Statement from Women Housewives workers in the home to  President Chavez - 4 February 2006

Also available in French, Spanish, Turkish

February 2006, a delegation of the Global Women's Strike from a number of countries was in Venezuela working with the Land Committee in Los Teques which is part of the Strike in Venezuela. On 3 February President Hugo Chávez announced that from June 2006 the poorest housewives would receive a monthly income equivalent to 80% of the minimum wage in recognition for their work in the home - 372,000 bls or about $180. He also announced a 15% increase in the minimum wage (which with the Cesta ticket employees get for meals and other essentials would bring its value to 835,350 bls or about $400 a month), and increases in pensions and other low wages. One hundred thousand housewives will be the first beneficiaries from June, and another 100,000 from July. Chávez said that he hoped that up to 500,000 women would eventually get this money.

This is not the implementation of the revolutionary Article 88 of the constitution which recognises the economic and social contribution of women' s unwaged work in the home and on that basis grants housewives a pension. Article 88 still needs legislation putting it into practice.

Rather than wait for its implementation, Chávez has put together the recognition Article 88 gives to housewives' work, with the recent legislation aimed at lifting the poorest out of poverty, and redirected some of the oil revenue to women - as Chávez has repeatedly said, women are the poorest, work hardest and are most committed to the revolution.

The announcement was received with enthusiasm in Venezuela by all of us women and by the men who acknowledge how dependent the revolution is on women's commitment to it. But people are concerned to avoid corruption in who is selected to receive this modest income. Chávez has been outspoken against corruption, but that has not halted it. People feel that, even as he is finding ways to force local government officials to hand over resources to organising by the grassroots, many in positions of power are stealing.

To prevent such corruption and ensure that this new benefit to housewives gets to the women who need it most, the Red Popular de Los Altos Mirandinos (Grassroots Network of the Los Altos in Miranda State), Municipality of Guaicaipuro, issued the following statement on 4 February.

STATEMENT FROM WOMEN HOUSEWIVES WORKERS IN THE HOME TO OUR PRESIDENT - 4 February 2006

We see the need to issue this statement given the imminent emergency of having to spend another year without a budget or begging here and there for resources in order to guarantee people's participation in the direct exercise of participatory democracy and grassroots sovereignty.

We have been working for five years as the Red Popular de Los Altos Mirandinos (Grassroots Network of Los Altos), Miranda State, Municipality of Guaicaipuro, with connections in Aragua, La Guaira, Mérida and Valencia spreading information on the creation of the Land Committees Urban and Rural, and the setting up of the Mesas Tecnicas Locales (Local Technical Committees). In those five years we have designed and carried out property surveys, population censuses, socioeconomic studies, and workshops with their own methodology for topography, seismology and urban planning. Our experience also includes working with the Consejo de Economia Social (the Social Economic Council) since its creation three years ago. There we worked on developing projects and budgets, and on selecting projects and studying their feasibility within the communities. We were also involved in the creation of the Red de Usuarias y Aliadas del Banco de Desarrollo de la Mujer (Network of Users and Allies of the Women's Development Bank) Banmujer. There too we carried out a selection process using a socioeconomic study to locate the women with the greatest need. We gave workshops on ideological training for the creation of a caring economy. From this selection process we developed the criteria used to deliver 120 credits between 2003-04 and to locate the Casas de Alimentacion (soup kitchens) and the Mercal (State-subsidized markets for people on low incomes). The Land Committee welcomed and found a location for the Mission Barrio Adentro (the healthcare mission based in low-income neighbourhoods) and supported the Cuban doctors while they set up the grassroots clinics. We also provided support for the Consejos Comunales (Community Councils) as they were being set up, and advised on the creation of projects that were going to be selected for the Plan de Obras Municipales (the Municipal Works Plan).

The great majority - between 70 and 80 per cent of participants nationwide - are women housewives workers in the home who have become community leaders and defenders of this revolution, this participatory democracy. We are the women who are doing the work of carrying forward this revolution. We work for free and we are treated with contempt by the State bureaucracy - they take advantage of us by using our work to project themselves politically and give themselves credibility, appropriating the few resources we have managed to get after many battles, and which they have the nerve to pretend to administer and even operate. This has brought disappointment and despair to those who believe in the President but not in the majority of those who surround him. By stealing our projects and the resources needed to carry them out, and denying our ability as grassroots organizations, they are stealing the revolution and this unique and unrepeatable opportunity to change the world.

The President announced yesterday that, as part of the redistribution of the oil revenue, the work done in the home by women heads of household - starting with those who live in extreme poverty - would be recognized with a housewife's pension equivalent to 80% of the minimum wage (that is 372.000 Bolivars a month) which would be paid to 100,000 women during the first semester of this year and to an additional 100,000 in the second semester. The President said that this would be administered by the Ministry of Work and the Ministry of Popular Economy, and that the beneficiaries would be put forward by the Consejos Comunales and the Juntas Parroquiales (Parish Boards) which would take account of the Land, Water and Health Committees and other community organizations for monitoring and accountability.

In order to ensure that this economic recognition - which the women of Venezuela and the world have fought so hard for - is delivered directly to those entitled to it and doesn't stay in the pockets of bloodsucking bureaucrats who live off the politics business, and who discredit the government and corrupt any initiative that attempts to deepen the revolutionary process, we propose the following points:

1. We do not want the resources to pass through the town hall, the county hall, the parish or local councils, or other State institutions which divert or steal this money.

2. We do not want the parties to decide who shall be the beneficiaries of social programs because they use the Misiones to buy votes.

3. We do not want the points of reference of grassroots organizations to be manipulated and displaced in order to impose on us civil servants and bureaucrats who know little about our reality.

4. Nor do we want the projects and initiatives to be stolen from community leaders in order to be presented by the councils or the county authorities as their own.

5. We do not want to be excluded with accusations that we are escuálidos [the term that refers to the pro-coup opposition] if we make any criticisms or point out something that isn't working that is the responsibility of a government institution or programme. Rather, we want to be respected as monitors of social expenditure and guardians of this Bolivarian revolution.

We base this on our experiences as grassroots organizers who have been forced to beg for what is ours by constitutional law. As Land Committee we delivered the project we had worked on for five years into the hands of our President on the Aló Presidente [Chávez's live weekly TV and radio show] he did in Guaicaipuro, Miranda state. On this programme our President committed himself to providing directly to our organization the necessary funds to set up our local technical office for the regularization of the tenancy deeds of urban lands. Yet, we are still begging for scraps from the local authorities and the city council in order to function. We still do not know what has happened to those funds. Rumour has it that they are being held by the governor's office or the national technical office, among other bodies. We do not know.

Another example is the experience we've had with the Segundo Consejo de Economia Popular (Second Council of Popular Economy) nationally with the executing body FIDES; we were elected by the people at a meeting of more than 500 citizens organized in work sessions. We were trained for three months and we organized a project for a centre for seven service-providing co-operatives, and we worked with it for a year and a half. Yet the funds (365.000.000) have been withheld to this day, and despite our many requests we have received no reply. The only reply we want is the execution of the project.

One more example is that of the Land Committee at Ramo Verde, where for 45 years 26 families have lived on a military base which belongs to the Ministry of Defense. After many petitions, the Consejo Local de Planificacion Publica (local public planning council) approved two of their projects, one to build roads and another for electricity. Today, after three years, they still haven't had a reply.

These are just a few examples of a general situation that exists throughout the country. It has many variants and it is wearing us out in the exercise of our grassroots sovereignty, running the risk that these revolutionary proposals may be lost and with them our revolution. We cannot allow this to happen and therefore we propose:

1. That the funds destined for workers in the home be paid personally and directly through Banmujer, and that the selection be made through the census of the Redes Populares de Usuarias y Aliadas de Banmujer because our experience shows that this would guarantee that the money is not stolen, that there is no partisanship or cronyism, and that social justice prevails.

2. That the pension is not temporary but for life because women's work is not temporary and never ends.

3. That they include the recognition of revolutionary community work as productive work that should be remunerated. It is not right that we the women who, as our President has said, are the foundation of the revolution, have to depend on the charity of our partners and relatives in order to carry out our revolutionary labour.

We have not expelled the elite along with its caste of corrupt politicians and its regime of terror in order to make way for a new generation of thieves who take advantage of our revolutionary work. We will not allow our dedication towards the communities and the revolution to be used to build a new form of exploitation and terror against us, our people, our President and our revolution.

4 February 2006

Red Popular de los Altos Mirandinos, Estado Miranda, Municipio Guaicaipuro
Tel: 0414 104 0858 Lamadre-romero@hotmail.com

Copies to: Nora Castañeda, President of Banmujer, the Red Popular de Usuarias of Banmujer in the State of Bolivar, Global Women's Strike

New book! Creating a Caring Economy - Nora Castañeda and the Women's Development Bank

Home