Showing posts with label Venezuela. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Venezuela. Show all posts
Monday, 9 May 2016
Saturday, 25 October 2014
Invisible No More
George Ciccariello-Maher, The Jacobin
Geographically, Caracas, Venezuela consists of a relatively
short, narrow valley just over twenty miles in length, sheltered from the
Caribbean Sea by a mountain range to the north, with population seams radiating
southward in a series of smaller valleys.
The old city center lies to the west of the valley, with
growth historically moving ever eastward: first in verdant suburbs, then elite
urbanizations, and finally — the valley’s easternmost limitations reached — the
massive informal barrio settlements that precariously ring the hilltops of
nearly the entire city.
Thursday, 3 July 2014
Raúl Zibechi: Latin America Today, Seen From Below
Original interview published in
the June 2013 issue MU Magazine, from the La Vaca popular media collective in
Buenos Aires. Translated by Margi Clarke.
Reprinted with permission. Upside Down Word
1- ECUADOR
In Ecuador there is a
government that proclaims a “citizen revolution” and that has a constitution
with explicit environmental values that speaks of Well Being and the rights of
Nature. At the same time, there are 179
or 180 indigenous leaders and activists accused of sabotage and terrorism for
doing what they always have done: blocking roads and occupying public land to
protest and stop the mining projects that threaten their livelihood and
communities. The greatest struggle of
the social movements right now is to defend water and to halt open-pit
mining. President Correa calls them
“full-bellies” (‘pancitas llenas’) who have plenty to eat and can dedicate
themselves to criticizing the government and the mining industry alongside
their imperialist NGO allies (non-governmental organizations).
Monday, 15 April 2013
Thursday, 13 December 2012
Friday, 18 May 2012
Barrio Women and Popular Politics in Chavez’s Venezuela
by Sujatha Fernandes, 2007
Since President Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela in 1998, ordinary women from the barrios, or shantytowns, of Caracas have become more engaged in grassroots politics; but most of the community leaders still are men. Chavez’s programs are controlled by male-dominated bureaucracies, and many women activists still look to the president himself as the main source of direction. Nevertheless, this article argues, women’s increasing local activism has created forms of popular participation that challenge gender roles, collectivize private tasks, and create alternatives to male-centric politics. Women’s experiences of shared struggle from previous decades, along with their use of democratic methods of popular control, help prevent the state from appropriating women’s labor. But these spaces coexist with more vertical, populist notions of politics characteristic of official sectors of Chavismo. Understanding such gendered dimensions of popular participation is crucial to analyzing urban social movements.
Since President Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela in 1998, ordinary women from the barrios, or shantytowns, of Caracas have become more engaged in grassroots politics; but most of the community leaders still are men. Chavez’s programs are controlled by male-dominated bureaucracies, and many women activists still look to the president himself as the main source of direction. Nevertheless, this article argues, women’s increasing local activism has created forms of popular participation that challenge gender roles, collectivize private tasks, and create alternatives to male-centric politics. Women’s experiences of shared struggle from previous decades, along with their use of democratic methods of popular control, help prevent the state from appropriating women’s labor. But these spaces coexist with more vertical, populist notions of politics characteristic of official sectors of Chavismo. Understanding such gendered dimensions of popular participation is crucial to analyzing urban social movements.
Friday, 5 August 2011
Jumpstarting the Decolonial Engine: Symbolic Violence from Fanon to Chávez
by George Ciccariello-Maher, Theory & Event, Vol. 13, No.1. 2010
Abstract
This paper finds the unifying thread of Frantz Fanon's revolutionary decolonial philosophy in what I call "symbolic decolonial violence," the violent self-assertion and public appearance of colonized and racialized non-beings which creates the necessary groundwork for their entry into being. By applying this concept to contemporary political discourse and identity dynamics in Venezuela, while maintaining an insistently "parallax view," we are able to enrich our understanding of both Fanon's work and the specificities of the Venezuelan situation. Such an approach allows us to see that it is the social-scientific literature that is most critical of the "violence" and "conflict" of the contemporary Venezuelan revolutionary process that testifies most powerfully to the very Fanonian truth of that process: the forced entry of formerly non-beings into being.
Friday, 15 July 2011
Negotiating Transformation in a Leftist State: An urban social movement and constructing a new agent of social transformation
by Jennifer Martinez, 2010
The Venezuelan 'Bolivarian Revolution', as the period since Hugo Chávez's election in 1998 is often referred to, at first glance appears to be the counter-argument to John Holloway's (2002) encouragement to 'change the world without taking power'. It was, after all, an electoral uprising and the taking of state power that birthed this self-proclaimed socialist government, which has the support of a highly mobilized population for its project of 'Twenty-First Century Socialism'. Despite appearances, within Venezuela, even among supporters of the revolution, the desired role for the state in transforming the country remains undecided. The debate about power and 'anti-power', as Holloway has called it – or in the language of Venezuelans, about the relationship between the state and poder popular – is intense and growing, and is made even more complex because the division between the two is anything but clear.
The Venezuelan 'Bolivarian Revolution', as the period since Hugo Chávez's election in 1998 is often referred to, at first glance appears to be the counter-argument to John Holloway's (2002) encouragement to 'change the world without taking power'. It was, after all, an electoral uprising and the taking of state power that birthed this self-proclaimed socialist government, which has the support of a highly mobilized population for its project of 'Twenty-First Century Socialism'. Despite appearances, within Venezuela, even among supporters of the revolution, the desired role for the state in transforming the country remains undecided. The debate about power and 'anti-power', as Holloway has called it – or in the language of Venezuelans, about the relationship between the state and poder popular – is intense and growing, and is made even more complex because the division between the two is anything but clear.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Dual Power in the Venezuelan Revolution
by George Ciccariello-Maher, Monthly Review
Too often, the Bolivarian Revolution currently underway in Venezuela is dismissed by its critics—on the right and left—as a fundamentally statist enterprise. We are told it is, at best, a continuation of the corrupt, bureaucratic status quo or, at worst, a personalistic consolidation of state power in the hands of a single individual at the expense of those “checks and balances” traditionally associated with western liberal democracies. These perspectives are erroneous, since they cannot account for what have emerged as the central planks of the revolutionary process. I will focus on the most significant of these planks: the explosion of communal power.
Too often, the Bolivarian Revolution currently underway in Venezuela is dismissed by its critics—on the right and left—as a fundamentally statist enterprise. We are told it is, at best, a continuation of the corrupt, bureaucratic status quo or, at worst, a personalistic consolidation of state power in the hands of a single individual at the expense of those “checks and balances” traditionally associated with western liberal democracies. These perspectives are erroneous, since they cannot account for what have emerged as the central planks of the revolutionary process. I will focus on the most significant of these planks: the explosion of communal power.
Friday, 24 June 2011
Who Can Stop the Drums?: Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela
by Sujatha Fernandes, 2010
In this vivid ethnography of social movements in the barrios, or poor shantytowns, of Caracas, Sujatha Fernandes reveals a significant dimension of political life in Venezuela since President Hugo Chávez was elected. Fernandes traces the histories of the barrios, from the guerrilla insurgency, movements against displacement, and cultural resistance of the 1960s and 1970s, through the debt crisis of the early 1980s and the neoliberal reforms that followed, to the Chávez period.
In this vivid ethnography of social movements in the barrios, or poor shantytowns, of Caracas, Sujatha Fernandes reveals a significant dimension of political life in Venezuela since President Hugo Chávez was elected. Fernandes traces the histories of the barrios, from the guerrilla insurgency, movements against displacement, and cultural resistance of the 1960s and 1970s, through the debt crisis of the early 1980s and the neoliberal reforms that followed, to the Chávez period.
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