The building was squatted one year ago, and apparently there seems to be quite a few central squatted buildings, but no network exists between them to serve you with more facts. This one has been flourishing ever since it was taken over. In this building people live, eat, make political and cultural meetings and most of the campaigns the president has set off are functioning there. El proceso, the process, as the revolution is popularly called is at work there.

The proclaimed Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is a revolution made up of parallels. To win elections is not the same as to take state power and in Venezuela opposition still holds many posts in the various departments, state owned companies and media, and control much of the economy. The over cumbersome bureaucracy within the government although not partisan, is slowing down the process as they go on doing the way they always did, and they have not received an education in new Bolivarian public management.

In fact a new Bolivarian Public Management School doesn't exist. Leaders of the revolution; governors, mayors, ministers, officials, bureaucrats, members of parliaments are persons that should be executing the paragraphs in the constitution and making them real, planning and organizing the process, guaranteeing that the objectives are met but for various reasons it doesn't seem to be working as smoothly as it should. Together they constitute a thick middle layer in society making change hard. The president's answer to that has been parallelism - a political strategy not yet labelled. Parallelism is being practiced by the president as well as on a grassroots level - the people.

An important part of what is actually being won in the process is created through parallels. If the health sector in the country is not willing to serve poor people - the president creates a parallel, brings in hundreds of Cuban doctors and lets them work.

If the educational sector is working poorly and apparently has not been fighting illiteracy - he creates a parallel, develops education programs and makes the communities responsible for their functioning.

If the shops are not selling affordable food - he creates a parallel, creates subsidised shops, and if people are still going hungry - he creates another parallel, provide food and make the communities responsible for cooking and sharing the meals.

And the parallels are working - soon illiteracy will be exterminated. The left-wing theory of creating parallel powers to break down and end the old order is here taken to new breathtaking heights.

President Chavez is not only creating a parallel bank, health and education programs, and a parallel to the CNN - Telesur. There is even a very popular soap opera, Amores de Barrio Adentro (which is the same name as the health program), about love over class boundaries set in the political Venezuelan atmosphere - as a parallel to other soaps.

In the squatted building on the parallel street to the presidential palace, the community run revolution is effective. "Here we have mission Robinson and mission Ribas, people come here to learn how to read and write, we coordinate the Cuban doctors and we provide food for poor people. We also have Bolivarian Circles, popular education and cultural activities, like the theatre you saw. I am an educator, and give courses on cooperatives. But we don't want anything to do with political parties."

The man who shows me around in the community centre underlines that they are not political. On the walls there are several Che Guevara posters, Arafat's face with a message of a free Palestine, Bolivar the liberator, and Chavez, of course. I smile and repeat: so you're not political and nod at Che. "We are not political because we don't like political parties", he insists.

After the “No” victory in the 2004 referendum Chavez proposed that all campaign activists should become social activists. The people in the occupied house have successfully taken on that transformation. "In many places it has not worked, the electoral units have ceased to exist, but here we work even harder" the man tells me. Some time ago the squatted house faced a possible eviction. The municipality wanted to do something else with the house. "We called for a big assembly, to talk about the situation and decided to fight to stay, and until now we are here, making the revolution", he says with pride.

The various parallels launched by the president are all dressed in either a military language or named after historic personalities from important moments in liberation struggle. You could divide them into two main fields: electoral campaigns and social transformation movements.

To win all elections he has had to trust the base. He set up parallel actions to guarantee the votes from all those supporting the process, but not being touched by traditional campaigns or possibly facing harassments for being chavistas. The outcome has been a great success every time and for the 2006 presidential election Chavez has set up the goal of 10 million votes.

The social missions, misíones, could be divided into four main areas: education, vocational training, health, and nutrition. Misíon Robinson is for basic education and is the weapon to erase illiteracy in the country. Misíon Ribas prepares high school students for university education. Misíon Vuelvan Caras is to train workers and prepare them for future employment. Misión Barrio Adentro has taken in Cuban doctors to serve in small community built clinics in the barrios, the Venezuelan word for slums. Misíon Milagro (miracle) performs operations on patients with cataract and glaucoma and makes people see again. Misión Mercal is the name for the subsidized food shops you find all over the country. Another food program provides free food to barrios, community members prepare it and give one cooked meal a day to children, single mothers, pregnant women, elderly people etc.

All the missions are run by communities. They organize the set up of the clinics, the education halls, recruit voluntary teachers, make schedules and solve thousands of problems that come up. They do it on voluntary basis and they reach out to many. The health program, Barrio Adentro I, was launched in April 2003 and has already passed over 100 million consultations. People who have never seen a doctor in their entire life before has now had multiple encounters.

The parallels and their effects are an important reason for the massive popular support of the process. Interviewing a community activist in the legendary neighborhood 23 de Enero, I ask what he thinks makes the process important: "The process has dignified people and given us an opportunity to express what we think, without being ashamed of ourselves. The Bolivarian revolution has also succeeded in mobilizing people, and making us feel that this process is ours, we are co-responsible for it. If it doesn't work I am responsible for that failure too. And we are included in education and health programs."

People here know repression and exclusion; they have lived it on a daily basis since the squatting of the newly built colorful modern blocks on January 23rd 1958, the day the dictator, Perez Jimenez, was overthrown. That was a time of mobilization and popular democratic aspirations, until the people were betrayed and the neighborhood repressed. This time there has been no treason.

On my way down from 23 de Enero I see a slogan, written big in red and black on a wall: Al pasado no regresaremos jamás! We will never return to the past! This seems to be very well rooted in people's minds. They know things have changed, and to the better, that is why they are the ones making the revolution real, but not without criticism.

The opposition in Venezuela is called escualidos, and that term has been generalized to be used against anyone making the process difficult. People want the elected politicians, mayors, governors and officials to work properly for a common good and too often they see things work in the bad old way, with corruption, positioning, and meaningless fights over power. The parallels are the new tracks created to go around the old ones - parallel lines never intersect. In that way, you avoid confrontation in a country were opposition has been violent and people need time to consolidate and build and not only confront. But people are impatient to see the parallels become the main tracks.

President Hugo Chavez is a phenomenon, not so much for 8 hour long speeches which is rather old school, but for an amazing way of directly communicating with the base. Somehow he avoids the thick middle layer and puts forward the people's thoughts and ideas.

President Chavez is the initiator, the developer, the ideologist and at the same time, the hardest critic of the process. The ideas he refines and puts forward in speeches are thoughts being formulated at the grassroots level. In the memorial speech three years after the coup president Chavez said that what has to die has not yet died, and what has to be born has not yet completed its naissance.

That is the core of the present Venezuelan parallelism - the old tracks are still parallel with the new ways. A change of tracks is not easy but it can be done. The squatted house is as close, or as far, as the various government institutions are to the presidential palace. If they are the ones stimulating the process maybe they should be recognized as a community centre, fed with resources, and on the other hand the institutions slowing down the process should be put on a diet.


 http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1462

Country of parallels, Part II
Venezuela: A parallel democracy?
Monday, May 30, 2005

By: America Vera-Zavala—Znet Commentaries

To introduce participatory democracy in Venezuela as a parallel to representative democracy is one of the hardest, but also one of the most interesting, challenges the country is facing. If they succeed it would mean having a society in power, that is more powerful than state power. The proclaimed Bolivarian revolution is made up of parallels. The idea of parallelism is to it create parallels that are better than the original tracks. Introducing participatory democracy in several parts and levels of the country would make democracy develop. Participatory democracy is also the most effective way to make the other parallels more even.

Participation and participatory democracy is mentioned over 40 times in the Venezuelan constitution – a bestseller. People often talk about the constitution, quote it and strengthen their arguments with it. The key articles for participatory democracy on the local level are paragraph 166 and 184 that speaks about the creation of Local Public Planning Councils and the decentralisation and transfer of power to the people. In spite of this, constitutional implementation has been slow. Planning councils have still not been instituted everywhere. Most of them have been newly implemented. The Constitution was adopted in 1999; the city of Caracas formed a Local Public Planning Council in 2004. Although some competent forces are trying to make the councils functional, people are not happy with how they are operating. That process is developing too slowly according to many. Why is that in a country were everybody speaks about participatory democracy?

The Bolivarian revolution has been in a constant state of conflict. The president and his policies have trigged the upper classes worst nightmares. Opposition has been met – not with repression as they claim – but different acts of deepening democracy. President Hugo Chavez should have a place in the Guinness world of records for the numerous times he has called for elections; nine times in seven years! That has not changed the opposition’s accusations of lack of freedom of expression voiced in their privately owned TV, - radio stations and newspapers nor calmed US concerns over lack of democracy. But it has created a certain ritual of mobilisations among the people that so often have been asked to vote. They have campaigned, and mobilised and voted and then started all over again, and again, and again…

To win one election you have to have a political party, to win 10 you have to have a Strong and Big political party, which is not exactly a parallel to grassroots democracy. Chavez invented one political party, MVR, the 5th Republic Movement for the first presidential election in 1998. Facing so many elections he couldn’t do anything but strengthen his political party. In February 2005, Chavez called for people to sign up for the MVR in the run up for their internal elections on April 10th. 2 million listened and the campaign to elect candidates for the August local elections got the same character as a municipal election. All over Caracas there were big fancy colour posters with names and photographs of the candidates and the slogan was not: “we will organise garbage collection!” Rather they competed in how many times you could get the word Chavez into a poster without covering the candidates´ photographs. Judging from the posters you could choose between “chavistas de verdad”, a real chavista, or “chavista de verdad verdad”, a real real chavista.

The never ending exercises in electing people have created a lot of mini leaders apparently afraid of loosing their power. Even though women are decisive force in the revolution, the number of women in parliament, or female mayors or governors is extremely low. Leadership is surprisingly white compared to the colourful barrios. “I think that the MVR elections were nothing more than a performance in old school bad politics and they have a lot in common with the AD (old government party) and the fourth republic.” The man talking in the worn out microphone in the community radio Ali Primera, named after the most loved Venezuelan folksinger, blushes when he says that out to the ether. People in the control room cheer. People’s judgements about the elections and the development of the MVR party are harsh. The MVR is probably the biggest failure of all parallels in the country, simply because it never became a parallel –on the contrary it seems to have reproduced traditional politics. Elections, male candidate saying the same thing, candidates fighting for power, candidates wanting to keep power - that is remnants of the past people don't want to return to.

Participatory democracy does not mean voting in excess. Participatory democracy means to give people the right to decide over politics, including fiscal and economic decision making, within a process that is simple and explanatory. People have made these demands in the past. In the three month period between the referendum and the regional elections in 2004 several communities demanded changes and power to the communities (documented in a brilliant article by Jonah Ginden,  http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1291). In big assemblies, in barrios like El Valle, Petare, and Catia, people drafted manifestos with demands to all chavista candidates. It was an effort to de-personalise elections, to demand decentralisations and power transfer from leaders to communities.

It takes a lot to introduce participatory democracy, but a lot can be gained in return. A participatory budget in cities, like Belem in northern Brazil, paved the way for people’s planning. Transparency fought corruption and collective intelligence meant effective development. Everywhere you have to build on what you have and in Venezuela there is a lot to build on. I think of this when I talk to Iruma Sanchez, coordinator of Casa Bolivariana, in Petare, which consists of more than 180 Bolivarian circles. The energy in that house could change more than their municipality. So why doesn’t the mayor of Sucre organise budget meetings there, letting people decide how to allocate part of the money?

The non-transfer of power to the people is already a problem. Garbage became a symbol of failure in my travel in Venezuela. The poor in Caracas get the best view; most of the barrios are situated on hill sides, surrounding and looking down on condos and shopping malls. When you look up at them you see thousands of small fragile houses and beside them, on the slopes, black bin bags. Garbage collection is an unsolved problem, but it provokes debate. When I ask why I get responses like: “It is because the opposition controls garbage collection and they want to fuck up the process.” “… because the mayor doesn’t know how to run this city.” “… because the president has not solved it.”

In Cuidad Bolivar on my way to the historic centre I ask the cab driver if he is happy with the mayor. “No” he says and nods at all the garbage on the side of the streets. In the beautiful Mochima National Park, the most touristic beaches look like garbage stations, the stink of rubbish makes it hard to walk from one beach to another, and in the fishing village Santa Fé I get the same no and the same nod at the garbage when I ask if they are happy with the mayor there.

Garbage is not a Venezuelan problem; the first garbage dump ever mentioned was situated in the cradle of democracy – Athens. Through exercising participatory democracy you can solve the problem. People made garbage recycling into a collective process in the Brazilian town Porto Alegre. Money was allocated through the Participatory Budget to cooperatives that collect and then recycle garbage in factories giving people work, income and education – literacy courses are part of the work schedule there. On one visit to a barrio, high up on a hill I see that they are already doing what the Local Public Planning Councils should, but as a parallel, without power and resources.

Still the Venezuelan people are what the constitution entitles them to be, participants and protagonist of the process. The Venezuelan people are highly impressive. They did, what no other people have done, they went against a coup and won. When the opposition was offensive the people endured hunger, general strikes and humiliations. And when the opposition managed to orchestrate a coup and kidnapped President Chavez they took to the streets and reclaimed him. On April 13, 2002 thanks to the people the President was back in office. The people are patient but it would be a mistake to think that their patience will last forever. The courageous people that took to the streets to reclaim a kidnapped President would do it again in a state of emergency. In the meantime they want to develop their communities - maybe starting with organising garbage collection. They should be given the power they deserve.

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