VENEZUELA Urgent Politics.
Counter-information bulletin #1
Caracas, February 20th, 2002
VENEZUELA - política urgente is a counter-information initiative of the
Plataform for Radical Democracy, one of many initiatives of the autonomous leftist
movement that have organized in the past months, in order to stop the conservative
forces from overthrowing the process of social transformation that is taking
place in the country, and to promote further political changes.
Translated by: Brian Holmes has translated 3 of 4 sections of this bulletin
on his own initiative. Thanks Brian!
Contents
1. Presentation of the initiative
2. A Pinochet-style coup for Venezuela
3. Some major victories in the Venezuelan process
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1. VENEZUELA - urgent politics is a counter-information initiative from a group
of persons who, faced with the difficult situation currently being traversed
by the Venezuelan political process, have decided to put together efforts in
an attempt to reverse the campaign of informational manipulation concerning
what is happening in the country. In the present situation, popular organizations,
militants on the left, intellectuals, students and progressive sectors in general
find ourselves forced to close ranks in defense of what we consider to be policies
oriented unequivocally in favor of social justice, equality and popular participation.
We are taking a stand because not to do so would be to ignore the exclusionary
project of the right which is advancing among the ever-more powerful and articulate
enemies of the process. But also because we see with surprise how militants
on the left, members of social movements, solidarity collectives, syndicalists,
students and progressive intellectuals abroad are victims of the powerful campaign
of disinformation orchestrated by the press agencies and the major communications
media.
With this effort of counter-information, we seek to offer another reading of
the Venezuelan situation to the collectives, groups and critical and progressive
individuals who may be interested, with the aim of facing up to the campaign
of manipulation by the major media, disqualifying in the most shameless and
deceitful way the complex and contradictory but valuable process of popular
liberation led by Chávez and pushed forward and supported by the great
majorities of excluded people.
We do not aspire to be neutral: we clearly assume our political position in
favor of a process of change which is most uncommon in these times of neoliberalism
and social demobilization. In addition, we hope to promote a vigilant attitude
of solidarity from the spaces of progressive political action both outside and
inside the country. Nonetheless, we will attempt to offer them sufficient elements
of information so that they can form their own judgments concerning what has
been called the "Bolivarian" political process - which beyond all
labels represents a project of possibilities for unheard-of social transformation
in the country.
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2. A Pinochet-style coup for Venezuela
The political and social atmosphere of the nation has become stifling after
the recent declarations in the media by three right-wing military men demanding
that President Hugo Chavez step down. An open conspiracy can be observed among
various actors posturing in an orchestrated way. In the tumultuous month of
December the United States government pronounced its opinion through Collin
Powell and the director of the CIA, both insinuating that Venezuela is a state
with anti-North American inclinations. The high ambassador continued this cynical
extravaganza by calling for civil disobedience. Then came the Papal Nuncio and
the high ecclesiastical hierarchy with medieval insinuations: Chavez should
be excommunicated. The major communications media constantly play up military
discontent and display the calls for a coup d'etat in lengthy editorials. The
landowners create paramilitary groups to defend their extensive parcels of idle
fields - which are already laid in with their first victim in the person of
a militant campesino from Zulia state. The right-wing parties and the unions
caught up in the reaction vie publicly for the most radical of conspiratorial
overtones. The upper-middle class, passed off abroad as "to the people
rising up in anger," parade in luxurious cars, though without leaving the
streets and squares of their home districts.
Nonetheless, this flood tide of speeches and mobilizations on the right holds
an incentive for the left and the excluded sectors: it has been provoked by
what we can call the radicalization of the process of change, or what comes
down to the same, the clear redistribution of political and economic power toward
the excluded majorities.
In barely two weeks, the sectors with the greatest power, those who have the
most to lose, have decided to topple Hugo Chavez. They do not even consider
the constitutional possibilities: they demand immediate renunciation of power,
and since they cannot topple him by popular pressure they have placed the pressure
on the members of the armed forces, some of whom are heeding the call while
uncertain kinds of bribes flow under the table.
The excluded sectors, the leftist activists, the people from the countryside,
the fishermen, the progressive sectors of the church, and the people from the
poor neighborhoods, for their part, constantly take to the streets to defend
not so much a president or a government as a project for the country which is
becoming conceivable, and which for the first time takes them into account as
participating subjects. Almost a million people from these sectors mobilized
on February 4th and will do it again whennecessary. A display of force on the
part of the powerful sectors then opens up the stage for cruel and battles between
the allies and enemies of the revolutionary process: peace hangs by a thread
when it only benefits the excluded.
Something very similar to what we're now seeing in Argentina happened here 12
years ago with the so-called "Caracazo." Our process has gathered
up these cries and struggles of innumerable men and women who decided to rise
against a dictatorship called democracy. Today, the same men and women are in
the street defending what they consider to be theirs, no longer as a cry but
as a real conquest: popular measures, a revolutionary constitution, laws against
exclusion, the centrality of the struggle against poverty and hunger, the conferal
of micro-credits, the tenancy of urban and rural land, sovereign international
policy, the transferal of power from the upper class to the poor, the struggle
against neoliberalism, against the unipolarity of the United States and against
the hegemony of an overtly racist right. If the tendency in favor of a coup
persists, many of these men and women will carry out a repeat of the "Caracazo,"
which left behind it the legacy of a bloody massacre of over 4000 people - and
which will be commemorated next February 27th with opposite signs and intentions
by the popular movement and the right, amidst a full-blown scenario of the confrontation
between contradictions.
The cards are on the table. The process is radicalizing and the radicalization
leads to confrontation with a powerful groups. This and only this is the reality
constantly distorted by the national and international communications media
when they call the most popular of Venezuelan presidents a dictator, a militarist
and a caudillo, the only mestizo president ever, who together with the people
is taking the first steps to put an end to a colonial era that has lasted over
500 years. This is what they cannot forgive and what causes so much reaction
from the sectors of power and the opulent and pillaging middle and upper classes,
which constitute minority sectors in the country (80% poverty, 60% of the land
in the hands of 2% of owners, etc.).
The configuration of this scenario pushes us to watch out for the possibility
of a rising in arms from the reactionary sectors and the right, in close public
alliance with the government of the United States. Or what comes down to the
same thing, a mortal attack against legitimate, popular and constitutional democracy
and consequently, a bloodbath in our streets. It is necessary to ensure that
our country should not be alone and that despite the discredit produced by the
international media, that news of our process should be heard by world solidarity,
above all if we can make it clear that Latin America will not bear a new Pinochet-style
coup and that the popular majorities will not let the first gains of the
social transformation process be struck down.
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3. Some major victories in the Venezuelan process
a. Development of an international policy oriented to overcoming the traditional
relations of hegemony and to the formation of a geopolitically multipolar world,
a debate over social justice in the international sphere and a decisive confrontation
with neoliberalism, as well as a reinforcement of Venezuelan sovereignty. Initiatives
have been developed destined to reinforce the self-determination of the oil
producing countries with respect to their own resources, with visits to Arab
countries, the realization of the OPEC summit and the defense of prices; to
develop exchanges with new allies such as China and Russia; to tightening of
relations with Cuba and the Caribbean countries, among others. Thus, official
declarations have been put forth questioning the U.S. war against Afghanistan
and its permanent exercise of force, the formation of the FTAA as the imposition
of a neoliberal model, and the opinions of spokesman of this country with respect
to matters of internal policy.
b. Approval of the Law on Land and Agrarian Development, which constitutes a
powerful instrument to bring about an end to the long history of injustices
and inequalities in rural areas. The law declares the latifundista regime as
contrary to the social interest, establishing penalties (lien or expropriation)
for land left fallow. In this way complete rural development and food security
is sought for the nation, as well as a more just and equitable distribution
of the land, including the adjudication of public or expropriated land to campesino
sectors. Self management and cooperative management is also being promoted through
the financing of agricultural cooperatives, and a system of social security
is being created for rural workers.
c. Approval of the Law on Fishing and Acquaculture, which leads toward the rational
use of fishery resources within the framework of sustainable development; promotes
the reinforcement of small-scale fishing, on which the large part of the coastal
population depends and which provides for internal consumption; and establishes,
for the first time in the country, clear regulations concerning drag-net fishing
and the ecocidal practices of industrial fisheries.
d. Approval of the Bank Law, which obliges the bank to offer 17% of its credit
to the agricultural sector under preferential conditions (in the accord with
the Land Law); to offer preferential credits to small and medium-sized industry,
and to destine a minimal percentage of its portfolio to the populations with
least resources, in the form of micro-credits. It also establishes a mechanism
to regulate the bank's profit rate.
e. Initial cessions of title deeds to landless campesinos. Up to this date,
the state has delivered 6751 title deeds in the agricultural states of Zulia,
Merida, Barinas and Portuguesa. These cessions, which are accompanied by the
delivery of agricultural credits, include both the donations of new properties
and regularizations of lands occupied and used over long periods of time.
f. The beginning of the process of ceding the property of land to popular urban
settlements. For the first time in the contemporary history of Venezuela, on
the basis of Presidential Decree no. 1.666, the inhabitants of the popular neighborhood
can obtain title deeds (both individual and collective) to the land on which
are established the living spaces they have constructed in an informal manner
on the margins of state policies. The project includes the active part suspicion
of the communities in elaboration of the local plans for the normalization of
tenancy. c. Clear orientations of public policies in social matters to the progressive
retrieval of public structures of social protection, pillaged within the framework
of earlier neoliberal governments. Guarantees for free education, health services,
plans for participatory policies, budgetary asignation in all social matters,
these are only some of the most exceptional elements in this respect.
For information and contacts: politicaurgente@politicaurgente.org
(Spanish, English, French spoken)
Local sites regarding the Venezuelan process: www.antiescualidos.com - www.proceso-digital.com
-www.redbolivariana.com
Brian's e-mail: 106271.223@compuserve.com