A JOURNAL OF THE 2006 WORLD SOCIAL FORUM IN CARACAS, VENEZUELA
by Christy Rodgers
January 23, 2006 : WSF for Beginners
I'm in Caracas for the VI World Social Forum, which officially begins on Tuesday afternoon with a public march, rally and festival. Participants are beginning to flow into the city. Something like 75-100,000 people are expected to attend from all over the Americas. The WSF is happening simultaneously on three continents this year, in Bamako, Mali, and Karachi, Pakistan, as well as Caracas.
The Forum was first held in 2001 in Brazil, as a means to bring together the growing popular opposition, particularly in the global South, to so-called neo-liberal economic policies that have been increasing poverty and ecological destruction worldwide for decades at an escalating rate. Its timing continues to correspond with the annual World Economic Forum, a gathering of the world's elites, in Davos, Switzerland. Since the Bush Administration's invasion of Iraq, the Forum has added anti-militarism and anti-imperialism to its list of central concerns. It is a space for broad dialogue, information sharing and networking; there has been a conscious effort not to turn it into a body that advocates a specific program or political agenda.
VENEZUELA AND CHAVEZ
Venezuela is a country of considerable symbolic significance for the Forum. Since Hugo Chavez Frias won the presidency in 1998 (which he has had to defend vigorously since then, against a small but extremely well-funded opposition, first from an attempted coup in 2002, and then from a recall election in 2004), Venezuela has come to represent one of the most powerful examples of a nation changing course and beginning to cut a new path in the global economy. Chavez' aim is to free Venezuela, and hopefully all of Latin America, from economic domination by the International Monetary Fund, which demands the privatization of every state industry and public service in return for loan guarantees, and from the powerful transnational corporations that have been the primary beneficiaries of the worldwide privatization fever.
After he won the Presidency, Chavez embarked immediately on a highly articulated and visible course of reform, including drafting a new constitution that favored economic and social justice. His actions totally polarized the country—if you consider it polarization that Chavez is relentlessly vituperated by about 20% of the population as “dictatorial” and “communistic,” and that percentage, unsurprisingly, also approximately corresponds to the wealthy and upper middle class, who till recently also controlled almost all the national news media. The other 80% ranges from relatively indifferent to wildly favorable, and to the vastly larger numbers of the Venezuelan poor and working class.
Chavez has been in power for six years now, and will be running for a second term this year. Every setback he has faced so far has seemed actually to help him consolidate power. He has done remarkable end runs around Venezuela's corrupt and paralytic public administration and mafia-like private companies, in order to begin distributing some of the country's massive oil wealth in the form of services to its poor. Primary, secondary and college education, health care, subsidized-price markets, housing and support for cooperative local enterprises are all provided by government “missions” that are run by armies of activists and volunteers.
Chavez, to the dismay of many leftists who prefer their revolutions decentralized, non-electoral, and without charismatic leadership (regardless of how many hungry people are being fed by them or marginalized people given voice) is indubitably a charismatic, continual and compelling speaker (though not much of a looker, by any conventional standards—he's a stocky guy with a face like a cartoon frog). He is central and thus far indispensable to the process he has initiated: its philosopher, its spiritual leader, and its detail-freak all in one. Shades of Fidel Castro! But Chavez, who unconditionally admires Fidel, has his own unique mezclada of historical idols: among them Simón Bolívar (who won Venezuela's independence from Spain and dreamed of united South America ), Jesus, and Martin Luther King. And he has his own almost mystical idea of “21st century socialism,” which will replace the “demon of capitalism.”
To the dismay of his opposition, Chavez is tireless, apparently incorruptible, and has been at least one step ahead of them all the way. It of course drives them nuts that because Venezuela 's oil is managed by the state, he now has some of the world's largest reserves at his disposal. He continues to pursue massive social reform directed internally at Venezuela's poor majority, and externally at a regional economic integration that is finding a lengthening list of allies with each new Latin American presidential election. A domino-theory that Che never imagined: after massive social upheaval, but without guerrilla wars, several countries—Argentina, Ecuador, and most recently Bolivia—have replaced neo-liberal puppets with leaders much further to the left—through elections. Other countries like Uruguay and Chile (just last week) have had completely pacific electoral transitions, but one by one the governments of the Southern Cone have been distancing themselves from neo-liberalism and US “leadership.” It remains to be seen if they really collectively have the courage of Chavez's convictions. But all of this makes Venezuela an appropriate site for the World Social Forum and gives the Forum a particular interest in the Venezuelan example.
SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
So what does it feel like to be here? Like most Latin American cities, the contrasts are immediate and in-your-face. Caracas, which is dramatically situated in a long, deep, winding valley to the south of the lush coastal mountains, has a core of impressive (or impressively ugly) glass office towers and grand boulevards, and is ringed for miles and miles by poor barrios of tin-roofed cement block houses that crawl at impossible angles up the precipitous slopes. Something like 300,000 of its five million people lack the most basic amenities for adequate housing.
It is a perennially steamy place, where diesel grit sticks to your skin after a brief walk in the streets, which are filled with cacophonous and chaotic traffic, and redolent with rotting trash. Its people are lively and vivid; most women under fifty dress with a relaxed voluptuousness that seems to raise hardly an eyebrow from the stocky, solid, sporty-looking men. The population is amazingly diverse too, coming as they do from all the regions of Venezuela , from the Caribbean to the Andes to the Amazon, and from China to Africa. Also typical of the tropics: sometimes a cool breeze, the fluttering of palm fronds in an azure sky, a lovely shaded park or a cold glass of fresh fruit juice startles you with pleasure. The sidewalks are crowded with vendors selling bootleg software, CDs and DVDs, watches, street food, and every so often, copies of the “little blue book” of the new Venezuelan Constitution and pamphlets with the texts of various laws that have been passed regarding cooperativization, education, and so forth.
WHAT'S HAPPENING NOW
The Forum will be taking place all over the city: 1,800 registered activities, between workshops, plenaries, and cultural events, 2,700 registered organizations from dozens of countries, 75-100,000 projected participants.
Internal organization has seemed remarkably loose by gringo standards (no surprise to Venezuela-watchers, who are familiar with a spontaneous and constantly improvised style of logistics here. Registration times and places have changed several times, and all printed schedules are viewed with a certain skepticism now.
There is one unavoidable logistical nightmare awaiting any international visitors by air. A month ago a span of the main highway over the mountains to the airport collapsed, and the government has been scrambling to provide alternative routes and to repair the extensive damage. The highway not only takes one to the international airport, but to Caracas' nearest and most popular beach resorts on the Caribbean.
The opposition media has had a field day with this. It is a serious problem; the 25-mile trip to Caracas on narrow, winding back roads jammed with traffic took over three hours when I came in last week. But of course Venezuela's infrastructure didn't just begin to deteriorate six years ago. However, the situation may have been responsible in part for animating one of the largest marches the opposition has been able to pull off in years, which took place yesterday, just as registration for the Forum was beginning, with international visitors starting to arrive in numbers, and a government-sponsored “Festival of Revolutionary Democracy” setting up across town.
Seeing the opposition march on television, where it got extensive coverage on the commercial stations, one was immediately struck by the fact that Venezuela's diversity was little in evidence there—only its whitest and tallest citizens seemed to have turned out en masse. But the ebullience of the commentators suggested that the size of the march—probably two or three thousand—surpassed all their expectations.
Meanwhile, Chavez was in Bolivia, welcoming the country's first indigenous president into the fold of anti-neo-liberal leaders in South America. The ceremonies there received the same level of blanket coverage on the government stations that the opposition march got on the commercial ones. Morales looks to be a key Chavez ally, perhaps ideologically closer to him than any of the other principals, Lula in Brazil or Kirschner in Argentina.
It's likely however that many Venezuelans were more involved in the fact that a major baseball game between the Caracas team and Magallanes was delayed by a freak evening shower. Baseball is the major national pastime, then basketball, with soccer apparently a distant third in terms of fandom. For those baseball fans among you, I apologize for knowing nothing about baseball, because it is certainly a major element of the social fabric here. I will just say that the game must have finally ended about 11 pm with a Caracas victory, because the streets outside the hotel erupted just as I was about to call it a night.
Today, January 23rd, is a day of significance in Venezuela —the commemoration of the 1958 street demonstrations that brought down its last military dictatorship and began Venezuela 's contemporary stretch of electoral democracy-in-name. Both Chavez supporters and the opposition make political hay of this event, just as both claim Bolivar and Jesus and the Venezuelan flag. Symbolism in Latin American politics is invested with an almost spiritual importance that most US liberals or progressives, at least, if not the radical right, would find astonishing.
At a Forum press conference yesterday, I learned that Cindy Sheehan will be speaking at the opening celebration, and that the US is actually third on the list of nations presenting activities at the Forum, with over 100 events scheduled by US organizations. This, as a Forum spokesman pointed out, is of particular significance to Venezuela , because of the Bush administration's antipathy to Chavez. Chavez is accused, ironically, of being anti-democratic even though he has twice received overwhelming popular support through internationally observed elections (unlike Bush). The main accusations are that he now has all the branches of government under the control of his party or his supporters (like Bush) and that he silences his opponents with intimidation and restrictive laws (like Bush). But of course it is his policies, not his adherence to democratic process that are really the issue.
The main question I will be attempting to answer throughout the Forum and after, is what significance the large US presence here will have for social and political work back in the US. We have been remarkably isolated from political realities outside our borders. Most Americans have had little need to understand foreign affairs, because we have never been invaded or had our standard of living crash as a result of foreign intervention. Even when progressives have mounted creative, vocal and organized action around foreign policy issues, it has not led to the growth of a progressive agenda among the broader US population. Most of our myriad progressive organizations each have relatively tiny bases with little awareness of their agendas beyond financial supporters and active volunteers. So does this mean that the movement gets lost in translation?
Stay tuned.
January 24th : More on the Forum
This afternoon the WSF will officially begin with a march, rally and concert. Other activities begin tomorrow morning, Wednesday. Only the schedule for the first three days is available so far, and it's over 80 pages long. The scale is both exhilarating and depressing, because of the sense that urgent and interesting information will be transmitted in hundreds of locations at the same time, making it impossible to share in more than a miniscule part of what's going on. It also gives me the feeling that the extraordinary diversity of the world's, or even this hemisphere's social movements, and a single global vision of change are difficult if not impossible to reconcile. Capital has had the easy road: just standardize everything along lines of profit. Margaret Thatcher's famous TINA (There Is No Alternative) equation is clearly being challenged here, by TAMA (There Are Many Alternatives). The key will be seeing how TAMA works in practice.
In any case, all workshops and presentations are grouped along six “thematic axes.” These are:
1. Power, politics and the fight for social emancipation.
For example: discussions of relationships among social movements, political parties and the state, struggles to construct democracy, new political cultures, solidarity movements, and the WSF itself.
2. Imperial strategies and resistance to them.
For example: analyses of war, militarism, criminalization of resistance, the “clash of civilizations,” the “culture of fear,” neo-liberal financial arrangements, the politics of energy, and all forms of resistance to the above.
3. Natural resources and the right to life.
This includes everything from biodiversity and intellectual property rights to reproductive rights.
4. Diversity, identity and philosophy/spiritualities (or “ cosmovision.”)
For example: racism, regional and local identities, gender and sexual diversity, and youth culture.
5. Work and exploitation.
Presentations on labor rights and abuses, such as child labor, exploitation of migrants and domestic workers, and alternatives such as cooperatives, social capital, etc.
6. Communication, culture and education, and alternatives for democratization.
For example: laws to enhance citizen participation, resistance to commercialization and concentration of media, development of new information technologies, resistance art, and the right to education.
Additionally, there is now a stated commitment that within each theme, there will be efforts to ensure diversity of representation by gender, race, ethnicity and other instances of historical exclusion.
So. As my particular interest is in the US movements and what comes out of all this for us, I will just say that it was startling to learn that there are something like 1,000 US participants registered (Global Exchange alone is said to be bringing 200 people) and, as I mentioned before, 100 activities registered by US organizations.
Just looking through the schedule for the first day, I saw presentations by eight or nine US organizations I've never heard of before. The Feminist Caucus of the American Humanist Association, the Union for Radical Political Economies, the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, or Opendemocracy.net, for example. And local groups like the Chicago Center for Creative Development, the Tucson Radical Information Project, etc. This gives me the same degree of mixed feelings as the wider global movement does. I wonder why we need in the US to come to Caracas to find out about each other, and what that means for us.
Last night on the government news channel, Venezolana de Television, there was an interview with Cheri Honkala, of the Poor Peoples' Economic Human Rights Campaign, which I was also not aware of before today. They are bringing a delegation of Katrina survivors, farmworkers, domestic workers and formerly homeless people. She painted a dire picture of repression and poverty in the US, which seemed to astound the interviewer, but the most interesting thing, to me, of what she said, was “We are here to tell the world: we need help.” This is an amazing and necessary admission.
January 24th: The Forum Begins
Today as the Caracas metro filled up with “ mochileros,” young visitors with backpacks and orange Forum badges, and groups of bewildered-looking gringos in rumpled khakis and Tevas huddled in the foyers of hotels, and lots of middle-aged guys in flak jackets haunted the press room at the Caracas Hilton, the Forum began to make its presence felt here.
MORE THOUGHTS ON VENEZUELA AND THE FORUM
Having noted the reasons why Chavez's Venezuela and the Forum are suited to one another, I'm also starting to see the differences, if it's fair to use elements as subtle and intuitive as style as criteria. There's undoubtedly a non-conformist, even hippie vibe that's a strong current among Forum attendees. There's a reason for this. Outside of Venezuela, no participants represent or have the experience of a state-driven alternative to neo-liberalism; almost all are from socially and politically marginalized groups within their countries, or are college-aged youth, intellectuals, or work for non-profits (non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, as they tend to be called outside the US) that advocate alternatives to the current system. The Forum as a body is extremely cautious about institutions like states and political parties, which most people have only experienced as repressive and corrupt.
Venezuela's “process” has a very different feel; it is really about ordinary people having obtained insider status, in a way. The legions of red tee-shirted members of the new social missions (if the process has a color, it is definitely red) are everyday people, not outsiders, at least not now. This imbues them with a kind of gut-level enthusiasm and even ebullience that are qualitatively different from the adversarial passion for justice that animates most of the rest of us. It's by nature less abstract, as is their relationship to social change. Venezuela has changed forever, the stalwarts say; the rest of us cross our fingers and hope its true, and that it will continue changing in the direction of more participatory and grassroots democracy, and look to distant futures when this may be true for other peoples.
The Festival of Revolutionary Democracy put on by the National Assembly over the last couple of days, was meant to showcase to Venezuelans and to international visitors the specific achievements of Chavez's “Bolivarian Revolution.” A national literacy campaign that achieved 0% illiteracy nationwide last year, indigenous rights and promotion of local cultures, missions to eliminate extreme poverty by doing outreach and support in Venezuela's most devastated slums—these were not just being advocated for by NGOs or grassroots groups, but being actively promoted and funded by the state.
There was plenty of kitsch in evidence, mostly from street vendors with a keen sense of how to make a buck. Chavez dolls, tee shirts, calendars, key chains, pins, Bolivarian (yellow, blue and red) noisemakers and even ice pops, you name it. But the fair, with all its shiny and colorful booths, and great performances by Venezuelan musicians, didn't just showcase, the fervor really spilled over into the street. I remember a little white-haired guy in the ubiquitous red ball cap and tee shirt turning to me as we listened to a band saluting Evo Morales' presidency in Bolivia, and beaming as he said “We are starting to change other countries now. It's a source of pride.”
I couldn't help thinking that had any of the Central American revolutionary movements I worked in solidarity with in the ‘80s achieved power, or, in the case of Nicaragua, had the resources and clout to maintain it, the result would have looked something like this. It was sad to think of all the Central American states putting their signatures on a US-backed Free Trade Agreement (although only after incredible arm twisting and behind the scenes negotiation) when the rest of the hemisphere had given the boot to any similar agreement in Mar del Plata, Argentina last year.
In fact, though, another interesting tension with the Forum's ethic is that Venezuela 's process is taking place without Venezuela 's seeking to withdraw from the global economic system or to overturn it, merely to get fairer rules for the game. You don't hear much talk about economic sustainability from the government; you hear a lot about economic growth. Global warming doesn't appear to be a factor in the state's rosy projections about continued increases in oil consumption worldwide. The U.S and Venezuela , for all the wild-eyed rhetoric from both administrations, are locked in a dance of consumption and production that neither has any interest in breaking off.
But sustainability advocates should note that growth in the Latin American context doesn't mean 700 cars for every 1,000 men, women and children in the country, as in the US, as an economic attaché to the Venezuelan embassy in the States pointed out in an interview I saw. What it means, right now at least, is that the poorest 25-30% of Venezuelan society are actually able to spend more on food. The US, and to some extent the rest of the global north are the ones who have the consumption addiction, as the Bolivarian economist made implicitly clear.
THE FORUM KICKS OFF
At a second inaugural press conference yesterday, the sizes of the US and Colombian delegations were again singled out for mention. That the most reactionary and violent countries in the hemisphere, one of them, of course, Venezuela's immediate neighbor, have so many people here is a source of almost palpable satisfaction to Venezuelans in the process. Chavez frequently alludes to the possibility of US military action against Venezuela , and others have pointed to Colombia, with its supine relationship to US intervention, as a likely launching ground for such action.
But Cheri Honkala's “we need help,” from the night before has stuck with me as the most honest thing I've heard from the US left in ages. I think sadly, that it is not any of us who are here, for all the will in the world, who are likely to stay Bush's hand in Venezuela. We'll have to count on the fact that the blood-soaked attempt to “guarantee” Iraq 's oil supply has been an unmitigated disaster, and the US is already overcommitted there. The administration, maybe because of Bush's biblical fantasies, is also fixated on the Middle East. So Latin America may be able to dodge a bullet.
(I do have to say that from down here, the world seems less dangerous and more filled with possibility, maybe just because I don't have listen to the US government's absurd rhetoric every day. And also because I can encounter evidence of lives unwarped by the terrible distortions we live with, that affect us so deeply we don't even recognize them. It's a nice breather. I like one of the slogans I've seen from the Ministry of Information even better than the Forum's “Another World is Possible.” It is “We Don't Have the Option of Victory or Death. We Must Win.)
At about 3 pm people began gathering at one of the entrances to the Central University of Venezuela, the UCV, for the Forum's inaugural march. A series of drenching showers and a metro breakdown right around 2 pm had me wondering (once again) if God isn't really a member of the 700 Club. But by the time the delegations began to assemble, the rain had stopped, and the streets just steamed a little under dirty gray clouds. An inaugural mass was held in the university chapel, where the rhetoric of inclusion and peace was a far cry from Pat Robertson's or the retired Venezuelan Cardinal Lara who set off a war of words two weeks ago by calling Chavez “despotic” in his homily for an important religious holiday.
The rainbow nature of the Forum was well in evidence at the march. There were quite a large number of women's organizations, there was a Venezuelan gay rights contingent, there were Ecuadoran and Bolivian indigenous groups with their own rainbow flags, a Canadian contingent in solidarity with Haiti, Brazil's Landless Movement (MST), several large Venezuelan mission and student groups, and a big contingent of boisterous Cubans at the front. One of the most powerful representations was the Colombian Coca Cola workers union, with graphic banners representing the bloody repression they have experienced, in which a number of organizers were killed. Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange, Reverend Lucius Walker of Pastors for Peace, and Cheri Honkala were among the US activists who led the march.
Maybe the most amazing thing about this march to a US participant: there were almost no cops. In fact there were so few I forgot they weren't there until the end.
I caught up with one of the larger US delegations, from Grassroots Global Justice, another organization I had no idea existed until I came here. I had heard of several of its 45 participating groups, like the Southwest Workers Union, Just Transition and PODER, a San Francisco-based immigrants and poor peoples rights group. I spoke with a member of Project South, one of the southeastern-based groups, who told me that the GGJ came about precisely because many of the individual groups had been coming to previous Forums and saw the need to build a US network of locally-based, grassroots organizing groups with a global vision of change. The main focus of the network is to create a US Social Forum. The first one was to have been held this year in Atlanta, but it has been postponed till 2007 because Atlanta's social justice organizations are still overwhelmed with the needs of Katrina refugees, and now, their precarious right to return.
The evening rally was addressed by Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin, Cheri Honkala and others, all of whom said what was expected of them under the circumstances. Medea called for protests at all US embassies against the Iraq war on International Women's Day. I might have wished she had been as open as Honkala in terms of framing this as part of the dire need in the US for international solidarity for a movement which has so far failed to ignite US militancy on a grand scale. As Honkala pointed out in her interview, we ourselves now need the election observers, peacekeepers and human rights investigators we have always so avidly sent elsewhere. In any case, the rally quickly became a concert “against war and for life” with everything from Latin American classic protest music, reggae, and roc en español.
The march was impressive, maybe 10-20,000 people, but by far the biggest march of the day anywhere in the hemisphere was held in Cuba, where hundreds of thousands apparently turned out to protest the US's proposed release of a Cuban-Venezuelan terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, for whom Venezuela had requested extradition. He is accused of being responsible for bombing a flight that resulted in the deaths of over 70 people.
Also in the news: Shafik Handal, the Salvadoran FMLN's candidate for the presidency in the 2004 elections died on the way home from the celebrations of the Evo Morales inauguration.
We're still in the looking glass media world here, when the opposition press reports that “rain and chaos weakened the opening of the Forum,” or shows a picture of a Chavez tee shirt hanging next to a hammer and sickle tee shirt on the front page of one of its papers, while the state TV gives in-depth interviews to US delegates representing small foundations and NGOs, which is as it should be, except for the desperate need by both interviewer and interviewee to believe that they represent a significant political force in the US.
Today, Wednesday, the full schedule of workshops begins, once again under clouds and rain (the 700 Club at work again?). US antiwar activists are meeting at the US solidarity tent this afternoon to discuss the movement. So—more to come.
January 25th : A Rough Mix on the First Day
Today, Wednesday, the full schedule of activities got under way in a steamy Caracas shrouded by clouds. The amount of rain is really unseasonal: we should be starting the tropical “summer” this time of year. Maybe this isn't evidence of a reactionary Rainmaker, but His/Her little reminder that we ought to be taking global warming more seriously. There are actually only one or two Forum presentations I've seen listed so far on the topic (though admittedly I haven't even looked through all of today's activities yet).
The information session on the anti-war movement didn't happen, and the US tent where it was supposed to be happening wasn't happening either, most of yesterday. This was a missed opportunity: only three countries have tents where they can centralize their activities and information, in an easily visible and highly public space. They are all countries whose delegations are particularly important to the Forum, and to Venezuela: Brazil, Cuba, and the US. Brazil had produced a sort of World Social Forum trade show in its tent, completely with video installations, visual displays, and free handbags stuffed with forum information. In fact, every other tent (there were several thematic tents in the area, not sponsored by countries) was up and running, had a schedule of activities and a functioning sound system. But the US tent was almost empty, no banners, a few scattered flyers, no scheduling information, no information on the US delegations, the floor a lake of mud. The only thing identifying it as the US tent was a handwritten sign stuck on a fence.
I've said that we gringos tend to underestimate the importance of symbolism in this part of the world, and that tent was an example. Its prominence and size were meant to express something. The walls were crying out for some of the banners that graced the previous day's march, showing the diversity and scope of the US solidarity movement.
Most of the Forum's workshops in this part of town (there are six main locations all over Caracas) are buried back in the mazy corridors of the Parque Central complex, which isn't a park at all but a bunch of connected high-rises. So the tent is a major opportunity, as well as a symbol, for those who have them.
For a short time while I was there, the Brazilian Communist Party filled the scheduling vacuum with a lively pep rally and musical interlude. Their bright red hammer and sickle flag was the only thing that hung on the those big white walls.
By late afternoon, things were a bit better. The tent was more or less functional; someone had actually gotten the heaps of gravel that had been sitting there for days spread over the floor. (Other public works are springing up around this grassy plaza, which is an interesting space—it's like a huge hole in the center of Caracas . A big expanse has been turned over to organic vegetable gardens; run by one of the state-sponsored cooperatives; they are large and well-kept.) The US tent still had no sound system, still nothing identifying it as the official US Peoples Tent. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers had hung up a banner, and were conducting a workshop (that was actually on the Forum schedule! at that time!) But they had to bellow through a megaphone over the racket of central Caracas and the din from the neighboring tents.
Well, enough said about that. Meanwhile, just sampling the variety of activities under way was enough to fill an afternoon. Argentina's Social Forum gave a presentation on creating a cooperative housing movement. They stressed building a concept of “habitat” that goes beyond housing to support a full array of human relationships and services. I found a presentation on human rights violations in Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia, at which one of the founders of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, one of the first organizations for the Latin American “disappeared,” spoke eloquently about the “loss of dreams, of possible utopias” that each of these hidden murders meant to the world. This tiny, white-haired, white-kerchiefed woman had also been one of the leaders of Tuesday's march. She, like so many here, spoke of “Yanqui imperialism” as a matter of direct personal experience, not Marxist theory.
Hundreds of craftspeople now line the main thoroughfares along which participants bustle, there is a street performance space in the small plaza that fronts two of the city's main museums, over a hundred campers are neatly staked out in the squeaky clean and shady Parque Los Caobos, which has piped-in music and announcements on a low-power radio station. There is also a free Forum newspaper, put out by Inter Press Service, and a Mural of Proposals, where participants' feedback is posted.
I think the most satisfying sight of the day was seeing the Caracas Hilton become a sort of international peoples' encampment, where an enormously diverse group of the kind of people usually excluded from the Hiltons of the world were gathered in discussion, seated on the marble floors, and every available surface, spilling onto the elegant walkways, as if, for once, it all belonged to us.
January 26th : From the Belly of the Beast
Thursday morning I started out trying to catch up with some US environmental justice activists giving a workshop on “climate justice.” These groups work in low-income communities in the US dealing with super-pollution and health problems caused by their big industry “neighbors.” Where global warming is concerned, they maintain that like every other dysfunctional aspect of society, it is hurting the poor first and worst. Katrina may have helped drive this point home in the US , for those who were willing to listen, but tropical countries in Central America, Africa, and the South Pacific have already been living it. Activists like Jose Bravo, with the Just Transition Alliance, advocate a massive, government subsidized transition to “green safe jobs” in alternative energy production, as a way to combat global warming and help poor and working people at the same time. They are fighting an uphill battle with mainstream US environmental groups, most of whom are sold on market-driven models like pollution trading. The market-based programs that do exist have already shown a tendency to concentrate more pollution in low-income areas.
José was leading the workshop, and he was at the listed location, even though a correction in the schedule (this unreadable novel I've been schlepping around with me everywhere) said that it had been moved because the Children's Social Forum was taking place there. (Which it was, but never mind. There are several other parallel forums going on) The site, a high school near the Parque Central area is another one of those symbolic locations, that tell you something about the kind of place you are in. The classrooms are bare, rundown, with dirty walls and battered desks, but the school boasts two stunning murals—one on the outside wall, which a number of students helped to paint, is a history of Venezuela in a hip-hop caricature style, showing its dictators and oil profiteers in full comic force. Inside, an intricately beautiful tile mosaic covers a wall sheltering a back garden.
Sadly, only two or three people showed up for the workshop. This is one of the difficulties intrinsic to the Forum's modus operandi. 75,000 people, 2,000 workshops, you do the math: that's less than 40 people per workshop on average. Some get over a hundred, and some only a handful. But many themes are repeated almost identically. I've seen several workshops listed, each by unrelated groups, on water privatization, alternative economics, immigration policies, you name it.
Does this contribute to a kind of social autism at the Forum, where everybody speaks and nobody listens? Maybe not, but if a good part of the idea is to get people from different societies and communities to share ideas and resources, a little more advance communication would help. It could get those with similar themes in touch with one another before the Forum, to give them the option of joining forces.
The Forum is a kind of giant petri dish for social alternatives. But in a way, just bringing everybody to the same place doesn't necessary means that you get fusion. Joining forces in a meaningful way, without top down leadership, still seems to be the big challenge for social movements everywhere, not just in the US. And listening in around the Forum, I'm finding an unexpectedly soul-searching mode, maybe because Venezuela 's alternatives seem so concrete by comparison. People are asking themselves this same question—how do “we” get from talking about that possible other world to making it happen?
The vast structureless structure of the Forum does provide a place for something that is definitely a recurrent need for people with the experience or understanding of injustice and struggle. It is the need to testify, to witness, in the words of the church. And it really is a similar phenomenon to religious witnessing: a passionate presentation to anyone who will listen of your transformative experience and your beliefs. And that is a huge component of what is happening here. It is a necessary part, necessary for the individual soul, necessary for any process of change. Especially for people whose system demands silence, or where others' fear or complacency makes them unable to listen or understand.
So it was powerful and fascinating to see the US participants in the Grassroots Global Justice delegation and the Poor Peoples' Economic Human Rights Campaign doing some witnessing today. The US tent, now pretty much in gear, though coordination among the US delegations still seemed only rudimentary, was the site of a series of presentations from poor people and organizers in poor communities from different parts of the US. Latin Americans listened in open shock as speakers described the collapse of federal support to these communities, or the near slave labor conditions in which a Haitian immigrant in Florida or a Mexican domestic in California had lived and worked, in the richest country in the world.
Presentations were given by community organizers from New Orleans fighting post-Katrina evictions, an indigenous activist speaking about the assault by extractive industries on reservation lands, against the poorest people in the US, an Asian American organizer speaking about the forgotten Asian poor, and others. Then the large gathering broke up into small groups, which lost about half the audience, but many stayed, and a handful of mostly Venezuelans and Cubans got into passionate and extensive discussions with the US organizers. They were clearly trying to get their minds around the bafflingly non-Hollywood nature of the reality they'd just heard. One Venezuelan asked “why black and brown people didn't just unite, in the US, and overthrow the whites, like we did here?” An African American organizer patiently explained to him that there were millions of poor and working class white people in the States, and what was needed was to find a way of including them in any movement for change, because they suffered many of the same ills and change would be impossible without them.
I remembered how, 20 years ago, those of us who went to Central America listened in horror as poor Central Americans described what their lives were like under their governments. Now, after 20 years of failing to develop a political alternative with any degree of real power in the US , we are the ones being listened to in horror as we describe life in the 21st century USA to puzzled Venezuelans. They seemed desperate to understand the complex face of the enemy Chavez has been warning them about in every public appearance. All the while commercial television shows a fantasy world of consumption and wealth that they have always associated with their northern neighbor. (A relentlessly repeated TV ad for a new shopping mall says "Now you don't have to go to Miami !")
In the end, though, maybe it was easier for the Venezuelans, with their long memory of corrupt, violent and unresponsive “democracies” in their own country and throughout Latin America, to understand the reality we live in, than it is for many US citizens to understand it themselves.
January 26th : Random Moments
VIVA AREPAS!
On Tuesday's march, as we passed a toney-looking shopping mall with a prominent McDonald's marchers started chanting “Queremos arepas, no hamburguesas !” “We want arepas, not hamburgers!” Arepas are a Venezuelan pocket sandwich: thick, grilled corncakes split in half and stuffed with chicken, tuna, ham, cheese, sausage and a variety of other fillings. I finally had one--there's a 24-hour arepería across the street from where I'm staying—and I'm now squarely in the arepa camp. Fuera McDonald's!
TRASH TALK
Even socially conscious people generate a heck of a lot of garbage. David Haenke, a bioregional activist in the US, has talked about how we need to institute a concept of tithing: for all the jet fuel pumped into the atmosphere to get us here, for the mountain of plastic water bottles and the blizzard of paper we've added to Venezuela's landfills, etc., we need to donate some kind of equivalent value to healing the ecosystem. I'd say just from looking around the Parque Central that the WSF (and each of us individually) has a long way to go towards becoming carbon-neutral or minimizing its ecological footprint.
TWO WORLDS
The Forum creates a center of gravity around itself among the high-rises, parks and museums in the city center, with the intensity and size of its crowds of badge- and official canvas bag-wielding delegates. The closure of Avenida Bolívar for the government-sponsored Democracy Fair created a pedestrian thoroughfare (sort of—scooters and motorcyclists treat themselves as pedestrians here, when it suits them, which means you can never really just relax and stroll. By the way, I haven't seen a single bicycle here in two weeks. Nobody is that crazy.) This gave the area an additional feel of “belonging” to the Forum. And the whole area is being rigorously maintained against the torrent of aforementioned trash. But just outside it, jammed traffic crawls past an open dump behind rows of metal market stalls, and in every direction the streets are packed and roaring, as people scramble to work, without street artists to entertain them, without carefully handcrafted items set at their feet, just the rickety stalls blaring pop music, and selling plastic toys and knock-off electronics. That other world is still only possible.
BLEACHING THE SEATS
The way the Venezuelan opposition does TV news is kind of comical: each morning they read the headlines of the newspapers they own. I saw a spot on the opposition station Globovision (which might be better named Tunnelvision) criticizing how the grand entrance to the elegant Teresa Carreño Theater, a Forum site, had been taken over by an army of untidy and “disgraceful” vendors, among other things. This reminded me of a story my friend Clif, who's been living down here for six months, told me recently. He went to a free performance at the theater; such performances are another Chavez innovation, of course. He noticed the upper class woman next to him looking around at the new audience for free culture, including some very humble-looking people, and overheard her remarking to her companion: “When we get the country back we'll have to bleach the seats here.”
CHAVEZ KEEPS IT MOVING
Meanwhile, Chavez pushes on, turning up on television every night (I'm starting to think of the government station Venezolana de Television as “all Hugo, all the time”) always at ease in front of the mic, giving long, coherent, unscripted speeches at the founding of a new development bank, or a ‘basic services” business association, or the presentation of diplomas to an auditorium full of graduates of Mission Robinson, the new free high school education program.
He talks about “sowing the oil,” his term for investing petroleum profits in his social and economic development programs. From the number of projects launched just in the last two weeks, this appears to be in full swing. He talks about breaking free of the “deuda eterna” the eternal (a pun on external, or foreign) debt, in Castro's phrase. He talks about Latin American economic integration, about local or regional production, of independence from imports, except in trade with other Latin American countries. He talks about the Forum and the importance of social movements. He reads poetry to the Mission Robinson graduates, and laughs with them when he encounters the phrase “escuálidos espinos” because escuálidos is his name for the opposition. He tells personal anecdotes, he denies rumors of romantic entanglement with a television star (he is divorced from his wife, who apparently turned out to be an escuálida.)
But he always gets around to the point: the “socialism of the 21st century.” He is trying to do two things at once that are usually thought of as contradictory: strengthen the state as the main guarantor of economic stability, and strengthen democratic participation from below, through the promotion of local cooperative ownership, of neighborhood services run by residents, of strategies like “government in the street,” where National Assembly members go to their districts and attend mass meetings where residents give their suggestions and concerns. Most critics, on the left and the right, see the base work as superficial, or a ploy, but the people involved are definitely taking it seriously. Can you change things from above and below at the same time? Who knows? This is all too new to call.
PEOPLE ARE TALKING
Whatever else is going on here, debate and discussion are constant. Not between the opposition and the Chavistas—there's no evidence of meaningful communication between them, and they barely seem to live in the same country. But within “the process” itself, all sorts of discussion is happening all the time. Is this really a politics with a future? what about the corruption that still exists in the political parties and the police? is it socialism? do we want socialism? The intimacy of politics with lived reality for average people here is something we haven't seen in the US since the 30s, possibly, if ever. I've never seen it in my lifetime. I still wonder if I ever will.
January 27th : A Militant Barrio and a Chavez Rally
Today I took advantage of a press junket offered by the Venezuelan Ministry of Information to visit the parroquia (parish or precinct) of 23 de enero (23rd of January, the date of the 1958 popular uprising that toppling the last military dictatorship here). This city district has 200,000 people, most of whom are working class, and it is one of Chavez's first and most solid bases of popular support. The district is in the city's hilly southwest, where rows of enormous cement block apartment complexes, lined up along the winding streets, house most of the population.
The group of mostly alternative press journalists from Brazil, Colombia, and the US got a strange non-sequiturish introduction from Charlie Hardy, an owlish American from Wyoming who said he was a correspondent with Narco News. This is actually a pretty good muckraking journal about US and Latin American politics, but Charlie didn't seem as coherent as his journal. He mostly told us personal details, which were interesting, about coming to Venezuela in 1985 as a Maryknoll priest, and living for eight years in a casa de carton, the cardboard and tin slum houses of Caracas, made famous by a ‘70s Venezuelan protest song. Charlie has apparently been here ever since, after leaving the church and marrying. But as far as Venezuelan politics were concerned, he wasn't too helpful. He wasn't able to field a question about Chavez's purported censorship of the press, even though there's a specific case all over the news right now that even the Chavez-sympathetic website Venezuelanalysis.com says puts the President on dangerous ground constitutionally. (Anybody who really wants to fix their jones for Venezuela information should check out this website, www.venezuelanalysis.com, by the way.)
Charlie then pretty much disappeared for the rest of the tour, which he spent mostly in conversation with a couple of other rumpled, aging, white male US journalists, neither of whom seemed interested in the least in talking to the Venezuelans with whom we later met. It was doubtful if they were able to; I only heard one of them speak once in halting Spanish, and he spent most of the tour on his cellphone. As Rosalind Russell remarked disparagingly in that great newspaper movie His Girl Friday: “the gentlemen of the press.”
Our first stop in 23 de enero was the former police station and city precinct office, now called the Casa del Pueblo Popular. We were met by community activists who told us the site was entirely self-managed by residents now, including all of its bureaucratic functions like issuing marriage licenses and notarizing documents. And the cops, who are still notoriously corrupt, no longer have access to this station, nor do they patrol anywhere in the precinct, according to our guides. The community manages its own security as well, with neighborhood vigilance committees, and a special task force of women who focus on eliminating violence directed at women. Joaquin Guerra, one of the guides, said gallantly: “Women are our most precious resource here. It's only natural we do everything we can to protect them.”
The community began over 40 years ago as a land takeover by homeless people, and its residents have a history of militancy that long pre-dates Chavez. Many have been disappeared, killed or beaten by the police for their activism. Joaquin told us he lost most of his family that way during various periods of repression. Armando Cardivillas tells me that he and some of the other men fought in the Central American revolutionary wars, and most of them grew up in revolutionary families.
So 23 de enero has always taken care of itself, but of course Chavez's ascendancy has given the people here a boost. All the government social missions are in working here, and residents have gotten permanent legal title to their housing through a law passed by the Chavez government.
Beyond the date its name bears, another key date for the community is February 4th, 1992, the date of Chavez's attempted coup d'etat. The guides tell us he actually launched it from here, with active support from many residents. The main road out of the precinct leads straight past the Palacio Miraflores, the President's mansion. We could see it far below the windy Plaza de los Martyres, another stop on the tour, where a large mural displays the names and birth and death dates of several of the community's murdered militants.
We stopped briefly at a spanking new building housing a community center and FM radio station, Radio 23, but a Forum presentation by Basque radio activists was happening at the same time, so we were unable to speak to people there.
Some of the apartment complexes through which we strolled appeared to be much better maintained than others, common areas clean, garbage stowed, repairs done. Others have fading militant murals half-hidden by rotting heaps of trash in their back lots. Garbage collection is something of a disaster in Caracas , as even the casual visitor can see. Apparently the brother-in-law of a key Chavez ally, who used to be a corrupt cop but has somehow gotten the Bolivarian religion, owns the concession. So you may have the choice of stacking your trash neatly, but like as not no one will pick it up. Still a few bugs in the system, and historic corruption in the ranks is one of them.
Each apartment block has its own coordinating committee whose members are elected for two-year terms. Among them they also handle most maintenance issues—Armando tells us he is an electrician, and most of his work his done as part of the repair teams organized by the community.
We also visited an abandoned school that a youth group has taken over and turned into a Bolivarian youth center. Eduardo Sanchez, a member of this committee, whose grandmother was one of 23 de enero's founders, showed us around. The center, called Alexis Vive, is named for another community martyr, a more recent one, a young man who died during the failed coup against Chavez in 2002.
Eduardo tells us more in detail about security in the precinct. Even though with community policing the crime rate here is now among the lowest in the city and dropping, drug-trafficking and related violence is still a problem, particularly among youth. The center's philosophy is one of first trying to offer a number of services and activities to youth, to keep them involved with their community, but also of directly confronting known criminals with the people they affect, who are usually their neighbors, and trying to awaken their consciences. The absolute last resort, in cases of violent crime with weapons, is to call the police. The police have been part of the problem here, Eduardo tells us, mostly killing militants and trafficking in drugs themselves.
Finally we visit the Barrio Adentro health mission. This may be the most successful and appreciated of all the missions working in the poor neighborhoods. The missions are staffed by Cuban doctors who live and work in trademark two-story octagonal brick buildings that have popped up like mushrooms in Caracas ` poor neighborhoods. There is a daily clinic in the morning, and 24-hour emergency attention. The doctor in this particular neighborhood sees about 40 patients a day.
The doctor poked her head out the door, but absolutely refused to speak to us. This is official policy: none of the thousands of Cubans working in Venezuela is allowed to speak to the press. The rationale is that their statements could be used to show evidence of political manipulation, as in that they've come not to doctor but to in-doctri-nate. Absurd as that is, given Cuba´s record of exporting doctors to every corner of the Third World , socialist or not, some of the doctors obviously take it very seriously.
In the evening I went with a couple of fellow visitors from the States to a stadium rally with Chavez celebrating “The Anti-Imperialist Struggle of the Peoples.” It was called in honor of the participants in the World Social Forum. However, the vast majority of those present were Venezuelans, members of Chavez's loyal base. There may already be unease in the Forum with just how close to Chavez's red-shirted, state-sponsored revolution any organization without a defined political stance can afford to get.
The radio said the rally was at 5 pm, the WSF schedule said 7 pm, and it turned out both were right. We caught a bus to the stadium some time after five, and I saw a woman on it wearing an event security badge. I asked her what time the event started. Five pm, she said. “It's after 5:30 now, I said, will it already have begun?” “Oh no, not for a while yet, she replied.” Lewis Carroll would have appreciated that exchange.
I have to say the stadium was the first place I'd seen any kind of heavy security during the whole Forum. I realized it's going feel strange, in a day or so, to go back into all those metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and police lines that are such a part of daily life in our land of the free. And Latin America's old machismo gave me a perq--men and women were sent to separate lines at the entrance, and the women got in much quicker, no pat searches. I suppose it's just a fact of life that there are fewer potential assassins among women than men.
As more than 5,000 people filed in, there were stirring revolutionary songs performed, there was beautiful Venezuelan folk music with harp, guitar and cuatro, a distinctive Venezuelan combo. There were flags and banners everywhere, denouncing Mexico's Fox and Bush, celebrating the social movements, missions and delegations. The stadium filled up, although not to overflowing. The Cubans, who probably had the biggest international delegation, sat in a huge block all in red caps, fluttering Cuban flags. A sense of urgency and excitement built, from songs to chants, the ones we've been hearing like a refrain in every public gathering: “Ooh, ahh, Chavez no se va !” (Chavez isn´t leaving), and “ Alerta, alerta, alerta que camina, la espada de Bolívar por America Latina!” (Look out, Bolivar's sword is on the march in Latin America). Finally (just around seven...) Chavez was introduced like a rock star, and the crowd went wild. A series of special guests had filed onto the podium: Cindy Sheehan, Ricardo Alarcon, the Cuban foreign minister, Che Guevara's daughter, Richard Gott, Chavez' English biographer, and others: an impressive group, but they were window dressing. Everybody was there to hear Chavez.
But first, in an amazing moment, the band played the Internationale, and five thousand people stood and sang. They didn't raise fists, they joined hands, over their heads, beaming and swaying. It was really moving. I've never seen anything like it.
Chavez spoke for over two hours, without losing more than a tiny fraction of the crowd. As usual he started with Bolivar and the “unfinished” Latin American independence movements. He gave a short (30 minute) overview of 20th century imperialism. He called Bush by his pet name, Meester Danger, and he called Cindy Mrs. Hope. He called the US empire bloody and hypocritical (because at least the Romans admitted they were an empire, and didn't talk about spreading democracy.) He said Bush was the biggest terrorist in the world. No surprises there. He made the interesting point that representative democracy always ends up being a false democracy, a democracy of the elites, and it should disappear. What was needed was direct, participatory and “protagonistic” democracy. (Which made him sound just like an anarchist.)
I couldn't help wondering what Cindy Sheehan was thinking as she sat there in silence all night, amid the vivas for 19th century independence fighters she'd never heard of, the multiple loving references to Cuba and Fidel, the frequent allusions to socialism, even one to Marx, and all those red banners and flags and shirts. She doesn't seem like the most deeply politically aware person who's ever led an anti-war movement, although she has seemed perfectly comfortable with that key word, that necessary word, imperialism, which I've heard her use in a couple of interviews.
And I wonder what kind of shit she's going to catch in the US for all this. The vast majority of Americans may not have a clue what any of the symbols displayed and discussed in this rally mean, and most of them won't even know the Forum ever took place. But the right-wing's attack dogs know, and they care. And people are starting to be vaguely aware of Chavez in the US, thanks to the Bush administration's paranoia. Of course, if they live in the Northeast, they may also know that he's the guy who's giving their poor old people cheap heating oil this winter.
But Cindy's been pretty teflon to the right's attacks so far, and as the war just keeps getting worse, it's not likely to be her credibility that suffers...
Chavez said that when Bush lost all possibility of a Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement in Mar del Plata last year, the region had turned a corner, that there was no turning back, and now it was the reactionaries, the neo-liberals who were on the run. He promised to give the right “the biggest defeat it has ever seen in Latin America.”
It may be a little early to be optimistic, with the US right still on the attack at every turn, the liberals hopelessly compromised, value-free and morally bankrupt, and the left marginalized and demoralized. Congress is apparently going to consider a bill to fund the Venezuelan opposition early this year. The Bush administration could still pull a killer rabbit out of its bloody hat. And it gave me a chill when Chavez said “we are counting on you,” meaning the US anti-war movement, or progressive or anti-imperialist movement, or whatever he thinks we are.
I'm counting more on the fact that Chavez himself is widely seen as someone who fulfills his promises. And his batting average (the only baseball metaphor you're going to hear from me) is pretty good so far. Play ball!
January 28th : The Alternative Social Forum
In deference to the anarchists I know, I wanted to report on this forum, even though I had my reservations about it. They began when a friend of mine, who works for Granma International, the Cuban daily (and who, admittedly, worships Fidel somewhat more than Pat Robertson does Jesus) said she met one of the participants in (where else?) the vegetarian restaurant in our Caracas neighborhood. He was a 20-something from Tucson , who said he was here “to critique the Latin American social movements.” To which the only reply, from an old warhorse like her (or me) could be “don't you think you might need to experience them first?”
I became more interested in this forum after meeting some of the Latin American anarchists camped out at the youth center in 23 de enero). The young Venezuelans who ran the center were a very different tendency, “Marxist-Leninist Bolivarians” they told me. But everybody seemed to be getting along. The visitors were, like most of the young anarchists I have met, thoughtful, serious and committed, and what is the left without vehement and continual debate anyway?
In any case, the rationale for the Alternative Social Forum is entirely justified, particularly if you are an anarchist. They maintain that the World Social Forum has compromised itself by allowing itself to be hosted by the Venezuelan government, which calls itself revolutionary but does not in the least adhere to anarchist definitions of such.
But I am sorry to say that, after all that, I missed the whole thing. By the time I found the website with the schedule and locations that was on the posters sparsely scattered around town, it was too late. But if you want to know what happened, you can check out www.fsacontrapoder.org.ve, or google Foro Social Alternativo. There's information in English.
And I am honestly sorry to have missed the chance to hear John Holloway, who spoke to the FSA on Thursday. He has become a much-cited figure in the Latin American left for his well-reasoned proposals on the necessity of “changing the world without taking power.” He is an admirer of the Zapatista movement in Mexico and promotes it as a real alternative to state-driven political movements.
But the debate will go on. Whether Chavez is any more capable of instigating grassroots democracy than capitalism is of eliminating poverty is not answerable yet, in my mind, even if the anarchists have already made up theirs.
January 29th : The Forum Ends
It's the last day, a beautiful day, the best we've had here, rainwashed blue skies, sunshine, the light Sunday traffic that makes Caracas seem almost liveable. I'm actually going to miss playing toreador with the traffic, the smell of cigarette smoke in the metro, and cheap gasoline (15 cents a gallon!) on the streets, navigating the gaping holes in the broken pavement, the plastic roofed buhones (street stands) with their bootleg goods. I'm definitely going to miss arepas!
I think I've experienced the Forum as a kind of intermittent source of interest against the vivid background of Venezuela, rather than the other way around. If my anecdotal experience is a guide, at least half to two-thirds of the scheduled presentations either didn't take place or were moved to another location at the last minute, making a reporter's job next to impossible. And the Forum as an entity is so diffuse that it's difficult to report on. I wanted to cover a discussion on the future of the WSF that was to have been held today—but I couldn't find it.
The future of the Forum will be discussed, I'm sure, at least the future of the Americas Forum, which this is. After six years, the newness of the idea is wearing off, and there is a sense that events may be passing it by, as the impetus for meaningful change in Latin America is increasingly likely to come from progressive governments with broad support. At an earlier press conference I heard a Forum representative take some credit for that electoral trend, which may be a bit of a stretch, but the Forum has definitely been a powerful symbol of the broad support in Latin America for a change of direction.
The US delegations, in spite of a shaky start, generated a lot of attention and interest here, but again, much of that was actually channeled through the government and its media, and Forum merely provided the pretext for the US presence. There's a reason why more Americans came to this Forum than to any of the previous ones in Brazil, and it has to do with Venezuela 's special position in this historical moment. I think groups like Global Exchange, that came with the idea of providing solidarity to Venezuela, didn't fit so well with the country's vision of its role in the world, and its new-found power and voice, as the delegations of the US poor, and of course, Cindy Sheehan, who came to denounce the US to the world out of their own personal experience of its injustice, and to ask for help. After all, seven states in the US are now receiving Venezuelan aid, (in the form of discount-price heating oil) you might say. Chavez says “we are counting on you,” but he isn't waiting around for US fact-finding tours or aid caravans, or even inviting them to come.
I caught a little of Alo Presidente this afternoon, Chavez's now-legendary Sunday television show, and it kicked off with a salsa band doing a rousing musical version of Ooh, ahh, Chavez no se va that you couldn't not dance to. It's a Caribbean thing. I thought that maybe the Cuban revolution's survival and the Russian revolution's failure might have something to do with the presence or absence of good dance bands. Bread and circuses are both more nourishing here somehow. And there was Cindy Sheehan again, brought up onstage for a long accolade and a warm embrace by Chavez, who stood there in his red shirt with his arm around her as he talked about the “value of valiant women and mothers in the struggle.” I wonder how CNN is going to play that.
Meanwhile, planning for the first US Social Forum is underway, and different localities and regions are also looking at the idea of organizing fora, which might at best build towards a national event. Grassroots Global Justice is taking the lead on this, and has already tentatively set June 2007 for the date and Atlanta as the place.
You can find out more at www.ggjalliance.org.
That´s the last from me on this. I'll miss the closing ceremonies tonight, to be held out at the Polihédro, the stadium where Chavez gave his speech on Friday. I'm airport bound. But for all its chaos and uncertainty, viva el Foro Social Mundial! It does make another world feel possible, and at the best of times, already underway. It's time to go home now and see what life looks like, back across the border from the rest of the world.
BACK to top of page
BACK to What
If? Online |
