by Kari Lydersen
The Yellow Times, April 25, 2003

(Venezuela) -- The mood was one of complete ecstasy in Caracas's "23 de Enero" neighborhood, a traditional stronghold of supporters of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, during an April 13 celebration of the anniversary of his return to power after a brief coup last year.

As pop and rock songs celebrating Chavez boomed from speakers set up on a hillside where residents had had a standoff with police during the coup last year, a woman over 60 years old and dressed in red, blue and yellow Venezuelan regalia showed off the words "Hugo Chavez" tattooed in delicate script on her tanned bicep.

An older man stood on the red, yellow and blue-painted stone fence on the edge of the hill waving a large Venezuelan flag for hours on end, his eyes turned to the sky and a look of rapture on his face.

Meanwhile, a young boy dressed in beret and combat fatigues practiced loading a realistic-looking plastic gun.

"He's the next Chavez," said a nearby man.

At various points, the crowd of about 100 men, women and children broke into chants of "Uh, Ah, Chavez no se va" (Chavez won't go). And when a Che Guevara look-alike in beret and fatigues rode up the steep road on a motorcycle, people ran over to have their picture taken with him in front of a Che mural painted on the housing project across the street, which still bears numerous bullet holes from the stand-off last year.

At one point, the music and chanting was silenced for the performance of a play by a group of preteens and teenagers who had come for the event from the Portugesa region about a five hour drive away. The students clamored over each other to express their support for Chavez.

"Venezuela has all this oil but we only see 20 percent of the profits and the rest goes out of the country, so we are poor," said teen Johnny Infante, in Spanish. "Chavez is going to change this and give us a better standard of living."

In the play, a girl with a yellow-painted face knelt on the ground crying while a boy made up as a vampire introduced youth representing the various ills that they see as plaguing Venezuelan society: alcoholism, prostitution, delinquency, promiscuity, witchcraft and greedy businessman and bankers. In the end, an angel and a woman in red tights and pink skirt representing Venezuela's future under Chavez slayed these demons and rescued the crying country.

Tears came to the eyes of long-time farmer Jesus Manuel Avila, 66, as he applauded the performers and spoke of his support for Chavez. "I've spent 46 years fighting for autonomy and liberty for campesinos (peasant farmers) -- my whole youth," said Avila. "Under the past presidents campesinos were sent to jail and tortured for this. Now Chavez will give support to rural cooperatives of campesinos and he has promised to return the titles of land to campesinos. He will also give us technical assistance, medical assistance and education. Now I'm 66 and I can say that things have improved."

New Hope

Later in the afternoon of the 13th, the 23 de enero community started down the hillside to march toward the center of Caracas, retracing a route many of them had taken a year ago to return their beloved president to power. On April 11, 2002, Chavez, who had first been elected in 1998, was imprisoned by opposition forces led by wealthy businessmen and a few military generals who threatened there would be civil war if he didn't resign. Though Chavez says he never actually resigned, the media announced that he had and Pedro Carmona, of the powerful business association Fedecamaras, stepped in to head a so-called transitional government.

But when word spread to 23 de enero and the other poor neighborhoods of makeshift "ranchitos" clinging to the steep hills surrounding Caracas that Chavez had not resigned and was being held prisoner, the residents, led largely by women, began to stream down the hillsides "like ants" in one observer's words. Over the next day they were joined by tens of thousands of military troops for a crowd of 200,000 to 300,000 outside the Miraflores presidential palace, while crowds of millions massed at military institutions, government buildings, TV stations and other key places all over the country demanding Chavez's return.

Seeing the crowd of supporters and suffering divisions within the opposition, Carmona quietly stepped down and on April 13 a military helicopter returned Chavez to the palace. During the several days of conflict, at least 37 people were killed and 96 injured. While opposition forces blamed Chavez's forces, independent human rights investigations showed that opposition-aligned municipal police and snipers and the general chaos were to blame.

The celebration this April 13 was like a reunion of last year's gathering, with about 300,000 in red, blue and yellow T-shirts, lycra tank tops, nylon pants and other sportswear, emblazoned with the words Venezuela, Hugo Chavez and revolutionary slogans, gathered to eat, drink and listen to a two-hour-plus speech by Chavez.

The 13th was a symbol of the new hope and sense of empowerment that has been felt throughout the country's poor and working class communities during Chavez's presidency.

The concrete manifestations of these feelings include community radio and TV stations, women's and campesino cooperatives, organic garden projects, newly built schools and the Casas Bolivarianas, community centers that are opening all over the country which will host cultural events, health clinics and popular education classes.

"As a mother, I see that even my kids want to participate in the process," said Sonia Yrausquier, member of a Bolivarian Circle in the coastal town of Coro.

"They talk about it a lot, they say, 'Mama, por que no hay un circulo infantil?' (why isn't there a child's Bolivarian Circle?)"

Uphill Battle

But there is still an uphill battle ahead for Chavez and supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution, a term which refers to 19th century Venezuelan revolutionary and philosopher Simon Bolivar's vision of a united Latin America which would be a democratic, humane world power. And the U.S.-backed opposition forces that ousted Chavez last year, made up mostly of business owners and the wealthy and upper middle class, are still highly active. Last fall, they staged anti-Chavez demonstrations that drew hundreds of thousands of majority white, upper class protesters. They orchestrated a "capital strike" this winter in which thousands of workers were locked out and laid off of their jobs, and the oil industry was almost totally paralyzed. Though the strike was ultimately a failure, they are still demanding Chavez's removal. Food and other supply routes were interrupted by the strike, to the point that Chavez allowed the government to seize privately owned trucks and tankers for the transport of oil, food and basic necessities. Needless to say, business owners didn't react well to this plan, calling it a violation of private property laws.

Many Chavez supporters claim the opposition are acting as provocateurs to create incidents of violence that can be blamed on Chavez's government. During an international solidarity conference April 9-12, for example, participants were awakened early one morning by a bomb that exploded in a nearby downtown office building where the Organization of American States had been facilitating talks between the government and opposition forces.

Besides Channel 8, the government-run station, the country's corporate media is also staunchly against Chavez. Media magnate Gustavo Cisneros, who owns a number of different outlets, is one of the leading opposition figures.

"This is a dirty campaign tactic," said Juan Lopez Vargas, a Chavez supporter and former oil industry worker who lives on the Peninsula Paraguana. "But the people don't believe in the manipulation of the media." Some of Chavez's own administration have also turned against him, a fact that his supporters attribute to opposition members posing as Chavistas to get a foothold in government.

Along with the copious pro-Chavez, pro-revolutionary graffiti blanketing the walls of Caracas, there is also anti-Chavez graffiti saying, "Fuera Chavez" (Out Chavez), Asesino (Assassin) and "Revolucion con Hambre y Miseria" (Revolution with Hunger and Misery).

The opposition has even called for Chavez to be tried for war crimes based on charges of violence during the events of April 2002, though these charges, played up in the opposition media, have been dismissed various times by judicial and independent investigations -- as documented, among other places, in the Irish-made video "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

Chavez supporters also note that far from being persecuted by a repressive regime, the architects of the coup haven't even been punished for their roles: Carmona and the other coup members have still not been jailed or prosecuted and the generals who took part in it are still members of the military.

Yet despite the efforts of Chavez and the Bolivarian Circle groups which support Chavez but operate independently on a local level, poverty, crime and unemployment continue to be high. Alleviating these problems is especially hard given that Chavez is being treated as a pariah by the U.S. and much of the global economic community with the exception of Brazilian leftist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and fellow anti-imperialist Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is ardently against Chavez, and, within the past few months, Colombian paramilitary groups, which are widely known to be backed by the government, have made armed incursions into the western part of Venezuela. In March, Chavez dispatched an air force operation to bomb Colombian "irregulars" who invaded the area. In a story for ZNet, journalist Justin Podur argued that the Colombian paramilitary invasions are a U.S.-supported move to militarize the area and secure U.S. control over the country's oil, which makes up roughly a quarter of the U.S.'s total supply.

Planting Hope

On an April afternoon in the center of Caracas, a handful of men and women of various ages were picking greens and weeding in a large community garden with neat rows of lettuce, radishes, cilantro and other vegetables. "This used to be a mountain of trash," said gardener Geidheman Requiz.

"People were afraid to walk by here. Now it's a dream made real. Rich or poor, we all have the right to live, to dream, the opportunity to grow."

In only a month, local residents and members of the military cleaned out the area and built the about 100 meter long key-shaped garden, with a small monument topped by an anti-war sign and a Venezuelan flag in the middle.

The co-op members, who are chosen based on their skill and belief in the project's philosophy, according to one member, now earn money selling the crops at a stall in the nearby market and other locations. The garden is all pesticide-free and organic, a small step in combating the pollution and litter problems that plague much of the country.

Ecology and environmentalism are also top concerns of a group of pro-Chavez campesinos who live in the mountain range in the state of Falcon, which residents call La Sierra, about an eight hour drive from Caracas. At the lush, mist-covered top of the mountains, which rise above harsh coastal deserts and brushy plains, the residents of La Sierra dedicate themselves to self-sustaining farming and small-scale ecotourism. There is a beautiful, several room inn where residents also sell organic coffee and cocuy, a liquor made from a local agave-like plant. At FUNDAECOL, the Foundation for Development of Agriculture and Ecology (Fundacion del desarrollo de la agricola y la ecologia), long-time activist and grassroots technology promoter Edgar Olivet oversees projects including a terraced garden of bananas, papaya, guayaba and other fruits and a gray-water recycling program involving three concrete-lined water receptacles with natural filtration systems between them.

FUNDAECOL is a fitting example of the decentralized organizing philosophy of the Bolivarian Revolution -- while the FUNDAECOL members are not primarily members of a Bolivarian Circle or connected with the Chavez administration, they are organizing on an autonomous community level for economic development and empowerment. While under past administrations these efforts might have been met with repression and intimidation, now they are supported ideologically, if not necessarily financially, by the Chavez government.

"We're looking for the roots of the people here," said Olivet. "You can go to meetings; you can read books; but if you aren't really with the people…you need to find the real road, not the road of theology or politics. This is the real road."

Many see this system as one of the strengths of the Chavez regime, encouraging true empowerment of the common people and decreasing the potential for government corruption and authoritarianism.

"The weakness and benefit of Chavismo is that there's not a political party at the top; it's decentralized," said Irvin Chavez, an artist and resident of Peninsula Paraguna.

Legal Reform

In the street markets of Caracas, alongside tables selling bootlegged CDs, beaded necklaces, sexy jeans and other typical market goods, there are tables stacked with palm-sized and coffee-table sized versions of the Venezuelan constitution and various individual laws. The constitution, rewritten and ratified by over 80 percent in a popular referendum in 1999, is one of the cornerstones of the Chavez government and a constant source of conversation and pride for Chavez supporters. It is written in accessible, common language and includes laws relating to the use of the land and sea, housing, education, human rights, media and the like.

It also nationalizes the oil industry.

Along with the oil nationalization, one of the main things that has terrified wealthy members of the opposition is Chavez's support of land reform. The government had carried out a land reform process in the 1960s as a way to take people away from the guerrilla movement, but the reforms collapsed due to a lack of technical and economic support for peasants who mostly ended up selling their land back to large landholders and moving to the outskirts of cities like Caracas.

Contrary to the fears of the rich, under Chavez there have been no moves to actually seize land for redistribution. Rather, land reform essentially boils down to the normalization of property ownership for squatters throughout the country. As in most poor countries, a large percent of the population live in shacks or small homes built on unused rural land or in jumbled hillside shantytowns.

Under the new constitution, people can actually file for legal title to the land on which they are living, giving them a sense of security, empowerment and an economic stake in their neighborhood.

Another example of reforms aimed at helping subsistence level producers is a law passed within the last year to aid the coastal environment and the small fishermen who have been devastated by sharp decreases in their hauls because of the over-fishing by major corporations.

Outside the Asociasion de Pescadores Artesanales de Adicora (Small Fishermen's Association of Adicora), a small stucco building smelling of salt and fish on the beach of the Peninsula Paraguana, on the northern Caribbean coast of the country, a handful of life-long fishermen with leathery, tanned skin, weathered hands and soft, shy voices tell how they were getting less and less fish during their 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. shifts.

They blamed this on the trawlers which drop their huge nets, scraping the sea floor and collecting everything in their wake including the immature fish who then perish before ever reaching a sellable size. Chavez passed a law restricting the large trawlers to six to eight miles off the beach, which on a hot April afternoon during the Semana Santa (Holy Week) festivities is packed with cars pumping out music, families picnicking and young couples flirting.

Though the fisherman's life is still a tough one, they say the law has helped increase their catches again by as much as 20 or 30 percent. Chavez has said he is trying to extend the ban on large-scale fishing even farther off the coast, but the issue is also complicated by international law.

Culture of Resistance

The general public can freely walk past the guard post at the entrance of the San Carlos Military Fortress, past the sleeping guard dogs and into the courtyard of majestic white stucco arches. It wasn't always this way. Under past regimes, this was a military prison where members of the guerrilla movements and other dissidents who struggled during the 1970s and '80s were held, tortured and interrogated.

The prison was closed in 1994, and now the small cells are partly covered with graffiti from visitors. But the graffiti is absent from the back walls of the cells, as if even the teenagers who weren't yet born during the worst of the repression can still sense the ghosts of the fighters who languished in prison here.

The rooms lining the courtyard of the military center are dedicated to art exhibits and the Historical Memory Project, exhibits which chronicle bloody uprisings, repressive regimes and resistance movements throughout Venezuelan history.

It tells of the 1989 massacre of over 1,000 people by police and sniper fire during riots sparked by the imposition of taxes on the poor in the form of bread and bus fare price hikes.

And of Chavez's 1992 coup attempt which failed but ultimately launched his ascent to power. After making it to the gates of the presidential palace in tanks with other dissident military members, Chavez surrendered on the condition that he be allowed to make a statement to the public. In less than a minute, he ignited the hopes and passions of much of the population, saying that "Companeros, it is time to stop the fighting. We could not reach our objectives for now, but our time will come when we will try again and we will be victors."

After two years in prison, Chavez was returned to the public more determined than ever and began to build up a support base with small meetings held in the slums, the mountains and the country.

After his party's relatively quick rise to prominence, he was elected in 1998, to the horror of many opposition members who had never conceived of being ruled by a dark-skinned, indigenous-looking president. Personal testimonies catalogued in the Historical Memory Project paint a picture of what happened when the people who are themselves indigenous, darker-skinned or poor, saw this beloved leader removed from power.

"I went at 8 p.m. to Miraflores (the presidential palace) and the Tiuna (military fortress in Caracas)," testified a Senora Marlene C. from the Parroquia San Juan neighborhood in Caracas. "En ese momento los militares que son pobres tambien sintiendo que sus familias habian sido atropellados y humilladas reaccionaron y nos dieron su apoyo, nos vieron como a su familia."

("At this moment the soldiers, who were poor also, feeling their families had been beaten and humiliated, reacted and gave us support, as they would their family.")

At a parking lot stand selling drinks and empanadas in the broiling sun in Coro, the man who owns the stand has his own miniature historical memory project. The back wall of the stand is decorated with slightly battered and wrinkled photos and posters of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Chavez.

His prized possession, in a cracked frame, is a photo of a youthful looking Chavez surrounded by a smiling group of campesinos in La Sierra, some with their hands on Chavez's shoulders and arms in warm gestures of familiarity. This was one of the meetings Chavez held shortly after being released from prison. One of the people in the photo, also significantly more youthful looking than he is today, is the man who runs the stand. To him, Chavez isn't just some political abstraction, he is a living, breathing man who sat down and broke bread with him in the mountains.

This is what hope means in Venezuela.

[Kari Lydersen writes about the criminal justice system, Latin America and other issues for In These Times, Punk Planet, Clamor and other publications and is an instructor for the Urban Youth International Journalism Program in Chicago.]

Karie Lydersen encourages your comments: Karilyde@aol.com