UNDER CONSTRUCTION - Venezuela Delegation
Introduction
Scarlet ibises by the thousands come back to the 
same island to roost each night in Laguna de Tacarigua National Park in the Barlavento region of Miranda State.
A cable car to the top of the mountains that separate Caracas from the sea is a very popular weekend outing for citizens of that city.
The Cult of Personality:
Simon Bolivar
There's a strong cult of personality in Venezuela that revolves around one man. You can hardly walk into an office or coffee shop or even a private home without seeing his picture displayed prominently on the wall. The country's official name has been changed to reflect his hero status; waiters and cabdrivers can tell you about his 
principles for society. His name is Simon Bolivar.
Simon Bolivar is known throughout much of South American simply as El Libertador, the one who led his native Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru to freedom from colonial Spain in the early 1800s. Bolivar was born in Venezuela's capital, Caracas, in July 24, 1783, into a wealthy, aristocratic family who had already been in Venezuela 200 years by the time that Simon was born. In many ways, he was typical of his time; h
is parents both died when he was a child, and his young wife died only a few months after their marriage. Like many boys in his position, his guardians sent him to Spain as a teen to finish his education.
Bolivar was also typical in that he was interested in the political revolutions changing the face of history in his time. It was in Europe that he saw firsthand the excesses of the French Revolution. On the way home to Venezuela in 1806, a six-month visit, beginning in Charleston and ending in Philadelphia, turned observations of the North American 
Revolution into principles that Bolivar wanted to apply to South America. A lasting image for Bolivar was seeing President Thomas Jefferson, wearing a modest coat, riding unescorted on a simple mount to his office. Watching this leader who had been elected by ordinary citizens rather than elevated by hereditary privilege made a deep impression on the future Liberator. Bolivar could see that society in the new United States was not torn by violence or chaos, just because government and education opened to the many, rather than continuing in 
the hands of the few.
Not much is known about Bolivar's visit in the new United States. Likely, he saw firsthand the cult of personality that 
had grown up around George Washington. People were already calling the general "The Father of His Country" just a couple of years into the Revolutionary War. The moment that Washington bade farewell to his generals and set aside his military cloak as a sign of the transition to civil government was already mythic to his many admirers. Washington had only died a few years before Bolivar's visit, and Bolivar undoubtedly saw the many pictures, medals and banners that people displayed in their homes. At that time, Bolivar couldn't foresee that he would himself be the father of not one but many countries, and that his image and ideas would inspire a twenty-first century revolution.
EL Proceso
When Venezuelans talk about what's happening these days in their country, it doesn't take long before they mention El Proceso, the long struggle that is just beginning to bring Simon Bolivar's principles for a democratic society to life in Venezuela (see "The Cult of Personality: Simon Bolivar" on this site). It's called El Proceso because it will likely take so long and so many small steps to erase the huge social debt that Venezuela has accrued against its citizens. Until the late 1970s, Venezuela had one of the highest standards of living in South America. But decades of dysfunction and corruption have taken their toll, and today, the vast majority of Venezuelans still struggle to make ends meet. Now Venezuela is taking the oil wealth that used to go into only a few pockets and using it to create a better-educated, healthier population.
The most important goal is to develop Venezuela into a direct, participatory democracy. This is a bit different from our system in the United States. In our country, we elect representatives to handle the day-to-day business of governing, and do little more than hear about their antics on the six o'clock news. Most North Americans have never been to a town hall meeting, or written to a member of Congress, the kind of opportunities which invite participation in the political process. On the contrary, lots of U.S. citizens practically spit at the world "politics." But Venezuelans right now are in the same place emotionally as our first forebears in the United States. They're excited about their new constitution. After a referendum to adopt it in 1999, many Venezuelans bought tiny copies of it, like the little gift books you find next to the cash registers at Borders. We found that many a waiter and taxi driver had an impressive knowledge of this extremely detailed document (it's officially the longest constitution in the world). In the same way, after the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1787, many people in the new United States owned a copy of it, and knew it well and discussed it with others.
The greatest achievement of the new constitution is that it spells out a wide array of human rights guaranteed to all Venezuelans - including free education through high school, free health care, a clean environment, equal rights for women and the right for minorities, especially indigenous people, to keep their traditional cultures, religions and languages. El Proceso is the name for the long struggle Venezuela is engaged in to make the vision of the constitution a reality.
In each of these areas, there are winners and losers. The winners in every category are the majority of Venezuelans who struggle to survive day-to-day. They have little to lose, and so a daring social experiment that is bringing them better education and better health care is bound to have their enthusiastic support. The losers are those who were already thriving under the old system, and are not anxious to move over and make room for others climbing up the social ladder.
Teachers, for instance, have long been represented by a powerful union in Venezuela. Like the bad old days in Chicago before school reform, their union fiercely protects teachers no matter how badly they perform. In many places, teachers call in sick so often that school is cancelled at least one day a week. For education to improve, teachers will probably have to learn to live with greater accountability to new local school councils, while continuing to work in schools that need major repair, with students who aren't prepared for their grade level. Just like Chicago, there's no turning back from this reform process, because things were so bad before that any slow, steady improvement will have the enthusiastic support of the huge majority of poor parents, who are also voters.
Ironically, adult education has taken off like a rocket, to the point where Venezuela declared a one hundred percent adult literacy rate in 2005. The key has been 129,000 tutors sent by Cuba in 2003 to teach a method developed there called Yo sí puedo (Yes, I can). Adults not only learn letters and numbers using practical problems they encounter in everyday life, they also learn how to tutor others using the method. This is in line with another Bolivarian principle, self-sustainability. We met many people in many places who were the highly-motivated night students that teachers dream about. Now that some of these adults are beginning to move into universities that used to cater to private school graduates, however, tensions are rising, as students worry about watered-down curriculum and watered-down diplomas. College students are among the best-organized opposition to Hugo Chavaz.
Cuba has also sent 28,000 doctors to Venezuela, to train 28,000 apprentices to become doctors themselves. After six years, the new docs will be ready to practice on their own, with the understanding that they themselves will eventually take on apprentices. This is the way that doctors used to train here in the United States as well, long ago. Not surprisingly, however, doctors who graduated from modern medical schools hate this program, and a parallel system of docs and clinics is beginning to emerge. Watching an apprentice doctor give a roomful of infants well-baby checks and shots in a tiny clinic, however, made me wish that the Cubans could come to the South Side of my own city to start the same program.
Unlike so many countries that dream of these kinds of societal changes, Venezuela actually has enough resources to make it all work. With more proven reserves than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela has been able to trade oil for assistance from Cuba and other countries.
Quick, Who's Hugo Chavez?
Everyone recognizes his name. Most of us in the United States envision him with horns and big claws. But, how much do you really know about his relationship with Venezuela? Take the quiz!
True or false:
1. Chavez came to power in a coup in 2002.
2. He lost running in a legitimate election in 1998.
3. He recently changed the constitution to give himself an unlimited term in office.
4. His government has the power to censor the media.
5. He defends his desire to lead all of South America by pointing to the legacy of Simon Bolivar.
6. Like Cuba, citizens need permission to leave Venezuela.
And the answer is...
1. False. Chavez attempted a coup in 1993, when he was a paratrooper in the Venezuelan army. He failed and was imprisoned for a couple of years. In 2002, when he was already the elected president of Venezuela, his political opponents launched a coup against him. After massive street demonstrations, however, he was returned to power two days later.
2. False. He won the election in 1998 with 56% of the vote, in elections that were declared free and fair by an array of international monitors.
3. False. The new constitution was adopted by popular referendum in 1999 (rather than being ratified by a legislature). Chavez proposed a set of amendments in 2004, including a proposal for an indefinite term of office for the president. Venezuelans voted on the changes as a package, and the proposal was defeated. The process of preparing the 1999 constitution was wide-open, with lots of grassroots groups and individuals offering input. That transparent process made it the popular document it is today. Many complained that the process of preparing amendments was top-down, with little consultation with ordinary people.
One of the Bolivarian principles that Venezuela is using in transforming its society is transparency, and encouraging evaluation and criticism that leads to a better result the next time around. Chavez admits that the process was flawed, and says that he plans to step down when his term ends in 2012.
4. False. If there is a censor, he's spending way too much time playing computer games in his office. Most media owners are opponents of Chavez, and the headlines in both print and electronic media in the country regularly blast him. Most people seem to think that the opposition is healthy. There is, however, a flow of dollars from the United States to an array of groups in Venezuela that regularly denounce Chavez and his social revolution, and to opposition political parties. That kind of interference from the United States in their internal politics makes Venezuelans understandably angry. But so far, there's been no move to officially silence them.
5. False. Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of many countries in South America (see "The Cult of Personality: Simon Bolivar" on this website), shared with many fellow revolutionaries the goal of someday uniting all of South America in a confederation, something like the European Union of our time. That kind of partnership, he thought, would be helpful in overcoming the legacy of colonialism on the continent. Spain was only interested in South America for the resources it could extract from it, the very reason for having colonies. Bolivar wanted his homeland to be free and sovereign, with control over its own resources.
Chavez has forged close, working partnerships with other neighboring countries, like Ecuador and Bolivia. But so far, his greatest use of the military has been to experiment with using them as a civilian force to do things like repair infrastructure.
6. False. Venezuelans enjoy the same kind of political freedom that we do in the United States, the rights of movement and assembly, religion and speech. Chavez has struck up a close friendship with Cuba (see "El Proceso" on this website), bartering oil for expertise. But most Venezuelans we met don't experience him as an authoritarian leader, rather, a leader with a very strong and volatile personality and style.
A Sweet Experiment for Afro-Venezuelans: A Visit to a Cacao Coop
Javier Marquez looks like any other African-American guy walking down the street in Chicago, jeans, designer shirt with logo, cell phone close at hand on his belt. If you saw him, you might ask him, how you doing? But Javier speaks also carries a machete, and he speaks Spanish, not English. He lives in the rural area of Barlavento, east of Caracas, along Venezuela's Caribbean coast. He's shares the same West African slave heritage as African-Americans in Chicago. But unlike African-Americans in the Untied States, Javier now owns the land his ancestors used to work as slaves. He grows cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate, and is a leader in organized agriculture in his area.
Slavery in Venezuela was abolished about the same time as it was in the United States, 1854. And as happened in the U.S., many slaves stayed put on farms and plantations, including Javier's family. By the 1950s, landowners were beginning to realize that the cacao they were growing wasn't very profitable. The owner of Javier's hacienda, like many other landowners at the time, sold his marginal land to the government, which then divided it among the slave descendants. Javier's grandfather received four hectares (picture eight athletic fields side by side).
As a young man, Javier's greatest desire was to leave Barlavento for the big city, and as a young man he did move to Caracas to study tourism. No one was more surprised than him when he decided to come back home to start growing cacao.
Part of the attraction was that cacao is an integral part of history and culture in Barlavento. Cacao is a South American native. It was an important ingredient in both native food and customs, and a favorite export to Europe, where it was first used in sweets. A wake in Barlavento isn't complete unless the family serves coffee and chocolate. In every small town in the area, yards and streets, even basketball courts, are covered by dark cacao drying in the sun. Javier saw the potential to not only grow a crop, but to nurture the culture of his birthplace.
Much of his grandfather's land had reverted to palm scrub. Years of lying fallow helped to build up the thin tropical soil, good preparation for planting cacao saplings. Javier planted fast-growing banana, beans and corn in between the plants to feed his family during the five years between planting and the first harvest. Javier's hacienda is one of about 200 that are part of a local coop that supports 1,100 families. Together, they recently planned and built a cacao processing plant that can handle about twenty percent of their shared harvest. The rest they sell to the community council bank using futures, a financial instrument that U.S. farmers use to help them lock in higher, more stable prices.
The plantation is a beautiful place, since tall trees like mahogany and cedar must shade the shorter cacao trees. Javier set up a table for lunch for our group in the yard, and his three young sons helped serve the food, big bowls of black beans and rice and meat. The family's dogs came to lay at our feet, and their chickens scratched in the undergrowth. A woman walked toward the drying sheds with a huge basket of cacao pods balanced on her head. A young man, an apprentice from a nearby agricultural college, shook a long wooden bowl, blowing hard to blow away the chaff, and then flipping the crushed cacao into the air to continue the threshing. Javier has the equipment on his farm to bring a small amount of cacao all the way from pod to wrapped chocolate bar. A neighbor built the drying oven and grinder that he uses. His family members help in every step of the process, including selling the delicious candies and liquors to visitors from a small table under the trees.
Javier has plans to bring tourism to his plantation, to develop a guest house, perhaps offering a chance for visitors to help with tasks like picking and threshing. Talking about his life and the future, Javier reflects on how far he and his family have come. "At one time, we were content being slaves," he says. He saw his parents work hard for others, with little gain. They didn't have the opportunities afforded him by the new coop system. "But now we realize our condition, and now we organize."
"I'm not a socialist, I'm not a chavista, [an admirer of Chavez]" he says. "I'm a person. And the most important thing about the process for me is justice."
A Long Walk Through Empowerment
It was a beautiful day when we started our steep climb up the mountain from the small town of Sanare to the tiny village of Monte Carmelo, in the state of Lara, west of Caracas. We rode the first leg sitting on benches in the back of a pickup truck, one of the many four-wheel drive vehicles that are the buses and taxis of steep, mountainous northern Venezuela. After about fifteen minutes of bouncing along in the back, the driver let us off at the home of Mario Grippo, a resident saint of the area. A young couple greeted us at the door of his modest house. Yes, Brother Mario was home, but he was already meeting with someone else. We took a seat on a split-log bench to wait.
Brother Mario came from Italy to Venezuela, via Argentina, about thirty years before to found a mission for the Little Brothers of Jesus. He and his community were interested in the idea, being developed in Latin America at the time, that Jesus' main concern was for the poor. The concept is called God's "preferential option for the poor," and it's part of a wider movement called liberation theology. Liberation theology has for decades been very popular with laity and orders like the Brothers of Jesus, not so popular with the Vatican. Right now in Venezuela, the Roman Catholic hierarchy is at the heart of the opposition to Chavez, with those who actually work among the poor more divided. Like most of Latin America, almost a third of Venezuelans today are members of a wide variety of independent evangelical and Pentecostal churches, and these churches are also divided in their sentiments about Venezuela's social revolution.
Soon, Brother Mario emerged from a back room, still in earnest conversation with an elderly man. Brother Mario himself was small and stooped, but glad to meet us on our way to see his community's main project, a dairy cooperative further up the mountain. The changes of the past decade and El Proceso (see "El Proceso" on this website) have been good ones for the surrounding countryside, he said. Mario and the other brothers have been able to help the people make great strides through an organic farm and dairy coop they founded, La Alianza Cooperativa. Because of their long tenure with their people, living with them during lean and difficult years. People trusted them enough to take the big risks and put in the grueling work inherent in starting any farming operation.
We began seeing grazing cows up close and personal, part of the spectacular scenery, as we wound our way up the switchback roads to the coop. We passed fields of squash, garlic, potatoes and cabbage, all irrigated by homemade systems drawing on shallow, dug ponds. One of the workers, Pedro Garcia, who showed us around said that the soil has been greatly improved over the last few years by the compost that the farm produces, both for its own use and for market. We watched as he dug his hands into the black muck of huge concrete vats, and pulled out handfuls of hundreds of earthworms. They help turn manure from five different animals into a rich and productive compost which boosts the productivity of the thin mountain soil (a secret of their success is that they mix in crushed coffee bean shells).
Pedro brought us into a small room that looked like an old fashioned ice cream parlor for a sample of the coop's yogurt. I tried a small dish mixed with strawberries. It was the best yogurt I've ever had.
Outside, we came on a large group of students from a nearby agricultural college. The coop hosts daylong seminars on a regular basis for visitors from all over the country who want to learn from their success. The students were a mix of young and old; many older people in Venezuela are students at some level, trying to take advantage of the new opportunities open to them now.
Further along the road, we met Gaudi Garcia, a different kind of saint than Brother Mario in her community. Gaudi was working on someone else's farm several years ago when she decided to begin selling preserves that she and a few of her neighbors made. They sold them from a small building next to Gaudi's house. More women joined the project as they expanded their business. Soon, they began renting space in the local school; last year, they won an award given by the United Nations to successful women's businesses in developing countries.
Gaudi invited us to sit down on her patio. Wild orchids, pink and white and fragrant, grew in the trees around us. Gaudi projects energy, an energy that makes her a natural leader in her community. She went inside and brought out a small jar and a spoon. "Try this," she said. "I'm experimenting with a new flavor." It was rhubarb, tart and sweet. When we walked up the road to the new store in the school, I bought a jar to bring home.
Gaudi's neighbor, Marlo, came out to meet us as we walked past. She's in her early 20s, with long, dyed hair cut in a spiral around her head. She came on a delegation to Venezuela a couple of years ago from Seattle, and decided to stay. She lived with Gaudi for awhile, until she met a young man up the road, and moved in with him. Her neighbors up the hill are a family from Pennsylvania, a scholar and his two teenage sons; he's researching and writing about models of development in Venezuela. Our guide for the day grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. before coming as a worker with a Catholic order and deciding to stay. More North Americans are beginning to "come and see" for themselves what's happening in the country.
Up in Capista
Barrios are unincorporated, sometimes illegal, always poor, communities that creep outwards from big cities all over Latin America (and the rest of the world). In the case of Caracas, the barrios started moving up the mountainsides in the 1940s and 50s, when people began to move to the big city from the countryside, in search of oil-generated jobs. Capista, southwest of the city, has been around long enough that all the streets are paved; it was recently hooked to the metro area by a new subway line. At night, the hillsides are dotted by pale blue lights, like stars, the result of a new government program to replace household light bulbs with energy- and money-saving compact fluorescent bulbs. There are plenty of houses in the barrios that match North American stereotypes of third-world shacks made of tin and plywood. In Capista, however, virtually every homeowner has rebuilt most of their original structure with sturdy materials like brick and stucco. The result is very narrow houses right up against each other, stacked like blocks alongside steep stairways winding upward from the switchback streets.
You don't have to go very far up to come to the vicariate of Santa Ana. Sister Jenny Russián Solé and her fellow Missionary Catholic Sisters of Christ Jesus serve people of the parish from preparing children for first communion to helping solve practical community problems, like trash collection. Like the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, the Church in Venezuela has fewer priests than parishes; many are vicariates, parishes administered by lay professionals like Jenny. Santa Ana is thriving under the direction of Sister Jenny and her fellow nuns. Their vision is to spread the Good News from the barrio out into the world, with the poor leading the way. Every event and program and person is a sign of the Kingdom of God breaking into the everyday. They see the government-led social revolution as dovetailing with their own work. While the institutional Catholic Church is rabidly anti-revolution, small communities like Santa Ana are often glad to partner with government programs that can bring good things to poor parishioners. Likewise, some of the emphases of el processo have long been best practices for churches (see El Processo on this website). For instance, just as audits help the government fight corruption, they also bring transparency and accountability to parishes. Just as the government is trying to put power in the hands of local councils and empower people to change their own lives and then teach others, churches do the same. Santa Ana's new strategic plan is being reviewed now by ever-widening groups of participants, who are encouraged to comment and suggest changes. Many of Santa Ana's programs are meant to equip people for their own ministries, like a formation groups for prison visitors, and an outreach to police officers.
The community of Esperanza (the word means "hope" in Spanish) is literally a hike up the mountain from Santa Ana. Many roads in the barrio wind back and forth in switchbacks, to help vehicles and people cope with the steep climb. We flagged down one of the many independent, converted four-wheel-drive vehicles that serve as a cross between taxis and buses in Capista. As we climbed, suddenly, the road was no longer paved for a stretch. Below, we could see the ruins of houses that had fallen down the hill in a landslide. The sandy soil and steep cliffs make slides a common danger in the barrios of Caracas.
At Esperanza, the view from the balcony is sweeping and engaging. Like so many places in Latin America, there's a lot of people and a lot of things happening out on the street. There are lots of businesses in the barrio, tucked into narrow buildings just like everyone else, and lots of people are standing outside of them, talking and laughing. There aren't so many sidewalk vendors, since the sidewalks are so narrow, but children are playing on them and in the street - there are no backyards and no parks in their neighborhoods, there's no space for them. Across the skyline are about a dozen kites of different shapes and colors, each piloted, I can see, by a young boy on a rooftop, making his kite swoop and dive. Capista is both a place of poverty, and a place of hope and joy.
Vaguely Reminiscent; Racism in Venezuela
To North Americans, the ongoing discussion about race in Venezuela sounds both exciting and depressingly familiar. The good news is that most average Venezuelans will tell you that no matter who is in their family tree, all Venezuelans share a racial and cultural heritage that is equal parts indigenous, Spanish and African. We're all mestizaje, they'll tell you, we're all mixed. Safe to say, that's not a sentiment you're likely to hear from too many white U.S. citizens. Some aspects of Afro-Venezuelan culture have become well-known, even hip. We visited a youth center in Barquisimeto, a city of about a million, to the west of Caracas, to listen to about a dozen teenagers play traditional Afro-Venezuelan drums. Tens of thousands of tourists flock to the Afro-Venezuelan areas in Barlavento to the east of the capital each June to party amidst the drums and costumes and processions in celebration of St. John the Baptist.
In a similar way, rap and hip-hop have become mainstream in the U.S. And just like in the U.S., when the discussion moves from cool culture to real political gains, Afro-Venezuelans have run into some stumbling blocks. The 1999 constitution spelled out the right of indigenous groups to use their own languages and define their own geographical boundaries. Three seats in the legislature were set aside for them. Afro-Venezuelans, however, were not explicitly singled out in the constitution; an amendment to change that, part of a large package of constitutional amendments, was defeated in 2007. Everyone might celebrate the country's African heritage, but o one can agree on the number of people who should be considered Afro-Venezuelans, because no one can agree on what distinguishes an Afro-Venezuelan from a mestizaje. Land titles continue to be challenged the Barlovento area, where many descendants of slaves have lived for centuries. Many of those small communities and farms sprang up as cumbes, the illegal settlements of escaped and fugitive slaves. As one government official told us, the Africans came after the indigenous, even the Spanish. Why should they be entitled to land?
When pressed, Venezuelans will admit that there are some obvious examples of racial divide in their society, and a lot of them will sound familiar to North Americans. Newscasters are mostly very light-skinned, as are the beautiful people we saw on billboards along the expressways and in television commercials hawking toothpaste and vacation destinations. At regular intervals, there is some scandalous incident where an important, dark-skinned guest or speaker is taken as the bellboy or a bike messenger at a big event.
Venezuelans on every point of the skin spectrum tend to disdain darker-skinned Haitians, many of whom are illegal immigrants in the country, who do the work that most Venezuelans won't do. This is an emotionally-charged issue for many Venezuelans, since Haiti gave Simon Bolivar the crucial help he needed to overcome the Spanish and end the colonial era in Venezuela (see The Cult of Personality: Simon Bolivar on this website). Haiti, independent since 1804, had been the first country to end African slavery. In exchange for Haitian help, Bolivar agreed to free all the slaves in Venezuela. His efforts, though, were half-hearted, and slavery didn't end until 1854.
There are some hopeful signs for the future. Hugo Chavez is both Afro- and indigenous-descended. His interest in partnership with Bolivia is based in part with his close ties with Evo Morales, Bolivia's first fully indigenous president, and his interest in empowering indigenous peoples in his own country. There are several groups attempting to survey and count numbers of Afro-Venezuelans, legalize land titles, and press for constitutional amendments. As it does in the United States, El Proceso continues.
