A government based on the self-activity of the grassroots
In Venezuela democracy has taken on a new meaning as people expect to act on their own collective behalf. Faithful to his mandate, President Chávez has refused to privatize and hand over to US multinationals the vast oil and water reserves that belong to the population. Instead he wants to “eliminate poverty by giving power to the poor” – the great majority.
| Nora Castañeda, president of the Women’s Development Bank (Banmujer), which offers micro credit to the poorest women says: “Micro credits are an excuse to empower women. The economy must be at the service of human beings, not human beings at the service of the economy. We are building an economy based on co-operation and mutual support, a caring economy. And since 70% of those who live in conditions of poverty in the world are women, economic change must start with women.” |
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The Venezuelan elite and their powerful US friends, continue to plot. They call Chávez a ‘dictator’ for going over the heads of state institutions and creating structures based on the direct participation of the previously most excluded sectors.
But Dr Thais Ojeda*, who works for Venezuela’s state-owned oil company and is a member of Clase Media en Positivo (Middle Class Positive), is deeply critical of her peers: “For two years after Chávez was elected, the government worked through the institutions. Chavez thought that doctors and educators, whom you expect to be most socially aware, would support changes that were for the good of the majority. But they didn’t. Only 2% of doctors support them. Obstacles were put in the way of directives that came from the Minister of Health or of Education so they never got implemented, never reached the grassroots. So the government set up neighbourhood health and education campaigns.”
Known as the missions, these are implemented by the users, and first of all by women who as society’s main carers are most concerned with health and well-being in the community. Women are the majority in all the missions.
Most professionals have refused to bow to the will of the grassroots who, like Chávez, are the colour of their servants. They never expected to care for those who couldn’t afford to pay.
Ojeda: “I come from state hospitals, I know. Doctors are paid for six or eight hours work but the pay is low so they work two or three hours and spend the rest in private hospitals for higher pay. Previously the state didn’t care if you provided good healthcare.” Now it does.
Ojeda believes that “As grassroots people get the skills that education provides they will replace those professionals who never did anything for them. Many professionals will leave the country.”
Some may take the plane to Miami. But others may be drawn by the excitement of this massive movement. Or their children will be.
There can be no food security when 65% of basic foods are imported, so land reform is the priority. The Vuelvan Caras mission has been training people to form co-operatives; many of the co-operatives Banmujer funds are rural.
For the first time since the oil boom drew everyone into the cities, agricultural production is encouraged. GM crops have been banned, replaced with native crops, and an international seed bank is being created.
Like Ojeda, Blanca Eckhout, a young woman who comes from community media and now heads both government channels Vive TV and Venezolana de Televisión, tells of deadly obstacles: “As the legislation giving rural people the right to idle land came into force, rural leaders and their families were assassinated by powerful landowners. They had no protection. We reported on it, and Chávez sent soldiers to ensure that taking the land that our constitution says is theirs would not be a death sentence.”
Assassinations have not stopped. Neither have the campaigns against impunity, by women and other relatives of those murdered. Chávez has instructed mayors and governors to step up land reform. “Some people are scared to take on the landowners. If you need backing ask for it, we will send reinforcements. This is a daily war against the latifundio and we must win it. We must use the power that the people have given us. Not to do so would be inexcusable, irresponsible and a betrayal.”
It is not only the professional elite which is holding back change. Many political parties claiming to be part of the proceso are competing to win power for themselves at the expense of the grassroots.
An organization of the grassroots beyond political parties
Chávez counts on the grassroots structures born out of the mobilization that defeated the 2002 coup and the oil coup, and that won the 2004 presidential referendum (largely thanks to women who mobilized their neighbourhoods), to become ‘a new organization of the grassroots movement, well beyond the political parties…We must ensure that popular participation is a reality, not a formality…’
Castañeda: “We must build the new state as we get rid of the old.” A government based on the self-activity of the grassroots – general assemblies are supposed to work out local government spending plans, making sure there is accountability, and stamp out corruption.
Chávez does not mince words: “We must demolish old habits or they will demolish us… The best medicine against corruption is to give up personal and material ambitions… A public servant cannot be making business deals.”