This report, written by Cde. Cristophe Simpson of the Jamaica Left Alliance for National Democracy and Socialism (LANDS), details his experiences during his Summer 2019 visit to Venezuela, as a guest of the 25th São Paulo Forum, hosted by the International People’s Assembly. Simpson’s first-hand account of the Bolivarian Revolution is rich with valuable insights, particularly regarding the Venezuelan masses and their relationship to the Bolivarian Revolution. Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution has successfully resisted Yankee imperialism for 23 years (and counting) and is a beacon of revolutionary optimism. Simpson’s report is long (some 65 pages), so we plan to publish it in the Red Clarion as a five-part series.
The full report (all five parts) can be found here.
Che Guevara Brigade (Notes)
These were notes that were written during the Che Guevara Brigade, sometimes in transit or when visiting a site.
August 8 – General Notes on the Situation in Venezuela
Venezuela is under a near-total blockade by the USA, similar to the one imposed on Cuba. This makes it difficult to do trade with any country, because most countries trade with the USA and need USD currency even when trading with other countries. The USA’s hegemonic status amplifies the effect of any sanctions that it decides to unilaterally impose, and we could discuss the former colonial powers (like the UK, France, etc.) in a similar fashion.
The blockade has forced Venezuela to hasten its economic independence, i.e. to be less reliant on trade. Domestic production is replacing imports; as this process of import substitution advances, the effects of hyperinflation will wither, and the Venezuelan people can overcome the blockade.
One could ask why Venezuela didn’t seek economic independence earlier or why they didn’t diversify their economy, but things are more complicated, and I will address that separately. In those notes, I will try to talk about the difficulties around diversifying the economy, the attitude of economists towards the issue of food sovereignty, and the recent issue with the currency controls.
Venezuela is facing a similar situation to Cuba, but the dynamics of their internal politics differ greatly. Right now, Venezuela needs a strong government to accelerate the transformation to a self-reliant economy. This is not a critique of how much power Maduro has in national politics; he is the legitimate president and the reality on the ground doesn’t dispute this. Even those who dislike Maduro can’t deny that he is still the President. He has as much power as any other head of government and as much recognition as any other head of state. The political situation that I am trying to describe has nothing to do with the presidency.
The Bolivarian Revolution (as well as support for the government and Maduro) is upheld by a broad alliance of parties, movements, unions, communes, and collectives. The Left here is broad and popular, but its decentralised nature and the impotent ‘Democratic Socialist’ tendency of the ruling party prevent power from being consolidated in a fashion similar to the consolidation that we see in Cuba. There isn’t a Socialist dictatorship in Venezuela, but some people feel that there needs to be one.
August 13 – Alina Foods
Happy Birthday, Fidel.
We are visiting the “Alina Foods” factory. A collective of workers have been in control of the factory for 4 years, i.e. since 2015. The operations at the factory were halted by the foreign owners, so the workers seized control. They sold the leftover potatoes and got a loan from a state-owned bank to raise funds to continue operations.
They produce snacks from potatoes, plantains (not bananas), and cassava. They used bacon in the past but stopped because it was being imported. There are 63 workers, and they say that production is profitable. There were 150 workers, but the blockade has hindered things.
The opposition gained control of the state of Mérida and tried to intimidate the workers to leave the site. Workers sometimes had to guard the property themselves.
The government is giving them the necessary paperwork/documents in official recognition of their control of the place; they are already registered as a social enterprise. They are rebranding because the old owners were the ones who used the name and logo of “Alina Foods” – they are also redesigning the packaging of the snacks.
Workers have invented machine parts to create new products; one example was a cutter that creates a special type of potato chips that go well with hot dogs.
Revenue is around 6000 USD per month; this is used for wages, maintenance, and raw materials for production. After wages are paid, all revenue is reinvested in the production cycle. The factory currently operates well below its maximum capacity, largely due to the economic difficulties caused by the blockade, but production is still growing, and operations continue.
August 14 – Notes from the Border Regions
The only place I’ve seen long lines for fuel are in the border regions with Colombia. There is a lot of vehicular traffic in Caracas but no long lines for gas as far as I’ve seen, and I frequented everywhere between Petare and Catia. There are many places with food, both fresh produce and cooked meals, and without long lines.
The long lines in the border regions are due to the fact that fuel is ridiculously cheap here compared to Colombia, so a lot of fuel is bought, smuggled to Colombia, and then sold there where it is far more expensive. In addition to what I’ve seen with my own eyes about fuel, I’ve read about a similar issue with food, i.e. it is smuggled across the border because it is cheap/easy to get here while being expensive in Colombia; according to Western sources like The Guardian and Reuters, about 40% of food and medicine from Venezuela was being smuggled into other countries from as early as 2014 and was documented by another Western source as still being a significant issue in 2016.
On another note, I was communicating with my Comrades back home in Jamaica last night when I had some internet connectivity. I discussed some things that I learned about community-based production and CLAP. I learned about some of this in February, but I got a deeper understanding and more details now. Witnessing social enterprises here has softened my stance towards the “social entrepreneurship” concept pushed by Dr. K’nife and others.
I’ve also now deemed it lazy and very irresponsible to publish raw statistics on public/private sector ratios in the economy because co-operatives and community-based operations are technically considered to be privates sector in this dichotomy since they are not owned or controlled by the state, but they are not Capitalist in principle and therefore should not be lumped with the Capitalist private sector.
It is critical to be more careful, especially when discussing production, because much of the bourgeoisie here in Venezuela are lazy merchants who don’t produce anything; they import and resell commodities to accumulate capital for themselves while facilitating the depletion of national capital, i.e. they retain small percentages of the large amounts of money that leave the country to buy foreign-produced goods.
There is no real national bourgeoisie here, in Venezuela; a national bourgeoisie must be productive and able to increase national capital. I’ve been told that the bourgeoisie here hasn’t even invested in oil; oil production has been done by the state (even before the Bolivarian Revolution) and foreign investors.
A national alliance (in the way theorised by Walter Rodney, Amilcar Cabral, or Chairman Mao) is not feasible here, in Venezuela. The bourgeoisie here is disposable, and there is more than enough fuel to cremate them or land to bury them (they can be given the choice). However, making moves against them is difficult:
- Firstly, Venezuela is the most scrutinised country in the world by Western media.
- Secondly, hostility to a powerful class with capital allows them to be a door for US intervention (as many of them already are).
But yes, we must be more careful in how we discuss the economy here. The economy is still largely Capitalist; Socialism definitely hasn’t been accomplished on a national scale yet, but it is being built.
What some persons lazily lump together and refer to the private sector includes:
- foreign investors
- the service sector (tourism, finance, telecommunications)
- big retailers/outlets (large-scale commerce)
- Capitalist producers
- Capitalist landowners
- campesinos/farmers (individual/family scale)
- small retailers/shops (individual/family scale in communities)
- collectives and communes
The ‘big Capitalists’ surely have a larger share of wealth, but the statistics on other groups are important as well. More careful analysis needs to be done than talking about a public/private sector dichotomy. A couple that operates a small shop in Petare cannot be in the same category as executives in telecommunications companies; both are private sector in a strict sense, and the operators of the small shop are trying to accumulate some capital through retail, but the operators of the small shop do not exploit labour and aren’t a part of some oligarchy. A commune that produces enough food for both self-reliance and commerce can’t be lumped with a private farm that exploits labour to produce food for profit.
Lastly, an anecdote about social enterprise to be mentioned better later: these entities don’t identify themselves as businesses (some don’t even identify themselves as enterprises), and they don’t operate for profit. Money from their small-scale operations is used to develop spaces where they provide education and other social services for free. I will elaborate on such an example with my notes on the Otro Beta movement.
August 14 – The Jesus Romero Anselmi Commune
As we visited the Jesus Romero Anselmi Commune, I no longer felt as if I was in a foreign country; most of the people here are Black. This place doesn’t look like the government did anything to develop it, but they still had Chavista signs, banners, posters, etc. – I only say this to dispel the myth that people’s support for the Bolivarian Revolution is based on poor people depending on the state for welfare. The people in this commune are self-identified Leftists; they were playing music and chanting at the imminent downfall of Macri in Argentina, and they sang along with all the Socialist chants and songs that we used in the brigade, because they knew them before. The names they use in Spanish, here and in other communes, are “Comuna Socialista…” and then their specific names; they identify specifically as Socialist communes.
The commune didn’t solely focus on agriculture; a commune is sometimes mistakenly thought of as some primitivist concept where farmers live in a collective. They produce good-quality clothing that is used by both the people in the commune and traded outside to earn money for the commune. I bought 2 dresses for a baby that was recently born in my household in Jamaica.
The municipality that we are in has 12 communes and 98 communal councils. This commune is in a cooperative with other communes; we will visit another commune in the same cooperative today. Over 2000 persons live in this commune. Over 440 hectares of land are controlled by this commune. The houses here are small flats, somewhat bigger than the 2-bedroom houses being built in many housing schemes in Jamaica. The houses seem to each have 2 bathrooms, and they also have a covered laundry area; the generic 2-bedroom model in Jamaica has only 1 bathroom and the washing area is outdoors. The yard space here is much bigger; houses are built further apart, and there are no fences or walls needed to mark boundaries.
The lands surrounding the main residential area have a lot of crops, including yucca, corn, and other things. I saw the largest passion fruit fields that I have ever seen in my life; I’ve never seen passion fruit production on such a scale before. There is a dense forested area that separates the agricultural fields from a nearby river that the residents visit and use sometimes.
August 14 – The Che Guevara Commune (Day 1)
The Che Guevara Commune takes up 25% of the land in the municipality that it is located in. It also has climate diversity, in that its lowest point is 150m above sea level (where it is warm) and the highest is ~4200m above sea level (it is cold here). It has more than 1300 families or ~3500 people living in it.
This commune is so large that it has 13 zones, each with its own communal council; 7 of these produce cocoa and 6 produce coffee. Their production is based on their climate. There is a complex including a processing plant and a greenhouse; the complex is under joint control of all the communal councils. Coffee and cocoa are produced for commerce while many other things are produced for food/subsistence. The processing plant is clean, well-maintained, and has modern machinery. A lot of chocolate is produced at the plant, and there is a sales office.
I spoke to a Venezuelan Comrade about how communal councils are elected and how they function; in each locality, members of communal councils are elected to specific positions or portfolios. For example, if there is a Culture portfolio, someone is elected to that; the person who comes 2nd for each council position serves as a deputy or substitute. The Comrade was elected to the Communications position in one of the communal councils in Petare. In the council that he is in, there are 5 positions for Finance (and therefore 5 deputies/substitutes).
Communal council elections are a standardised process nationwide; each council is elected every 2 years. Some communities have more positions than others; they create positions based on their needs, so a communal council may have a position for management of water, management of pests, or something specific to a community that isn’t in all communities.
August 15 – The Che Guevara Commune (Day 2)
The commune has a communal bank with its own digital currency and own app to circumvent the blockade and the USD.
The commune gives loans to its members in coffee; people ‘borrow’ coffee from the commune in weight, sell the coffee outside of the commune for cash to do whatever they want/need to do, then repay the ‘loan’ in coffee.
The commune has a relationship with Proinpa Foods (an industrial producer that we visited; I didn’t write notes on them during the visit).
Apart from crops, the commune also raises livestock for subsistence.
We left Mérida and headed to Lara.
August 15 – Nueva Esperanza Apartments
We visited an apartment complex called “Nueva Esperanza” in Carora, Lara – it is being built and developed by the “Pobladores” movement. The same movement seized a building in Caracas and turned it into a school.
Each building in the complex is an L-shape with 16 apartments; each apartment has 3 bedrooms and bathrooms. Each building also has an accessible roof with a covered area a bit bigger than the stairwell, and large uncovered areas. There are 4 buildings (i.e. 64 apartments) so far. Each pair of the L-shaped buildings is organised in a way that leaves a quadrangle for recreational space (including communal events).
Every family pays a maintenance fee of 300 Bs.S. The fee is very small, considering that 1 USD is about 13,000 Bs.S, so 300 Bs.S is like 0.02 USD. Even in February when 1 USD was 3,300 Bs.S, 300 Bs.S would have been 0.09 USD.
The complex falls under a communal council that is also responsible for some nearby areas, but they also have their own committees within the complex for production, organisation, planification, finance, formation, and communication.
There is a building that was being used for food and social services but is now used for administration (the office of the auditor, a warehouse) and a doctor’s office. The doctor’s office can be used/visited by persons who don’t live in the complex.
The complex is being expanded; the existing 4 buildings and 2 squares comprise 1 ‘terrace’ and 2 more terraces are being built for a total of 12 buildings (that would be 192 apartments, a total of 576 bedrooms). 110 families want to live in the complex. A family must do 60 hours of community service to earn an apartment.
The movement buys materials (cement and steel) from the government, and the government delivers the materials, but the residents and the members of the movement do most of the labour themselves. Many of the residents are elderly or at least middle-aged, so some of the labour is done by workers who are hired from the outside. Guarimbas (violent persons on the fringes of the opposition) try to attack the project and residents, so they set up a watch in the nights.
Children and their parents befriended me and a handful of other Comrades; I interacted with them a lot, and I also spent some time interacting with some of the construction workers, both the ones who live there and the ones who were hired from the outside.
August 17 – Alfareros del Gres
Workers seized control of the operations of this brick factory in 2012; it was operated by Spanish investors before that. The factory has been in operation non-stop since the workers took control, i.e. they have never needed to shut down production on a workday due to lack of supplies or a dispute or something like that. Workers’ control is recognised through their registration as a social enterprise, but they are going further by seeking total ownership instead of only control.
This is a large-scale industrial operation, though only 60 persons work here; a lot of the production processes are automated. The factory, as is, produces 190,000 bricks per month. They will also begin producing tiles. The workers that we’ve seen seem content. The factory doesn’t feel hot, despite the heavy machinery and this being one of the hotter parts of Venezuela. There are specific parts of the factory that are hot, but those places have the most automation (we don’t see any workers staying there, only passing by).
August 17 – A Refitted Brewery
We visited a factory that was once a brewery that produced beer. The owners tried to halt operations (which would cause the workers to lose their jobs), so the workers seized control and dismissed the owners in 2013. 62 workers work at the factory. Before seizing control, they had to work 12 hours per day. After seizing control, all workers’ shifts are now only 6 hours per day.
Instead of beer, they now produce flour, animal feed, and water; beer production required the input and processing of a lot of grain and water, so a lot of the old equipment was easily repurposed to produce flour, animal feed, and water.
The sale of animal feed is the main source of their revenue, while they truck water to communes and public facilities, even in other states. There is a lot of Communist imagery at the site.
August 18 – Arrival in Maizal
When I imagined communes, I imagined a homestead and a few houses or a small compound surrounded by some farmland, something like the size of a high school in Jamaica. La Comuna Maizal is the 3rd commune that I have visited; all 3 are huge areas. You can’t stay from 1 building and see everyone and everything and the people don’t all live in some compound.
These are communal spaces, but people have their own houses and yards. Some houses in the other communes are in clusters or rows like housing schemes or ‘normal’ neighbourhoods, but some are far apart like a typical rural setting. This commune doesn’t have housing; the members of the commune live in other neighbourhoods among non-members, but convene at the communal grounds for work, production, meetings, cultural activities, and other things.
August 20 – The Maizal Commune (Day 1)
Having arrived in the night, we could barely see the surrounding areas of the place we slept in. In the morning, we could see pigs, corn, cows, etc. – all the food that was eaten for dinner and breakfast are produced here by the commune.
The point of all these anecdotes isn’t to paint some romantic/feel-good sense, but rather to show that communal life is neither some Anarcho-Primitivist nonsense nor the abolition of certain personal comforts like living spaces and privacy.
We visited a ‘cultivation house’ which is a large complex with over a dozen large greenhouses, with space between them. At the time, they were trying an experiment with rice in the spaces outside between the greenhouses. The place that we stayed is not “El Maizal” – it is not their main territory, and neither is this place that has the greenhouses and the rice experiment.
The territory of the Jesus Romero Commune is more consolidated; the territory of the Maizal commune is split among different communal properties. The importance of noting this is to remind ourselves that we don’t need contiguous properties for projects or territory if we want to build a productive commune; a commune doesn’t need to begin as a single do-all physical site.
We later visited the main complex that the commune controls, the gigantic complex that they call ‘El Maizal’ – it has some workshops and factories surrounded by large crop fields. They have a gas distribution plant where 80 persons work. We visited a corn packing plant immediately after, where the shells are removed from corn and then the corn is packed into large bags. The trash from the shells is used as pig feed; the commune has a pig farm at another site. At this main site, they recently built a factory to produce corn flour; they currently have a single machine with 750hp that can produce 720 tons of flour per month (working 10 hours per day, 6 days per week).
August 21 – The Maizal Commune (Day 2)
We visited a pig farm that is one of the production sites owned and operated by the commune. 29 workers work here, producing ~4000 tons of pork per month. The workers get paid much more than minimum wage and are entitled to free lunch on workdays.
This was the last day of our stay in Lara. We headed to another state for 2 days of rest before we headed back to Caracas to reconvene.
Post-Notes
These are notes written after the Che Guevara Brigade; some things may be about encounters that took place during the Che Guevara Brigade, but they were not written until after it ended.
Invitations
I’ve been invited to visit and stay in multiple countries, though I’m not sure if I can. Comrades from Colombia were the most insistent with their invitation; one is from a movement that focuses on Afro-Colombian struggles, and she suggested that I visit the far North of Colombia where many Afro-Colombian people live. A Comrade from Argentina said that I should visit Argentina and that he would host me in his home.
Venezuelan Comrades and other persons I met insisted that I visit Venezuela again, and promised accommodation; I took their invitations seriously because they have hosted me already so I know that they can and would. I was hosted by Comrades in Petare, I was offered some help with accommodation from a Comrade in Caracas, and I was hosted by a family in Carora22. I was told by very specific persons that I have homes in Venezuela. I hope that I can return with other Comrades from the Caribbean to show them what I saw.
In the future, I hope that other Comrades from LANDS can form delegations to have these experiences, whether with me or instead of me. I am grateful for the bonds that I have built with people that I have met, but I want to eventually have a less central role in the face and image of the organisation, and I want the organisation’s relationship with other organisations to be less dependent on my personal relationships with other people.
Medication
I had taken some medication with me for the entire trip in general but for the Brigade especially, because it is guaranteed that persons will feel ill at some points. I brought some medication for headaches, diarrhoea, and vomiting; I didn’t need all of these things, but they became useful to my other Comrades. I also bought some sinus medication, but it ran out before the Brigade started, so I had to stop in a pharmacy to get more.
Hearing of medicine shortages in the media, you would think that a pharmacy’s shelves are empty or that there is less variety, especially in a pharmacy outside of Caracas. On the contrary, compared to Jamaica, the pharmacy a wider variety of over-the-counter drugs for simple things like sinusitis, and the prices were also ridiculously cheap. I was pleased. I could have waited until I had arrived in Venezuela before I bought medication.
Encounter with an Eco-Socialist
I met a Comrade who wore an Eco-Socialist shirt, and I was pleased to see it. I told her that I’ve gotten into arguments with dogmatic Westerners who say that Eco-Socialism doesn’t need to be a distinct tendency with its own name because Socialism is already environmentalist; this would be the same as saying that Marxism-Leninism doesn’t need its own name because Marxism is already inherently in favour of national liberation and anti-imperialism, a claim which would ignore the reality that many Marxists in the early 20th century were not concerned with those things.
The necessity of some sort of climate austerity and the understanding that we have to put limits on our growth goes beyond rejecting Capitalism’s infinite growth; one can reject Capitalism’s model of infinite growth without understanding that there needs to be an active effort towards degrowth of the economy that already exists. Eco-Socialism also has to be internationalist, to ensure that climate austerity is adopted where it is most needed, rather than forced on the already-marginalised people in the countries in the Third World.
Removing Populism from Socialism
Venezuelan Comrades told me that they are getting accustomed to some things during the crisis, and some of these things are normal in other countries that aren’t said to be having crises. For example, they eat less now than they did before the crisis, but they still eat more than anyone in my family. One admitted to me that they also use a lot of energy without much regard for wastage; you’ll see air conditioning in the poorest areas, something that was shocking for me as a Jamaican, and persons will have windows open while the air conditioning is on, because the price of fuel and electricity are ridiculously cheap there. Cuba, compared to Venezuela, is much more austere with energy use. Venezuelans were openly self-critical about these things, and some felt that the government made things too easy in an unsustainable way; they never had to think much about sustainability before, but they’re doing it now. This is not an indictment of the government, as they were simply pleasing the people. They will emerge from the blockade stronger than before.
Visit to Cultural Centre
The bus that we were using on our first day of the Brigade was not fit to take us for the entire journey, so we stopped at a cultural centre in small town in the state of Cojedes to wait for new buses to come so that we could change. The cultural centre was amazing; there was a lot of open space. I went in to use the restroom, and I had passed a classroom filled with young people who seemed to be practising for a theatre event, and a large open area filled with some other people practising dancing. The place was very clean, and I wish we had things like this in Jamaica; a lot of persons are interested in the arts.
Tauty TV
We visited Tatuy TV, a media house in Mérida. The persons who work here are not full-time journalists; they are all workers from other places, i.e. they have other jobs and they do the media work for Tatuy TV voluntarily.
The way that Tatuy TV operates is very different from the tendency that we see among the Left in the West, where activists or opinionated persons try to become career journalists in pursuit of attention/fame or an income. From watching Tatuy TV’s content, you don’t really see the faces of whoever is behind the work as they are not trying to become mini celebrities; at most, you will see long lists of credits. In the West, everyone wants to have their own blog or podcast, to build a sort of brand for their unchecked personal opinions; things become more about the personalities, preferences, and egos of the individuals involved in content creation, rather than the point or mission of the content itself.
Tatuy TV’s content is intended to educate and agitate. Some Comrades and I have some issues with some of their content, but we get where they are coming from, and we freely discuss these things with them, and they get what standpoint we are coming from. We (Comrades in the brigade and I) were impressed by what we saw, we built friendships with some of the Comrades from the organisation, and some of us did a lot of small activities with them separate from the main activities in the brigade.
Going forward, Tatuy TV and LANDS may have a working relationship, as they indicated interest in that. This will of course mean that we need to strengthen our Communications portfolio, and to prepare as well to develop Education as its own portfolio in the Secretariat.
Visit to Community Centre (Merida)
We visited a community centre in Mérida that was somewhat similar to the one in Petare, but it was not operated by the ‘Somos Otro Beta” movement. The building was at the corner of the block across from a park, and it had 3 floors. This area of Mérida seemed to be quiet.
The ground floor had a library and a bakery; the revenue from the bakery is likely used to fund other things at the centre. Some of us worked in there for the day, making arepas for dinner later in the night.
The floor above the ground floor had some bookshelves, a meeting area, and some offices; some activists operate a radio programme from there as well. Before arriving at the building, we were told that it’s a space that a lot of clubs and social movements use to do their work.
The top floor had an office, a kitchen, and a large balcony area. When we arrived, there were some teenagers participating in a rap battle, with many others spectating. We could see a lot of persons entering and leaving while we were there.
The main difference between this place and the one in Petare is that the one in Petare seems to focus a lot more on offering services; they have education, in that they offer multiple classes that attendees can materially benefit from, and they also have a clinic. This place in Mérida seemed to be a general community space, though nonetheless a valuable one.
We need community spaces like this in Jamaica, whether or not they will offer classes and skills training like the one in Petare. In both urban and rural areas, we could use more communal spaces for people, especially youth, to come together. In urban areas in Jamaica, there aren’t enough social spaces, so many inner-city youth convene on the street corner unless their community has a sports field; youth who aren’t wealthy are considered to be idling or loitering when they convene somewhere like a library or public space, as they are often considered to be wasting their time if they’re even at an internet café. In rural areas, people live far apart, and it would still be useful to have hubs for social activities. Petit-bourgeois youth may convene in green spaces in gated communities, or entertainment venues like restaurants and cafés; there aren’t enough developed and well-maintained public green spaces for youth to access otherwise. It would be important for youth to have spaces that they feel that they own and belong to, especially if there are scheduled activities or specialised areas for them to study, have meetings, share ideas, socialise, play, produce works of art, engage in skills training/practice, hold simple events, etc.
Visit to a Recreational Center
We visited a large recreational centre in Mérida, and we were told that there are several of them around the country. After this visit, I saw one in Barquisimeto in Lara and in another city and state that I don’t remember. The one we visited is a large cubic building with colourful external walls and 5 floors, and the 2 others that I saw looked the same from the outside.
When we entered, the ground floor has a front desk and a large playground. There were a lot of children playing when I got there, but they were leaving by the time that I got the chance to take some pictures; I had to attend 2 activities and a tour of the building. The tour started from the top:
- On the top of the building, there was a big basketball court with covering and a good quantity of seating. There were large translucent surfaces on all sides, so we could look out and see the city and surrounding neighbourhoods.
- On the top floor below the basketball court, there was a large area for fencing and a decent-sized area for table tennis; the fencing area had lockers and several lanes for fencing, while the table tennis area had 5 tables. Fencing equipment was freely available for anyone to borrow and use.
- On the floor below that, there was a boxing gym and another room that I’m not sure what it’s used for. The boxing gym had 2 boxing rings and some training equipment like punching bags. The other large room had some mats, lockers, tyres, and some mirrors; it’s possible that it’s a multi-purpose room as I can imagine it being used for yoga or for training for some types of sports.
- On the middle floor, there was a massive gym with well-maintained equipment. I was told that they were bought 5 years ago and that they’re expensive. Many persons were using it at the time that we visited, including what seemed to be a football team doing some fitness training. This gym was better than any expensive private gym that I have seen in Jamaica.
- On the floor just above the ground floor27, there was an auditorium where we held a meeting, some stands for social enterprises to display their products, some studios for community media initiatives. and restrooms.
- I went to the ground floor on my own to take pictures of the playground; it is bigger and has more things than any playground that I have ever visited before.
Access to this facility is free. When I told persons how much a gym membership costs in Jamaica, they looked at me as if I had committed a crime; the crime is Capitalism, but I am not the one committing it.
Visit to Pico Bolivar
We went to Pico Bolívar by cable cars. A Comrade took the opportunity to discuss Venezuela’s potential for tourism. Being from Jamaica, I took the opportunity to discuss some of the negative sides of Tourism with him. I said that we need to be careful and that we should avoid falling into some of the same traps that Caribbean islands have, where underpaid workers are used to keep prices low for entitled white foreigners who visit the country to get treated like gods who need to be pampered. I definitely saw Venezuela’s potential for eco-tourism and I also gave some ideas for cultural tourism; these forms of tourism depart from the colonial all-inclusive resort model, making it easier to avoid some negative things, but they are still not immune.
Somos Otro Beta in Quibor
We spent 2 days in the town of Quíbor in Lara with the Somos Otro Beta movement and visited 2 places that they operated. My Comrade from Petare, who introduced me to the movement during my first trip to Venezuela in February, explained to me that Somos Otro Beta isn’t a single movement, but rather a collaboration of multiple movements and organisations; the Comrades who led the Somos Otro Beta operations in Quíbor were also from the October 7 Collective, another organisation that operated in that city. I was too busy at the time to write any notes, but I remembered enough to include this in the post-notes.
They had taken control of a large building that was used as a public library before the local government abandoned it. The movement negotiated with the government for official control of the building so they could transform it into a community centre like the one in Petare. They had promised to maintain the library while doing other projects like the movement does in other places.
There is enough outdoor space to be used for cultivation, and there is some paved space that can be used for some sports. The space indoors is enough to fit an auditorium, a kitchen, a cafeteria, several classrooms, some offices, and activity-specific zones/areas/rooms. The movement already plotted out a floor plan for how they intend to use the space. They will need to make some repairs to the roof and install some plumbing fixtures, but the place is surely promising.
They also operate a bakery. There is a decree in the bakery, made by the October 7 Collective, that says that no individual is allowed to buy more than 4 loaves of bread per day. This suggested that the area had been struggling with food hoarding as well; they produce more than enough for everyone, but a handful of persons could together buy everything and hoard it if there was no regulation enforced.
Considerations with Diversifying the Economy
Many wannabe economists love to give a simplistic comment that some countries simply need to ‘diversify their economy’ to be better off; it has become an annoying platitude. It is true that a country is better off avoiding dependence on trade of a high-value product, but it is not that easy or simple to diversify the economy of a country with a high-value product. The Venezuelan government is trying nonetheless, and we are not saying that they shouldn’t; the main point here is that things are not that simple or easy.
Neoliberalism pressures countries towards specialisation and dependence on trade. By eroding barriers to trade that may actually be useful in protecting certain sectors of the economy, important sectors can become risky investments because of unbeatable competition from trade, or prices for domestic goods being impacted by international market dynamics.
Capital is coercive; it’s what forces farmers in many countries to prefer producing cash crops rather than focusing on food, and this is a legacy of colonialism. The economies of Third World countries have been organised around the needs and wants of consumers in the West. If an entitled European consumer is willing to pay more money for a cigar or some sugar than the average worker in Cuba or the Dominican Republic is able to pay for corn, that is pressure to produce tobacco or sugar instead of corn. The market is the language of daily life, and the people and interests with more money are the ones who are more heard. This is not something that the governments of either Cuba or Venezuela can control; they exist in a larger global economy that is Capitalist and that doesn’t care for the people or the goals of their governments.
Another problem is what neoliberal economists themselves call ‘Dutch Disease’ as explained by both the IMF and The Economist, where the export or even mere discovery of a high-value resource leads simultaneously to economic growth and increased demand for the exporting country’s currency, leading to higher domestic prices and strengthened currency; they coined this term specifically in reference to oil-rich countries.
It becomes difficult for such a country to export agricultural produce for competitive prices, because what’s cheap in its own currency is expensive for others, and dropping prices is not an easy option when costs/prices of inputs are rising domestically. It becomes easier for the consumers in such a country to buy imported food than to buy locally-produced food, so the business and workers from agriculture and other sectors suffer.
To make things easier for domestic producers, an oil-rich country could ensure its domestic prices of fuel are much lower than it sells things for to foreign countries; the thing is that Venezuela already does this, having fuel so cheap33 that I’ve been told that the price of a bottle of water is the same price as filling dozens of trucks with fuel; one consequence of this is that cheap oil/fuel is smuggled out of the country into neighbouring Colombia34, allowing a black market to boom. On the inverse, rising the domestic prices of oil to be closer to international prices would upset the people and exacerbate the damage done by Dutch Disease, simply by increasing domestic production costs35, as well as household expenses and therefore labour costs.
Of course, one does not need to think about all these things before simply saying the words “X country just needs to diversify its economy” – they just need to open their mouths and repeat a single phrase they came across once or twice as if they are cheap parrots, without doing any investigation or analysis of why the economy hasn’t been diversified or what factors impact the ability to diversify an economy.
