The Extraordinary Rise of a True Democracy

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Wed, 17 May 2006 13:42:48 -0700 (PDT)

The Extraordinary Rise of a " True Democracy "

 

 

 

 

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May06/Pilger17.htm

 

The Extraordinary Rise of a " True Democracy "

 

by John Pilger

May 17, 2006

First Published in The Guardian

 

I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios

of Caracas, in streets and breezeblock houses that defy gravity

and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog.

Caracas is said to be one of the world's toughest cities,

yet I have known no fear;

the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth

characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable

confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who,

in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts

long emptied of their meaning in the west:

-- " reform " , " popular democracy " , " equity " , " social justice "

and,yes, " freedom " .

 

The other night, in a room bare except for a single fluorescent tube,

I heard these words spoken by the likes of Ana Lucia Fernandez,

aged 86, Celedonia Oviedo, aged 74, and Mavis Mendez, aged 95.

A mere 33-year-old, Sonia Alvarez, had come with her two young children.

Until about a year ago, none of them could read and write;

now they are studying mathematics. For the first time in its modern era,

Venezuela has almost 100 per cent literacy.

 

This achievement is due to a national program, called Mision Robinson,

designed for adults and teenagers previously denied an education

because of poverty. Mision Ribas is giving everyone

a secondary school education, called a bachillerato.

(The names Robinson and Ribas refer

to Venezuelan independence leaders from the 19th century).

 

Named, like much else here, after the great liberator Simon Bolivar,

" Bolivarian " , or people's, universities have opened, introducing

as one parent told me, " treasures of the mind, history and music and art,

we barely knew existed. " Under Hugo Chávez, Venezuela

is the first major oil producer to use its oil revenue to liberate the

poor.

 

Mavis Mendez has seen, in her 95 years, a parade of governments

preside over the theft of tens of billions of dollars in oil spoils,

much of it flown to Miami, together with the steepest descent into poverty

ever known in Latin America; from 18 per cent in 1980 to 65% in 1995,

three years before Chavez was elected.

 

" We didn't matter in a human sense, " she said.

" We lived and died without real education and running water,

and food we couldn't afford.

 

When we fell ill, the weakest died.

In the east of the city, where the mansions are, we were invisible,

or we were feared. Now I can read and write my name, and so much more;

- and whatever the rich, and their media say,

- we have planted the seeds of true democracy,

- and I am full of joy that I have lived to witness it. "

 

Latin American govts. often give their regimes a new sense of legitimacy

by holding a constituent assembly that drafts a new constitution.

When he was elected in 1998, Chavez used this brilliantly to decentralize,

to give the impoverished grassroots power they had never known

and to begin to dismantle a corrupt political superstructure

as a prerequisite to changing the direction of the economy.

 

His setting-up of missions as a means of bypassing saboteurs

in the old, corrupt bureaucracy was typical of the extraordinary

political and social imagination that is changing Venezuela peacefully.

 

This is his " Bolivarian revolution " , which, at this stage,

is not dissimilar to the post-war European social democracies.

Chavez, a former army major, was anxious to prove he was not yet

another military " strongman " . He promised that his every move

would be subject to the will of the people.

 

In his first year as president in 1999, he held an unprecedented

number of votes:

a referendum on whether or not people wanted

- a new constituent assembly;- elections for the assembly;

- a second referendum ratifying the new constitution -

- 71 per cent of the people approved each of the 396 articles

that gave Mavis and Celedonia and Ana Lucia, and their children

and grandchildren, unheard of freedoms, such as

 

Article 123,

which for the first time recognized the human rights

of mixed-race and black people, of whom Chavez is one.

" The indigenous peoples, " it says, " have the right to maintain their

own economic practices, based on reciprocity, solidarity and exchange...

and to define their priorities... "

 

The little red book of the Venezuelan constitution became a bestseller

on the streets. Nora Hernandez, a community worker in Petare barrio,

took me to her local state-run supermarket,

which is funded entirely by oil revenue and where prices

are up to half those in the commercial chains.

 

Proudly, she showed me articles of the constitution

written on the backs of soap power packets.

" We can never go back, " she said.

 

In La Vega barrio, I listened to a nurse, Mariella Machado,

a big round black woman of 45 with a wonderfully wicked laugh,

stand and speak at an urban land council on subjects

ranging from homelessness to the Iraq war.

 

That day, they were launching Mision Madres de Barrio,

a program aimed specifically at poverty among single mothers.

Under the constitution, women have the right to be paid as carers,

and can borrow from a special women's bank.

 

From next month, the poorest housewives will get about 120 pounds

[approximately US$284] a month. It is not surprising that Chavez

has now won eight elections and referendums in eight years,

each time increasing his majority, a world record.

 

He is the most popular head of state in the western hemisphere,

probably in the world.

That is why he survived, amazingly, a Washington-backed coup in 2002.

Mariella and Celedonia and Nora and hundreds of thousands of others

came down from the barrios and demanded that the army remain loyal.

 

" The people rescued me, " Chavez told me.

" They did it with all the media against me, preventing even the basic

facts

of what had happened. For popular democracy in heroic action,

I suggest you need look no further. "

 

The venomous attacks on Chávez, who is on a private visit

to London this month, have begun and resemble uncannily

those of the privately owned Venezuelan television and press,

which called for the elected government to be overthrown.

 

Fact-deprived attacks on Chavez in the Times and the Financial Times

this week, each with that peculiar malice reserved for true dissenters

from

Thatcher's and Blair's " one true way " , follow a travesty of journalism on

Channel 4 News last month, which effectively accused the Venezuelan

president of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd

fantasy.

 

The reporter sneered at policies to eradicate poverty

and presented Chavez as a sinister buffoon, while Donald Rumsfeld

was allowed to liken him to Hitler, unchallenged.

In contrast, Tony Blair, a patrician with no equivalent democratic record,

having been elected by a 5'th of those eligible to vote

and caused the violent death of tens of thousands of Iraqis,

is allowed to continue spinning his truly absurd political survival tale.

 

Chávez is, of course, a threat, especially to the United States.

Like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, who based their revolution

on the English co-operative moment, and the moderate Allende in Chile,

he offers the threat of an alternative way of developing a decent society:

in other words, the threat of a good example in a continent where the

majority of humanity has long suffered a Washington -designed peonage.

 

In the US media in the 1980s, the " threat " of tiny Nicaragua

was seriously debated until it was crushed.

Venezuela is clearly being " softened up " for something similar.

 

A US army publication, Doctrine for Asymetric War against Venezuela,

describes Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution as the

" largest threat since the Soviet Union and Communism " .

When I said to Chavez that the US historically

had had its way in Latin America, he replied:

" Yes, and my assassination would come as no surprise.

 

But the empire is in trouble, and the people of Venezuela

will resist an attack. We ask only for the support of all true democrats " .

 

#################################

John Pilger is an internationally renowned investigative journalist

and documentary filmmaker. His newest book,

Freedom Next Time, will be published in June by Bantam Press.

Visit John Pilger's website: http://www.johnpilger.com.

 

 

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