> Venezuela 2005: visions and answers from an anarchist perspective El Libertario * In these translated texts from EL LIBERTARIO, a newspaper from the Anarchist Relationships Commission, we resume the ideas and actions currently promoted by the venezuelan anarchist movement. - Editorial, Issue 41, february-march 2005 It seems to us that 2005 will be an important year in the advance of anarchist ideas and initiatives in Venezuela. The main editor group, the Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas - CRA [Anarchist Relationships Commission], just reached 10 years of continued activity, whose results show, aside from the ability to survive as a group in less than favorable conditions, an increasing number of achievements, proving that the anarchic ideal is taking roots in the country as the possibility of creating freedom, equality and solidarity by and for everyone. In this edition, we shall review some of those recent achievements; for example, the opening of the Centro de Estudios Sociales Libertarios - CESL [Center for Social Anarchist Studies] (http://centrosocial.contrapoder.org.ve/), the Anarcho-punk Gathering at Biscucuy, and the Sixth Anarcho-punk Gathering in Caracas. Looking back unto the past issues of this newspaper, you can see a remarkable variety of different writers who express themselves in it; this is so because it is not the product of a small elite group of experts, but instead has seeked to give voice to every libertarian socialist perspective. By the same token, the anarchist presence is growing in the social and cultural scene in many parts of the country. We have participated in many demonstrations and initiatives, among them: environmentalist struggles like those in Imataca and Perija, struggles against the dire prison conditions and police brutality, supporting the demands of the Pemon people, opposing the genocidal Iraq war, and standing up for women's rights. Moreover, we have constantly resisted the political climate of agression and intolerance brought about by both chavists and antichavists, and promoted the exchange of ideas between all those who reject both packs of politicians. We denounced, as no one else has done, the selling of the country's resources to the globalizational voracity, at the hands of a government who claims to be revolutionary but is neoliberal in practice, ratified by the silent complicity of the oppositors who miss the old times when they themselves bowed to the multinational corporations. In the matter of communicating anarchist ideas and projects, El Libertario has managed to establish a big distribution network, currently reaching 25 cities and towns in Venezuela, plus 7 countries in Europe and America. With the support provided by both that network and the readership, we managed to overcome the economic hardships who frequently kill these sort of initiatives, despite many a blockhead who still insist of attributing our survival and good health to secret financial contributions, thus proving again that "a thief will asume everyone is like him"; such claims are refuted by the tangible evidence of the high popularity of our publication. We can offer as evidence (indirect but plausible) the fact that our website , with only 2 years in operation, already got fifty thousand visits, with a daily average of a hundred hits. Aside from the paper, we have made increased efforts to promote our ideas and practices in other realms we have managed to get ourselves heard; namely, forums, conferences, audiovisual projections, academic events, concerts, etc. Undoubtely, a lot more can and must be done in that respect, but it is gratifying to see how often these opportunities have being presenting themselves in recent times. On the other hand, and despite the aforementioned financial hardships, we are pleased to have been able to print several tracts of anarchist propaganda, which have been warmly received among the local readership, making us eager to expand in that territory. We have met with similar success distributing musical anarchist material, our CDs and cassettes being very popular. Even as we reflect on our past achievements, we are aware of the enormous obstacles and adversaries that still await us. But they are no greater than they were in 1995, when we started down this road, and yet we managed to sow and even begin to reap. This is why we considered important to remind everyone of all this, since, here and now, we can honestly say: We carry a new world in our hearts, and that world is growing up right now! - Editorial, Issue 42, april-may 2005 As we aproach another May 1st, the date we commemorate the undying presence of the Chicago anarchist workers in 1886, the El Libertario editorial collective wants to devote as much space as possible in this issue to workers' struggles and problems. We have decided so, not only out of interest in communicating the fertile historic legacy of anarcho-syndicalism. As it goes, today as well as 119 years ago, oppression, exploitation and injustice are still the norm in the daily life of workers, both in Venezuela and the world, specially since the relative improvements conquered by the organised worker's movement have suffered a grave setback during the last 20 years, due to the bosses and states' neoliberal offensive. Exceptions aside, worldwide statistics indicate that wage earners' quality of life (income, stability, social security, etc) has decreased, the bureaucracies controlling the unions being unable to do anything about it. In fact, the new conditions brought by modern capitalism, as well as the worsening of working conditions, have redefined the very definition of 'worker', since a growing number of us work as temps, outsourced and 'flexibilized', putting us in situations where the old modes of organization and struggle developed by the industrial working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are inadequate, specially given that the 'classic' condition of being a factory worker is starting to look privileged, compared to what so many workers have to endure today. Venezuela is no exception to all this, where six years of "perky revolution" (now renamed "socialist"!) has done nothing but exacerbate the continuous decay of working conditions started by the administrations of Lusinchi, Pérez the Second, Velásquez and Caldera the Second. No doubt the apologists for the "process" will scream bloody hell upon hearing this, and proceed to quote the most recent official employment figures; but, those very same figures tell us not only the total amount of employed, but the unchanged trends towards less and less stable jobs, and a corresponding increase of unstable and part-time jobs. Besides, the actions of this government, as well as its so-well-publicized legal-institutional reforms, haven't changed anything of what had been done in favor of neoliberal flexibilization of the labour market; this is because multinationals haven't complained about that at all, and are reaping the benefits offered by this "lip service revolution", as was bitterly called by Domingo Alberto Rangel. In this situation, we can't do anything but to build, and promote, organization from below, applying the same principles that anarchism has always advocated for the labour movement, taking into account the demands and goals of those who need this form of organisation (but have been more reluctant to have it): temp workers, and all the other victims of labour market flexibilization. Moreover, this organization must act in combination with (neither oversee nor replace) the other strategies followed by other oppressed groups (women, young people, environmentalists, ethnic groups, and many other excluded or discriminated against by the numerous reasons of state). This is our fight, and you are invited to join... - Editorial, Issue 43, june-july 2005 In this new edition, we have decided to deal with antimilitarism, a movement we consider fundamental, both for anarchism in general and for our specific struggle to build new libertarian socialist avenues for change in Venezuela and Latin America. Throughout the history of socialism, the more consistent revolutionary currents have been radically antimilitaristic, since they found obvious that the workings of the war machine are indisolubly tied to capitalist domination, in its more sinister expressions of death and destruction. But anarchists have gone beyond even that, in their criticism to uniformed men and their barracks, since it doesn't just oppose their role, but their very existence as a mechanism designed to perpetuate oppression, injustice, inequality and insolidarity. Faithful to our roots, venezuelan anarchists have been, for the last two decades, denouncing actions and events that (in the case of "our" army) show clearly how the same pattern occurs here, covered up only by the customary patriotic and self-serving discourse - yesterday's litanies about national security or struggle against subversion become today's fairy tales about leader-army-people unity and asimetric defense against imagined american marine invasions. Therefore, we defy the grotesque militarism inflicted upon Venezuela today, in the most poignant and critical manner, something never seen among the fatcat ideologues of the socialdemocratic "opposition" nor the right, who deep inside aspire to become the bullies themselves. In the same vein, we give a space in our pages to the stinging accusations made by our companions in Chile in the wake of the killings of conscripts at Antuco, yet another proof of the inhuman barbarism that marks the daily life in any country's barracks, in the face of which the interest groups who wield, or aspire to wield power, keep a hypocritical silence, as we have seen ourselves here in so many cases of conscripts murdered in the name of military discipline. We made available these testimonies and analysis so you, the reader, can decide, as we reiterate that they have been written from the highest commitment to freedom, equality and solidarity. In this last paragraph, we'd like to express our sad indignation before the twin losses we speak about in these pages, which have affected us deeply. We shall never forget Simon Saez Merida and Nicolas Neira Alvarez, of whom we keep the most heartwarming memories. As Alí Primera said, with that singing voice no loudmouthed sergeant and no grey red-beret bureaucrat can take away from our minds: "those who die fighting for life aren't truly dead". - Editorial, Issue 44, september-october 2005 Many individuals and groups who communicate with us for the first time (wether by means of this newspaper, Internet, or personal contact) frequently as us: "What is so different in the ideas promoted at El Libertario, as opposed to the two more popular choices in the countrys' political scene?" To answer that question, we must point out an important fact of the venezuelan political scene: the political actors contesting to get institutional power, wether it is the currently-in-power chavism or the rightist or socialdemocrat opposition, have been successful imposing their agenda upon the grassroots social movements, wether labour, feminists, environmentalists, indigenous, tenants, students, cultural, etc. They consented to abort their autonomous process of strugle and organization, under the illussion that their goals would be realised the moment their political Messiah got elected. Because of that, we, as well as the opposition party, saw the stunned representatives of the "civil society" marching like Hamelin mice behind the flute that drove them to the ravine of the "civil strike" and the electoral debacle of April 15. From the other side, participatory illussions were crushed by a government whose modus operandi are total submission to the warlord and the subsequent servilism from his followers, supported by the revenue from the oil profits and demagogic hullaballoo, consistently breaking all their promises, wether by postponing them for when the illusory enemy threat has been defeated ("Yankee invasion", "President murderers", "coup d'etat conspiracies") or for when the unending cycle of electoral contests finally ends. Facing such a bleak situation, we express something different. We are not, nor want to be, contestants for control over institutionalized power: we are anarchists, and desire the dissapearance of both state power and every oppressive hierarchical structure. This is not a mere declaration of principles; here and now, it means to commit ourselves to promote and improve the autonomy of every nonauthoritarian social movement. Such as it is, we are not interested in building "anarchist social movements", which would be so useless to any collective progress as the dying bolivarian circles or those opposition parties disguised as NGOs. We support social movements who build dynamics of independent action and organization, based upon everybody's participation at all levels, which allow people to reapropriate or build modes of direct action and self-management outside the control of the state or any other instance of oppression; because only in this way can shared spaces of freedom, equality and solidarity can be build, which will be the seeds of the kind of future we fight for. All in all, our offer can be best expressed in John Holloway's lemma: "to change the world without seizing power". We reckon that this proposal must be carried out and debated by and with those who (both inside and outside of Venezuela) are commited or sympathize with the autonomous rebuilding of the social movements. Certainly, that communication and discussion would be very different from the bureaucratic/sycopantic charade which was the Sixteenth World Festival of Youth and Students last August, whose model is going to be repeated in January 2006 in the Sixth World Social Forum. So, in parallel with supporting and associating independent grassroots organisation efforts, such as those so often reviewed in this paper, we are part of the budding initiative to realise (also in January 2006) an alternative forum outside of the political and economic control of the powers that be, where those who carry a new world in their hearts would discuss the things that interest them. If you and/or your association feel in tune with these ideas, please get in touch with us!