Venezuelan Funds Dry Up For Hugo Chávez Supporters In New York

[naaman fletcher]

The film originally ended with a scene of Venezuelan authorities handing a $100,000 grant check to Lucia Solano, who heads a non-profit in the South Bronx. The goal was to give documentary proof that the Venezuelan government was using its oil profits to help fund community organizations in the South Bronx, just like Chavez had promised.

But now, the film fades to black and a few lines of white text pop onto the screen, explaining that some organizations that received grant money from Venezuela have been abruptly cut off from Chávez’s funding program, leaving them no other option but to close their doors to the South Bronx community — and people want to know why.

...

The irony is that the non-profits that have been excluded from the Venezuelan grant program are those that most militantly support Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution, and they do not understand how their unflinching support for Venezuela’s socialist revolution got them rejected from a much-needed source of funding.

“We are sad to say that all of these projects are paralyzed and/or closed today,” Luis Rojas told a crowd at the Petro Bronx gathering. They are closed, he added, “because, in an anti-popular and anti-Bolivarian way, some people entrenched have irresponsibly and vulgarly ignored our collective.”


http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/18/venezuelan-funds-dry-up-for-hugo-chavez-supporters-in-new-york/