The small shock of going from Venezuela to Mexico

photo- SME meeting

Super combative and democratic electric union and a 6 year old kid in a school uniform selling porn are the two things that have stuck in my mind (or heart) so far about Mexico (in my 1st week of a 3 week vacation), and although it’s a bit ridiculous to try and compare a city of 20 million with a very different history to little Merida in Venezuela, you can, and you do.

Unemployment- because of the crisis, because of NAFTA, because of Calderon- is getting much worse here in Mexico, and since there is little to no social security, people start selling stuff when they are unemployed. People (I’ve talked to all sorts of people, from electric unionists to a radical student band, to the CMR) say that the informal market has grown a lot but the amount of money people in it are earning has gone down significantly. Which makes sense, since the number of employed is the similar to the number of people with money to buy such stuff.
So that, unfortunately, is a similarity with Venezuela, although it does seem worse here, and certainly unemployment in Venezuela has not increased. In Venezuela, in Merida or Caracas, there are usually a few people who get on the long distance buses, sometimes even the local buses, trying to sell some useless thing like bracelets or stickers. Same in Mexico city, but its every carriage of every train- not exaggerating. Especially on trains it seems to be people selling pirated dvds. Then on the station stairs there are more people, spending all day repeating over and over ’3 pens for 10 pesos.’ God what a rotten life.

I’ve also now met with a range of movements, collectives and parties- though far from a majority of them, just a sample. While the electristas are fired up, and that’s mega exciting, the culture collectives Ive met (2 of them) seemed a bit dead or faded. One, fighting the battle of trying to inject culture in a barrio where, as usual, street markets of stuff and more stuff dominates, seemed to have about 5 or so main volunteers, who were all in their 50s or 60s, and who have been doing it for a while. They said they’ve gotten some resources from the city government (which is semi left, but which itself has few resources as the national government doesn’t want to give money to them), and despite it all- they are out there every Tuesday putting music on for people to dance to (seemed mostly very old people- which is fine, but clearly all the young people are sticking to their stalls) and conducting some classes. Frankly, as un politically scientific as it may be, what struck me most was the guy who talked to me. He was tired. He was repeating a schpeal he’s clearly said many times, and not with the animo of the average Venezuelan activist that you’ll come across- who you sometimes can’t shut up just because they are so excited and have so much to say.

Of course the whole electricity thing is on a different plain- and the groups who aren’t participating in this newly formed Resistance Assembly of movements who want to not just get the SME workers re-instated but finish with Calderon altogether- are making a big mistake. I’m talking about some of these collectives, and the Zapatistas.

So, it’d be lovely to see some unions as fired up as the Electristas here, in Venezuela, but of course its just completely different. The national government in Ven doesn’t go around firing 44,000 workers in order to privatise services. And then, I live in Merida, not in the industrial sector, where they probably do have such mass meetings like the one I went to a few days ago here.

Fascinates me that here some people believe what they hear about Venezuela too, one woman, a Mexican, in my dorm at the hostel saying she actually went to a highschool that was called Venezuela, but all she knows about it is that the president is a dictator and there isn’t a lot of freedom. I start telling her that education is free and medicine is free and there’s complete freedom of speech and she starts to ask more, because she’s trying to get a visa to the US to go live with her husband (who married her in Mexico), and has a whole folder full of documents for it and at least she has heard how expensive medicine is in the US.

So there’s a lot more I could say. Being here as a tourist just for a few weeks I’m bound to miss most stuff, though I am trying to talk to lots of people, I’m going out to the barrios, not just to tourist sites. I guess there is MORE to buy here- Ven, being a petroleum country, imports cost a lot and there really isn’t much variety of food, clothes, and products (relatively speaking of course. In terms of living, its more than enough). Here, you are bombarded with stuff to buy and at first it can seem nice- I found shoe laces so easily, or whatever. But eventually it gets tiring and a tad depressing.

Busy Times

Wow, things have been so busy, that I’ve been fairly stressed, to be honest…and I only work part time!

On Monday we had an extra-ordinary meeting of our communal council. People there are getting a bit stressed too, and a bit demotivated. The council has existed for around a year now, and “we haven’t achieved any of our major projects”, complained one of the leading members (who is also feeling warn down because he’s one of the communal bank reps, finally after this long, we got a signature we needed, to open a bank account, but the lines each morning are horrendous, and he keeps going, seeing the long line, and saying he’ll go next time).
That, the lack of a bank account, has been one of the main things stopping us get much down (the three main projects we have are the communal house, a wall to protect some of the houses that are on the edge of a slope, and a security camera project). The other thing though that has been stopping us is the opposition mayor and the ‘sindico’, so that we can get legal title to some land.

This week is also FILVEN in Merida- International Fair of Books-Venezuela, and one of the main focuses this year is the Revolutionary Reading Plan. There are workshops every morning for reading promoters and a whole day on Saturday, plus book and artesania tents, poetry recitals, performances etc. I haven’t been able to go to a workshop yet because of work but tomorrow, the organiser told me the topic is promoting reading to children, and Friday- writing local histories, so those will be really great. On top of that, on Saturday we have our own reading squadran meeting to organise, and the ‘women and spirituality’ conference which links women’s issues with food production and the environment. Saturday I’ll literally be going back and forth between the two events.
I went to a poetry recital last night, it was half recitals and half speeches about the history and formation of an alternative publishing group, which was interesting. But the whole thing was very badly organised- as with FILVEN in general. My opinion (and I’m going to go more into depth about this an upcoming article about bureaucracy in Venezuela) is that the institutions aren’t linked, or communicating well enough with the movements, the councils, and the communities (from the fact that there was no publicity out about FILVEN before it started, to not involving us well in the decision making- myself and M attended meetings to organise FILVEN but the program and financing was all decided by the institutions before the meetings) and so it was the same old people at the poetry recital. To me, the point is to reach out, not just sell books. Of course, having a book fair in of itself is a great thing, and the talleres, but it could be so much better I think.

M and I, as part of our reading promotion, have been trying to do a small weekly activity with some kids from his street, who also eat in the food house, but it has been hard to get it started. Three of the kids are more keen than the other three (younger, I guess), but every time we arrange a time to do the activity, half of them aren’t there when they said they would be and so on. I guess I’ve learnt that we have to be more flexible- design activities for just half the group and go with it, or do it 2 hours later than planned and on other days (well, I’m ok there, though sometimes its hard, as me and M both have a range of commitments). We will get there, I think it’ll just take a while. As I said to M (though perhaps talking more to myself), it’s hard to promote reading to people who don’t read! Much easier to organise groups of people who already like reading, but that’s not really the point. And it’s not just that they don’t read, they (or more their parents) have grown up in a world that couldn’t care less about them, and its easy for them to then adopt a similar attitude about the world. Still, they are nice kids.

Then the other thing is that I’m going to take a few weeks “holidays” and go to Mexico, something I’ve dreamed of doing for a long time (in love with the political muralism there, among other things), so I’ve been preparing for that, and writing my novel, and argh! A full life, I shouldn’t complain.

Steep slopes, Uni classes, and community forums.

*photo: cinema-forum in Belen

Merida city or Merida central is kind of on top of a mountain, well a small flat one, its hard to describe, but this mountain drops down into a valley that goes back up into taller mountains on the other side of the valley. People from our community and the one next to it live on the slope, along a twisting path that goes all the way down the valley.
We went to the Cuesta de Belen (slope of Belen) and going down was easy, and about ten minutes down, after asking at various houses, we found the house where two of the main communal council people for the slope live. They had a simple house with an upturned car on the side and about 4 kids playing on a sort of patio. The mother looked really young to have so many kids, one a young teenager. We talked to her about the women’s forum and she said she’d stick up posters along the path- only a few are necessary as everyone has to walk up by the same path. Which is the hard part, the walk up is exhausting, and we didn’t even go right down to the bottom, I don’t know how the old lady we saw does it.
Another day I went to Campo de Oro to do the same thing. For some reason Campo de Oro is one of the most organised areas of the city, I guess the nucleo might help (The nucleo is an area, in this case, with cultural centre and hall, community radio, internet café, barrio adentro health centre). They were having a combined meeting of various communal councils, there were about 40 people there in total, and the IMMFA woman motivated the women’s committees in general and I motivated the conference, and they were quite keen with lots of questions.
That was a full on night that, I meet the IMMFA woman at a meeting of paroquias, we then went to that meeting, then I went to what was left of my own communal council meeting.

On Saturday we had another taller organised by the ministry of culture for the reading promoters. There was more people this time, later the organiser told us he’d texted everyone that they could lose their libraries if they didn’t come (since so many people or groups who registered reading squadrons just got their libraries then haven’t done much, and even a few people have been selling the books from the libraries, which is just screwed).
The workshop was interesting, lots of discussion about the role of the teacher, and about what it means to read. We looked at the history and lyrics of the Venezuelan national anthem and discovered that most people sing it without really thinking about what the words mean, or necessarily meaning what they sing. Reading can’t be like that. Especially not when it comes to politics and preparing yourself to be a person who’s going to participate in changing the world :)

Then in the afternoon we set up for the cinema-forum. We had the projector from a friend of mine, and radio ecos lent us big speakers and a screen. In terms of using the forum to create a women’s committee, it probably wasn’t a success and on reflection probably not the best way to do it- its hard to form a committee in such an open atmosphere, with others there who don’t want to be on it, just watch the film, etc. But we did get some names down, and we can call them later.
As a community film night it was great- we had some great little cartoons about environmental problems, then a short doco about some enviro initiatives here in Merida, up the mountains. People sat on the fence behind, and on the chairs we’d set up, and I’d guess all in all about 60 people or so watched. There was some good discussion between films on what we can do here to improve recycling.
Then, just as we were getting to the last short doco on women, rain came out of nowhere and fell down heavily on us, and for a while we stood there in the middle of the plaza around the equipment with a floppy broken umbrella, then we moved to the church nearby where there was shelter, waiting for the rain to calm down so we could put things in the car. None of us had umbrellas which is silly for a country with rain so often :)

Finally, a few weeks ago I started taking a class at the ULA (University of Los Andes), in colonial literature- quite a useful and critical course examining the language of the invaders of South America, how they saw it and why, what role literature had in justifying and maintaining the colonisation, both in their eyes and foreign eyes. I enjoy it, because it’s been a while since I had the luxury of being a student, and the teacher is quite good, as a teacher. He has a good class dynamic- unusual for ULA where most classes are just the teacher talking. But, he’s incredibly right wing, to the point where he says racist things like the Chinese are going to end with the world (ya he said exactly that) and he constantly makes irrelevant jokes about Chavez and the revolution. First of all, I find it ironic, because his stance on colonialism is fine- no racism there, but when it comes to the current political situation he has all sorts of paranoid and stupid theories without any academic logic behind them, that the reason why there are black outs all the time in Merida is that the government is too centralised (sorry mate, the electricity system just doesn’t work like that!) or that the cheap books the government sells aren’t of good quality and the government bookshop closes too early- so its all screwed and a lost cause apparently ha. Its ok, it really just shows that the opposition are full of crap when they talk about being repressed, this teacher gets away with a lot more politics than most teachers in Australia could even touch on. I don’t mind either, I don’t have any opposition friends or listen to the opposition channels, so it’s a handy reminder of the fact that not everyone here is as revolutionary as the people I know.

Promoting Reading and Self Organisation of Women in the Barrios

It was Friday night, young guys and students were drinking beer outside the barrio entrance, next to the main road. We met one member of the Milagrosa barrio, and walked past the drinkers, up a steep path until we reached a blue house.
A woman, almost 40, greeted us, and called up into the houses, until 4 more women came down to join the meeting. Two were housewives, two were social workers, another was a worker and another a pensioner. One woman was so shy she refused to sit in the circle, while another two women had a lot to say, were angry, and frustrated.
‘We’ were myself, helping to organise an upcoming conference for women in October, a woman from the Merida Women’s Institute (IMMFA) and a woman from the Women’s House.

The IMMFA woman told the group of women that the point of the meeting was to talk about setting up a women’s defence committee, which would make the law against violence (which recognises about 19 types of violence against women) known, raise awareness of women’s rights, and could organise a range of other activities. “We don’t just exist to have kids,” she said.

“We’ve been receiving a lot of denunciations, a tonne, and most of them are by young women,” she said.

One of the barrio women said, “I’ve been living here for 37 years and the truth is the people are very apathetic and we’ve tried to unite the community and we haven’t been able to.”

The others were equally negative, saying, but we’ve done this and tried that and had this problem, and this person behaved like this, and the bureaucracy….etc. Their pessimism was understandable, and it’s a common feeling in many communities, or for anyone, which would be all of us, who tries to get through the bureaucracy and achieve something.

The IMMFA woman replied, “I understand, yes, but capitalism has many vices, we’re changing them slowly, I wish we could change everything by tomorrow, but there’s so much.”

She also gave the group a lot of information- about when the people with disabilities meet, how to get help, equipment etc for people with disabilities, the documents needed to get an elderly person’s pension, and so on.
Then suddenly one woman laughed, “And this is why we need to organise, to collect this information and hep each other and the others.” Then she started complaining about problems with bureaucracy again.

The IMMFA woman agreed, “But why does this happen? Because there are a few people in charge of everything, that’s why we have to organise ourselves.” Then she gave out a range of pamphlets about the law, women’s rights etc, for the information to be “socialised” and suggested, “Why don’t we organise a cinema forum?”

When I got home that night, at about 9.30, it was pouring rain. There was no running water, and there was a blackout that lasted until early the next morning, part of the daily blackouts we’ve been having in Merida for the last few weeks.

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Myself and a friend also attended a neighbouring communal council meeting yesterday to promote the women’s committees and the upcoming conference. This community council is mostly just three men who regularly meet, and after 2 years, have finally been granted some funding to implement a lighting and security project. These men were also frustrated and demotivated, and one man kept saying how he wished they had “young people like you (us)” in the council, as they are tired. He said ages ago Chavez had promised funding for communal councils, and they had put together a bunch of projects, but never received any funding so feel disillusioned.

It’s interesting though, because these guys are opposition. They are “anti-Chavez” but see the usefulness of the community organising itself to solve its own problems.

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And last Saturday we had a meeting of reading promoters, or members of “reading squadrons” where we talked about what the point of such reading circles is, about participatory education and the role of the teacher. We read a story together which really moved me, about a boy whose family was quite poor, his mother was quite negative and assured the teacher he would fail when she enrolled him into school, and from then on the boy was always treated as a failure, and had little motivation to study. It was loosely based on a true story, the boy ended up in prison and was shot at a young age just after getting out of prison.

Talking to one friend who lives in one of the barrios and who’s being trying to promote culture there, he said few of the kids there read. You can understand why- poverty is a shitty life experience, it makes people negative, the teachers and schools are under-resourced and a lot of people and institutions judge you as a failure from the start.

And that’s why the communal councils and this “Bolivarian Revolution” aren’t just about material things- new roofing on houses, health, better rubbish systems etc, which, while being very important, is somewhat meaningless without food for the spirit as well- culture, music, personal growth, etc. Reading stimulates the mind, the ability to criticise and think autonomously, it makes our world bigger, puts us in the shoes of others, improves our creativity, awakens interest and curiosity.

And so promoting reading, both to children, their parents, and adults in general, is important, and it’s important we do it in a positive, fun, participatory and dynamic way.
We had our first reading circle last Saturday, where we discussed the new education law, each person reading a part to themselves then summarising it to the group. The law is so interesting that we all had a lot to say, and ended up talking together, constantly interrupting each other for 2 hours, instead of the forty minutes I had planned for, leaving us no time to plan our promotion of reading activities in the community. We’ll do that this Saturday.

Blackouts and books

Wow there have been a lot of black outs lately. Around this time last year I remember, it happened as well, and a lot of meetings were disturbed and didn’t happen because of it. Then, it “got fixed” and we’ve mostly been fine, until this last week, when they have been every day- usually just for half an hour or an hour, but on a few days they were all afternoon or night. Of course, the speculation as to why is rife, with rumours of coups, blaming the opposition, blaming the government, etc. I am not sure what the real cause is, to be honest, though I also hear there is a union battle going on in the electricity sector.
It has been ok though. We had our communal council meeting on the school basketball court by the light of the moon one night when there was no electricity all night. We used our mobile phones to sign the attendance and read anything we needed to, and one member held his phone over my shoulder as I read last weeks minutes. And the FILVEN meeting, discussed below, we had next to an open window. That was during the day, so it was not so bad- but most of the culture ministry area doesn’t have windows for natural light, so we all had to squeeze in this corner next to the one window in that part of the building.

The new education law is still very much on people’s mind, and I love it how well informed (some) people are…before our communal council meeting the week before, one woman was explaining the law (article numbers and all) to one of the newer, less regular attendees of the meeting. Another man was saying how he had talked to his nephews. The opposition has got out a bunch of false versions of the law, and this man go his nephews to read the real version (“look, that article doesn’t even exist!”) and they were like, “oh that’s not so bad!”.

On Thursday I went with communal council members to Suncorp so we could ask yet again about that piece of paper that we handed in in order to register our communal bank (I’m simplifying, all the paper work is a bit more complicated than that). The woman from Suncorp wasn’t there so we took the advantage that we were all together to go up the road a bit to the architecture faculty of the university.
We talked to a teacher who is in charge of organising student/community projects, about helping us with the design for a community centre. We discussed with her the size of the land, and our ideas- to build something that not just functions as a community meeting and cultural space, library, but also for child care and old people care- where old people can go while the person who usually takes care of them is freed to go to work or take care of other responsibilities.

In around October is the Venezuelan International Book Festival (FILVEN). M and I went to the first organising meeting for the festival here in Merida, where we (Ministry of culture, Revolutionary Reading Plan, reading Squadrons, the Writers Network etc) discussed the starting stuff, like when and where. There was quite a discussion about where- whether to focus on Merida city, whether to try to get out to everyone and do it simultaneously (are there the people to be able to do that), to launch in Merida city then go travelling around the rest of the state, and so on. And whether to focus on areas where there are already reading squadrans set up (hold further training type workshops with them) or to areas where they aren’t set up, to try to spur that on.
Usually these book festivals are half stalls of books for sale and half workshops. I’m glad that people at the meeting emphasised that the point of the festival isn’t getting books sold, but rather promoting reading and facilitating it with all sorts of events such as poetry reading, plays, film, and so on. And that secondly, now that there are reading squadrons, they should play a big role in promoting the festival, and in the events themselves.

Responsibility for the Streets

It seems the mayor and his staff often override what should be community council territory. The mayor is opposition, but I’m not sure if the problem is more that or, general bureaucracy and old habits.
For example, one issue that has been ongoing for our communal council has been the immigration office building- which is situated in our ‘territory’. It is more a house than a building, and since the government started speeding up the processing of passports (a good thing), they are now receiving 300 people a day and the queue is in the street, onto the road, blocking people’s houses and the parking blocks people’s parking. My house is included, and I have to say I don’t mind much – it just means having to walk on the road sometimes cos the street is blocked (not so bad in slow traffic Merida), and sometimes asking someone to move so I can open the house door. I worry more about the people in line all day, in the sun or rain. Anyway local residents are pretty concerned about it, and we had a meeting of 22 people with the director of Immigration in Merida and with a representative from the mayor. The director said they are waiting on a new building, with more floor space so people can queue inside. In the mean time, the best we can do get a pedestrian cop to keep things in order. There are also buhoneros (informal stall holders) who sell orange juice, arepas, etc. They got permission from the mayor to be there, but communal council people were angry, because both the buhoneros and the mayor should come to us before granting people permission to do stuff in our community- in this case it’s a business that results in a lot of rubbish in the street.
The mayor/municipal government has also made it really hard for us to get use of a piece of public land. It’s a small bit of land that was going to be used, originally, for a child care centre. For whatever reason, they changed their mind about that, and now its not being used at all, and we’d like to use it to put our community building on (which would have library in it, meeting space, security, etc). The more opposition leaning member of our CC got verbal permission for us to use the land but it’s been a six month bureaucratic and annoying wait to get any kind of written permission. It’s a shame, because that building would help us organise a lot of stuff and do a lot of stuff more effectively. At the moment we meet in the school on Wednesdays and any weekend meetings have to be in someone’s house.
On the other hand, the “reading squadron” is coming along…we had a first meeting in my place last Saturday, and I’m excited that we got enough people, so we filled in the form and chose our name (el grillo- the cricket), which I handed into the culture ministry, and I’ve organised a rep from there to come and help us organise our first activities.Yipee! It’s so awesome to be doing stuff and for meetings to be happening and things to be happening :).

I went to a Socialist Front meeting the other day- after a long time without going because of work and other reasons. It was great, a good re-orientation. Much smaller, but everything is right now because its “summer” vacation time. (I’m loving vacation, I’ve been spending a lot of time with M, cooking, sleeping, watching movies, a poetry recital in the plaza, catch up on reading…but I’m looking forward to it all starting up again).

Sometimes, we can get lost or lose perspective a bit, without a group like the Socialist Front, I think. In the patrullas (the new organising form of the PSUV), or in the communal council, there isn’t a lot of space for Marxist analysis (although that should happen in the PSUV, but if it does, its at a more basic level) or for constructive criticism of the revolution (or complementing the revolution as well). That is, basically, there’s no where for cadre revolutionaries to talk together. Well, in the absence of a good revolutionary party, the Front provides that space.
At this Front meeting, I liked one comment someone made, which was that you can say there is ‘consciousness’ when people start collectively taking responsibility for their community- be it their street, suburb, country, or the world. This is one of the reasons why I think the community councils are so important, it’s such an obvious but revolutionary idea- that we are responsible for what happens to our surroundings, not just for ourselves and our families.
Then we talked about how one strengthens consciousness- and it’s clearly a combination of ideology or theory (which the patrullas are meant to be tackling once a month now- a very good thing, beyond my basic gripe that it was a decision made by a leadership that is totally removed from our local circumstances) and experience. One CMR member said – well the reading squadrans are good, Alo presidente is good, but people have to start taking over their workplaces, taking real democratic control of them, and that’s the experience side. I think there are other types of experience, but he has a point- the PSUV is simply not promoting such things or even assisting struggles where that is happening. Or promoting/supporting any social movements really.

Mercals and Murals

The Saturday before last we did community council stuff all day. We started at just after nine and painted the first layer of white paint on the wall, to do the mural, finally. Then while that was drying we cut up and wrote on leaflets, which we then handed out as we visited each house.
The idea of the leaflets was to raise awareness about the rubbish problem- here the system is that each Monday, Wednesday and Friday we put out rubbish in a bag in the evening, and it gets collected. But a lot of people put it out at other times, and some street corners get filled with garbage that won’t be collected for a while. Others don’t tie the bags well and dogs get into it and spread the rubbish around. Naturally, everyone complains about it but it’s always someone else’s fault (this was a comment we got a lot when we went to talk to people about it). So we got a leaflet from the mayor that specifies possible fines people can receive, and we went around visiting the houses making sure everyone was really clear about what hours exactly they can take the rubbish out.
We divided the streets amongst us, Me and M took the slope (literally houses built onto a steep slope of hill) and streets 13 and 14. A lot of people weren’t home or didn’t want to answer (they’d talk to us through their closed door, it was weird), others were very happy that something was been done about the problem, a few wanted to have a whinge about it, but frankly, no one was really interested in getting involved in the communal council. (Although, we’ve had a few new people since the mural, coming along saying they want to be regularly involved).

In the end we ended up having to pay for the mural paint out of our own pockets, but got it super cheap from the electronics/paint store in the plaza, as the guy there is communal council-sympathetic :).
It was great to have lots of people chipping in with the painting and the drawing and ideas and we did it during the day which mean the sun damn well killed us, but also that lots of people stopped and asked us what we were doing and showed interest. We added the meeting time and place at the bottom of the mural, so everyone will definitely know about it now.
J, a teacher, decided he couldn’t paint, so he watched for a while, while another J told him off (in a friendly way) for not helping out. Finally he cleaned up the edges of the letters with white and got one of those letter things to draw the lettering at the bottom. All fun, I like the chatter.
And then, we were painting in front of one member’s house (well 2 actually, who are related) and the mother cooked soup for everyone for lunch and kindly brought out yum pineapple juice and water.
And now I think the CC feels like its finally got something concrete done (2 things really). So many of our projects take forever due to paper work issues, financing issues, bureaucracy, etc, Not that it’s the first thing the CC has done- collected money and utencils for the school, other things I’ve written about before, and other things before I got involved…but the mural will help us get the message out about what we’re doing, plus the community can stick their stuff up too.

Then last Saturday, some social/community worker students had organised a mercal day. We handed out slips of paper notifying everyone in our area that there would be one… and there was meant to be the Mercal, and ID stall, and a doctor giving out vaccinations…but the last two didn’t come for some reason (one of the students had to go to hospital, that was probably part of it).
The Mercal was great fun though- they were selling powdered milk a bit cheaper than the Mercal store, plus fish and chicken, canned sardines and so on, and a big range of vegies and fruit…all for 4bs ($2) per kilo. You get a big bag and just fill it up with herbs and potatoes, tomatoes, cauliflower, guayaba, etc. That price is really cheap, especially compared to most vegie shops in the centre. Down at the big farmers’ market in Soto Rosa, on Saturdays and Sundays, you can get some vegies like potatoes, carrots and tomatoes for 2bs/kilo…but Soto Rosa is a bus trip away and hard for some people in our community, like the elderly, parents of multiple young kids etc. This way, the mercal was in the local plaza and a maximum of 4 blocks walk for anyone. (Interestingly though, although it was obviously organised through the government structure, it was a small cooperative who did the actual selling and who received any profits).

Creative Communities

*photos: the dance class in la pastora, Caracas, and the Rincon de los Muchachos in Merida

They had whole big bins full of tizanna, a Venezuelan drink with lots of small pieces of fruit- a bit like punch I guess. The local community council had organised it for the Day of Children, which was celebrated all over the country and the city, and in this case in the Rincon de los Muchachos, one of the most beautiful playgrounds I’ve ever seen. It’s situated just on the edge of the working class suburb of Santa Juana, with the big green mountains in the background.
The man, Cesar Albanoz, who designed and helped make the park is a quiet, very old man who always wears a beret. He’s a poet and a writer, and he used all sorts of recycled materials to make the park. As you enter, there’s a martian type thing of all colours, holding a sign that says ‘by all for all’. There’s a giant boat with a bird at the top, a turtle, a train with a rainbow of birds painted all over it, swings and slides and see saws. That day there were also chairs set up in the shade for the parents and adults to sit back in while their kids plays, and about 8 tables with chess games, where adults and kids were playing….including one kid who must have been about 4, and had no concept yet of taking turns, and just moved his pieces about the board at random, while his adult opponent patiently played along. Then, on the left there is a large round building with a pointed roof, where they were handing out the tizanna and where kids sat in a circle, painting using water balloons. I wanted to join in :).
So it was cool, because people/kids from the community and from outside it were all mixing and playing together, being creative and just having a ball. Usually I don’t like sitting and doing nothing, but this day I just felt like sitting in the shade for hours and just watching, it was really peaceful.
The contradiction came when they handed out party bags, with pink barbies on the bag for the girls and something blue on the bag for the boys, and full of commercial sweets. So there was still very dominant values of consumerism mixed in with community and creativity.

A few days later I went down to Caracas to be with M and his mother, who was receiving cataract surgery. One site struck me, as I was sitting on the bus as it arrived in the city amongst hours of slow moving traffic- people standing on the pedestrian strip in the middle of the road, as they do- usually selling anything from kites to hand towels. In this case I saw people with signs around their neck saying ‘Artists movies’ but in their hands what was very obviously porn, full of pink bare bodies.

I took the opportunity of being in Caracas to go see my friend, who teaches modern ballet (I think it was) in her community and a few others, organised through the community councils. There’s a few key ideas behind these classes- to get the kids off the streets (in the drug using, smoking, not doing much etc sense), to get the women and girls doing something other than demeaning regaeton dancing, to build the sense of community, and to arm people with another method of self expression, and with self confidence.
It was beautiful really, the whole environment in the class (which was conducted in a hall next to the Mercal). I was there out of curiosity, but also to take some photos for the ministry, I think, and for my friend’s mum :). My friend is a good teacher too, in just a few months- perhaps four, she has taught her students (they were aged about 7 to 40 plus) to do beautiful things with their bodies. Good exercise too. And at the end of the class everyone walked out chatting amongst each other and with the teacher and kissing each other goodbye, walking down the street of the barrio together, back to their homes.

(And of course, all the dance classes and the activities in the park in Merida etc are free..)

Capitalism is death

*photo: view of M’s bathroom window

“Capitalism is hunger” and “Capitalism is death” accompanied with images of various coups, military regimes, wars and so on, is one of the current ad campaigns on the Venezuelan government channel. Better if you could see it yourself, to believe me how effective it is.
A few foreigners have commented to me lately that the government media here is very propagandistic, and its true that, in order to counter the shit put out by the private media, a lot of the government websites, radio and TV do emphasise the various government projects and achievements. But its not true that there’s no debate (in fact most of the talk shows on VTV are some kind of debate) and frankly I think the Capitalism is Death campaign is great- its full of dates and events and facts about the current world situation that other TV channels, anywhere in the world, would love us to forget and to be otherwise distracted by not funny crap like Everybody Loves Raymond or whatever.
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The technology students came again to our communal council meeting and presented their plan to deal with crime in the area. Their idea is to put cameras on every corner, which would feed back to a computer which would be monitored by the community police, or people chosen by the community or the council. I have to say I was hella sceptic, it reminds me of big brother or 1984, with the obvious big difference being that the cameras are under democratic community control, rather than some dictator dude. Still, I said we’d have to hold a community assembly as there are privacy issues, and the rest of the meeting agreed, but everyone seemed pretty convinced that people would feel combating crime is more important.
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There have been a lot of meetings…I went to an anarchist meeting on campus, and have to say I couldn’t disagree more with the main speaker. But to the credit of anarchists, he was extremely negative about everything, criticised everything, and proposed nothing. I don’t think they are all like that.
Then there was a meeting with an Argentinian feminist- about 30 people turned up (7 guys), which is not bad for little Merida and for a country with a non existing women’s movement. The woman was said quite a few interesting things, and compared the history of women’s struggle in Europe to the one here in Latin America (though I disagree with her that you can so easily generalise about LA- Bolivia and Chile and Colombia and Guatamala are world’s apart). She said that here, women still occupy the private domain, and men the public, that there is no “new man” if there aren’t new male/female relations, that when you talk about revolution you have to start with democracy in the house or family, and that gender is the cultural expression of sexual differences.
There was also a rather cool puppet show and singing night put on by Argentinians as well, the other night in the cultural centre. Awesome music and a touching show- the way the woman moved the puppet around, giving him emotions through his posture, and how this puppet-man was meant to symbolise Argentinian history… that was definitely special.
There was the book launch of a book about INVEVAL, in which a CMR worker from there talked about the Revolutionary Front of Occupied and Co-managed Companies. He had lots of great ideas, but unfortunately at the moment they are only being put into practice in a few companies around the country. In the discussion one woman said that we should be fighting for democracy in the public sector as well as the private sector workplaces. She said she has worked for years for CNE (National Electoral Council) as a contract worker. Meanwhile a friend of mine works for the government workers rights institute, and she said that daily they get complaints about bosses not implementing laws, abusing workers and so on. Clearly the revolution is radicalising workers, has seen a few occupations and many more workers protests and so on than before, but its only touching the tip of the iceberg.

The Honduran coup was personal here

I was really moved by the Venezuelan reaction to the coup in Honduras. On two levels… One was the way everyone (well obviously not everyone, there are always those who go about their shopping and drinking and soapie watching as if the world is not a bigger place..) but a lot of people were somewhat glued to their televisions, watching the events progress, and here in Merida a crowd gathered from 12pm in the plaza to protest. Eventually a large TV was set up in the government building, facing the plaza, and I remember the serious and solemn expressions on hundreds of people’s faces as they crowded around the TV, watching the ‘new president’ swear himself in (see photo above).
Clearly it brought back memories of the April 2002 coup here. But also it just felt like this coup was almost happening to us. A kind of sense that what happens anywhere in Latin America is personal. And that the possibility of future coups, here or in other places, is real.
The other moving thing is, damn the left governments here are uniting and becoming a powerful force. They’ve become a bit like a block, uniting and voting together to push through various left wing initiatives in what were previously US-controlled multilateral orgs like OAS etc. And they are all against this coup, and then how fun it was to watch the conservative governments of Panama and Mexico etc swallowing their tongues and saying, briefly, they are ‘for democracy’ (bullshit Mexico…) too. How weird too, for the US and for the UN to come out against a coup, an anti-left wing coup. Not that Zelaya is that left wing, but he’s clearly allied with Chavez in lots of way, and uses anti poverty rhetoric.
So, despite how things are looking now, for the moment I’m stoked and I hope that what comes out of this is a radicalisation of Hondurans and here as well, and even more stronger unity between the left wing governments of Latin America as they have seen how powerful they can be, working together.

I talked to some people at the protest here and noted what they said,

"Clearly US imperialism is getting scared," said Douglas Arauju

"We're here supporting the sovereignty of the people, we're counting on people waking up, we're not alone you know, we're a South American people," said Marilyn Osorio

"What happened was a coup just like the coup that happened here in April 2002, the military acted similarly in Honduras.. us as Venezuelans and having the experience of what we suffered in April 2002, we support the democratically elected president of Honduras," said Ismael Pena

"This is another coup by the oligarchy and the CIA against democracy...like what happened in Venezuela...but the people of Honduras will win. The truth will prevail," said Gladys Araque

"What happened in Honduras was a coup against democracy and the people, the armed forces and the oligarchy represented by the mainstream media conspired together," said Mauro Lamus

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Later, myself and two friends popped down to the barrio to a meeting organised by the Culture ministry, then we’d come back after to what really felt like a vigil. Today the TV is still in the plaza, and there’s a small crowd watching.

Anyway there were only about 8 people at the cultural meeting, for a variety of reasons – I guess the community is quite small, the meeting hadn’t been publicised that well, and clearly a lot of people were distracted (in a good way) by the coup.

Never the less, I was impressed. Basically the point of the meeting was to just talk about things like human development (that is, development for humans and the planet rather than for profit), values, morals and things. Nothing at all religious. But very much the sort of stuff that should be discussed more and that rarely is, in an organised way amongst communities. This community is one of the most… full on ones too, with a lot of confrontations, relative poverty, drug and violence problems and so on.
In so many third world countries, I think they don’t get around to talking about the environment, because there are always just more apparently pressing issues to talk about, like housing, food, water, access to medicine, etc. Here, the man from the ministry talked about how much water the world has, how non salty water will run out in 45 years, and this fisherman guy with few teeth and wearing rain boots got up and talked about how the future is important and that we have to look after the world for our children.
Then R, my friend from this community, a half indigenous woman with 2 children that she’s raising alone, got up and talked about the difference between morals and ethics. She was a bit nervous. But hurray that the ministry isn’t just doing all the talking, but rather encouraging new leadership and participation in the communities and getting them to give talks too.

Behind Walls

Wow I’d never been to the school of music building before. And M’s choir was performing there for Fathers’ Day, so he texted me like half an hour before the performance, asking if I wanted to come…I got dressed, ran (well, walked fast) down, and into the building…and…woa… soooo beautiful!! I had no idea, walking past it from the outside for almost 2 years now…(and damn I didn’t bring my camera- next time)
The building is based around a big square patio, with 3 floors surrounding the patio in some ancient rustic grey design, old balconies looking out down on the patio. In patio corners there are gardens- a big jacaranda tree dropping its purple flowers on the patio, other crazy trees, some with the grey green beards. From the jacaranda tree there were strings with hundreds of origami cranes, and behind the trees, on the walls around the patio area, there was awesome grafitti art- good art. So the whole place is just full of colour, its incredibly peaceful.
A group of kids – tiny little 4 year olds and things, sang, and the 50 or so parents watched and clapped (and clapped and clicked along, as the kids instructed them too), then M’s choir (called voces oscuros- dark voices) sang too. They sold some deserts and stuff after (and hot dogs- oh god how gross- pink sausage, covered in chips- the packet kind- and then mayonnaise and tomato sauce- oh well, a good fundraiser) and the money raised was to help them go to Argentina in August for a Latin America choir festival there.

I’m still utterly impressed with my communal council. We meet yesterday even though it was raining and even though it was a national holiday (Anniversary of the Battle of Carabobo).
Our community put security as the number one local priority, so we have to talk about it and try to look at solutions. Unfortunately, I think its one really hard problem to solve with short term methods. One guy, an engineering student, came to the meeting with a proposal for security cameras. Well that would help to the extent that the robbers and so on might go somewhere else, but it would also be extremely costly. So we are going to talk other nearby councils and see what they are doing and see if we can’t do something with them (they have money, we still don’t have a council bank).
We also talked a lot about housing. It seems the government is building a block of flats nearby- with 2500 units (so more than a block I guess, more like a whole development). At the moment it seems they want half of these to be private, and the other half will be fully or partially subsidised housing for those who most need it. The communal councils will play a big role in working out who does need housing (as we generally know our community and have done door to door calls a number of times over different things), so we had a long discussion about how to get the information out and how to organise it all. Some people do have it pretty tough, even in the fairly middle class area where our council is- one woman was renting out just a room (I mean a room only) and was living there with her two children. Other places do that on a mass basis- one place has 10 bedrooms and just one bathroom. I doubt they get access to the kitchen (its rare here, when you are renting a room, that you get full access to the house). Hard. Also it seems that anyone applying for these units would basically have to be married. They (private or government builders in Venezuela) pretty much don’t even build housing or units for single people, despite how many single mothers there are. The dominant culture is (and I say dominant but its by no means everyone) that you live with your family and then you get married and live with your spouse. Its quite hard to live here without some kind of family.
So we decided a tonne of things…. we’re going to make a community notice board and a mural, so today I went down to INJUVEM (Merida Government Youth organisation) and asked about how we can get some paint. The guy there said they will actually come and help us paint the mural, all we have to do is decide on a date. Wow. Lets see how that goes..

What is Radio?

“What is history?” was the theme of the ULA history students’ first show on Ecos radio.

“…it’s important to know who’s telling it…”

“…History is alive. It’s now.”

“…People use the past to justify the present. The past is very important.”

“…History is who we are, where we’ve come from..”

…They said and debated, and people texted in other comments which spurred the debate on further.

Radio shows are really not that hard. Later, some media and communication students talked to the group and asked me what I thought of it all. At the time my brain went blank (as it does when I’m asked to suddenly give my opinion, in Spanish, to a camera…) but later I compared the whole thing to Australia- or any other country really, where media- TV, radio, newspaper etc are very much seen as something you *receive*.

You receive entertainment, “news”, documentaries like you receive presents and I don’t think it occurs to many people to participate in media (beyond calling up to talk shows or to send out love and birthday messages).

Here, such forms of media still dominate, but the alternative and community media are becoming more and more accessible and popular and respected I think (slowly). The idea is that media is for the community to use to communicate with the rest of the community. To express opinions, announce events, and something that is accessible to everyone- not just people with “radio voices” and careers and connections. So the history students just decided they wanted to have a show and they talked to the guys at Ecos, and now every Saturday for 2 hours they question Venezuela and South America’s history and how it’s talked about and perceived. And as I said, its realllly easy to do. Why should such a powerful medium be limited to so few people?

As we waited for a few others to arrive, M talked to the Ecos guy and asked to learn how to use the controls. It took about 5 minutes to explain. There are these switches that turn on the various microphones, the phone, and the computer. There’s the computer program where you line up ahead various songs or community announcements. Similar to any winamp play list. So R sat in that room, and put on a song occasionally to break up all the talking, and we all sat in the other room around a table, where there were 5 microphones. And then, like that, you just have a discussion.

J got there at 11 and sat down to join in. He sells sweets and chips from a tray in the pubs until late at night, so was still tired. Half way through the discussion I went out into the other room to listen to it via the radio, and came back to tell them they were talking to close to the microphones. Then went back to other room and fiddled with a guitar. A girl walked in and sat down watching me, as if I had the vaguest idea of what I was doing. “Teach me to sing?” she asked. (Anyone who knows me knows how I really can’t sing :).

The communal council stuff is chugging along. We have so many things we need to do. We want to use some empty land to be like the community space- make it into a library and meeting area for whatever groups, things like that. Then the school needs food and cutlery and stuff. And we want to paint a wall with a mural and put up a community notice board. And to get these reading circles started. And then there’s the new community council law which we want to study together first, then organise some kind of social day or something where we can inform everyone of what we’re working on, encourage more people to get involved- at least in a committee or something, and talk about or debate the new law (which, I have to say worries me a bit- you need 20 or 30% - I forget- attendance to make a decision. Wow so in a community of 600 you need 120-180 people to come! Wo.)

Still, I was impressed. Wednesday it rained, but everyone actually came to the meeting! But then some people from the school came, and we ended up spending the whole meeting talking about creating links between the school and the community, and didn’t get on to anything else. So then we had an extra meeting on Saturday. And then on Sunday a few of us- the cultural spokesperson, the education spokesperson and myself met to talk about how to get reading circle promoters. We’ll stick up some signs, and the education spokesperson will write a letter to the school to see if any teachers can volunteer, and we’ll try to get people along to sign up before next Wednesday’s meeting.

Meanwhile, the very centre of Merida organised their communal council elections for last Saturday. A hard task given how opposition the area is and the lack of sense of community because the area is mostly shops. They held their elections in the cultural centre- had some photos stuck up of the people running, and a electoral register for people to vote. I think in total 120 people (community size- 650) turned up to vote, so that’s…well, not that bad. A lot of the people from my PSUV branch were running. They’ve decided to put their time into the communal council as the branch hasn’t met since last year, and beyond a core of 4or 5 of us, noone ever comes to the meetings.

Community reading

About 20 people sat on chairs in a makeshift circle down by the plaza, and many more watched on from under trees and leaning against walls nearby. People walked past, stopped to listen for a while, stayed, or walked on. After a day of cultural activities organised by the ministry for culture (circus, forums, puppets, book stalls), now it was open mike time, and people talked about the media war. It started to get dark. Some kids performed a dance not very well, but got a lot of support from the crowd. Then everyone picked up their chairs and moved over a bit to where an outdoors cinema was set up. The TV collective showed a documentary they’d made based on an interview they did with Manu Chao.

The next day the ministry set up a mobile library in the same spot (basically a big van with shelves on the sides, mostly with children’s books), a tent and chairs, and throughout the day kids came along and had a bit of a read.
There’s something real sweet about reading outside. Also, it’s important to remember that public libraries are very much a first world thing. In Venezuela there isn’t much of a culture of reading, which is why I think they are emphasising reading for children, and you can see the advantage of reading in public like that.

In the same spot they also handed out this DVD with Venezuela’s real history (as opposed to the imperialist version of it), newspapers, magazines- also about Venezuela’s history, and these beautiful little boxes with ten small children’s books. They are so pretty, even though they’re for kids I want to read them.

Later, walking back home I saw an icecream seller, perhaps 14 years old, who had stopped work to read one of the little books. I took a photo, and it reminded me a bit of a photo I have of a policeman leaning against a wall, mesmerised by a novel in Cuba. Bugger work, bugger money, lets read : )

Anyway, I’m really excited about Chavez’s call for reading circles. I admit when I first read about it I was a bit sceptical, Chavez has a lot of cool ideas and sometimes he’s a bit ahead of everyone else with the things he calls for. But here they are, materialising. The ministries of culture and education are organising them, and I’m so happy to be one of the ones assigned to getting the reading circles set up in my communal council. We need to have at least 4 teacher kind of people signed up to being involved. Once we hand in the documentation for that, one of the ministries will send someone out to teach us how to go about the rest- how to set up the circles, what to do, how to get books etc.
Chatting to a culture ministry worker at the stall, he said that one of the reasons behind the reading circles was that despite all the books that have been given out- from children’s books, to novels, to books about history and political theory- most people just put them on their shelves and don’t read them. Doing it collectively like this I think will encourage some people to read the books and also maximise what we all get out of the reading.

Last night we were going to talk about getting the other 3 reading circle teachers at the communal council meeting but unfortunately the mother of one of the spokespeople died, so we went to the ‘salida’ (exit, literally) instead. I protested that I don’t know the person- the spokesperson hasn’t been to meetings in ages so I haven’t met her, but the other members said the point was to go as the communal council.
There was like 120 people or something there. It was a kind of service in the woman’s house, with an open casket inside, and a young woman led some praying.
Boy Venezuelans I think, at least outwardly, are quite different about death. They all walked past the open casket as if …I guess as if it wasn’t that big a deal. I’d be freaking out to see the dead body of a friend. They dress casually, they stand outside smoking or chatting in groups, kids run around playing, and although the mood was solemn, no one was really crying or particularly upset. It was similar at another salida I went to at the end of last year.

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And how could I forget the symphony concert? It was the Merida youth symphony orchestra and choirs, and they performed in the cultural centre on Friday night. I was on my way to a forum about the media war in the same building, but then couldn’t resist the crowds and the ambience…literally a good 3000 people were waiting and queuing outside for what was a free concert. I loved it because it’s rare to see people that excited about classical music (including me) but the founder of the national program that teaches kids in the barrios to play musical instruments- Abreu – was there, and the theatre- packed with people sitting in the aisles and squeezing in doorways etc- all roared and cheered when he came out to speak. And then they did the same for all the songs. It felt like a rock concert, people were that excited- except it wasn’t, it was very brilliant classical music.
Including, a deaf kids choir- who sang in sign language- with white gloves on their hands. And a conductor who had cerebral pausy and the crowd just loved him and he had a ball too.
With all this going on in the main concert hall of the cultural centre, there were still people in the downstairs café learning salsa, and old men playing chess in the entrance area, and kids learning contemporary dance in the side bit…

Super cheap milk, boring opposition students, dance, and frailejones

Photos from top: Super cheap Mercal milk, people queuing up to register or re-register in the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela), clouds and frailejones in La Culata, street theatre in the main plaza.

Mercal- the government subsidised grocery store- is always an adventure. It seems to me that (at least the one near me, they do vary a bit) it mostly sells stuff at the same prices as everywhere else (since 11 basic foods are regulated) but then it always has a couple of surprise things super subsidised. It usually has the government sugar, and a few weeks ago it was selling jelly powder by the kilo. Today I got chocolate pudding powder by the kilo and a kilo of milk for BsF4.7. The regulated price is 13BsF, just down from 16BsF, although the supermarket up the road would always try to sell it for 17. Usually the deal is you have to buy at least one other mercal product, and its only one (one packet of sugar or of milk etc) per person, to prevent businesses buying it up cheap and using it for profit I guess.

I don’t buy fresh milk any more…its so expensive here (Bs2.4/litre – also a regulated price) and goes off all the time, where as the powdered stuff doesn’t, and a kilo makes 9 litres.

You can see in the picture that the milk is covered in government information/propaganda- the law on a people’s right to food, and it says in big text that it’s only for consumption in Venezuela- again people buy it up or are corrupt and leak it out and sell this sort of thing for a profit in Colombia.

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Ah what a crazy place the university is …for the last few days the right wing have been burning tires and blocking one of the main city roads that goes past the university- yet again. They never do or say anything. No placards with messages. Its up to one to guess and listen to rumours to know whether they want early holidays or are complaining about something more profound, such as the supposed government attacks on the right wing TV channel, globovision (verbal attacks that is). It- the tire burning, blocking streets and making things generally inconvenient – is getting boring now.
Although, I read in the local paper today that they also kidnapped 16 people- 14 of which were taxi drivers, wanting to exchange them for two fellow students who are in prison.

I’ve been trying to see if I can study at the university- its meant to be possible, there’s a system for ‘free students’- that is, students who pay a fee and study individual courses as they like rather than a whole degree, but no one seems to know how to actually do this and I’ve been sent from one office to another, to another, back to the first one, back to another one etc... I asked when semester dates are- September till January, the woman said vaguely. When in September? Oh… It just depends if there are disturbances or not.
Wow life at ULA is laid back, students (to perhaps over generalise) don’t seem too worried about passing and studying and they don’t seem to get a lot of assignments (based on the students I know). Plus teachers decide not to come half the time and it also sounds like a lot of them are pretty shocking, and when they don’t come, the students are just like ‘oh great, no class’.

In other uni related news- the left kicked ass in the recent elections, with the most ring wing, most violent group- m13- not winning any positions. Beats me where that came from.

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I decided to chill a bit last weekend. Saturday night I went with friends to a contemporary dance performance. There were two things that I loved about it- the first was everyone’s familiarity and the audience support. Afterwards, half the audience stayed back to talk to the dancers (of various ages), congratulate them etc. The second thing was the dancing itself- there were a few boring traditional dances (girls- for they were about 12-16- in pretty, short dresses and frozen smiles) but the contemporary dancing was just amazing. Images in the background, sometimes voiced over poetry, and intense symbolism….around themes such as the struggle of the planet, how urbanism kills gentle beauty, or other things that were more abstract, like this one woman who danced alone and you could just see how liberated she felt, doing it.
The next day I went with a friend up the mountain to ‘La Culata’- a popular walking track lined with the Andean plant –frailejones- see picture. They are not THAT pretty, but they are really really soft to touch and there’s a mild amount of local pride over them. It was really peaceful.

The streets are flooding and blocked and the priests are a preaching…

photo: view of the main (wet) plaza from the women's centre

It rained so much the other day that the roads were turned into racing rivers, and I walked around with my friend’s umbrella, wading in water at times up to just below my knees, bombarded by splashes from cars and water rebounding off roofs and bursting out pipes, it was great fun. But one woman died apparently, in the east of the state, and in Caracas there were earthquakes.
In the foreground to all this were left and right student battles with police. It seems to me that these come every 3 months, people stay at home, the schools are closed, there are traffic jams because roads are blocks, and then it all goes back to normal within a day or two. This time though, it wasn’t just the right wing causing disturbances, making a fuss over nothing, with no particular demands or aims. This time the left were involved in well. A student leader of the PSUV was killed by police the day before and so the right marched against budget cuts on the same day the far left got angry and burned some tires, trucks, blocked streets, wrote grafitti, and later burned Macdonalds. Ha, honestly, the burning of Macdonalds doesn’t bother me. The company stinks, and the actually restaurant, on the corner of the plaza, physically stinks. False hamburger smell, or something, plus a daily reminder of life back home, perhaps (the bits of it I didn’t like). However the left tactics disappointed me. I can understand their anger- their comrade was killed by police- the old police that still haven’t been reformed yet. Yet the movement must be more democratically organised and with a bit more a plan than plain adrenalin based destruction. Still, the police and national guard fired back- with rubber bullets that burn and hurt but usually don’t kill. The reform of the police is urgent, utterly long over due- although I’d rather a complete elimination of them and making of a new, different kind.

Later after the first day of violence (it lasted for about 4 days), I went to my communal council meeting. But the rain was already loca (crazy) and only one person came. So until that person arrived I sat chatting to the night guard, door opening person.
He said that when he went to church the priest encouraged everyone to go on the opposition march, during the service. Omigod! Well we all know how the church is, along with the universities, one of the main institutions supporting the opposition, but gosh I thought they did it more subtly than that! The guard guy continued, “If the priest takes off his uniform and wants to go into the street and do politics as a citizen, that’s ok. But not in church.”

In the fortnightly meeting of the women formation group, we talked about the church too actually- or specifically, women and religion. One woman said, “Priests direct everything here.” And I liked one woman’s comment that, “they are against abortion, but meanwhile the poor don’t seem to have the same right to life.” And I’d add- they seem to have no problem gorging on dead animals. Their position against abortion so obviously has nothing to do with being ‘pro-life’.

Anyway, last night’s communal council meeting was good. A couple of Mission Sucre students came to talk about doing some information collecting about people’s food needs, two other women dropped in to ask about what is being done to help the homeless people and about one crossing in our area where there are always crashes. It really beats me how people manage to have crashes in the centre of Merida, given how slow all the traffic moves. There are no traffic lights and the blocks are small and the roads are narrow, so cars and buses move one block at a time. We discussed putting a speed bump in (which is called ‘policia acostado – lying down police person- in Spanish. Hilarious.), but apparently they aren’t legal, and frankly I think the problem more boils down to awareness of safety practices.
We talked about a bunch of things last night, from petty stuff like a dog that constantly barks because it isn’t fed properly (petty yes but omigod that dog sounds horrible and barks at 6 in the morning) to bigger projects like converting some land into a house for old people etc.

Finally, for the last month or so there have been long queues going right past my house, which is on the same block as ONIDEX- the Venezuelan immigration/passport organisation. The government has started speeding up handing out passports, so that now these queues are a daily thing, to the point where two new shops have opened up a few houses down from us, plus a new photocopy place across the road, and another juice place diagonally opposite.

Free food and community control

photo: the food house

University dinning areas

I went with M to the university dining area for dinner, where he used his student card and his mum’s student card to get us both the free meal. Dinner that night was two bread rolls, a kind of porridge type soup (atol its called), an apple, jelly, cooked sweet plantain, cheese, and lettuce type salad. All uni students can eat lunch and dinner for free during week days at these dinning rooms.
Suddenly everyone was banging their forks on the metal trays and yelling out. Apparently it’s some uni tradition- when someone drops a fork everyone else (well not everyone) yells out ‘Nuevo!’ (newbie!) and makes a massive racket.
After this M asked me what dinning areas are like in Australian universities.
“There aren’t any.”
“Are all the universities private?” he asked, surprised.
Ha, well the ULA in Merida is an autonomous university- its funded by the government but makes decisions about how to use that funding independently (and in this case the opposition rectors of the university buy cars and things). So you can’t really say the dinning areas are a result of the socialist government, since I think they even date back before Chavez. You also can’t use the excluse- well Venezuela has oil. Australia is hardly poor! Dinning areas are fairly common and expected here- and the government here has set up a lot of Bolivarian schools where the kids get breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack for free. That, though, is a result of the Chavez government.
After dinner M went around to all the tables collecting the breadrolls left by other students. He would use them for him and his mum for breakfast over the weekend. He called it ‘bread recycling’ which I thought so adorable : ).

Communal councils

My communal council meets in one of these Bolivarian primary schools, two blocks down from where I live (and everyone in the council just 2-3 blocks away). These schools are so cute, always covered in murals with various values painted on them- this one had various drawings and inside them ‘life is like music- its listened to better without drugs’ and a food pyramid, and then a chess board with various values like solidarity, respect etc. The school was either built or renovated by the government in 2005. A friend of mine- an ex student who studied to be a teacher through the mission sucre (free government university level education with an emphasis on community) is now teaching there.
I introduced myself to the other council members (actually all of them were spokespeople for various committees, who had been elected in a community assembly not long ago) and we all chatted as we waited for people to turn up. The topic was the law against violence on women, and I was really impressed with how much everyone new about the law and how the men talked in admiration that the law considered insults a form of violence. It was clear within minutes that this was a non opposition run communal council- I don’t say chavista because that’s a limiting word. A friend of mine in this council is a revolutionary who’s extremely critical of Chavez, to the point of not joining the PSUV, for example. Also, this council is quite new. The one just to the left of it is two years old now (and its come out that the opposition is trying to take that one over, as elections are run every two years, the opposition is trying to stack the assembly meetings to get control). But ours has just been formed, and is now legal, and all the spokespeople for the various committees are also considered legal representatives in the various fields (culture, food, housing, education, sport, auditing etc). However, we don’t have a communal bank yet.
The first item was a complaint by one of the community members. A mother and her around 30 year old son came to the council to talk about a dispute they have with a neighbour, whose house is joined to theirs (as most houses here are- all joined together) and whose water from the bathroom is causing their wall to rot. Now, the communal councils are the first step to dealing with any situations like this. Ideally, simply discussing it out will resolve the problem, sometimes the community can decide (once it has a bank) to contribute money to the repairs. But the spokespeople at this meeting were clear- they aren’t authorities who can go about forcing people to do things, they are simply community reps. If things aren’t resolved in the council, a representative will help the neighbour take the problem to the next level- usually the mayor.
In the community assemblies which set up this council, they had approved a list of norms of co-living. All communities create their own such norms, as it helps create a sense of community and it also means they can tailor the norms to their own different needs. As everyone lives so nearby to each other, most people know eachother- either by name or by appearance ‘the man in the shop’, ‘the house with the black car out the front’ etc. Also before the assembly was held, the council promoters had done a census of the community, so they know who lives where, what their main needs are etc- and this information proved to be useful in this case, as the neighbour with the leaking bathroom refused to talk to the other neighbour- we were able to send a rep from the housing committee down to have a look at the place.
After this item, I introduced myself and said that I thought the communal councils are an important way for communities to resolve their own problems and to take active control over their collective lives and that I’d like to help out anyway I can. The fact that I was a foreigner was nothing more than a curious fact- they were all extremely welcoming and said I could join the culture committee. I suggested the idea of setting up a women’s committee, which they loved- but I said perhaps it was something more for the future, once a few other things like the bank have been sorted out.
We are looking at calling another community assembly- to inform and discuss with the community various issues like the food house, a sport/cultural area and so on, and that will be an opportunity to elect a women’s committee (as these things can’t just be set up, they must be elected).
A range of other issues were discussed- some public work that has been stopped and we don’t know why, getting a bank account, another meeting one of the reps went to about water etc, and I was just so impressed with how much everyone know about the laws and which organisation to go to about what (for the number of organisations, funds, levels of administration, ministries etc in Venezuela is quite a minefield).
The last item saw a few people getting a bit emotional, one of the reps had been physically assaulted by someone outside the food house (a house which provides free food to homeless people, drug addicts, orphans, single mothers, ex prisoners etc) and she also claimed that the place was selling food on the side to non-needy people to get some extra pocket money. It was agreed to convoke the head guy of the place to the next meeting to talk about the issue.

I came out of the meeting utterly inspired. There were 12 people at the meeting, representing a community of about 1000 people or less, and they were extremely able, active and intelligent people. If you can generalise that across Venezuela, that’s 260,000 hard core quality community leaders. I also loved how serious they were about what they were doing, and how real it all was- community control- and how real they were seen by the woman who came in with the complaint. I also learnt a tonne about the few blocks I’m surrounded by that I hadn’t known.

We all walked out together, said goodbye as we passed each person’s house, and one woman invited me to pop into her shop- just a few houses down from where I live, to get a drink some time.
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The meeting the next week started off with the food house issue. The woman re-told her version of what had happened, then the director of the food house told his side, and also described how the whole place works.

This particular food house is linked to a lot of organisations. It gets some support from a church, whilst the government mercal provides food and pays the bills, but not the rent. There’s no rehabilitation centre in Merida so the house also sometimes pays for transports, and accompanies people to centres nearby.

The place makes 155 meals, and has 7 workers who receive the benefit of the food and a small scholarship from the government of 350BsF/month (about $160US).

In the discussion after the guy had gone, we decided it was important that there be some kind of security and vigilance of the place, ensuring that only needy people eat there, not paying workers, that the council monitoring committee and the food committee should monitor the place, that people who ‘disturb the peace’- in violent ways that is, should be sanctioned from eating there, but we also need to be conscious that the work done in the food house is hard work, important work, and we should get involved and help, and before any accusations or anything are made, we should work on facts, not rumours and so a monitoring plan is necessary.

Later there was also discussion of a range of other issues, such as the creation of a culture and sport space jointly with architecture students, and a few other things I’ve mentioned above already.