Venezuela Solidarity Activity Feb 4, 2012 - Sydney

The Venezuelan Ambassador to Australia Nelson Davila together with the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network celebrated the 20th anniversary of the 1999 patriotic military rebellion led by Hugo Chavez. While the rebellion was unsuccessful at the time, Chavez subsequently won the 1998 presidential elections and assumed power on February 2, 1999.

Venezuelan socialism by Nelson Davila

Venezuelan Ambassador to Australia Nelson Dávila Lameda talks about Venezuela's socialism of the 21st Century. Talk presented at the New International Bookshop, Melbourne and co sponsored by the Search Foundation on July 14, 2010 Produced by Direct Action Films

El pueblo tomará la decisión en elecciones históricas

Taking back dignity

Report by Tamara Pearson http://gringadiary.blogspot.com/


Seen: On the train, two women with two tiny kids- a boy and a girl, and the girl was playing with a doll that was white with the blondest blond hair. There are a few white people here, but most people are all beautiful shades of brown. Yet a lot of the advertising and products originate from overseas or buy into the whole blond (north American) is beautiful cultural imperialism garbage.

Brigade moments: Coral translating ‘hugs’ as ‘cuddles’ – which is so much more sexual and affectionate! Jammo, who owns 80 musical instruments, doing charades of them and we had to guess…whilst a bit drunk... Me at the Bolivar Museum- I thought a glass showcase with Bolivar’s boots and writing table and stuff in it, had a top- and put my book on it, of course there was no glass there and it dropped into the display. So the Venezuelan Lonely planet was added to the display cos the glass walls were too high for me to reach over and get it. Bolivar might have used it in his time if it had existed J. Well, embarrassed, I asked a museum worker to help me, who had to pull the case half apart…
…Me again going psycho on the bus to Ciudad Bolivar. Don’t know what happened there, but I seemed to need to throw things at people, then on Sinndy’s advice, started a rumour that there were rats on the bus with the intention of tickling people’s feet while they were asleep and freaking them out, but never got around to it.
..Coral talking English to the Venezuelans then Spanish to us. People have no idea how HARD translating is. It’s one thing to listen to what people are saying in Spanish and understand, its another thing to remember what they said, say it in English, and listen to what they are saying in Spanish as they interrupt you because they are so keen to say what they have to say..
…certain unmentionable romances that did and didn’t happen..
...some brigadistas finally letting go and standing under the sprinklers to conquer the heat
…waiting for our friendly Venezuelan hosts to pick us up…they said they’d be there at 1, so we waited in the stuffy hallway of the hotel at five to 1, like good little gringos… and they turned up at 215. By then people were sleeping in the hallway, sitting down, trying different walls to see which one was cooler, playing silly word games. Turns out the bus driver decided he’d have lunch, while most of us went without so we could be there on time
…big lizards, Margaret happier cuddling a kitten than she was at Mayday (just kidding..although…), and rescuing tiny abandoned kittens…big men trying to feed them with caps of water, and ‘dipping’ their heads in the water to make them drink (ok maybe I had a part in that too).
… countless shared pizzas in an effort to deal with the really expensive prices…and many more, some of which I’ll mention specifically below…

May Day… [photos: people in red] speaking of Jammo- he was on the moon and dancing around at the May Day protest. It was pretty awesome. From about 9 till about 12 or 1 people met at Las Banderas train station and marched down to the centre. There was like a continuous stream of red on the road. I got my wallet stolen on the train, and it was hot and humid and a long march, but that didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits.
At the stage end there were speeches and music and some dancing, a few drunks, a few friendly people. We were pretty popular-interviewed for a few TV channels along the march and Coral and John even got up and spoke. The footage was played through the next day- I think we were probably the only country specific contingent there.
People were touched by the solidarity I think- both the people we met and spoke with- and just random people we met. One woman on a train had a pamphlet of one of Fidel’s speeches, and she wrote ‘revolutionary greetings to Australia’ on it, and gave it to me, saying she’d seen us on TV.

Radio Ali Primera in El Valle, Caracas: we went and checked out and chatted with people from this community radio station which was made for people who don’t have degrees (a requirement to work in radio) or the resources to have a voice. They have all sorts of programs, including one by a 12 year old who’s been involved since the beginning, various countering mass media misinformation and deep news analysis, culture- poets from the community reading their poems for example, women’s shows, etc. People from the community run the shows and the radio workers are directly involved in the community- and this relationship meant that, for example in 2004 when the radio was threatened with being attacked by the opposition, they made a broadcast about it, and within minutes hundreds of members of the community were outside the radio station, and the opposition ran away :)

Ciudad Bolivar/Puerto Ordaz – we had a chat with union leaders from ALCASA- a nationalised aluminium plant, at their centre of formation- which supports the formation of the workers of ALCASA and the surrounding community- which means fostering values of cooperation, solidarity, honesty, discovery, and learning about different economic systems, the new forms of social participation etc
We also visited an internet centre built by the government, now used by indigenous and non indigenous students. It also has phones. Before people only had mobiles but no fixed lines.. the woman working there said it had opened up their life to the world, as they are able to read about the world on the internet. Made me think about how easy it is to be completely isolated when you are poor…

Las Amazonas- I think this would unanimously be voted the most inspiring experience of the brigade. Driving into this suburb we could see people with flags occupying unused land on the edge of it. (Something economically and legally encouraged by the government). We could also see the shacks of found corrugated iron etc that people had built only a few days and weeks ago. This would be a start.
3 and a half years ago the people of Las Amazonas did the same, and 80% of them now have good, complete concrete houses- with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, floor, toilet etc. All of them financed by the government, and the same model, but painted a rainbow of colours, making the village a delight to see (I would have taken more photos but it was getting dark). However, they are still waiting for asphalt to put on the roads (which are dirt at the moment).
They were so proud. Most of these people were homeless before. Now they are organised in this new community, sorting out their own business- streets, lighting, sewage etc. We met with the spokespeople of the community council and after a welcoming rain dance [see photo] and various speeches demonstrating how proud they were of their revolution, they took us on a walk around the town. We saw the ‘nutrition house’ which receives for example, 90 kilos of chicken a week, and feeds about 150 children a day, we saw a market with regulated prices, and our hosts knocked on one of their neighbours door, “there are some visitors!”, and this poor woman who’d obviously just been asleep came to her door to see 14 camera wielding Aussies and a bunch of Venezuelans we’d picked up a long the way. They just wanted us to see the inside of her house, to see how good it was. Indeed it was nice, and the woman welcomed us in. What was clearest was the dignity these people now have- both from watching them, and from their own words.

Sidor – [photo: workers with AMWU- Aussie Metal Workers Union- flag] and finally we got to visit the recently nationalised (largest) steel factory of Venezuela. Our bus pulled into the area where all the buses drop off workers at the shift changes. We got out, met a few union leaders but were quickly surrounded by heaps of other workers. Poor Coral was stuck in the middle of all these tall men in blue uniforms who all interrupted eachother as they told us the history of the plant, their struggle, how they were attacked by police, their 3 strikes… and “Chavez has liberated us from slavery”. They insisted that we “Come back in a year to see how the changes have taken affect”. Then there was exchanging of union flags and tshirts and hugs of solidarity all round.
(For more information about this struggle see http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/)

That was roughly the end of the brigade..I got on my bus back to Merida and was genuinely sad to say goodbye- all the brigadistas had been very nice, and interesting and different. It’s meant to be 22 hours from Puerto Ordaz to Merida… after about 12 hours, at 10 in the morning, they suddenly decided to take us off one (comfortable) bus and put us on another one- no air conditioning, toilet, space for feet or bags etc (I was cooking because I had thermal underwear on because of the really cold bus I’d just been on). Which after another 12 hours then terminated at El Vigia, so me and a few others had to pay for a taxi to finish the trip- 1 hour- to Merida. Where it was raining, and I had to get another bus to my place, then walk. So the

Unions, collectives, wage increases, colourful wool and blackouts

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.