in Venezuela and vice versa (Venezuelan teachers went to Cuba for 15 days to observe their education system).
On Tuesday in the morning we visited NUDE- a nucleus of all sorts of missions and collectives. Walking past car repairers and factories, you suddenly arrive at a street with colourful murals on each side (painted by participants in the missions).
We saw a textile collective, It was great, the women (for they were mostly women working there) seemed quite relaxed. They have assemblies of all the workers once a year where they choose their new division of labour: who will sew, work in administration, run the factory etc. It changes every year and the people who do the ‘real’ work- the sewing, get paid more. They made some t-shirts for the members of our brigade right there, in under an hour :). Their wage is 30% of earnings, and sometimes they might need to work weekends or nights, when they have extra work- but it’s a choice each person makes.
We also saw a barrio adentro (dentist, 2 gyanacolegists, a farmacy, etc, all completely free), a Mercal- which sells food at a solidarity price- ie very cheap, and PDVAL- which sells it at cost price- but with per person limits to prevent businesses buying it to use for profit. All of these function under the rules of collectives.
After that we talked to some of the leaders of the Electricity Union. Boy was that an adventure! They talked about some of the difficulties of combining what was once private and public companies into one public company- the different regulations, pay scales, etc. They are currently working towards a law which will see the company have 50% state representation and 50% workers. Before it was nationalised like this, the 10 years in private hands meant that no infrastructure was built, there was no development. Now under Chavez, with all the wage increases and free services, consumption has gone up a lot and people have money to buy electrical goods like blenders, TVs etc. There’s also quite low environmental consciousness here, so the amount of electric consumption has gone up massively. So finally I understand all the blackouts! And the problems are worse in places like Merida because it is further away and further back in the ‘queue’.
Then, as we said our goodbyes, there was a blackout! Haha. Outside it was chaotic, as the traffic lights weren’t working, the trains had stopped and motor taxis quickly caught on and started charging 40Bs ($20). The buses were packed, with people hanging out, and the streets were full with people waiting for buses. Finally they just started walking, and it looked like May day had come early :). After 4 hours, we eventually decided we’d walk too (the centre was about 14km away), but just as we did the trains started again. They were PACKED and there were little shouts each time it stopped and more people tried to squeeze in.
There’s a lot to say :) I haven’t even got to the bureaucratic mess of ONIDEX which is where passports and visas are processed. And the cold bus ride down here where I was freezing despite wearing thermal underwear, shirt, jumper, pants and 2 skirts J and to top it off they played loud cheesy music from about 7 in the morning (it’s a 12-14 hour trip).
And the other world that is Caracas- it hits you in the face as you walk out of the bus terminal, especially as it is so different to Merida- the stall holders yelling out at you, all the concrete and towers and rubbish and humidity….(and stories of my friends who live here of being robbed and people being shot in gang fights during a party they were at)..
And the surreal experience of walking to one of these humid stations (god they are uncomfortable but at least the trains come like every 2 minutes…and are extremely cheap) and the stairs were covered in different coloured wool that went out into the street where people were playing with it and making music and doing acrobatic things- it seemed to coincide with Chavez’s announcement that day of a national circus and reminded me of that ad where people drag big balls of wool through the street- it was just like that.
