Student Movements and Moving Students

Twenty-four years have passed since my feet first touched Venezuelan soil. Recently as I watched a group of students march in a protest against the current government, I realized that they were not even born when I arrived here. More importantly, they have none of the memories that I have of the years of supposed "democracy" before the arrival of the government led by Hugo Chávez in 1999.

My collage of memories from those years would include: looking at the bodies of naked dead youths strewn on the floor of a hospital morgue because there was no place else to put them; sleeping in a cemetery as an act of solidarity while sixty-eight bodies in garbage bags were being exhumed from a pit the government denied existed; watching helicopters pass overhead and hoping that no protesting students would be shot that day; wondering what the newspaper journalists wanted to share on the blank spaces that had been censored; raising my hands in the air as I and the people of my neighborhood faced a soldier with his automatic weapon aimed at us; having the police raid my barrio shack when I was meeting with other clergy from the area; defecating on a newspaper on the floor because the barrio had no running water or sewers; staring at children with bloatedstomachs full of parasites. The list could go on and on.

In recent years, Venezuelan university students have become probably the most significant opposition force in Venezuela. The old political parties have lost almost all credibility and the new ones have been mostly centered around their founders. The reporting of the private mass media is questioned by the majority of the people. In my opinion however, the students unfortunately have been manipulated by leaders of these parties and by those who control the private media.

An example might be the student who was never politically involved in any cause. One day in 2007, he arrived at his university and observed a protest because the government was not renewing the license of a private television channel. He said he became aware that day that freedom of expression was being threatened in Venezuela and so he became involved with the other students in rejecting the government's action.

In 2002, the television station he decided to defend had encouraged people to overthrow the legitimately elected government. When it was overthrown the channel celebrated the event and was proud of its collaboration in the overthrow. Had such happened in the United States, the channel would have been taken off the air immediately. However, in Venezuela, the station was permitted to continue for five years until its license expired in 2007. In some ways, it seems incredible that anyone would run to the defense of this station and its multi-millionaire owner. But they did, especially the students.

To me, it would have been a more sensible idea for the students to march so that the government would give them the channel for their own use rather than fighting for the rights of a multi-millionaire to have control over a part of the public airwaves for another twenty years. In the end, the channel became a public service station. But the multi-millionaires' station is able to continue broadcasting through cable.

The successful gathering of people for these demonstrations put the students in the forefront for organizing protest marches against constitutional reforms that President Chávez was proposing. But when people got up to speak at such events the podiums were dominated by the old time politicians and not by the students.

It is good to see young people becoming involved in political concerns. At the same time I am a bit frightened by the possibility of them being manipulated. They are more knowledgeable than older people in using the Internet and therefore have a great deal of power.

The Internet has definitely opened the lines of communication. But it has also opened the possibilities for abuse. When Colombia crossed international borders and bombed in Ecuador, there was a call through the Internet for people to attend a concert for peace. The concert was to be held on the Colombian-Venezuelan border. It should have been on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border. Yes, there was concern in Venezuela because of the violation of sovereign rights of another nation. And Venezuela had a right to be concerned because it also shares a border with Colombia. As a result it did send additional troops to its borders. However, the call for the concert on the Colombian- Venezuelan border diverted attention from what Colombia had done and made Venezuela look like an aggressor.

I believe that the Internet plus student movements will equal one of the most important factors in determining many decisions in which way our world will go. But as Superman Clark Kent was told, with great power comes great responsibility. That's where I think programs such as the one from Evergreen College that concentrated on what has been happening in Venezuela in recent years are of extreme importance for the future of our world. In their months of study in Olympia and the several weeks that many of the students spent in Venezuela, they were exposed to a variety of views that will be helpful to them in evaluating U.S. relations not only with Venezuela but with the whole world. The skills that they have developed should have opened their minds to seeing the multiple factors that enter into what shapes our opinions. That would include the influence of the mass media, the wealthy, and the powerful. The wealthy and powerful are not the majority in the world and it is a small group of individuals that decides what is presented through the mass media. That is why it is so important that the Evergreen students were able to mingle with ordinary Venezuelan citizens.

I extend my congratulations to the students and their families, to their professors Anne Fischel and Peter Bohmer, and to the Evergreen State College. May more people and institutions follow your example.

Charles Hardy is a native of Cheyenne, Wyoming and a columnist for Narco News. He has more than 20 years of experience as an international correspondent in Venezuela. He recently met with a group of students from Evergreen State College who spent three months studying in Venezuela. This article appeared in a book that the group wrote collectively about their experience. Hardy's book Cowboy in Caracas: A North American's Memoir of Venezuela's Democratic Revolution and other essays by Hardy can be found on his personal blog, www.cowboyincaracas.com and http://www.cowboyincaracas.com/ . You may write him at cowboyincaracas@yahoo.com.