Founder of Venezuela’s world famous El Sistema music program, Jose Abreu, met with President Nicolas Maduro last night to discuss expanding the program. They agreed on a project called Musical Program Simon Bolivar, which will aim to have one million Venezuelan youth and children playing musical instruments.
One prominent Venezuelan intellectual and activist’s perspective on the current political situation and tasks ahead, Denis argues that there is a larger opening now for the opposition to take power, and that the grassroots are talking of regrouping, and are at a “critical crossroads”.
The Venezuelan government announced that it is implementing a short term plan, called ‘Safe Homeland’, to fight crime. Members of the Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) will patrol areas of Venezuela with the highest crime rates.
The corridors are always packed in the Metropolitan Council of Popular Power for People with Disabilities, situated in a building just down the street from Plaza Diego Ibarra in Caracas. Wheelchairs come and go, sometimes squeezing to the side in order to let another person pass first...
By Jody McIntyre - New Internationalist, Apr 7th 2013
The deep social changes are described to me as ‘the process’. Governments that came before the election of Hugo Chàvez in 1998 are grouped as ‘the Fourth Republic’. Venezuelans, now living in the Fifth Republic, do not want those days to return.
By Jake Johnston and Sara Kozameh - CEPR, Mar 10th 2013
On Tuesday, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez passed away after 14 years in office. Below is a series of graphs that illustrate the economic and social changes that have taken place in Venezuela during this time period.
The truth is, Chavez is my father, and he is the father of all of my Venezuelan compatriotas with whom I have had the immense privilege of sharing my life and raising my children for so many years in this beautiful and generous land. Twenty of those twenty-eight years have been defined, in great part by Chavez.
Despite some private international media reporting “economic chaos” and that social missions have ground to a halt with President Hugo Chavez still recovering from cancer surgery, the missions continue working.
It is estimated that this year the program will help more than 100,000 families in 25 states plus the District of Columbia, including members of more than 240 Native American communities and more than 200 homeless shelters.
