The Chávez revolution remains the most original and democratic experiment in Latin America [View All]

[leftchick]

Bolivar reborn

The Chávez revolution remains the most original and democratic experiment in Latin America, and is clearly here to stay

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_gott/2007/11/bolivar_reborn.html

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The workplace was delightful, yet clearly not much work was being done. These were not the regimented factories of the maquiladoras along the Mexican border with the United States, let alone the sweatshops of Asia. The guide explained that the 142 workers were mainly housewives involved in a government job-training programme, Vuelvan Caras, that seeks to get untrained people into socially useful work within the framework of a cooperative. This is admirable, but here too much remains to be done.

Cooperatives are becoming the basic organising tool of Chávez's Bolivarian Revolution, with thousands springing up all over the country. I found a group of security guards, watching over a peasant collective, who had formed themselves into a cooperative of their own, and a group of cooks in a student kitchen had done the same, calling themselves the Flavour and Revolution cooperative. In the revised constitution that will be subjected to a referendum on December 2, the cooperatives will receive constitutional approval. Article 112 declares that the state will promote different kinds of economic enterprises, be they private, mixed, or run by a local community, to create the best conditions "for the collective and cooperative construction of a socialist economy."

Other articles in the revised constitution promise everyone a six-hour day, and extend social security provision to all unorganised workers (fulfilling the ambition of Simón Bolívar, the guiding genius of the state, who invented the term in 1818). This is not so much populism as sensible democratic politics. Chávez needs to win elections. Whereas Fidel Castro has spent half a century explaining to Cuban people why they can't have their cake today, Chávez needs to promise everyone the moon in order to retain his popularity at the polls. Such is the challenge of revolutionary politics in the democratic era.

Of the 69 articles in the constitution that have been revised, some seek to reorder the existing structure of local government. State boundaries will be altered and new regions created, some under the control of central government. The purpose is to get more state money to neglected and indigent areas as well as to avoid the corruption of local caciques. The most significant new articles deal with the powers of a myriad elected "people's councils", the basis of the country's future democracy and give emphasis to the presence in society of its indigenous and Afro-American components, in addition to those elements, hitherto predominant, that originate from Europe.

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The unfavourable image of the Chávez government in the outside world has been largely created by a tiny group of Caracas-based foreign journalists who repeat the hostile propaganda produced by this opposition, and fail to appreciate the quantitative and qualitative improvements that have taken place in the country over the past few years. It is easy to denounce the levels of crime and corruption, and the incompetence of a government presiding over a revolutionary upheaval, just as it is easy to suggest that catastrophe may lie ahead. Yet it should not be possible to ignore the fact that the sheer volume of the oil bonanza of recent years has given the country a feel-good factor that is finally providing a sense of stability and optimism.



edit to add some more enlightening reading....

Spinning Chávez
Hugh O'Shaughnessy

http://www.newstatesman.com/200711260004

On Sunday 2 December 16 million Venezuelans vote in a referendum: all the signs are that they will approve constitutional reforms proposed by President Hugo Chávez.

Popular as ever for having put a big dent in the shocking gap between rich and poor in an oil-rich country, he wants a chance to bury 19th century Leninist shibboleths, strengthen already rumbustious local democracy and stand for election again.

It is very likely that the electors will give Chávez what he wants: it is certain that spinners in Washington, London and elsewhere will do their best to pull the process to pieces.

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Now those who have fawned on Saudi Arabian kings, indulged the Israelis’ atom bomb and their criminal mistreatment of Palestinians, and quietly backed every Latin American dictator from Somoza and Pinochet to the Argentine and Brazilian generals will attempt to portray the Venezuelan leader as anti-democratic.

They will also try to bury the European Commission’s high praise for last year’s presidential elections in Venezuela - "the high turnout, and peaceful atmosphere in which they were held, together with the acceptance of results by all those involved".