Analysis: Social Programs

After nine months in a flood victims' shelter, Daviana Padron now lives in a free apartment, works in a cooperative bakery and her kids attend a new school in the Venezuelan city of Caribia.

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Current events and discussion on the crisis in the Eurozone and more globally, have raised interesting questions of democratic deficit, sovereignty over economic policy and whether countries can work co-operatively together to improve economic and social development. Yet in Latin America, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) agreement between progressive governments is showing a positive alternative, that puts people first.

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In 2000, the Bolivarian government of Venezuela embraced the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to achieve a better standard of living for the entire population. Venezuela’s remarkably rapid achievement of most of the MDGs compared to every other country in the world is a result of the Chavez government’s implementation of economic and social policies based on the principles underlying 21st century socialism.

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Two incumbent presidents are running for re-election in 2012, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Barack Obama in the United States.  What makes these two electoral contests significant is that they represent contrasting responses to the global economic crises.

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A discussion by Venezuela's Elvy Monzant, Dean of the School of Communication at the University Cecilio Acosta de Maracaibo and active member of the Gestión Participativa Cooperative. Monzant spoke during the First Global Prout Conference in Venezuela, "Building a Solidarity Economy based on Ethics and Ecology" (July 2011). 

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Revolutionary Doctors, a new book published by Monthly Review Press, gives readers a first-hand account of Venezuela’s innovative and inspiring program of community health care, designed to serve—and largely carried out by—the poor themselves. Drawing on long-term participant observations as well as in-depth research, author Steve Brouwer tells the story of Venezuela’s Integral Community Medicine program, in which doctor-teachers move into the countryside and poor urban areas to recruit and train doctors from among peasants and workers. 

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