By America Vera-Zavala - ZNet Commentary, Jun 26th 2005
What makes Venezuela so interesting is the development the country is going through. Venezuela is a model of development in a world where "making poverty history" is a bracelet you can buy. In Venezuela they are making poverty history by using the country's wealth to make society richer.
By Sarah Wagner – Venezuelanalysis.com, Jun 17th 2005
With the passing of the new Venezuelan Constitution of 1999, women’s groups applauded that a long fought battle for legal gender equality was won. However, the war for practical equality is still being waged, and the way in which it is most effective to wage it, is far from clear.
By Roberto Jorquera – Venezuela Solidarity, Jun 16th 2005
Notes by the Green Left Weekly correspondent on revolutionary democracy, debates within the Chavez movement, on political consciousness, workers control, popular organizations, and other issues.
By Gregory Wilpert - Socialism and Democracy, Jun 15th 2005
There is a strong progressive, redistributive, and participatory democratic impulse in the Chávez government, which is, at heart, the reason for Chávez's success. However, Chávez's emotive leadership style and personality cult, a burgeoning in-group culture, and external resistance threaten to derail the project.
Journalist Richard Gott and academics Julia Buxton and Steve Ellner spoke recently at an event on Venezuela in London, for the opening of the Venezuela Information Center, highlighting the importance of countering the disinformation spread about Venezuela.
By Roberto Jorquera - Green Left Weekly, Jun 4th 2005
The Centres for Ideological Formation (CFIs) are grassroots groups initiated in March this year by William Izarra, who has emerged as a key leader of the Bolivarian revolution — the popular process led by the government of President Hugo Chavez that is attempting to overturn capitalism and create a democratic socialist society.
By America Vera-Zavala — Znet Commentaries, May 30th 2005
Introducing participatory democracy in Venezuela as a parallel to representative democracy is one of the hardest and most interesting challenges the country is facing. Venezuela’s peaceful revolution has made this a slow process, constantly coming up against the institutional, cultural and bureaucratic limits of the ancient regime; but the Venezuelan people are what the constitution entitles them to be, participants and protagonist of the process.
By Sarah Wagner — Venezuelanalysis.com, May 26th 2005
Recent demands by the people of Bolivia for their government to "take the same path as Venezuela" revelas the powerful resonance of the "Bolivarian revolution" throuhout Latin America. As Venezuela depeens this process of social, economic, and political transformation it is increasingly unlikely that the people of Latin America will tolerate their unresponsive governments. It is equally unlikely that the Cold War mentality of Washington will tolerate the threat of a good example.
The working class and its leadership in the Bolivarian movement of President Hugo Chavez is making huge strides in its efforts to forge a new country based on human solidarity and social justice. That's the conclusion I draw after returning from two weeks observing political and social life in Venezuela.
Citgo is a U.S. refining and marketing firm that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil company. Money you pay to Citgo goes to Venezuela -- not Saudi Arabia or the Middle East. There are 14,000 Citgo gas stations in the US.
By America Vera-Zavala - Z Magazine, May 11th 2005
An important part of what is being achieved in Venezuela is created through parallels. If the health sector in the country is not willing to serve poor people - the president creates a parallel, brings in hundreds of Cuban doctors and lets them work. If the educational sector is working poorly and apparently has not been fighting illiteracy - he creates a parallel.
Writers on the left can help the Bolivarian process with objective reporting or humble supportive analyses. Or they can leave Venezuelans alone. They will do just fine.
In Cuba Chavez gave a major speech to activists that laid out his government's main international initiative. The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) seeks to empower the people at large, and holds out the utopian, revolutionary-democratic hope of eliminating poverty. The goal, Chavez Frias said, is "integration for life--not colonialism, but the happiness of our peoples."
While there are some superficial similarities between Venezuela's Chavez and Ecuador's Gutierrez, they are quite different. As a result, the situation in Venezuela in April 2002 and in Ecuador in April 2005 had very different consequences, despite similar starting points.
