For Venezuela, There is No Going Back:

[Judi Lynn]

For Venezuela, There is No Goig Back:
A Discussion with Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke
Written by Ali Mustafa
Monday, 22 March 2010 13:18

As Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution enters a new decade of struggle and defiantly advances towards its goal of '21st Century Socialism,' serious challenges to the future of the process emerging from both inside and outside the country still abound. As a result, key questions surrounding Venezuela's mounting tensions with the West, the role played by its fiery and outspoken leader Hugo Chavez, and the future of the process itself remain as relevant today as ever before. Australian-based journalists and long-time Venezuela solidarity activists Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke have been carefully following Venezuela's ongoing political transformation for several years now, countering mainstream media Spin and providing invaluable on-the-ground coverage and analysis about the process as it unfolds. I had the fortunate opportunity to sit down and speak with them both in Toronto before they were set to return to Caracas, following a 10-day Canadian solidarity tour.

Ali Mustafa: Over a decade now has passed since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Can you provide an overview of the type of gains that have been made since President Hugo Chavez has come to power and what Venezuela looks like today?

Federico Fuentes: Well, I think the first thing to note in regards to the gains that have been made in the 10 years of the Venezuelan Revolution is the huge improvement that has occurred in peoples' daily lives. The fact that the previously excluded majority of people now have access to free health care, free education, unemployment has fallen by more than half of what is was before, the level of poverty has decreased, and many other statistics and social indicators that show that general Venezuelan living standards have improved dramatically. But also extremely important has been the active political participation of people in daily life; we are talking about a country where, literally, something like 80 percent of the nation were excluded and felt that they were not represented at all by the sort of representative democracy and two party system that had existed.

It's the collapse of that system and the important movement for change that erupted – prior to Chavez's election but, of course, which then has been stimulated even further by Chavez's election – in the re-writing of the new constitution that's brought about these important gains that Venezuelans have been able to achieve... This reflected itself in important mobilizations that occurred particularly in 2001, 2002, 2003 that defeated a military coup and an attempt by the capitalist class to strangle the economy, which of course meant that the government basically was unable to carry out a lot of the 'missions' that it first set out for itself, but through that struggle was able to move into a position where it could begin to carry out a lot of these social programs, and as always places emphasis on the people involved in them. I think one of the most exciting things is, for instance, the health care social missions – it's not just that free health care is now being provided but that this health care is being carried out by the people, for the people.

So, I think the Venezuela that exists today is fundamentally different from what it was like 10, 11 years ago in the social aspect, in the political aspect – and I think it's a Venezuela that today, in its large bulk, refuses to go back to what existed before. That's one of the most common things that you'll find amongst Venezuelan people: that no matter what problems, or whatever they may be encountering, they strongly feel that there is no going back to what Venezuela was like before and they are willing to die to defend what they've won.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2413-for-venezuela-there-is-no-going-back-a-discussion-with-federico-fuentes-and-kiraz-janicke

[PhD]

1. I'm always amazed anyone writes positively about this dictatorial nutcase

He's delusional, paranoid, and building a personal army comparable to Hitler's SS.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[PhD]

3. No, I'm not deluding myself

I don't see someone who was a thorn in the side of Bush and think he can do no wrong. The guy is a wannabe dictator who's changed his country's constitution and says he wants to stay in power until 2030 and complete his "revolution." He's no better than Fidel Castro or Robert Mugabe. How can any self-respecting progressive support people like that?!

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

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[wroberts189]

5. You know I see how he has helped his country and others..

One year he provided cheap oil for the poor in the US. When gas was close to 4 bucks a gallon.

So people post articles showing all the good he has done for the country and someone always comes along calls him a dictator or "wannabe dictator" ..but they never back it up.

Or mention he was elected twice. Or mention the free health care ...that poverty has plummeted and literacy skyrocketed ..that quality of life for everyone has gone up.

I say where are all those terrible stories these people must be reading to say all these bad things... ? Delusion ..Paranoid? Why? Dictator? Why? Nutcase...why? Comparisons to Hitler????

I never see them.

I do see a lot of Teabaggers saying those same things about Obama though.

[PhD]

11. Because I have personal experience with his regime

A friend of my daughter is engaged to a Venezuelan. The trials and tribulations of his family at the hands of Chavez's thugs are eye opening. Do a little research on what is going on in that country. The seizure of property. The investments in weapons. The arming of rebel groups throughout the region. The oppression of opposition groups. The media restrictions.

Look at how Chavez has behaved with other leaders--even Obama--and how he tries to bully them. Something is just not right about this guy.

[wroberts189]

12. Obama .. he praised him at the U.N.. Even gave him a book.

Because of my self-employed job and the fact I am a news Internet news junkie and I watch all that goes on through RSS through every major news feed ..and I just never see anything that would suggest he is some evil dictator soon to become Hitler that some make him out to be. Jesus he won 60% percent of the vote on a re-election essentially certified by one of our own ex-presidents. The country is more democratic then we are... and you ask me to read up?

Read up what?

Show me....something... and do not show me something like he refused to renew a tv license of a station that was calling for rebellion or kicked the big oil companies in the pants.

[eridani]

13. I see. Connections with the rich white people of Venezuela

The majority is as dark-skinned as their president, you know.

[Doctor_J]

14. Media restrictions?

the media there is as right-wing as ours. And maybe property seizure was neccessary because too much was in the hands of a few (like our 5% that own 80% of the assets of the US).

[mudplanet]

9. I imagine you'd be surprised to learn that grass is green and the sky is blue

[Peace Patriot]

6. "...there is no going back to what Venezuela was like before...

...and they (most Venezuelans) are willing to die to defend what they've won." --from the OP

This is yet another reality that we never hear about from our corpo-fascist press--the viewpoint of the Venezuelan people.

----------------

Kiraz Janicke makes some particularly important points, which I've boldfaced:

"...for the first time the Venezuelan people have a government that's actually truly independent of US imperialism. But of course in addition to all of the social gains, one of the most fundamental changes is this kind of mass political awakening of the Venezuelan people and the amount of participation of the Venezuelan people in political life through many instances of grassroots participatory democracy. For instance, the communal councils that since the end of 2005 have developed and spread all around the country. You have now approximately 35,000 of these communal councils...where the highest decision making body is the General Assembly of the local community, and importantly they have the ability to recall elected officials or elected spokespeople. This is something that was also another major democratic gain of the 1999 Constitution...which was the first constitution that the Venezuelan people were ever able to democratically decide upon themselves. They democratically voted on that constitution in a popular referendum, and that in many ways has provided a legal framework for further changes. But the real driving force behind the change has been the mobilization of the people.

Initially when the Chavez government came to power, Chavez said he thought that there was a third way between Capitalism and Socialism and that it was possible to create Capitalism with a human face. For every time that the government attempted to implement reforms in the interest of the poor majority of Venezuelans, they were met with extremely violent resistance by the traditional ruling elite; for instance, the carrying out of the coup in 2002, the bosses lockout of the oil industry, and so on. It's actually been through this process that Chavez himself came out and said that, 'I've come to the conclusion that it's not simply possible to reform the system but it's necessary to change the system entirely,' and he came out and made his famous speech at the Porto Alegre World Social Forum in 2005, where he called for 'Socialism of the 21st century'. And that really has sparked a huge debate in Venezuela... People are very politically aware, people are participating and debating and discussing an alternative to the capitalist system, which is currently in crisis."

-----

Then, in 2006, the Venezuelan people gave Chavez his biggest endorsement yet. He won the 2006 presidential election in Venezuela with nearly 60% of the vote, after the Porto Alegre speech--despite relentless lying, psypos and disinformation out of Washington and by the corpo-fascist press here and in Venezuela, and further plots to harm Chavez and Venezuelan democracy, funded with U.S. tax dollars. Janicke explains here WHY Chavez made this speech. That is very important. It was not an ideological decision--it was the RESULT of the coup attempt, the oil bosses' lockout, the USAID-funded recall election, the Bushwhack's dictate to South American leaders that they "must isolate Chavez" (which they defied--most notabe defier, Lula da Silva, president of Brazil), the CIA/rightwing plots around the 2006 election, the assassination plot out of Colombia (U.S. client state) and many other examples that established that Washington in collusion with the worst elements of Venezuelan society and multinational corporations would not permit "Capitalism with a human face" in a country that they had always looted and exploited. Reform had to be more thorough to expunge Washington's dictation in the political system and to solidify the poor majority's democratic gains.

This explanation reinforces my view that Chavez and his government are comparable to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal here. FDR met with vicious resistance by the rich and the capitalists, even after they had ruined the U.S. economy--and, like now, the world economy--and plunged everyone into severe Depression, including millions of jobless and homeless in the U.S. They had no conscience and no remorse and fought every measure that FDR took to help the poor and to rebalance the U.S. political/economic system to make it more democratic and more humane. And, as FDR said, "Organized money hates me--and I welcome their hatred!" Chavez has developed the same attitude--just as FDR did--as the result of EXPERIENCE. FDR was no ideologue either. But the rich and the corporate were so vicious and so inhumane that strong measures were needed to curtail them. And that takes time--to counter the untoward power of the rich--and that is the chief reason that the American people elected FDR to four terms in office. And that is the reason that the Venezuelan people voted to lift the term limit on their president, to let Chavez run for office again in 2012. Real reform takes time.

The second Great Depression that the Bushwhacks induced here hit Latin America before us--in the previous decades. This is what was happening to Latin America as the result of Reagan/Bush/Clinton "neo-liberal" policies, which impoverished multi-millions of people in Latin America. Chavez came to power in response to those dire conditions, but the corpo-fascists in Washington and Venezuela tried in every way they could to prevent the simplest and most obviously needed reforms. Education. Health care. Pensions. Transparent elections. Public participation. To achieve a decent society, you MUST curtail the influence of "organized money," as FDR put it--and you must do so with determination and thoroughness.

Venezuela, like the U.S. during the Great Depression/New Deal, represents an unusual alliance between the people and their leaders. In both places, an historic grass roots democracy movement arose in response to the cruelty and irresponsibility of the ruling class, and put leaders into power with a mandate for major reform. That possibility no longer exists in the U.S., due to the utter corruption of our election system--both by money and by 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines--but it remains possible in Latin America, due to Latin Americans' vigilance over their election systems, and that is no better illustrated than in Venezuela, with "organized money," here and there, relentlessly attacking the Chavez government, and the people of Venezuela repeatedly electing the Chavez government, each time with increased margins of the votes, in provably transparent elections.

---

"People (in Venezuela) are very politically aware, people are participating and debating and discussing an alternative to the capitalist system, which is currently in crisis." --from the OP

We need to have that discussion here-- a thorough discussion of Capitalism's failures--and it is occurring to some extent, just not in Washington nor in the corpo-fascist media. In the controlled media, we see canned "movements" of an idiotic, uninformed, and probably "subsidized" tiny minority--"tea baggers" and other nutballs. These are trumpeted as distractions that have nothing to do with the main crisis, except that "organized money" here has the power to trumpet their idiocy in place of real discussion. And in Washington, we see many people paraded as elected leaders who were (s)elected by ES&S/Diebold in completely, 100% non-transparent voting systems, with the help of "organized money." This is one of the reasons that Venezuela is so hated and reviled by our corporate rulers--they know that Venezuelans are having a REAL discussion about corporate rule, and they further know that, despite corpo-fascist control of most of the media in Venezuela, they cannot rig the elections, and neither can they stop the president and the people from creating their own forums for discussion, such as the public TV/radio stations. Their hatred of Chavez is really hatred of the Venezuelan people and their democracy.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Busting the corpo-fascist myths about Venezuela...

These two close observers/analysts of the Venezuelan scene make additional, very important points about the corpo-fascist media campaign against Chavez and his government (and, by implication, against the people of Venezuela). I've highlighted some of them below.

The interviewer asks them to comment on misconceptions about Venezuela:

---

KJ: Well, for me, I think the main misconception or lie that is often repeated in the media is the idea that this is an undemocratic government – that Chavez is a dictator. Most of the international media overwhelmingly focuses on Chavez, but they always ignore the fact that the Bolivarian movement, which is led by Chavez, is a movement that's made up by millions of people that support Chavez: the workers, the urban poor, campesinos, students, sectors from right across Venezuelan society... They feel that the Chavez government is implementing policies that are in their interests. If you look at all the opinion polls over the years, they will show that Chavez has consistently higher levels of support within Venezuelan society, and it's always hovering around 60% support. And it's not only that people are just passive supporters of Chavez, they are active supporters as well, and active participants in the Bolivarian Revolution.

FF: Yeah, I think that definitely one of the main myths of the media is this idea of Venezuela drifting towards an undemocratic dictatorship – which is ironic because I think there is possibly no other country in the world that has more electoral processes than Venezuela. Almost every year there is an election, and there has been at least one example of an election that the government has lost, and that was the Constitutional reform vote in 2007, which generally under a dictatorship doesn't happen... The other major lie is this idea of the restriction of the freedom of the press; I think it's an important issue, particularly in the case of RCTV ... It's worth just quickly explaining that no TV station has ever been shut down in Venezuela. What we have is RCTV, which in 2007 – after having actively participated in provoking and carrying out a coup that, by law, would have easily justified them being taken off air in any country – was not taken off air; instead, their license was up for renewal...and the government, or the broadcasting authority, decided that at this time it was not in its best interests to continue to give a license to a company that would use it to destabilize the country.

Then, again, at the beginning of this year, it became a scandal internationally because, even though we were told in 2007 that RCTV had been shut down, it was still broadcasting (it was broadcasting on cable). But this was not a question of the government silencing dissent; this was a TV station that was operating illegally: their paperwork said they were an international channel, but by law – and everyone accepted this, including RCTV afterwards – they were a national channel, because more than 80% of their production was made in Venezuela for a Venezuelan audience. So they needed to renew their paperwork, and the government said that until they did, they would be temporarily removed from air. Once the paperwork was put in, they would be able to broadcast again on cable. There are many other examples, but that's I suppose the biggest one that's always in the media.

KJ: Yeah, well, as an independent journalist, I monitor the media everyday about Venezuela and look at what all different kinds of news sources say about the government – both news sources internally and externally – and I would have to say that the kind of manipulation and distortion of Venezuelan reality is something that I've never seen anywhere else. There's an Australian journalist and documentary film-maker, John Pilger, who said that, 'What you're seeing is really an unprecedented propaganda campaign that's being waged against the Chavez government' –

FF: It's a media war –

KJ: It really is a media war. And I think if you go to Venezuela and see what the media says, this will become clear immediately. You often hear the claim that there is no freedom of speech and so on, but internally in Venezuela there are more than 50 daily newspapers and about 45 of those newspapers support the opposition and are constantly attacking the government everyday – including having front page headlines calling for the military overthrow of the government... Then you have those 4 newspapers that support the Bolivarian process; and then you have one newspaper that, you know, presents itself as being neutral. So, on the level of the print media, the opposition to the government is overwhelmingly dominant... A lot of the television stations are extremely hostile as well.

The other important aspect to note is that, as a result of the Bolivarian process, you actually have a massive explosion of community media in Venezuela, in particular community radio stations in the Barrios...but also a number of community television stations and other independent media websites and so on. So this is like the first time where a lot of the grassroots groups and Venezuelan poor are actually getting to participate themselves in the production of the their own media; whereas prior to the Chavez government, they didn't have a voice in politics or the media. They were just excluded. --from the OP

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2413-for-venezuela-there-is-no-going-back-a-discussion-with-federico-fuentes-and-kiraz-janicke

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"Chavez is a dictator"? "There is no freedom of speech in Venezuela"? BULLSHIT!

As during the New Deal, the poor majority finally gets a voice in politics and government! That is what is REALLY happening in Venezuela--and our corporate rulers don't like it; they don't like it at all. Control of what we think and what we know, and control of the national political/economic discussion, is one of the two main methods of corporate tyranny here (the other being monetary and 'TRADE SECRET' voting machine control of election results). So, they lie through their teeth about Chavez. Kiraz Janicke says, "...the kind of manipulation and distortion of Venezuelan reality is something that I've never seen anywhere else." I've seen it somewhere else--in the lies about WMDs leading up to the Iraq invasion and the slaughter of a hundred thousand innocent people, to steal their oil. That is what this corpo-fascist, CIA-driven media campaign against the Chavez government and the people of Venezuela closely resembles. They're now accusing Chavez of "supporting terrorism"--the most absurd charge of all. While the U.S. funds death squads in Colombia and Honduras, and commits atrocities against innocent people every day in Afghanistan, and has been, for the last decade, torturing thousands of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and torture dungeons around the world, while we rain bombs on innocent people and support the worst governments on earth, the Chavez government has done NOTHING to harm ANYONE. Our government and our corpo-fascist media have become insanely hypocritical. We need to realize this. They are LYING.

[DCKit]

8. "A lot of the television stations are extremely hostile as well. "

45 (not including the newspapers and RW radio) versions of Faux to 5 supporting the legitimate government and the people.

Seems the average Venezuelan - unlike 29% of U.S. citizens - knows how to change the channel when their talking heads start spouting willfully ignorant, corporatist and fascist B.S..

I would say the level of education has most definitely improved. How can we get some of that here?

[wroberts189]

10. Excellent posts ..great info. thx nt