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Features: Social Programs

The "Doctors of Socialism"? Meet Venezuela’s Community Doctors

By Various / Ewan Robertson - Venezuelanalysis.com, Oct 16th 2013

A group of trainee community doctors on a celebratory march in Caracas. Their placards read “healthcare is a right, let’s de

Late President Hugo Chavez argued that Venezuela’s community doctors must be “doctors of socialism”; committed to free public healthcare and community service. These interviews with recently graduated community doctors from Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia give a firsthand insight into the new kind of doctor Venezuela is creating for itself and the wider world.

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Attending Need, Not Profit: Venezuela’s Experiment with Community Medicine

By Ewan Robertson - Venezuelanalysis.com, Oct 14th 2013

The February 2012 graduation of the first wave of community doctors, of which there were over 8000 in total (AVN)

How should the healthcare needs of a society be met? Conspicuously absent from international media coverage and under fire from conservative critics at home, Venezuela is developing a public healthcare system distinct from both U.S. market-driven and European welfare-state models. Perhaps nothing makes this system more unique than the kind of doctors being trained to run it.

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Science for Need not Greed: Venezuela’s Optical Instrument Plant

By Tamara Pearson - Venezuelanalysis.com, Jun 11th 2013

Elias Sanchez with some of the telescope prototypes (Tamara Pearson/ Venezuelanalysis.com)

In these interviews with three workers at Venezuela’s new telescope plant, Venezuelanalysis.com looks at how scientific work and community work can go hand in hand, and how science can be used as a tool for liberation and human development.

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Venezuela’s Dreams and Demons: Has the Bolivarian Revolution Changed Education?

By Tamara Pearson – Venezuelanalysis.com, Mar 18th 2011

An Alternative School student holding up her placard made for the march to protest the bullfighting in Merida (Tamara Pearson)

Through two very different interviews we get a glimpse of the bureaucracy, corruption, clientelism, achievements, inspiration, and political growth within Venezuela’s education system, all of which are representative of the broader demons and dreams faced in the Bolivarian Revolution and its aim to create the “new person”.

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Venezuelan Education Law: Socialist Indoctrination or Liberatory Education?

By James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com, Aug 21st 2009

Venezuelan opposition activists allege that the new Education Law is unconstitutional, anti-democratic, politicizes the classroom, threatens the family and religion, and will allow the state to take children away from their parents for indoctrination. Are they correct?

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Misión Barrio Adentro: Experiencing Health Care as a Human Right in Venezuela

By Rebecca Trotzky Sirr - UpsideDownWorld.org, May 27th 2007

Entering the Misión Barrio Adentro clinic in San Rafael de Tabay, a town in Merida, Venezuela amazes even the most jaded visitor. The local community hospital, Centro de Diagnostico Integral (CDI) brings alive Venezuela’s social revolution in health care.

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Felix’s Miracle and the Convenio Cuba-Venezuela

By Michael Fox – Venezuelanalysis.com, Aug 24th 2006

Felix Jose Espinoza Ledesma is a cab driver in Caracas. If not for his large print and the way his eyes squint slightly when he reads an address or a phone number, you would never guess that just over a year and a half ago, he was on his deathbed, his vision nearly completely gone, and barely struggling to stay alive.

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Venezuela Launches Primary Health Program for Extreme Poor

By Michael Fox - Venezuelanalysis.com, Apr 22nd 2006

The Venezuelan government, yesterday, began a diagnostic primary health project for the homeless, drug addicts, and at-risk individuals as part of the “Negra Hipolita Mission,” the social program that is aimed at taking care of Venezuelans in situations of critical poverty.

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Mercal: Reducing Poverty and Creating National Food Sovereignty in Venezuela

By Sarah Wagner – Venezuelanalysis.com, Jun 24th 2005

Mercal is the new subsidized supermarket and food distribution network that the Venezuelan government set up in the wake of the December 2002 to January 2003 "general strike." It has now become one of the government's most popular and widely used social programs, providing food to over 30% of the population. What is its background and what are its effects?

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Venezuela: Illiteracy Free Territory

By Sarah Wagner – Venezuelanalysis.com, Apr 21st 2005

The 8th graduation of Mission Robinson, the program to teach Venezuelans to read and write, honored the 32,509 participants of the program and brought Venezuela a step closer to being a "territory free of illiteracy." A report on the program, its context, and its impact.

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Free Neighborhood Clinics Spread Across Venezuela

By Argiris Malapanis - The Militant, May 5th 2004

Barrio Adentro is a government-sponsored program that has brought thousands of volunteer Cuban doctors operating free neighborhood clinics in working-class districts and rural areas across the country where workers and farmers have had little or no access to health care.

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Venezuelans carry out literacy campaign with aid and volunteer trainers from Cuba

By Argiris Malapanis and Camilo Catalán - The Militant, Nov 2nd 2003

Venezuela's Misión Robinson is to teach 1.5 million illiterate people to read and write this year.

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