Prepared by Nachie, for the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN).

June 17th, 2006.

Over a period of two months spanning January to March in 2006, I backpacked through Venezuela in a reckless manner on behalf of the Red & Anarchist Action Network (RAAN), in search of first-hand information regarding the country's current political and social situation and in particular the "Bolivarian Revolution" proclaimed by incumbent president Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. My goal was to use the VI World Social Forum, held in the capital city of Caracas during the last week in January, as a launchpad to make the kinds of contacts necessary for this study to be a success. As an autonomous communist and affiliate of RAAN, my ultimate aim was to specifically seek out the contradictions that lay within the institutionalized Bolivarian movement and, therefore, to hopefully discover the sectors of Venezuelan society that were developing anti-capitalist critiques of Chávez's state-driven process.

1. BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

For RAAN, this whole affair began exactly a year ago when I distributed a text entitled Bolivanarchism: The Venezuela Question in Our Movement to comrades in the network and the North American "anti-authoritarian" tendency in general. Written whilst I was on a short trip to Brazil over the point of which I had become particularly fascinated by the process in neighboring Venezuela, this exploratory essay laid the groundwork for everything that was to follow in terms of our tendency's discussions on the issue. At the time I was criticized for showering attention on a situation seemingly directed exclusively by the Venezuelan State; and it was suggested that the network's time and energy would be much better spent elsewhere. I am now certain that this -- at least for me personally -- is not the case, and that this focus on Venezuela will prove to have been useful to both our network and the wider movement.

A few things must be made absolutely clear: firstly, that without this follow-up, the original Bolivanarchism essay would be considered, under RAAN's "No-Bullshit Policy", to be more or less an exercise in useless ideological masturbation. Only this on-the-ground investigation and practical follow-through on the tasks set out in that text could possibly justify it within our network's action-oriented culture. Furthermore, I must clearly state that my time in the country has led me to seriously reconsider many of the positions I had toyed with in that essay -- as will be shown below. And finally, one of the essay's main points has in particular shown itself to be quite outdated: that being my concern over the lack of attention and information on the situation. When Common Ground Relief goes down to ask Chávez for cheap heating oil to New Orleans and the mainstream Left starts riding Trotskyist coattails in an effort to associate itself with the Bolivarian Revolution, I don't think we have to worry too much about any such neglect; Chávez is in the limelight and poised to become the most important political figure in the world. Now all we need to focus on is the quality of that information concerning Venezuela.

As with all documents produced under the banner of RAAN, this essay strives to be not merely an exercise in theoretical development or information sharing, but a full report concerning the interventions our network has made in the Venezuelan process and what we might further propose as points to act upon in the future. That said, this study exists simply to fulfill the goals set forth last June and I, personally, have no intention of returning to Venezuela in the near future, or organizing around the issue past the objectives lined out over the course of this text. Nevertheless my work has set the material foundation through which other RAAN affiliates may become involved in this process, in accordance with their personal desires.

Before beginning I would like to take the time to thank all those who let me interview them, gave me food, shelter, or in any way assisted in the creation of this report. In particular I would like to thank Alix Santana and the artisans of Valencia, all the anarchists in Caracas but especially Nelson Méndez, Humberto Decarli, and the CA3 Collective, Oswaldo Kanica of the Tupamaros, Red & Anarchist Skin Heads of Venezuela and last, but by no means least, Christian Guerrero of Earth First!

I'd like to also give a shout out to everybody who helped out with this project and the collective editing process and the RAAN crews who have been organizing stateside around this issue.

Giuliano Roma of the Argentine "La Anarquía" periodical deserves mention as well for being among the first to engage in a serious debate with us on this issue. Anne Carlson & Michael Staudenmaier both deserve props, as their 2004 piece "Of Chavistas and Anarquistas" provided a great deal of inspiration for the spirit, if not content, of my own travels.

It is crucial to state that, except where explicitly outlined in the text, no alliance is implied between RAAN and any of the groups that are mentioned over the course of this report. I was often given contradictory information and views on the same situation by different people and have done my best to reconcile these within the overall text. By far the most difficult part of this process was deciding how to represent all these viewpoints simultaneously while giving enough space for the speakers' backgrounds to be explained; I hope I have succeeded in this task. And lastly, any factual errors or mistranslations are entirely my own fault.

2. A (VERY) BRIEF HISTORY OF VENEZUELA

To a certain extent I will be assuming that the readers of this essay are already familiar with the broad framework and implications of the current regime in Venezuela, and in particular its recent spats with the US government. Nevertheless I have found that one cannot possibly hope to appreciate the complexity of the situation without at least some knowledge of the nation's political history and that of its "liberation heroes". Those looking for a more comprehensive analysis can probably find it in Michael McCaughan's The Battle of Venezuela, (7 Stories Press, 2005) where I have pulled the majority of these dates from. Anyway:

Venezuela's independence movement truly began in 1806 when "Generalissimo" Francisco De Miranda begins plotting against Spanish rule, but only six years into this he is betrayed by fellow conspirators while trying to set up an independent administration in Caracas. He was then shipped off to Spain to die in jail, in the process becoming the nation's first Independence Hero.

Miranda was a military man, fighting all over Europe and Florida before turning his attentions to the South, and seeking support from the new United States government in the process. There is little reason to believe that he was to be anything but a tyrant, though government-funded murals and banners across Caracas now display the old bastard as a hunky, square-chinned sexpot who stares squint-eyed into the future as his long platinum hair flows in the wind -- something which is really hilarious once you get to see an actual portrait of what he really looked like. The Frente Francisco De Miranda, an apparently mass-non-electoral organization driven by "ultra-left" Chavistas, unites a more modest caricature alongside that of Ché and Bolívar as their symbol, and aside from a scattered statue or street name, provide the most widespread reminder of who this guy was.

So in 1812 we see Miranda leave the stage and his project is picked up by a young prospect known as Simón Bolívar. Now Bolívar, who is known officially as either "The Liberator" or "America's Genius", is really quite well known in history, and the crypto-nationalist cult of his image predates Chávez entirely; to compare him to George Washington in terms of his stature as a popular icon would be to gravely understate the situation. Just to give an idea of how deep feelings can run in regards to the man, a poor woman named Victoria once answered me, after I had asked if she thought Chávez was a sincere revolutionary, "After God, Bolívar. After Bolívar, Chávez. And after Chávez, us. The people". It was one of the most terrifying things I'd ever heard, and serves as a decent example of how profound the adoration and trust of Hugo Chávez really is amongst the people. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Bolívar was a rich kid. Like most nationalist heroes of the time, brilliance was more or less an effect of his being exposed to the ideas of the Enlightenment. Though born in Caracas he was schooled in France, where in particular his tutor Simón Rodríguez (alias Ribas, now also considered a national hero) helped to expose him to Voltaire, Rousseau, and all that stuff. Add to his experiences a trip to the freshly-independent United States, and you'll find that he had all the fuel he needed to embark on his revolutionary plans for an independent South America.

Bolívar turns out to be a more than competent leader, as he and his lieutenant Antonio José de Sucre (you guessed it, also a national hero) use his inheritance to romp across the Northwestern continent, secure Colombia in 1819, and rock the Spanish armies in 35 battles including that of Carabobo on June 24, 1821 -- gaining independence for all of modern Venezuela. Ever an ambitious fellow, Bolívar declares "Gran Colombia" to exist on the territories of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela before the last two were even won from the Spanish Empire. This shining idyll of a South American superpower is more or less the historical and ideological basis for what the Chávez government refers to as its projects of "integración", and Bolívar's empire provides a handy reference as to what that might look like (plus Cuba, of course). I was surprised at how openly these ideas were paraded in the country; for example when I read in the December, 2005 issue of El Camino (a publication of the Ministry of Culture) that Evo Morales' election had "reopened Bolívar's dream in the territories of Venezuela and the nation that is today Bolivia".

Anyway, Bolívar gets along fine until about the late 1820's when, after "liberating" all of Gran Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, his territory begins to fall apart while he is away fighting in the latter. Despite having continually rejected offers of an emperor's crown, Simón finds that his massive conquests cannot hold under a central government and in 1828 becomes a dictator in an attempt to save it all. In 1830 he miraculously escapes an assassination attempt in Bogotá, after which he says, "Fuck it" and resigns from politics. Sickly, impoverished and without any friends, he dies later that year after declaring, "There have been three great fools in history: Jesus, Don Quixote, and I."

So there you have El Libertador, who more or less embodies the imagery that Chávez has rode to power. Now some anarchists, at least in light of the Bolivarian Revolution, have since sought to put a "libertarian" spin on Bolívar, giving him the José Martí treatment as someone who was potentially a revolutionary, but either before his time or prevented by history from seeing his dream succeed. They can pull out a number of arguments to back this up; for instance his support for "indigenous rights" or the fact that the patriotic Venezuelan government of Miranda had abolished the slave trade early on -- though not slavery itself, which would only disappear in name by 1854 (it continued in practice for quite some time after). Personally, as a North American resident I see little use in opportunistically "recuperating" such a historical figure. After all, it's just another white guy espousing bourgeois nationalism, and we got enough of those.

Bolívar's empire soon crumbled to pieces as it was divided between feuding caudillos ("little generals") who would define Venezuelan and regional politics for at least the rest of the 19th century. There is, of course, as much history of genuine class struggle in Venezuela as there is anywhere else in the world -- notably Eziquiel Zamora's "sovereign army of the people" that in the 1840's terrorized the landowning classes (Chávez' great great grandfather was among their ranks) -- but for our purposes it is sufficient to say that the nation remained more or less unchanged from this ragged state of affairs, without a truly effective central government or military, until 1908 when the corrupt dictatorship of Cipriano Castro Ruiz (who has been praised by Chávez as a nationalist figure at recent OPEC meetings) was overthrown by his more ruthless lieutenant, Juan Vincente Gómez.

General Gómez was the most successful of Venezuelan dictators, holding onto power until his death in 1935 partly through luck, and partly through skillful planning.

The luck was that Venezuelan oil production truly began in 1914, and during the discovery of massive reserves throughout the early 20's Gómez was able to capitalize -- literally -- by making himself sole shareholder in the national oil industry and then selling everything he could to the foreign energy companies: by the 1930's Shell and Standard Oil owned 85% of the nation's oil reserves.

The "skillful planning" was in finally being able to unite the country's armed forces under a centralized command -- partly with oil bribes and partly with the help of a Chilean officer enlisted to restructure the military in line with the Prussian model. This is a particularly interesting fact given that Chavistas make such a point about the FAN (National Armed Forces) being "fundamentally" different from the quasi-fascist militaries in such countries as Argentina and... Chile.

After Gómez died, mobs in Caracas set fire to the houses of his relatives and supporters, and even threatened the oil installations in the West of the country with outright destruction -- a clear indicator of his legacy. The Venezuelan "Communist" Party (PCV, obviously Leninist) gets founded in 1931, and eventually adopts the rooster as it symbol in reference to a popular novella, El Gallo Canta Claro. Decades later, it's most important contribution would be to produce the daring guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo, who originally comes up with the idea of organizing an insurrection from within the officer class of the FAN.

As Gómez' successors struggled to maintain the same level of tight control, a new wave of nationalism in the country led to a movement proclaiming that Bolívar's dream was an unfinished project, particularly so long as oil revenues did not directly benefit the people. From 1936 to 37 we see a massive strike in the oil industry against "imperialism", probably the single most important event in the last century of Venezuela's labor history.

In 1941 the "leftist" Acción Democrática (Democratic Action, AD) party is founded on a platform of European-style Social Democracy, and in 1945 it seizes power with the military via the Unión Patriótico Militar (UPM). The Christian Democratic COPEI party is founded in 1947 to "counterbalance" the AD -- both parties embrace and directly copy the Leninist model of efficient centralized organization in order to quickly counter the growing PCV at a national level. Pushing through a number of social reforms that would have been unthinkable only a few years earlier, by 1948 they are removed from power in a military coup by General Marcos Pérez Jiménez -- the same who had lead the UPM in the first place.

Pérez Jiménez' rule was relatively short -- only a decade -- but became known as one of the most brutal dictatorships in the region. Torture, disappearances... if you can name it, it probably happened. During this period we see Venezuela's first real experiences with modern political diversion and proto-populism as Jiménez seeks to draw attention away from the fact that he is a shitty ruler by constructing a lot of big impressive buildings in Caracas. It doesn't work.

On New Year's Day 1958, the airforce begins a bombardment of the Miraflores presidential palace and soon the navy joins the mutiny. By January 21 a general strike is called, but only two days later with the cooperation of the military does Jiménez fall. This drawn out process is nowadays condensed into "El 23 de Enero", a popular myth that one massive uprising toppled the dictator on the 23rd.

The magic of 23 Enero is compounded by the fact that during the uprising, poor Venezuelans seized several modern apartment blocks surrounding Miraflores, which had been built to house Jiménez' technocrats, and to this day they remain in the hands of the working class in the heart of the barrios that soon sprang up around them -- the most famous of which is itself known as El 23 de Enero.

Nevertheless, the events of early '58 were the birth of Venezuela's 4th Republic. The "Junta Patriotica" -- another, more stable civic-military alliance -- took power under the auspices of the infamous Punto Fijo pact, a "perfect alliance" between the military, clergy, business, (FEDECAMARAS union) labor, (CTV bureaucracy) and the AD and COPEI, to alternate power indefinitely through a two-party electoral system. The PCV, as usual, did all it could to put a break on the revolutionary process in order to weasel its way into power somehow, but ended up being kicked out of the government it had helped to create in order to appease Washington after visiting President Richard Nixon was nearly lynched in the streets of Caracas by an anti-US mob (awesome!).

New president Romulo Betancourt presides over this process and succeeds in uniting the ultra-right FAN behind electoral democracy by buying officers with oil money and stroking fears of the communist menace. His other great achievements include a literal "shoot first, then ask questions" policy and a comprehensive exchange program with the School of the Americas -- another thing to remember the next time a Chavista tells you that the FAN are unlike any other military on the continent. Business as usual is back in place as early as 1959, when a march of 50,000 unemployed workers is fired upon, killing three.

Around this time, the Cuban Revolution had the same affect on Venezuela as it had everywhere else on the continent: it inspired armed struggle. In 1962 the FALN (Armed Forces of National Liberation) was created from various smaller preexisting rebel groups, and began a comprehensive campaign of violence against the state that lasted well into the '70s and included a botched assassination attempt against Betancourt himself in 1963.

All in all, Venezuela's armed struggle didn't get too far, but its history is filled with dramatic attacks, escapes, and even mutinies. In 1965 guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo is expelled from the PCV after criticizing it for turning away from the armed struggle to focus on prisoner support and civic organization. This break would clear the way for him to start looking for other possibilities, and in 1980 he succeeded in recruiting a young officer named Hugo Chávez to his plan of insurrection from within the FAN.

The 1970s are a period of ultra-populism for Venezuela. In '73 instability in the Middle East shoots the price of oil from $2 to $12 a barrel and in '75 President Carlos Andrés Pérez nationalizes oil and iron ore, and then immediately goes on a spending spree. Venezuelans suddenly become used to a high standard of living and everything the country needs (and plenty of stuff it doesn't) is imported for consumption by the ruling classes. Terribly-implemented social programs nevertheless deliver free childcare and food to thousands, successfully neutralizing the social struggle with paternalism. As we shall see, Chávez' plans bear more than a passing resemblance to this model. At the same time, the "Andrés Bello Plan" cleverly lets the government save money by allowing certain military officers to leave barracks and attend college to gain professional skills. Supposedly this put them in contact with "leftist professors", a key argument of those who insist on the "revolutionary" nature of the FAN.

In the earlier part of this decade two groups would split off from the PCV to become Venezuela's institutional leftist parties. The first, Movement Towards Socialism (MAS -- no relation to the ruling party in Bolivia) was more interested in the "Euro-Communism" line and really didn't do anything exciting aside from disappoint people whenever it actually managed to get into office. The second was known as Venezuela 83 (even though it began in '71) for 8 years before becoming La Causa Radical (Radical Cause, Causa R). Causa R has had a much more interesting history than MAS, as it rose directly out of the steelworker's struggles against the union bureaucracy in Bolívar State before becoming a political party. In 1989 it won the governorship of that state and became the only party in congress to oppose IMF policies.

Another oil price spike caused by the Iran/Iraq war in 1979 keeps Pérez riding high, and the government is even able to maintain a policy of "buying" its neighbors through random gifts (again, a similarity to the present government). In 1983 Hugo Chávez, who had been looking for revolutionary alternatives throughout the late '70s, founds the MBR200 (Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200, for the bicentenary of Bolívar's birth) as a clandestine group within the FAN.

Things didn't get really interesting again until 1983, when world oil prices dropped and Venezuela got hit with inflation for the first time that almost anybody could remember. The only possible solution to the failure of paternalism? Neoliberal policies, of course! In 1989 Pérez runs on an anti-IMF ticket but immediately turns around once he is reelected. On February 25th gas prices are raised, wounding the national pride. Two days later, public transit prices go up and spark what would become the biggest explosion of class war in Venezuela's recent history.

In response to the higher fares, organized students occupy a bus terminal and in the process manage to get mass support. This is particularly important to remember since many Chavistas insist that the traditional student population (those not enrolled in the new "Bolivarian" University) are exclusively middle-class and incapable of playing an active role in the struggle. But during the events of February 1989, the students were the only organized social movement to be involved from the very beginning.

From the bus terminal, street barricades and marches spread until Caracas itself becomes a riot zone. Pérez was out of the city at the time, and ignored the protests until they had gotten completely out of hand. In Venezuela I had the chance to see some footage from those days, and I can tell you that for sheer comprehensiveness, the looting made anything from Argentina in 2002 look like a walk in the park. The government responded the only way a government could, which was to shoot as many people as possible.

It all depends on whom you ask, but anywhere between 300 and 1,000 people were killed in Caracas by the military. Of course, the "300" figure was suggested by the state itself. If you include Valencia and Maracay, to where the rebellion also spread, the count is probably something like 3,000 dead over 5 days of unrest; mass graves have been found from this period. In Caracas, where soldiers faced working-class snipers defending their neighborhoods, whole apartment buildings were repeatedly strafed with automatic machine gun fire. Many of the young officers directly responsible for this atrocity now hold posts in the Chavez government.

For Pérez' part, he put on the brave face and made plenty of televised speeches about "restoring order", "citizen's duty", and "getting through this hard period... together."

If Venezuela is going through a revolutionary process, this is where it all began. Ten years before Seattle, in the first major rebellion against IMF policies.

Of course the Chavista line is a little different. The "Caracazo", as the riots came to be known, were a tragedy of course, but the "revolution" didn't begin until February 4th 1992, when Hugo Chávez and his MBR200 burst onto the scene and tried for a coup. Tripping all over themselves with tactical incompetence and abandoned last minute by the Causa R which had promised to support the action (but then decided to hold out for the upcoming elections), Chávez's followers were quickly mopped up without any particular trouble after attacking Miraflores -- though they did see some military success in oil-rich state of Zulia. Before being taken prisoner, Chávez negotiates one minute of TV airtime so as to ask his troops to surrender. What happened next was the genesis of mass Chavismo, as in the process of this appeal he tells the Venezuelan people that he is only laying down his weapons "for now". Lookin' all cute in his uniform and paratrooper's beret, a national icon was born.

Another coup attempt, primarily driven by the airforce, fails with no popular support on the 27th of November, but at this point populism, the Punto Fijo pact, and for all intents and purposes the two main political parties, were already dead. Pérez would be impeached just one year later as it surfaced that he illegally sent $17 million to support the anti-Sandinista candidate in Nicaragua's 1990 elections.

This whole chain of events (but particularly the Caracazo) created a political vacuum, which then allowed the Venezuelan social movements to come into their own for the first time. Without a dictatorship or populist handouts to suppress them (or the stifling control of an AD/COPEI leadership), the indigenous, environmental, women's, student, and other movements found themselves in a period of widespread disillusion with the electoral process, and began to press for a sweeping change in the country's politics. In particular the student movement was able to finally assert its independence from the traditional political parties, peaking as an autonomous force between 1994-96.

After Pérez' impeachment, Rafael Caldera took office as a "reformist" with the support of MAS. It is now -- and even then -- widely known that the military burned ballots during his election so as to prevent the victory La Causa R, but the left-wing party accepted the fraudulent results in order to enter the government. Caldera's only claim to fame is that he made good on a campaign pledge to free Hugo Chávez and his co-conspirators; the rest of his term is a continuation of IMF policies and the "Washington Consensus". For their part, Chávez and the MBR200 had urged Venezuelans to abstain from the '93 elections, confident that the political system was on the verge of collapse.

In 1995 we see the first of the major non-PCV Chavista parties emerge as Patria Para Todos (PPT) splits from Causa R in response to the former's allying itself with MAS and COPEI. Causa R is rewarded with government posts for supporting the 1998 presidential campaign of Irene Sáez, former Miss Universe and district mayor of Chacao (a small but wealthy sector of Caracas).

By 1996 the MBR200 had grown tired of waiting, abandoned armed struggle, and held a national conference to reformulate itself as a political party known as the Movement for the Fifth Republic (MVR). Nowadays the MVR is more or less known as "Chávez's party" but some people are still running under the name of MBR200, as it is a certain stamp of credibility to have been with him from the beginning. This overall change in strategy did not materialize out of nothing -- various members of the political and business class had been working to groom Chávez as an "alternative" candidate for years. His campaign was directly funded by private business and the eventual victory speech was broadcast from the offices of a securities multinational in Caracas.

The MVR as a political party came out of practically nothing, united a number of too-small-to-be-important socialist groups, did not have the organization necessary for electoral success, and has been described by ZNet as an "ideological monoculture" (a description that could also be much more widely applied). In practical terms, the MVR only got along by relying on the established PPT, PCV, and PODEMOS (which split from MAS) parties, which did have the internal structure to put up candidates and run national political campaigns. Thus Chavismo, far from being a neutral revolutionary phenomenon, is the force by which the traditional statist and social democratic Left has finally found a way to get itself into power; and its continued participation in the Chávez administration, is the only way that the MVR government can exist.

Hugo Chávez mounted his presidential campaign by leaning on the "Polo Patriotico" (an alliance of left groups), promises to rewrite the constitution, and the flowery imagery of Bolívar's dream, which hadn't been successfully harnessed since the height of populism in the 70's. Irene Sáez' campaign began strong, but she soon suffered from a few faux pas and withdrew before the election. As oil prices tumbled yet again, Hugo rocketed to victory.

On his first day in office, Chávez fulfilled his promises by signing a decree to create a constitutional assembly. And whilst the traditional oligarchy began courting the new government to see where the opportunities lay, he went ahead and implemented things such as Plan Bolívar 2000, which saw over 40,000 FAN troops leave the barracks to fix roads, schools, and distribute food throughout the country. On the one hand it was the only option for a president looking to bypass the state bureaucracy. On the other hand, it was the first indication of Chávez' methods for integrating his armed forces with the civilian population.

Simón Bolívar was known as a "caudillo with a human face", and Chávez latched onto this ideal with a great degree of success. It soon became clear how things were going to go as he stacked the MVR with fellow coup plotters and members of his immediate family (including his brother and longtime Leninist organizer, Adán). Up until this day, Chávez has continued in the democratic tradition by giving out all kinds of posts as rewards for loyalty.

The elections to the constitutional assembly in 1999 attracted a more diverse grouping than any previous process, and resulted in a 90% Chavista victory -- with over half of the electorate abstaining. The assembly soon came to see itself as the de facto government, setting up 21 commissions for the debate of different issues and taking in article submissions from hundreds of citizens. Chávez' own contributions would come to form the outline of the final text.

The majority of Venezuelans who I spoke to expressed a positive view of the constitutional assembly and believed that, on the whole, it was an immensely democratic process -- particularly given the alternatives. To be sure, the resulting Bolivarian Constitution has several interesting articles. For one, housewives were for the first time recognized as workers who create value, and thus should have access to welfare and social security. Paragraph 2 of Article 21 declares that the government should "adopt positive measures for groups which could be discriminated, marginalized, or vulnerable", which is vague, but has since been enthusiastically seized upon by the Gay Revolutionary Movement (an actual tendency). Prior to the new constitution, homosexuality was considered "gross indecency" and punishable by anywhere from 5-12 years in prison. Javier Granadillo, a queer media activist who I met during the World Social Forum, told me with tears in his eyes, "I LOVE my president because he has included gays for the first time".

This kind of heartfelt loyalty to the Bolivarian process is widespread and must be taken into account by anyone seeking to understand what Venezuela is going through. The new constitution went on to fix the workweek at a maximum of 44 hours, gave the military the right to vote, and reserved the rights of officer promotion for the president and top brass (it had previously been held by the National Assembly). All elected posts in the country were now subject to a recall referendum halfway through the term if 20% of the electorate desired it. 5% could petition for a referendum to reverse presidential decrees, .1% (10,000 people) can send a bill to congress, and 15% can force a referendum on constitutional reform.

Terrified at these implications and the possibility that abortion could be legalized (it was not, and continues to be illegal to this day, with no mass pressure on the issue that I could discern), the media and church began their attack on the constitution -- and Chávez -- around this time. The key to understanding the extreme-right spin of Venezuela's 9 private television channels and daily newspapers is knowing that Caracas has the highest percentage of Cuban exiles outside of Miami, and these people have taken their time getting well-entrenched in the news industry. At this point It was useful to think of Chávez as a Venezuelan FDR, the modern bourgeois going up against the established bourgeois. The constitution also did not provide for any libel laws until the 2005 law of "Social Responsibility" (which was decried as censorship) and so for the first several years of Chávez' government the private media had a field day, attacking the president in any way possible and even declaring him to be developmentally challenged.

But not everything in the Bolivarian Constitution can be looked at as positive. Presidential terms were extended, foreign relations power was centralized in the executive, and business lawyer Allan Brewer-Carías was personally able to insert several articles guaranteeing a protection of private business and property. The constitution supposedly creates a citizen's branch of government, "republican power", but in practice Chávez has really done whatever he wants. Federalism is proclaimed while power is centralized, and page after page is loaded with repetitive announcements of human rights that mean nothing when grafted onto the pre-existing police state (which has undergone no reforms). Most worryingly, the constitution makes it completely unnecessary for the government to consult anyone before signing international energy or infrastructure contracts.

In December of 1999 the people voted for the new constitution largely on class lines, which -- in a country where anywhere between 55-80% of the population is impoverished -- means that it was approved. While Chávez promised, "I will turn Venezuela into a first world nation in 10 years" tens of thousands of the old bourgeoisie fled to countries that already were -- notably Spain and the USA (Miami).

In order to cement this new constitutional order, new and massive elections for all governorships, state and national assemblies, president, and local mayors were held in July of 2000. It is at this point that we first begin to see the emergence of Chavismo as an electoral farce -- in other words, various politicians of all stripes began to put on the signature red beret or t-shirt in order to get elected. Because Chávez lacked any mass political organization, he found himself needing to get support from wherever he could find it, and could afford to be ideologically promiscuous in the process.

As a result of everything Chávez has done, Venezuela became the first -- and possibly, only -- country in South America to have saved popular faith in political institutions and electoral participation. The biggest consequence of Chavismo is that it has relegitimized the state and its political class, at the total cost of all gains made in extra-parliamentary struggle over the course of the 90s. Venezuela has been on the verge of popular revolution (even if only a "national democratic" one) for at least half a century, and the crisis of the last decade created a situation where only a non-traditional politician using leftist rhetoric could possibly have salvaged the crumbling state.

In late 2001, Chávez approved the famous "41 Laws" he deems necessary to put the constitution into practice. This proves to be the final straw for the media, church, and national business class, who from this point forward begin to seriously plot against the government. Ironically, it is in these 41 laws that we really begin to see openings for new types of foreign investment in the energy sector and other neo-liberal strategies.

What happened in Venezuela over the next few years is almost common knowledge, and I won't touch on it too much except to hit the main points:

In April of 2002 the heads of the military ally themselves with the business class and stage a massacre against peaceful Chavista crowds and opposition protestors outside of Miraflores palace. In the confusion caused by a concerted misinformation campaign by the mass media, Chávez is kidnapped from office and a new transitional regime immediately begins dismantling his government. Pro-Chávez crowds surround Miraflores screaming for his return and the loyal Palace Guards retake control of the complex. Through a single-minded concentration on these events, the international Left has built up for itself a myth that the April coup was miraculously reversed by a mass popular uprising with the sympathy of the rank and file in the FAN. This version of events is best represented in the officialist documentary The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, by far the single most accessible source of information on Venezuela for English-speaking North Americans and Europeans. The truth however, is that Chávez' return had more to do with internal negotiations within the higher levels of the FAN than anything else. As the new regime was put into place via a coup, the Organization of American States would not have recognized it and as a result Chávez remained the only option for the bourgeoisie.

The following year, the business class struck again by calling for a national "strike" in all strategic industries, most notably the state oil company PDVSA (this is commonly known as the "paro petrolero"). Venezuela's economy dived for months before the bourgeoisie itself called off the lockout in order to save their own livelihoods. The United States in particular had an interest in seeing oil production get back up to speed. Here again the Left has decided to paint the events with a red brush, hailing the heroism of PDVSA workers who defied the lockout to get the pumps working again. The most important effect of the lockout was that it allowed Chávez to fire 18,000 PDVSA employees for walking off the job, including most of its technical staff of geologists, geophysicists and reservoir engineers, and then refill those posts with political supporters (this is the point at which the "new" PDVSA became "the people's"). In this process all forms of budding worker's self-management were quickly rolled back under the assurance that PDVSA now "belonged to the people". Workers also managed to reoccupy a handful of other small factories, which are now being absorbed by the state and tokenized as symbols of "co-management" and glorious revolution.

The oil boom in 2002 saw Chávez rolling in cash, which through the "new" PDVSA, he proceeded to spend on a series of Misiones, or social programs intended to make the decrees of the constitution factual. In 2003 thousands of Cuban doctors and literacy workers entered Venezuela to help in building these programs, the most famous of which are Barrio Adentro (free health care) Robinson (literacy) Ribas (higher education) and Mercal (subsidized food). The real benefits of these programs cannot be denied, but neither can the fact that their implementation is designed to integrate civic society with the state oil industry and make the former even more dependent on the latter than it already was. There is indeed a case to be made that the current implementation of the Misiones is primarily an exercise in building infrastructure for the future, but the material fact is that social spending per capita has not increased past the levels seen during the 1970's oil bonanza.

The last and most recent concerted attempt to remove Chávez from power came in 2004 with a recall referendum -- obviously ironic since such a move would have been impossible under anything other than the Bolivarian Constitution. The "No" (pro-Chávez) vote won this incredibly important election in a landslide that guaranteed the president's democratic credentials. And yet even the referendum itself is a bit tricky to decode, as of just under 15 million voters, only about 70% participated in the recall; some 5,600,000 for Chávez and 3,800,000 against, shattering the illusion of an undisputable Chavista majority, and exposing the continuing existence of voter apathy. It is also worth noting that the political forces behind the "Yes" vote had and continue to have absolutely no political platform or project other than a rabid anti-Chávez stance. It's also interesting to point out that after the victory, multinational stocks such as Chevron-Texaco and Crystallex (Canadian gold mining) shot up. Chávez provides a very stable and welcoming environment for foreign investment.

3. NO HAY CAMINO HACIA LA AUTOGESTIÓN, ˇLA AUTOGESTIÓN ES EL CAMINO!

In fact, Chávez provides a very welcoming environment for just about anyone. The man is damn charismatic! It's like an anarchist sport just to see how long you can watch the president give a speech before saying, "hey maybe he's not so bad".

His relationship to the people is unlike anything I've ever seen. They love him. It sounds cliché, but they see themselves in him and have concentrated their hopes into his personage. His personality cult has been built slowly over thousands of hours of televised appearances and meetings with all sorts of different people -- and it all began with that little minute in 1992. To give an example of how his "magic" sometimes plays out, it might be useful to relate what I saw of a televised conference in which Chávez presented a series of grants for different "endogenous" community projects to be implemented through the new Bolivarian High Schools. In an auditorium filled with cheering, uniformed school children, Chávez and several ministers listened as one by one, representatives of the nation's Bolivarian students reported on the development of their new educational institutions.

One young woman, poised to read off the achievements of her school, excused herself and instead used the opportunity to ask the president on national television what he planned to do about the confusion over school uniforms, which come in both blue and beige. The girl wanted to know when they could expect a single color for all school uniforms, and the crowd roared with approval at seeing Chávez caught off guard by this friendly interrogation.

The Venezuelans I had been watching the broadcast with began to laugh with disbelief, saying, "Wow -- that little girl just fixed those stupid uniforms!" as on screen, Chávez played up his bewilderment and responded by calling out possible colors for new uniforms, after each of which the crowd of students would cry out for approval or rejection.

To be sure, these little incidents are not necessarily indicative of an actual "revolutionary democracy" and given Chávez' history of promising various things in the heat of the moment and never following up on them (such as ridding his country of Genetically Modified food companies such as Monsanto), often times do not mean anything at all. Some of the more cynical might even point out that such spectacles could be easily pre-planned in order to look spontaneous and paint a human face on the president. Regardless, the phenomenon they represent and feed is central to any understanding of the Bolivarian Revolution.

Hugo Chávez spends more time on television than probably any other politician, and practically all government ceremonies at which he speaks are seen as opportunities to rearticulate his vision of the revolution before a national audience. His weekly "Aló Presidente" program is only the tip of the iceberg in this nonstop propaganda blitz. The key to appreciating all this aritime is to contrast it with other politicians of past and present, both national and international. George W. Bush for instance, is infamous for spending as little time as possible in front of the cameras, and only speaking briefly whenever he is. Next to this example and the prior tradition of politics in Venezuela, Chávez' constant rhetoric and openness to the media creates the impression of a process that is constantly developing with the people's involvement -- a societal discussion in which he can continually serve as the moderator.

There is a small but vocal group of radicals, including prominent members of anarchist groups, who have personally met Chávez in the past and confide that this "dialogue" is a sham, and his actual personality is quite authoritarian. Douglas Bravo himself is now one of the major voices in this strand of criticism, and insists that Chávez is nostalgic over his 1992 coup attempt, during which he claims that the future president was openly disdainful of the "unorganized masses" and saw the revolutionary project as the exclusive role of the armed forces, only to be rubber-stamped by the popular movements. In a way this is not difficult to believe, especially given the elevation of February 4th to a national holiday that totally eclipses Chávez' actual election in terms of relevance to "the process". On the other hand, the overwhelmingly vocal majority of the Venezuelan working class seems totally convinced of his sincerity, though not that of his immediate allies.

For the sake of this text as well as RAAN's future organizing around Venezuela, I must insist that the question of whether Chávez -- as a single man -- is sincere is incredibly irrelevant. For anarchists in particular, the detail of whether or not to support Chávez is a massive distraction that can only lead to divisiveness within the movement and accusations of "petty-bourgeois influence" from without. Regardless of whether or not Chávez is a legitimate revolutionary "leader", the only tactical course for all revolutionaries remains as it ever was: to press for autonomous and horizontally-applied community and workers' organization and action against capitalism, focusing on a sustainability independent of all governments, "revolutionary" or not, and especially the limited political and even natural life of any single figure.

4. NINGUNA REVOLUCIÓN SE FINANCIA POR MEDIO DE LAS TRANSNACIONALES

"The Comandante may shout whatever insults he likes against Bush, but that loud-mouthed anti-imperialism means nothing as long as he continues giving Chevron, Conoco-Phillips or Repsol the control of our reserves of oil and natural gas, continues giving Telefonica our communications, giving Grupo Santander and BBV our bank sector, giving Crystallex our gold mines and to Vale do Rio Doce or Peabody our coal reserves." -- Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas (CRA), Venezuela

Hugo Chávez is a pragmatist who on more than one occasion has said that he does "not believe we are living in an age of proletarian revolutions". So the question becomes, just where the hell is this "Socialismo Bolivariano" supposed to come from, then?

Criticizing the current Venezuelan regime, particularly from within the North American movement, is a tricky proposition. There are more than enough people out there wearing red berets and ready to denounce any "attack" against Chávez as tacit support for a US coup. This tendency is of course rather prevalent in Venezuela, and in fact is really quite analogous to the Bush doctrine of either being "with us or against us" -- a comparison that needs to be made as much as possible. To those who say that criticizing Chávez hands weapons to the enemy, we must be firm in saying that to not do so is infinitely more dangerous. Those who speak at any time of a "revolutionary government" have, to recall Vaneigem, "a corpse in their mouth".

The Venezuela issue is so interesting, so very germane to the Red & Anarchist Action Network, because to understand it fully one needs a synthesis of both classical anarchist and Marxist critiques.

From the anarchist side, we have a rejection of all power structures and particularly the vertical implementation of aid or development. So no, of course it's not "bad" that Chávez is setting up free health care clinics, and of course it's not "bad" that people are learning how to read and write for the first time, but the extreme rigidity of these programs breeds a direct dependence on state structures that harkens back to the paternalism of the 1970's. Thus when the leftists exclaim that Chávez has gotten rid of school fees (allowing 600,000 more children to attend class) and RAAN (with its principles calling for the abolition of institutional schooling) is hopelessly "bourgeois" and cannot understand the importance of that in a "Third World" nation, we must explain that Chávez has bought his way through the revolution with frequent "gifts" (such as free school uniforms) and that not only was free schooling already available during the populist years, but it was abandoned due to the unsustainability of the oil-centric economic dependency that Chávez has not only refused to confront, but has in fact deepened exponentially.

We envision self-managed communities with the ability to independently educate themselves according to their local custom via a free access to information and resources. The vertical implementation of government programs seeks to "push through" a "revolution" that in many cases doesn't actually exist at the level of grassroots consciousness, or at least not in the format specified by the government decrees. This culture of "charity" and dependency is ultimately counter-revolutionary since it ossifies the state bureaucracy and makes it nearly impossible for the people to defend themselves or carry through the revolution in the absence of a "friendly" central government or armed forces -- conditions that simply cannot be taken as given!

There are of course exceptions to this -- for instance in the autonomous community of La Vega, (a historically combative settlement 40 minutes outside of Caracas, from where the police have been expelled) Mision Ribas and other social programs are directly run by the most active community organizers, without much interference by the state. The problem is, La Vega is not a representative community in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez continually calls, day and night, for the people to organize themselves. Repeatedly he states that the revolution can only go through if the people are organized enough to really make it happen. Such comments as these are always pointed to by those who would insist that Chávez is sincere in his project. I would respond that it really doesn't matter, and that "with" him or "against" him, the task remains to organize autonomous communities capable of breaking all dependence on Chávez or the guy who comes after him, even if having to utilize government handouts along the way. The problem is, this isn't what's happening.

Chávez will decree that by such and such a date, some odd number of localized "cooperatives" will be ready to extend whatever the new project for that month is into a like number of communities across Venezuela. When the deadline comes, less than a third of these cooperatives have actually gotten themselves together, and the project is just dropped from above onto the remaining communities. It is very important to note, these Misiones do not surpass the token level of care already provided for during previous oil bonanzas. Barrio Adentro, for instance, has three levels. The first are the preventative care clinics directly in the neighborhoods that we hear so much about, which aren't good for much more than a band-aid. The second level encompasses the specialized trauma centers, which only exist in select communities, anyway. And the third level is supposedly the public central hospitals of Venezuela, which remain completely inadequate and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, food consumption is up while actual nutrition is down, and "tropical" diseases like Malaria and Tuberculosis are shockingly on the rise. But none of this matters, because all Chávez needs to do is build another Barrio Adentro and the international Left will shower praise on him like he saved the world. With such tactics he actually spends less on the social programs than he would on any media campaign necessary to promote them, and draws attention away from the fact that all of this is still based on one thing -- oil.

This is where the Marxist analysis comes in. In the rush to support an emerging "revolutionary" situation in South America, many radicals have completely forgotten that capitalism is not just some form of government, but a mode of production that is not isolated in one nation, class, or done away with simply by having the workers run "their" own factories. Chávez very skillfully keeps the attention on policy differences with the US government so as to throw up a smokescreen with which to hide the fact that he is actually marching right in step with neo-liberal globalization's grand scheme for the region.

What possible use is it to go on and on about how unjust the war in Iraq is, for instance, when Halliburton remains the chief services contractor for PDVSA? How enormously distracting is it for Chávez to play verbal war games with Condoleezza Rice while welcoming Chevron -- the murderous company she once directed -- into the country with open arms, even calling them "great friends of the revolutionary process"?

On the one hand, Venezuela's oil nationalization left much of the industry's infrastructure undeveloped, and building relationships with the transnationals is the only way to overcome this without immediately bankrupting the country. Chávez certainly can't hope to go from relying solely on oil and importing up to 80% of Venezuela's food, to a completely "sovereign" and self-sufficient nation overnight... but on the other hand there is absolutely nothing to suggest that he is doing anything other than trying to deepen this dependency. Under the banner of socialism and with slogans of "development", Chávez has presided over the biggest handover of national resources in Venezuela's history.

And how else could they possibly hope to do it? In late 2003 Bolivia nearly went through a revolution just at the suggestion of privatization. Chávez, on the other hand, is such a "revolutionary" that he can sign over the rights to the massive offshore Deltana Platform -- which will create a "dead zone" in the ocean and have access to more gas reserves than ALL of Bolivia combined -- and nobody will even realize that it just happened!

For Chávez, anything that brings in money from the country's energy reserves (combined, the largest in the world) is positive. His single driving goal is to convert Venezuela into the number one energy producing country on earth -- and for this to happen he relies not only on the transnationals, but the continuity of the capitalist system that consumes that energy. Despite scattered references to "the environment", he has absolutely no intention of developing or providing the alternative energy solutions necessary to reduce economic dependency on the oil market. In fact, the only type of energy Chávez seems to be interested in that doesn't come from gas, petrol, or coal... is nuclear.

But that's probably a long way off. After all, he recently declared that under his government the integration of South America will become reality, and that Venezuela can provide for the region's energy needs for the next 200 years -- as if the ecosystem could possibly survive that much more sustained consumption! To match the global South's level of "development" with that of the North (because of course, that's what a prosperous socialist society should look like) is not only an ecological catastrophe, it's exactly what international capital demands! Moreover, it's a path completely removed from the national reality, as Venezuela has already received 60% of its energy from hydroelectric sources for some time and hardly needs a massive expansion in its oil production except as a exporter for the global market.

Chávez won big brownie points with the anti-globalization movement by coming out strong against the Free Trade Area of the Americas, (FTAA, or ALCA in Spanish) and never stopped his tirade against it until it was clear that it would not be going through. He even had the brilliant idea of creating "ALBA", the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. The only problem is, ALBA didn't even really exist until Evo Morales signed on in late April, and unless Daniel Ortega becomes president of Nicaragua it is unclear if any other countries will be willing to sign up. In theory it's a wonderful ideal of mutual aid whereby countries trade the services they specialize in without any emphasis on profit, with examples being the literacy, oil-for-doctors, and spinoff programs with Cuba. Chávez pushes the issue whenever he can and throws out oil gifts across the Caribbean, defiant that ALBA (which spells out "dawn") will be the future. In fact, there seems to be no public framework to define ALBA aside from some of Chávez' own essays, which make sure to state that the project could never serve as "a barrier to the development of technology" in the participating countries. While ALBA shows a lot of potential and could one day even redefine international trade, (though not free it from the capitalist context) at this point it does not pass for more than a distraction when compared to Venezuela's much larger economic integration ventures under IIRSA.

5. EN VENEZUELA, LA ALCA SE LLAMA IIRSA

Unlike the FTAA, which would not have affected the energy sector and therefore really wouldn't have mattered to Venezuela's mono-economy in the first place, IIRSA (Integracion de la Infraestructura Regional Sur Americana) is all about Chávez' favorite subject. Financed by the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF, which in turn gets money from the International Monetary Fund), IIRSA is a longstanding development plan of the multinationals that is now being repainted as "nationalist". Of course, any similarities between IIRSA and what Chávez is calling a revolution are entirely coincidental.

IIRSA links up with other regional projects such as Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) to create the best possible environment for "Infrastructure Integration". In Venezuela the best example of this strategy can be found in the Western state of Zulia, which borders Colombia and contains some of the most important "energy reserves" in the country.

Zulia is where you hear about the FARC running columns around on Venezuelan soil. It's 100% true, by the way. The paramilitaries are, of course, also coming over with the drug trade, (and clashing with the FAN) and even Colombian government troops cut through to shave time off marching in their own territory. More interestingly, it's the center of the most important social struggle in Venezuela -- as shall be discussed below.

For IIRSA, Zulia is most important because of the role it can play in helping both national and Colombian coal exports reach their final destinations. Already in the works are a network of highways that will cut across Amazonian territory, a bridge over the enormous Lake Maracaibo, and the construction of a massive international port with which to handle those coal shipments. The entire development package has been put together with a mind towards easier access to "competitive" markets in Europe and North America, and is taking place against a backdrop of several shady coincidences. Chief among these is that prior to the signings of the relevant agreements with Colombia, Chávez had regularly criticized his counterpart, the "paramilitary with a necktie" Alvaro Uribe, for being a member of the oligarchy and a US puppet. After these integration deals went through, Chávez switched his vitriol to Mexican president Vincente Fox, who is now seen as the chief lapdog in the region. Unsurprisingly, relations between Venezuela and Colombia are now really rather smooth. Even more interesting, however, is that the port in question was to be named "Puerto América" (in the original plans which of course pre-date Chávez) but has now been rechristened "Puerto Bolívar", no doubt so as to make any voice against it sound unpatriotic by default...

Puerto Bolívar is set to totally displace fishing communities on the islands of San Bernardo, San Carlos, and Zapara, and the construction of Puente Padilla over Lake Maracaibo is being done without any respect to studies conducted by the government itself, which indicate that strong winds in the area (over 100 km/h) will lift coal dust from the transport trucks and, along with the opening of several new mines in Venezuelan territory, contaminate the entire region's water supply including the rivers Socuy, Maché, and Orinoco (which is the biggest reserve in the Western hemisphere) as well as Embalse Manuelote, the most important reservoir in Northeast Zulia. Directly affected will be the water supply to the city of Maracaibo, Zulia's state capital. Of course, the construction of this bridge and its connected projects was originally proposed by Carlos Andrés Pérez as part of wider neoliberal policies, and was even listed by Chávez as a justification for his 1992 coup.

It is hardly the first time that the current government has gone back on its word regarding planned infrastructure development. In a little-publicized struggle that has been all but forgotten in the face of Chavismo, the indigenous Pémon population spent the majority of 2000-2002 fighting against the construction of a series of inefficient and outdated energy towers cutting through their people's sacred lands. The project had originally been signed in 1997 by the Caldera government with then president of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and Chávez had made it a campaign pledge to "review" the project, which under the future Bolivarian Constitution should never have been allowed. Of course once in office, Chávez declared the tenido electrico to be a "geopolitical necessity" that would not to be stopped by "foreign interests".

By foreign interests, Chávez specifically meant ecologismo del Norte, or "Northern ecology". In Venezuela the environmental movement that began in the 80's has long been stigmatized as a privileged interest group from the North, out of touch with reality -- how, after all, could an "undeveloped" nation have problems with pollution? In fact, already in the 80's there were many pressing environmental issues such as the contamination of Lake Maracaibo and release of mercury into the ecosystem by the mining industries. As we shall see, nowadays this idea of "ecologismo del Norte" is skillfully combined with "anti-imperialism" to harshly silence all movements that could be considered "green", which in Zulia means indigenous peoples opposed to the destruction of their ancestral homelands in the name of neo-liberal energy exploitation.

In the case of the Pémon, this situation led to their adoption of direct action tactics and the toppling of seven electrical towers in their territory -- of course, this was denounced as "terrorism" (where have we heard that before?) by Chávez. Events came to a head on May 28th, 2002 when Pémon activist Miguel Lanz was murdered by Sgt. Jonathan Ortiz of the FAN. In July of that year, Pémon activists traveled to Caracas to denounce the killing and present a request for legal action to Chávez on his weekly call-in show, Aló Presidente. After having their demands passed back and forth between the various levels of bureaucracy lurking behind the program's "unscripted" image, Minister of Education, Culture, and Sport Aristóbulo Istrúiz denied them, saying, "Chica, you are crazy. This can't go on the air, what are you thinking? You think we're going to disparage our armed forces? What you are is crazy."

This is the reality of a "left-wing" government that was drawn directly out of, and remains dependent on, the armed forces: of an "anti-imperialist" government that rhetorically positions itself "against" Christopher Columbus, but in full cooperation with the Spanish banks that control the nation's finances -- and of course, who do you think ultimately owns those banks?

Foreign influence over Venezuela's economy does not only extend through the energy sector, though that is clearly its most important manifestation. Electricity in Caracas, traditionally owned by a powerful local family, is now set to be internationalized by H Corp. The finance sector is totally owned by transnationals -- Banco De Venezuela by Santander, Banco Provincial by Banco Bisbao, (which illegally gave funds to Chávez' 1998 campaign) Seguros Caracas by Liberty Mutual, and the list goes on. The security sector is almost totally controlled by a Spanish company, as is Movistar, one of the nation's largest cellular service providers. Two of other big ones, CanTV and MovilNet, are both owned by Verizon. In 2004, former US President (and "neutral" advocate for Capital-D Democracy in South America) Jimmy Carter arranged a meeting between Hugo Chávez and Gustavo Cisneros, a Venezuelan media mogul considered by Forbes to be among the world's richest men. Shortly after, the Cisneros Group bought Digitel, leaving the nation's telecom sector entirely in the hands of the multinationals.

6. VENEZUELA: AHORA ES DE TODAS LAS TRANSNACIONALES

None of this is paid any serious attention of course, because the only important strategic industry (at least for now) is PDVSA, which thankfully "belongs to the people". Or does it?

Beginning this year, foreign multinationals will no longer have the ability to make contractual agreements with PDVSA regarding their operations in certain areas of the industry. Instead, they will enter into "partnerships" where the state will always retain 51% of ownership. These partnerships are decided through a system of "bids" where different companies become "winners" in the contest to see who gets to help Venezuela move into the next century. On the surface, it seems like this might be a "fair" deal in which the nation gets to keep a majority share in its resources, even at the cost of the bidding contest's ludicrous spectacle. In reality however, while previously companies such as Chevron-Texaco would only be contracted for certain projects, (the building of a refinery, for instance) they will now be the literal owners of 49% of whatever projects are undertaken. When you consider that the contracts Chávez is pushing tend to last for up to 60 years, this amounts to nothing less than the privitization of PDVSA!

Like everything else, these processes are declared "socialist" and then through various manipulative techniques are sold off to a cheering international Left and a skeptical populace that had no say in their original design (as it took place behind closed doors, as always). Many fans of Chávez are of course quick to point out that new energy deals with China and India will cut Venezuela's reliance on the US as a market for oil, but this simply isn't true. When China puts money into Venezuelan energy it doesn't mean that they're buying oil for themselves, but that they're investing in national production that will still -- according to the laws of the capitalist market -- go to whoever is ready to pay cash on the barrelhead for it. Sin embargo, the United States.

The government of Hugo Chávez has basically had the affect of turning Venezuelan territory into a magical wonderland where the reality of international capitalism and the interests of the conglomerates who benefit from it are seemingly dissolved into a homogenous revolutionary development that is somehow "participatory" for the masses. This takes place regardless of what could be called any "long-term" strategy for revolution, as it is only the capitalist objectives that are being rammed through right now. Their logic being, it won't matter how socialist Venezuela is tomorrow if access to its energy reserves can be locked down in the meantime -- no matter what the cost to the people or environment.

There is seemingly no end to the number of longstanding neo-liberal development schemes that can now be pushed through without protest in the name of solidarity, South American economic integration, or "exporting the revolution". Many of these projects were originally proposals of the Caldera government that are only now seeing the light of day, such as the opening up of the Imataca natural reserve to extensive logging and gold mining operations that began in 2002. Perhaps the largest, however, is an 8,000 km trans-Amazonic gas pipeline that would stretch from Caracas to Buenos Airies, providing energy to Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay (another key US ally) along the way. Despite PDVSA's own admission that the pipeline carries "more operational risks" than petrol, and government-funded studies predicting an "ecological catastrophe", the project is being hailed as the crown jewel of integración, a milestone in South America's economic development that will allow Venezuela to provide the continent with the centuries of energy necessary to match the insane consumerism of the North.

Such pipelines are well known for being prime targets of sabotage and are unreliable delivery systems, regardless. The similar -- but significantly smaller -- Camisea pipeline in Peru has had four major ruptures since becoming operational in 2004, and Amazon Watch has already described it as "arguably the most damaging project in the Amazon Basin". In addition, gas pipelines uniformly suffer from a continuous corrosion that either leads to more spills or simply creates a massive filter for toxins.

However, it is in fact in the area of coal exploitation that we find a convergence between the most pressing issues of ecology, national sovereignty, and indigenous liberation in Venezuela.

7. EL CARBÓN ES MUERTE

On November 13th of 2003, Hugo Chávez announced that Venezuela would be tripling its coal production, principally through the incredibly destructive method of open pit mining -- again, keep in mind that Venezuela does not actually need this energy for its own development, and the primary consumers of coal in the near future will continue to be the United States and Europe. It hardly seems a strategy for reducing reliance on Northern markets, particularly as this desarollo will rely directly on the participation of several multinational companies, and is in fact a welcome mat for them to enter the country.

The increase in production is to be centered in a region of Zulia known as the Sierra del Perijá, which is home to hundreds of families from indigenous Wayuú, Yukpa, Barí, and Japreria tribes. Several of these groups have already suffered greatly as a result of mining operations already underway on their lands, and regard the Chávez government's plans as an impending death sentence. Seven Barí and three Wayuú tribes are already currently encircled by mining pits through which the coal companies forbid all outside visitors to pass, and members of the tribes themselves are allowed to come and go for only two days out of the week.

Although the Bolivarian Constitution states that the government can only have access to natural resources "without rupturing the cultural, social, and economic integrity of [the people] and, equally, will be subject to the prior informing and consulting of the respective indigenous communities," in reality this -- like much of the Constitution -- doesn't mean much in practice. The process by which these tribes were allowed to demarcate their own land (as stipulated by Article 119 the Constitution) was undertaken by a joint government/community commission on the matter that included ample representation from business interests and some questionable participation from discredited indigenous "leaders" selected by the state. The result is that while a large land package was in fact offered to the tribes, the final territorial boundaries proposed had some suspicious holes cut out of them in exactly the areas where you might find the largest coal deposits...

This has been a divisive issue within the tribes themselves, as several voices in the community have been quick to point out that for a government to even recognize them, to say nothing of offering them an -- admittedly limited -- control over their own land is totally unprecedented and should be taken up as the golden opportunity it is, while it lasts. Others have explained that even in those lands the tribes would be continuously under siege by the environmental contamination of the adjacent export mining activities, and that the total destruction of the surrounding area, its water supply and bio-diversity is far too high a price to pay.

For a variety of reasons the struggle of the indigenous people in the Sierra del Perijá has received startlingly little attention, even within Venezuela. To begin with, the extreme urban concentration of the national population (80% living on 1% of the land) means that vast expanses of the national territory are kept far from the eye of public politics, which at any rate is centered almost exclusively on and in Caracas. To some degree, this also explains how various Venezuelan governments and multinationals have been able to maintain ecologically destructive means of resource extraction without directly affecting or alerting any "significant" number of the populace; the Southeastern region of Guyana, for instance, makes up 40% of Venezuela's landmass but only one percent of the total population actually lives there, and those only in relatively few cities -- there are still areas which have not yet been explored.

Additionally, the Bolivarian government has long been promoting a mythologized caricature of the nation's indigenous population, usually based on more well known, tokenized, or secluded populations such as the Yanomani, who stretch into Brazil. Through this outlook, indigenous peoples who live in developed areas of the country or wear "modern" clothing are almost totally disregarded simply as an impoverished, uneducated, inebriated, and invisible lumpen-proletariat -- much like elsewhere in the world. Thus the Chávez government can play with the imagery of indigenous "rights" and especially "recognizing/paying tribute to indigenous heritage" without actually engaging in the daily reality of a good deal of the country's indigenous citizens. During one public speaking event in Caracas, I saw a local community leader explain his pride at being part of the Venezuelan majority's uniquely distinctive racial makeup by explaining, "we are neither whites, nor blacks, nor Indios; we are our own category." Such public discourse, coupled with the Bolivarian government's incessant propaganda campaigns glorifying indigenous resistance to colonialism and their cultures which have been "criminally eradicated", allows for the focus to be kept off the socio-cultural and economic realities faced by the originarian peoples that do in fact still reside within Venezuela.

To be sure, the rather ill-defined Mision Guaicaipuro has recently sprung up as the government's tool for intervention in these matters, but in many cases it has been used as a simple propaganda venture by which small schools with a limited mandate (generally, literacy programs) are set up and run by the state for a few months before being abandoned and left for the tribes to take over themselves (which of course, when it happens, is a good thing). Only recently is the government beginning to make moves on the issue again, no doubt as a way to increase "solidarity" work within these regions in the hopes of potentially undermining community opposition to the exploitation of coal (in Spanish, carbón).

However, the biggest problems for the anti-carbón activists come (unsurprisingly) from the coal companies themselves. In Zulia, coal exploitation is coordinated by a firm known as Carbozulia, which is owned by PDVSA and controlled by Corpozulia, the umbrella in charge of all development projects in the state. The extent to which these interests are willing to go in order to secure foreign access to Venezuela's coal include publicly denying that there are any indigenous or other residents within the affected areas, and should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the dealings of similar corporations, "revolutionary" or otherwise.

8. CON EL PUEBLO TODO, CON EL PODER NADA

Corpozulia is headed up by Brig. General Carlos Martinez Mendoza, a prime example of the FAN's "officers in suits and ties" (or red shirts, depending on the photo opportunity) that Chávez has recruited in his ultra-militaristic campaign to reshuffle the national bourgeoisie in his own image. Mendoza was quoted in May of last year admitting that the construction of Puente Padilla over Lake Maracaibo was for the "exclusive benefit" of Colombian commerce into the country. More generally, he has put his authoritarian background to good use in combating the anti-carbón movement with a fear-mongering campaign matched only by the United States government's own "green scare". In addition, Corpozulia claims to have done extensive research into the projects that it is about to undertake, but as expected the investigatory commissions on the matter were stacked with Carbozulia partners against only 2 community organizers opposed to the development.

The anti-carbón movement is ostensibly led by indigenous activists, though a university professor named Lusbi Portillo -- who coordinates the environmental group Homeo et Natura -- is more or less in control of the contacts between Wayuú organizers and the movements in solidarity with them. Also involved are the groups Amigransa (Friends of the Gran Sabana) and Red Petrolera -- Oilwatch Orinoco, which in 2005 published an important book, Chevron: Right Hand of the Empire. Also at the front lines in terms of publicizing the arguments against coal exploitation is the country's long-running green magazine Era Ecologica. These groups are involved primarily over environmental concerns, whereas Portillo himself is of the opinion that the anti-coal campaign cannot be successful unless it is able to tie up the immediate issue of indigenous and ecological survival with the greater neo-liberal scheme of IIRSA; to present a more comprehensive critique that takes into account the construction of Puerto Bolívar, among other factors. From a tactical standpoint, it seems the only way to transcend the disdain towards the ecologismo del Norte is by connecting the issue to broader concerns of sovereignty and the ultimate construction (or betrayal) of the "Socialism of the XXI Century". Additionally, the tribes are particularly opposed to turning anti-carbón into a "human rights" campaign with themselves at the center, since such a move would likely only give the United States more fodder in its attacks against Chávez.

In response to these groups' attempts at raising awareness on this life-or-death issue, Corpozulia has gone on a propaganda offensive aimed at totally destroying the credibility of the environmental organizations and galvanizing Chavista support against those who would seek to derail the country's "revolutionary strategy" for modern development. It should come as no surprise that Carbozulia publishes its own newspaper Carboinforma, often featuring a cheerful cartoon character "Coalie", who tells kids about how great coal mining is and what wonders it will work for the nation. On the not-so-cute side, the Ministry of Energy and Mines has openly (and obviously, without substantiation) called Lusbi Portillo a "terrorist" in the pages of that publication. They are also quite taken to referring to any anti-coal sentiment as coming from a shadowy "Mafia Verde" (Green Mafia) supposedly funded by the CIA. This is serious.

Last year, Mendoza was able to turn an indigenous Earth Day march on Corpozulia's headquarters into a PR stunt by paying coal truckers and other government workers to turn out in a "completely spontaneous" pro-carbón counter-demonstration complete with police escort and professional sound equipment. These tactics are reminiscent of Chávez' own methods for conjuring mass rallies out of thin air in Caracas, including giving state employees a paid day off and free lunch to attend the event. Often, the authorities can bus in these recruits from out of town. In Corpozulia's case, the intent was to sow divisions between coal workers and the indigenous movement and cast the latter as golpistas trying to disrupt the nation's Revolutionary Process.

Venezuelans live under a siege mentality, and after the failed 2002 coup and subsequent economic sabotage campaigns, no one can possibly blame them. As I mentioned, the chief legacy of the paro petrolero has been to associate anyone who is opposed to the normal functioning of PDVSA with the coup plotters, and since there is not exactly a lack of precedent for US military interventions in the region, this game of loyalties can be played with high stakes and offers Chavismo an incredibly effective way to publicly denounce anyone who might criticize the way the energy industry is being run. The culture of defending PDVSA's "sovereignty" at all costs is hammered in continuously over the course of all Bolivarian propaganda, both through playing up fears of a Yankee invasion and the constant reminder that all of the Revolution's social programs (relatively inadequate as they are) are being provided by the oil giant, which was irreversibly "retaken" by the workers during the paro and is now considered to be "one" with the Venezuelan people...

Meanwhile, in the North we have only just begun to see a massive pro-carbón corporate advertising campaign aimed at promoting coal as a "clean, sustainable" energy alternative for the future. Considering what a wonderful supply of it they just locked down in Venezuela and Colombia, this should come as no surprise. And given that a Rutgers team in collaboration with researchers from the University of North Carolina has in the past month discovered a method for turning coal into diesel fuel, we should be prepared to see a worldwide surge in the amount of attention paid to coal mining, and hopefully a comparable rise in the militancy of movements against it.

Fortunately, it is not only the corporate side of the issue that has been able to publish its views on the matter, though obviously theirs have had the broader distribution. The anti-carbón organizations and publications named above have all sought to keep a spotlight on the struggles of the indigenous peoples of Zulia, and in particular the only national anarchist periodical El Libertario has for years shown a single-minded determination to press for this issue as the most important point of intervention for anti-authoritarians in the country's current social struggles. This is important, since only a truly radical anti-capitalist critique is capable of exposing IIRSA and the wider issue, which is the imposition of a foreign mode of consumption upon the people of Zulia and Venezuela as a whole.

In Maracaibo, the anarchists have been active through the Union of Alternative Collectives, (UCA) a more or less broad coalition of groups working to stop local expansion in the coal industry, and the genocide and destruction it would entail. The indigenous movement has already tried everything from mass propaganda to street art and mural campaigns to make their struggle known, and through all this the anarchists have remained their most reliable foot soldiers. To a degree this has been a shaky marriage, as the tribes consider themselves to be Chavistas and Lusbi Portillo in particular has remained untrusting of an alliance with libertarian groups despite the fact that only they are willing or capable of expanding on his systemic critique against IIRSA and the energy industry. From the side of the anarchists, working with Chavistas has been a major ideological leap that probably wouldn't have occurred had this not been an indigenous movement over indigenous land, in which the tribes involved must of course be given the ultimate overall tactical command of the campaign. The Wayuú, Yukpa, Barí, and Japreria are at this stage advancing the strategy of trying to use the new Constitution to stop the open pit mining, calling themselves Chavistas not only out of genuine affinity for the Bolivarian Revolution but also with the calculation that they will have more success in identifying themselves as also being "part of the process", albeit the cost of it.

For North Americans, awareness of the anti-carbón movement began with Christian Guerrero's article "What's so Revolutionary About Venezuelan Coal?" in the July-August 2005 issue of the Earth First! Journal (to their credit, this publication was also on top of reporting on the Pémon struggles in 2002). The article went a long way in proposing a global alliance between the Zulia campaign and other anti-coal activists who are often combating the same companies in different parts of the world, and this will inevitably form the backbone of any substantial international solidarity movement to combat what Chávez intends for the people of the Sierra del Perijá.

And yet ironically enough, our best tool for consciousness-raising and organization against IIRSA was commissioned by the Venezuelan state itself. Two years ago, Italian filmmakers Elisabetta Andreoli, Gabriele Muzio, Sara Muzio, and Max Paugh were approached by the National Council of Culture (CONAC) to film a documentary covering the Venezuelan oil industry and Bolivarian Process. The filmmakers were already well known for their works Another Way is Possible... in Venezuela, (2002) How Bush Won the Elections (in Ecuador), (2003) and Bolivia is Not for Sale (2004). Undoubtedly, what CONAC had in mind was another fluffy, feelgood "left-wing" (and of course, unreservedly pro-Chávez) documentary along the lines of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, which could be easily exported towards the growth of an international "Venezuelan Solidarity" movement that Chavismo has long been carefully grooming in its own image.

Unfortunately for them, the final product, titled Nuestro Petróleo y Otros Cuentos (Our Oil and Other Tales) turned out to a blistering exposé of the social realities behind blind petro-populism. Released in February of 2005, "Our Oil" was first privately screened for a group of government ministers, after which CONAC cut all funding (which had been 50% of the production costs) and promotional deals, a functional blacklisting that left the directors in serious financial trouble. This film has only recently been subtitled in English for showing at the Alternative Social Forum in Caracas this past January, and an active campaign to screen and distribute it throughout North America is the first step for any international anarchist intervention on the Venezuelan issue, as will be discussed below.

Nuestro Petróleo begins as an exploration of the social and ecological effects of the Venezuelan energy industry over the past decades, and then branches out to directly tackle several of the most pressing issues in the country today. The Wayuú mobilizations against coal are paid significant attention, as is the severe underutilization of Venezuela's own homegrown process for clean(er) fuel, Orimulsion (control over which has largely passed to the Chinese). Interviews with PDVSA employees reveal the corruption of the labor bureaucracy and that after a few months of self-management during the paro, old managers were reinstated and the same hierarchies whereby the workers have no say in the actual development of the national energy industry were put back into place. In a particularly poignant scene, a Corpozulia executive who had been speaking of coal as a "sustainable" energy solution is asked by someone behind the camera, "I don't understand in what sense this is a sustainable development?" The executive then hesitates momentarily before admitting that he actually has no idea. The film also pays close attention to the involvement of Chevron-Texaco as a fundamental partner to the "revolutionary" state, regardless of its current and historical involvement in more overtly-violent imperialism elsewhere. The importance of this film as an introductory tool in building the movement against IIRSA cannot be exaggerated.

On the ground however, anti-carbón activists are facing an uphill battle. On March 29 of last year, over one thousand indigenous protestors and their allies traveled to Caracas to march on Miraflores palace and get direct answers from Chávez about the final destruction of ancestral lands that had always been denied them in the first place. Unfortunately, at the time Chávez was meeting with Argentine ex-soccer star-turned-cokehead-turned-political opportunist Diego Maradona, and the mobilization was prevented from reaching Miraflores by the National Guard. For Chávez (who constantly plays up the fact that his own grandmother was half-native) to deny these people audience in favor of a photo opportunity with Maradona strikes me as being nothing less than extremely fucked-up.

Meanwhile, the situation is already coming to a head as the indigenous populations run out of both time and options for legal protest. During my stay in the country we received word that the National Guard has begun indiscriminately killing Yukpa tribesmen and burning their shelters in Zulia (to my knowledge this has yet to be confirmed). Angela González, a well-known Wayuú organizer for the Zulia campaign declared in an interview with El Libertario that "we can live without coal, but not without water". In her words, "[These people] are not going to leave, the army will have to remove us. Chávez says, 'damn the military that shoots its own people' and then what? There will be blood spilled here. The Wayuú are ready to die for these lands". She concludes, "We're going to die here anyway because of the coal, so [why not march to] Miraflores to die there? They'll have to kill us all."

9. MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCES IN VENEZUELA

Up until this point, I have been providing the reader with a broad overview of Venezuelan history and some of the less well-known details of the Bolivarian regime. The second part of this text will be reflecting on my own travels in the country and the dialogues I participated in with a variety of different political and cultural groups. I'm hoping that by having introduced the context in such a way, my analysis of the on-the-ground situation will be made much more informative. To some extent I have tried to present the following accounts in a chronologically accurate manner, excepting where that would have made it impossible to effectively present the information in question. Towards these ends I have in some cases sacrificed the "narrational flow" of the text from chapter to chapter, and I hope that the reader will bear with me. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, what follows is nothing more than my own personal take on what I saw and learned.

So that it will not be necessary to repeat myself throughout the following pages, I would also like to say that almost without exception, everyone I spoke to was incredibly friendly, engaging, and interested in my own views as well as sharing their own. This goes beyond traditional Latin hospitality and is indicative of the fact that the Bolivarian Revolution is at all times seen as a societal dialogue in which it is necessary for ordinary people to continuously rearticulate their vision of what is happening around them and what role they have to play in it. The best way to describe this is as Narco News journalist Al Giordano did during an interview with the San Francisco Independent Media Center in late 2002: by using the autonomist Marxist term "self-valorization". Self-valorization refers to the working class' psychological -- and eventually, economic -- evolution towards conceiving of themselves as "[their] own subject and no longer the object of the ruling elite". Giordano compared the mood of the Venezuelan masses after the overturning of the April coup directly to the self-valorization he had witnessed at Zapatista communities in Chiapas. This shift in mass-consciousness and perception can only be experienced, not described, and is confined neither to Chavismo nor to Venezuela itself, but is representative of the enormous global upheavals through which we are living in this epoch -- the most advanced expressions of which are at this point concentrated to some degree in South America.

I must be clear: despite my adamant opposition to the idea of Chávez as an infallible revolutionary leader and even the structure of the state itself, it is clear that Chavismo and Bolivarian Socialism are only indicative of a deeper process at work. There is a revolution going on in Venezuela, and anyone with eyes should be able to see it. Anyone with a heart would be able to sense it. The Bolivarian Revolution is simply the (political/institutional) reaction to the Venezuelan [and developing World] revolution, not the other way around.

10. FIRST IMPRESSIONS

I arrived in Caracas several days before the kickoff of the sixth ("Polycentric") World Social Forum (WSF) and second Social Forum of the Americas in order to get an idea of how the capital looked before the grand spectacle began. My first impressions were of a city more or less like any other in South America -- bustling activity in all directions, ample litter and other pollution, and very little overt indication of any revolution whatsoever. Various businesses function as usual and billboards still dot the skyline, which itself is inevitably dominated by a few large banking firms and, in the distance, the endless hillside barrios that surround this mountain city -- proof that despite everything the old oligarchy complains about, fundamental change is still a long way off.

Socialist and Chavista graffiti prevails over any traditional tags, and multiple government-funded murals recalling that decrepit celebration from the days of Stalinism, the World Festival of Students and Youth (held in Caracas last summer) provided frequent warnings against an impending US invasion; before long these would be outshone by new paintings commemorating the WSF. Practically every underpass is painted with the enormous faces of Simón Bolívar and other independence heroes, or propaganda from the city government proclaiming that "With you, Caracas has decided to change" (an anti-litter campaign) or "Con Chávez, un solo gobierno" (which simply means that the city mayor is in alliance with Chávez, but also carries the double meaning of "only one government"). On some of the main streets, I saw literally hundreds of stencils declaring, "Chávez is the people."

Large banners positioned throughout the city depict Chávez as often as possible, usually alongside slogans such as "the people march forward with their comandante," or quotes from his televised surrender in 1992 like, "Before all the Venezuelan people, I accept responsibility for this military Bolivarian movement".

As in many countries outside the US, even mainstream political parties engage in massive postering and wheatpaste campaigns around campaign time. The newest ones I saw were from the elections to the National Assembly late last year, where an opposition boycott was used to mask more widespread voter disillusionment and the various Chavista parties (collectively referred to as "officialist") gained full control of congress. Almost all of these posters, which generally belonged to candidates of the MVR, PCV, PODEMOS, PPT, UVE, (Union of Electoral Victors, the symbol of which is designed to recall that of the MVR) or some combination of the above, serve as interesting lessons in the county's politics. Because the officialist parties can rarely agree on anything except supporting Chávez, and the voters themselves are only interested in Chávez, many of the posters and accompanying political campaigns are designed in such a way as to reinforce the idea that the candidate in question is "more Chavista" than anyone else. It's a running joke that in order to get elected, all you need is a photo of yourself shaking Chávez' hand, but it's actually the truth. One candidate in particular had a larger picture of Chávez on his poster than he did of himself! My favorite campaign slogan? "Guarantee of Chavismo and Revolution".

This massive opportunism is at the heart of the electoral aspect of Bolivarianism and the creation of a new "Boli-bourgeoisie", and has yet to be significantly challenged by Chávez due to the fact that without it, he would have no political support base.

11. REVOLUCIÓN EN LA REVOLUCIÓN

My first encounter with an organized revolutionary group in Caracas happened practically by accident -- I was walking down Bolívar Avenue on my first day there, trying to get my bearings in this new city when I noticed a sort of encampment on the sidewalk of a major intersection, complete with a small PA blaring traditional folk music. The huge, hand-painted banners that hung from chain link fences around the large group cried for a "revolution within the revolution", and finding myself quite well disposed to such a sentiment, I walked over to see what they were all about.

In the Bolivarian vernacular, "revolution in the revolution" refers to that constant re-articulation of the process, and an awareness that it is perpetually undergoing change and finding new ways to overcome the limits imposed on it by bourgeois democracy. Leninists have tended to use it in describing a "profundization" of Bolivarian Socialism through the election of more "radical" (that is, Bolshevik) leaders, or the ascendence of such personalities within bodies like the MVR and trade unions. For most Venezuelans however, "revolution in the revolution" means nothing less than pushing for the total dismantling of the present economy and political classes, "Chavistas" or otherwise.

The group who's banners I had been reading turned out to be the Gonzalo Loreno Collective of the Partido Nuestramerica, from the Movement 13 April. They were a "nomad" collective, meaning an organized body comprised of the street vendors who make up at least half of the total Venezuelan workforce. These informal economists sell everything from sweets to cheap electronics to nail clippers to Puma knockoff clothing to plastic balls to pirated DVDs, are notoriously hard to "unionize", and can be found practically everywhere in the country. To some extent the government has tried to reorganize them into certain "Bolivarian Markets", but they continue to be particularly concentrated in the main areas of urban traffic. While often times this type of vocation can prove to be a self-contained and "apolitical" family affair, the Gonzalo Loreno Collective seemed to be a particularly diverse community group of people who traveled and sold their wares together -- though in practice it was only the older men who spoke to me or offered their political viewpoints, often while keeping an eye on their own merchandise or children out on the sidewalk.

Before delving deeper into the collective's ideology, I think it bears repeating: At least half of the national proletariat survives through the informal economy. It is important to keep in mind this fact of Venezuela's class composition, as it is the key to understanding why one cannot speak of a truly national mass workers' organization in the vanguardist sense (not that you can anywhere else, either). The much-vaunted officialist UNT, (National Union of Workers) which was set up in April of 2003 in response to the collaboration of the old CTV (Confederation of Workers of Venezuela) with the bosses' lockout, is certainly doing the bulk of the labor organizing in the country, but even their efforts are limited in scope and have stalled over infighting, negotiations dealing with how exactly to make the union as participative as possible, and a lack of follow-through on the militant tactics such as factory occupations that they were supposedly to be advancing.

The Loreno Collective members were incredibly articulate in their views on the present state of Venezuelan society and I found myself in full agreement with them. We ended up discussing various practical and theoretical questions for hours, including an on-the-spot translation of the Red & Anarchist Action Network's Principles & Direction, which they were very interested in and reacted very positively to. Overall I left with the feeling that if their opinions were at all representative of the Venezuelan masses, the revolution was in very good hands. Their own literature, a bare-bones series of photocopied pages calling for a "bloc of permanent and revindicative social struggles" demonstrated an incredibly advanced consciousness that -- as usual -- surpasses that of most self-righteous hobbyist activists.

The "nomads" self-identify as lumpen-proletariat, which in the Venezuelan context is a totally unique demographic without a classically identifiable political culture. The lumpen define themselves through the nomadic way of life and method of economy creation by and for the excluded classes (self-valorization through dual power). They point out that the lumpen will ultimately direct the politics of the street because it is they who have continually focused their actions towards the negation of a state in which they have no part; the lumpen "builds in the street a counter state, a 'non-state' that opposes the state which negates it". They are quick to point out that during the December 2002 paro petrolero, the economy survived wherever the lumpen were taking active part. They were also openly hostile to what they called the derecha roja -- (red fascists) the Leninists and Social Democratic politicians who have recast themselves as revolutionaries under Chávez' banner of Bolivarian Socialism. The collective mocked the suburb-like "dignified housing" construction developments of the government and proposed a general redistribution of land and resources with which they could build their own dignified housing, but, "for real, without filters, without the revolting guises of the derecha roja". "Unlike the enlightened vanguards and those who would wish to be professional revolutionaries," they explained, "we fundamentally dedicate ourselves to sharing and constructing conceptual or methodological tools with the people of these nomadic communities to which we belong". Encouragingly, their literature also mentioned the need to build solidarity with miners, "who via the politics of the state are displacing [the lumpen and campesinos] simultaneously from their lands and ways of life."

The group's direct focus on the concept of dual power, or sustainable and combative alternative (anti-)institutions, was inspiring. Their organizing was based directly in their own everyday experiences and put an emphasis on building resources for the future. In many ways, they brought new inspiration to the original influences in RAAN, and I believe that our tendency would do well to learn from them. For instance, their organization's "immediate themes" were defined as: Develop the political-ideological struggle for the formation of a nomadic and communitarian social subject; Organize autonomous projects with the methods of production already in existence; Build social intelligence networks; Define the politics of the street and the character of this tactical and strategic alliance.

12. EL CENTRO ENDÓGENO FABRICIO OJEDA

Those who visits Venezuela with any type of political agenda in these times, and particularly those who embark on any number of "revolutionary tourism" experiences offered by the government and its allied social movements for the benefit of international leftist groups in awe of Chávez, can tell you that the first things to see are the Misiones, the various social programs extended into the barrio by the government. Although I was hardly in Venezuela to study the government's side of the revolution, I figured it would be a positive experience to see these projects first hand, and was able to tag along with a group of German activists on a guided tour of a "nucleo endogeno", (internal nucleus) which is essentially a shopping mall/factory/cultural center comprised of various Misiones. Although I would come across the Misiones repeatedly during my trip, this was my single most informative encounter.

The Nucleo de Desarrollo Endógeno "Fabricio Ojeda" is a bright new complex built over what had been an abandoned PDVSA petrol post, but was reclaimed under the "new PDVSA" for "social growth and integration". Although it serves as a good example of the extent to which unutilized resources can be put to the benefit of the community given a shift in consciousness, it is undoubtedly also a perfect example of how PDVSA is being elevated to the untouchable level of national savior -- "integration" is meant specifically as integration between the surrounding community (a typical Caracas barrio) and the state oil company. On all signs and banners, PDVSA and the Bolivarian Government are celebrated almost as if they were two completely separate entities.

The center's namesake Fabricio Ojeda was the president of the Patriotic Junta that took power after the 23 de Enero 1958, but became a guerrilla leader in the FALN after becoming disillusioned with the government. In 1966 Ojeda was captured and shot by the FAN. It is important to note that in pre-Bolivarian Venezuela and practically anywhere else in the world, this is not the kind of person who would be having public projects named after them. Thus, the (selective) unearthing and commemoration of Venezuela's rich history of struggle has been one of the true benefits of the Fifth Republic.

The Nucleo is only one out of 120 of different sizes and types spread throughout the country. As mentioned above, the idea is essentially a grouping of all government programs into one massive cultural center that can eventually become a starting point for urban renewal/economic gentrification. This one was rather large -- two completed buildings, another open but under partial construction, and fourteen left to build. The nucleus would soon feature a restaurant and center for disability treatment to compliment its Mercal market, Barrio Adentro, outdoor athletic facilities, and two Vuelvan Caras factories. The design of the place itself was open and friendly despite being a walled-in complex with a soldier on guard at the front gate, and during our visit we saw a few people apparently using the property as more or less of a public park. On the basketball courts, local schoolchildren engaged in various cardio vascular exercises. To be sure, the shiny new center was in stark contrast to the impoverished neighborhoods surrounding it.

We received a guided tour of the facility from a PDVSA "social relations" employee who explained that the nucleo's purpose was to "develop each person to their own potential" by providing the community with jobs and resources on credit from PDVSA. Despite this focus, she explained that cultural activities and music made up the most important aspects of the center.

Each nucleo is supposedly based on several local production cooperatives -- in this case, up to thirty -- around whom the center's functioning revolves. These cooperatives were not preexisting, and so were in fact put into place and designed by the project, and not vice-versa. In the case of Mision Vuelvan Caras, for instance, the cooperatives are not unionized because, in the words of the PDVSA guide, "they own their means of production and therefore are their own bosses". However, everything they own was originally fronted to them by the company, and so what inevitably results is the creation of a total client business that would not be able to survive in the actual market and is therefore utilized primarily as a PR tool by PDVSA.

Mision Vuelvan Caras was implemented after the paro as a way to promote the education of the populace in skilled labor and foster an economy independent of the oil industry. In reality because the startup capital for these small businesses is provided by PDVSA, they always start off in debt to the company. The guide was open in explaining that the government's vision of cogestion (co-management) did not mean worker's management, but state-capitalism. One of the Germans asked the guide if the cooperatives were "autonomous". She looked surprised at the word but replied, "yes of course, but they must be in accord with the revolutionary process". She cheerfully explained that the nucleo's directors at PDVSA definitely "take into account what the cooperatives want in making decisions".

The two plants running in the nucleo were relatively small, probably not employing more than two hundred people at a time. At one end of the complex was a textiles factory, where an all-female workforce worked under Bolivarian banners at several rows of sewing machines. From what I saw, they were producing work overalls and red silkscreened Hugo Chávez shirts -- both of which were undoubtedly going towards guaranteed markets within the Bolivarian state itself. Across the way was another warehouse filled with a relatively small shoe-making industry based around 25 industrial machines provided by PDVSA. The shoes were uniformly black leather, and of a pretty decent quality. A good number of them would also be bought by the state, but the majority was bound for Cuba.

The Barrio Adentro clinic in the nucleo must have been one of the program's "level 2" specialized centers because it was enormous, complete with an outdoor pharmacy. It is hard to overstate the importance for Venezuelans, particularly residents of the barrio, to suddenly have immediate access to some form of healthcare like this. It's unprecedented.

The last storefront we saw was Mercal, the heavily-subsidized state supermarket chain. Not only is Mercal a way to assist communities, it's also a method by which the state can secure control over certain parts of the economy by ensuring markets for certain preferred distributors. The whole process remains explicitly capitalist, with a focus on increasing visible consumption (which has gone up) rather than nutrition (which has gone down). Mercal has in many ways also deepened Venezuela's dependence on imported food, but with that said, the prices were significantly lower than any other grocery store I encountered and I'm not going to play around like I wouldn't be useful to have a Mercal down the street from me right now.

13. THE SIXTH WORLD SOCIAL FORUM

The World Social Forum (FSM) began in 2001 as a response to the high-level World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The FSM was to provide a week-long media counterattack to neo-liberalism beyond the mass protests that had been regularly springing up outside meetings of the WTO, IMF, World Bank, G8, and other symbols of corporate globalization by giving the protest movements a forum in which to explore their own ideas in more detail. While the anti-globalization protests have arguably lost a lot of steam, the FSM has been getting bigger with each passing year -- undoubtedly due to the rise of "leftist" governments in South America.

Technically the FSM doesn't "do" anything, it's just a massive convergence where protest movements and political parties -- usually of a Social Democratic nature -- can come together and talk a lot. Like many such gatherings, it also attracts a certain number of neo-hippies interested primarily in the communal atmosphere provided by such a large leftist forum.

The first three annual FSMs were held in Porto Alegre, Brazil due to the fact that the (now ruling) Worker's Party (PT) had taken control of the city government and was looking for a way to promote itself to the outside world. The fourth Forum took place in Mumbai, India before returning to Porto Alegre for its fifth iteration. Now in its sixth year, the FSM has split into a "polycentric" model and was held both in Karachi and Caracas. Unsurprisingly, it was the Venezuelan forum that seemed to receive the most interest.

I attended the 2003 FSM in Porto Alegre right after the presidential victory of Lula and the PT in Brazil, and in many cases my analysis of the Caracas event will be based off contrasting it with the experiences I had then. At that time, Lula was the "shining star" of the institutional left and Hugo Chávez, while drawing a large crowd, did not have much to offer other than red banners and vague populist rhetoric. One must remember that it was only at the 2005 FSM that Chávez even announced that Venezuela was on a "socialist" path. More importantly, 2003 was the first year that we really began to see the focus of the FSM get taken off the independent social movements and transferred to the leftist politicians. At the time this could be blamed primarily on Lula and the PT, but by 2006 the spotlight had shifted, making the Forum an essential tool for the Chávez government's own self-promotion. I am not going to pretend that the FSM was ever anything but reformist, but there has definitely been a progressive and significant shift in its focus towards and collusion with the state.

I was absorbed into the Caracas FSM almost by accident, several days before the event was to even officially begin. Walking past the city's Parque Central (which is actually not a park at all) with my scruffy appearance and traveler's backpack, I was called to by an extremely tall, dreadlocked university student who turned out to be coordinating the registration and translation services for the Forum on that day. I figured that he would know the best way to start getting in touch with other Venezuelan groups, so I followed Enrique (as his name turned out to be) onto a bus that took us to a large stadium outside of Caracas where the registration was taking place. There are at least a few different levels of registration for the FSM, depending on if your organization wants to be officially represented or has workshops scheduled or whatever, but I was only interested in the "credentials" that would allow me access to the international campsite, which ended up costing just a little more than a US dollar.

After I was registered, we hopped back on the bus and were taken even further outside of Caracas to a national park known as "Vinicio Adames". This area was a trash dump for decades, and a number of national civic organizations had been working around the clock to turn it into a campsite for the upcoming Forum. The location was supposedly chosen in order to provide the safest possible environment for the international attendees, although the park itself is adjacent to several violent barrios from which one could clearly make out the sounds of gunfire at night (the entire park had to be surrounded by FAN troops for protection). The location of this campsite -- a ten-minute bus ride outside of Caracas and all the venues where FSM events would be taking place -- was utterly ridiculous, but since I had already paid my dollar, it was well after dark, and I had no tent of my own, I gladly accepted the hospitality of the volunteers I had bused in with, who at that point seemed to be the only people there.

The translators were almost without exception Venezuelan high school or college students with some background in languages, and had their own campsite set up at the top of a hill next to the army encampment, which was illuminated by floodlights throughout the night. They were buzzing with excitement about the upcoming Forum, and in particular the pact they had made between themselves to maintain a monopoly over local marijuana sources in order to make a hefty profit off the gringos on vacation. As it turned out, Vinicio Adames was a logistical nightmare and had suffered from drainage problems that were not insignificant considering that we were up in the mountains and caught rain just about every night, (which really killed the mood, by the way) and the fact that it was so removed from Caracas meant that I ended up only spending a couple days there before switching to another campsite. Yet during my short stay, I had the chance to witness some interesting dynamics.

The infrastructure of the campsite was still under construction at the time I arrived, which for the most part meant the setting up of showers and potable water supplies by the FAN. The direct participation of the military in the organization of the Forum was my first indication that I was going to see some fundamental differences between this experience and that of Porto Alegre. The large number of (uniformed, but of course unarmed) soldiers running around in the park and building the showers made it clear that the Bolivarian government was deeply involved in the running of the Forum. I would later hear that some non-governmental organizations were given the opportunity to coordinate logistics, but were ultimately unprepared to deal with the massive number of people that the FSM was expecting to draw with its Bolivarian context. One opinion voiced was that the government purposefully engineered this failure so as to later justify the massive involvement of the FAN in the Forum's execution.

I used this opportunity to speak to as many of the rank-and-file soldiers as I could, but was severely disillusioned when not a single one out of perhaps 25 wanted to talk about anything other than drugs or women, and the latter only in a particularly disrespectful and sexist manner. This was not at all what I expected to see from a military that was ostensibly undergoing "revolutionary transformation" and integration with the Venezuelan people. The soldiers I spoke to were all from poor families and had signed up for their two years of service for economic reasons; few of them took the possibility of war with the United States very seriously, and surprisingly none of them even had anything particularly positive to say about Chávez.

One must contrast this with the spectacle projected by Chávez and his generals of a "democratic" military in the process of redefining its role in society. It would seem that this image is only for public consumption, and any actual ideological instruction or debate on the revolution's course is primarily reserved for the officer classes. True, Chávez loves to give televised speeches regarding the nature of the army and its evolution, but from my experience it seems that the military itself remains a hopelessly vertical structure in which the ordinary recruits are excluded from this dialogue and have no direct say in its actual implementation. Hence the FAN, like the rest of the Bolivarian Revolution, will remain "democratic" only so long as those in power agree to call it that.

It is worth noting that a brigade of Caracas firefighters was also on hand to help with any safety concerns, refilling gas stoves, or water supply issues. This small group was pretty well organized and I would say much more conscious of the revolutionary process than the soldiers, including in their willingness to talk about it. Overall I got the impression that everyone really appreciated their having been there.

Things finally got interesting once more internationals began arriving at the park. In the first few days, it seemed like a disproportionately large number of them had arrived from Colombia and especially French Canada, although those numbers would eventually be dwarfed by Brazilian and Venezuelan nationals in attendance. In Vinicio Adames I got the distinct impression of the FSM as a plaything for gringo nonprofit "Peace & Justice" NGOs and the student movements of South America. In addition, the isolation of the campsite created a very strange dynamic in which the bright-eyed activists had decided to call for a "General Assembly" of the campers, which would decide how "we" were going to run the site and what "we could make of it".

This idea was ludicrous to begin with, because whatever the "General Assembly" decided, it was still going to have to work with the Venezuelan state, which at no point was ambiguous in showing that it was running the show. Up in "Vinicios", where any type of infrastructure had to be imported from Caracas, the campsite assemblies took on a decidedly reactionary and privileged nature. I attended the first meeting, but got seriously bored very quickly and left with a number of others. The main force behind the organization was clearly coming from "professional" activists with lots of experience in holding such gatherings. I do not wish to give the impression that it was only Northerners who were involved in the efforts of the Assembly, but with few exceptions it certainly seemed that way.

Up in the mountains as we were, the Assembly was only able to come up with two real proposals for the "running" of "our own" campsite: one related to food, and the other to trash. Both initiatives ended up as total failures, but not before the activists had also wasted an entire day's worth of their own labor in carefully arranging fallen leaves on the ground so as to approximate some sort of "path" through the campsite. It then took only about half an hour for this tedious creation to be trampled underfoot and lost in the mud.

The handling of the trash issue was definitely born of a first-world sensibility -- you might even say ecologismo del Norte -- and revolved around setting up various recycling and compost points throughout the campsite to replace the single trash barrels put in place by the organizers. This was from the very beginning a shortsighted venture based only in the activists' own need to make themselves feel more at home, as Venezuela has no recycling program to speak of and therefore would have no use for neatly arranged piles of paper, glass, metal, etc. no matter how many hours the activists spent digging through the trash in order to sort them out. In the end, it seemed that the only useful separations to make in the trash were for organic matter and tin, since by total luck somebody had met a local man who collected the latter for some type of redemption at who-knows-where.

The "food" working group had only slightly more luck in actually getting something accomplished. The meal situation at Vinicios was that the state had contracted some 15-20 cooperatives to set up shop under a number of pavilions around the park and sell food -- usually in the form of traditional Venezuelan meals -- to the campers. This aspect was not exceptionally out of line with what I had experienced in Porto Alegre. The prices were not particularly outrageous, but the food itself was generally of a pre-prepared character, with little variety and not much in the way of the fresh fruits and vegetables that a good number of the campers, being vegetarian, were looking for. Even the prepared meals in little aluminum containers that the government was providing to its translators (and those fortunate enough to have gotten in with them) always contained meat. Because of its isolation, the state and its associates had been able to create a monopoly over services in the park, and were running the campsite almost like a carnival.

The solution to this state of affairs was a system by which a small group would travel to Caracas each day and buy a good amount of nutritious food from the street vendors there, who of course were selling it for much less than the cooperatives in the park. The food would then be collectively prepared and cooked at the campsite, (usually to the effect of a Food Not Bombs-ish mix of vegetables, greens, and rice) and sold to the campers at less than $1 a plate, which allowed those who had done the shopping to get back their money and do it again the next day.

Honestly I thought that on the whole this was handled pretty well and I certainly did enjoy a couple different cheap and delicious meals courtesy of the food collective, but it was never meant to last. For starters, this system was never able to feed more than perhaps 35-50 people a night, which ended up meaning that it became a good way for the General Assembly to feed itself and those who knew about the meals, but not an actual alternative to the state-controlled food supply. More importantly as the day of the Forum's opening drew closer, more and more cooperatives began setting up shop in the park, eventually taking over the last public grill and pavilion where the kitchen and mess had been organized. To my knowledge this resulted in some degree of friction between the activists and the campsite organizers, but I didn't stick around to find out because the official opening of the Forum would mean that other housing opportunities were opening up within Caracas itself, and so at that point I left Vinicio Adames as quickly as the bus would carry me. Although I never went back to verify, I heard from various sources that it was not long before everyone else left, too.

As much from the point of view of the activist General Assembly as from that of the Venezuelan state, the encampment at Vinicio Adames was a total failure and I can only ask, what the hell were they thinking?

14. PARQUE CAOBOS

Once the FSM was about to officially begin, it became possible to set up camp inside the relatively large Caobos Park in the center of Caracas. The park is notoriously dangerous at night, and it had been considered folly to sleep there before enough Forum-goers had arrived for a new encampment to begin. In Caobos I began to see a Forum that more closely resembled the one I had experienced in Porto Alegre -- a massive convergence of international "leftists" and radicals concentrated in a central park that, at least in some areas, becomes a prototype for different forms of communal living and dialogue.

The events of the FSM are spread throughout different venues in the city, primarily the Universities and a couple public buildings. Hundreds of workshops by an alphabet soup of international groups with different agendas, music and cultural events, and a few talks by more high-profile personalities make up the "official" activity of the Forum, but since 2003 it has always been my assertion that the real forum, the only useful thing that happens at the FSM, is the massive gathering of and discussion between everyday personalities in the encampment. It is far too complex of a process to describe accurately, save for the fact that it inevitably has a profound effect on all those who take part, as anyone who has participated in such a large experiment in intentional (if temporary) community can attest. By far the most positively affected were the individual Venezuelans I spoke to, who were beyond excited to suddenly have direct contact with representatives of so many different movements and ideologies from around the world, and were anxious to learn what they could from the more "experienced" radicals and see which of those lessons could be applied to the revolutionary situation in which they are living. My hat goes off to the Zapatista delegation, which held two nights of open talks regarding their 6th Declaration and so-called "Other Campaign" directly in the encampment itself rather than as events scheduled outside of it. This made the talks not only more accessible to a large number of people, but really brought home the underutilized potential of the FSM campsite as an autonomous forum unto itself.

As for the rest of the official Forum, I did not attend many events because my primary concern was to learn what I could directly from the personal discussions I was having with Venezuelans on a day-to-day basis. I will say that the music concerts organized by the state were usually pretty interesting, with a refreshing mix of genres that was responded to very positively by the crowds. Certain groups, such as the Cuban delegation or that of the (Maoist) "Communist" Party of Brazil had a jump on propaganda or connections to the C