Blogs

It has been a while since I have written an entry here. I guess I got caught up in living life and forgot about writing about my experiences for people; that and I have been lazy and haven´t scheduled time to write stuff up. I made a few notes about some my political impressions from my first week that I´m going to expand in this entry and I will try to be a bit more regular with the posts. I already have 3 months worth of events to fill people in about, so I will have to get cracking.

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Well, as one friend pointed out, these elections took place following difficult economic conditions, in which governments on a global level have been very unpopular. Nevertheless, my feeling is that these results are a reflection more of political than economic discontent.

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Some people try to classify this process here. It’s a useful exercise in terms of analysing what is going on, where it is going and which forces, classes and social groups really have the power and for whom this revolution is serving. Yet statements like ‘it’s a working class revolution’ or the Chavez government is totally ‘bourgeois’ or  ‘the PSUV is good’  or ‘bad’ do not work, because what is going on here is far more complex. It’s an un-won battle between a range of forces, many of which are confused and obscured by red t-shirts or sloganeering for one side or the other.

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We were pretty annoyed when we found out someone had occupied the land that we’ve been struggling for for over year.

It’s a piece of land that is within the area covered by our communal council and technically belongs to the mayoralty, but hasn’t been used for ages because it’s quite a long but skinny piece of land.

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The New York Times did a "story" today on my reaction to Michael Moore's fairy tale about meeting with President Chávez in Venice this past September. The article, written by Simon Romero, was published in both the print and online editions of one of the world's most important newspapers.

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In an interview last October 9th on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the renowned and award-winning documentarian, Michael Moore lied vulgarly about his encounter with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez during the Venice Film Festival this past September. In the interview, Moore responds to Kimmel’s request for an explanation of a photo of Moore with President Hugo Chávez. Apparently embarrased about the encounter with one of Latin America’s most prominent and influential heads of state, Moore proceeded to completely make up a fairy-tale, attempting to pass it off as reality.

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It was Friday night, young guys and students were drinking beer outside the barrio entrance, next to the main road. We met one member of the Milagrosa barrio, and walked past the drinkers, up a steep path until we reached a blue house

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I was really moved by the Venezuelan reaction to the coup in Honduras. On two levels… One was the way everyone (well obviously not everyone, there are always those who go about their shopping and drinking and soapie watching as if the world is not a bigger place..) but a lot of people were somewhat glued to their televisions, watching the events progress, and here in Merida a crowd gathered from 12pm in the plaza to protest.

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President Barack Obama said he went to the Fifth Summit of the Americas to listen but I’m not sure he heard or understood all that was being said.

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I went with M to the university dining area for dinner, where he used his student card and his mum's student card to get us both the free meal. Dinner that night was two bread rolls, a kind of porridge type soup (atol its called), an apple, jelly, cooked sweet plantain, cheese, and lettuce type salad. All uni students can eat lunch and dinner for free during week days at these dinning rooms.

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