Analysis
Opinion
Investing in democracy in Venezuela page 7
Nobel Peace Prize goes to war-makers akers age 8 while peacemakers are shunned page
Friday, October 26, 2012 | Nº 132 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
Nine Venezuelans in World Series
ENGLISH EDITION/The artillery of ideas
Chavez praises Venezuela’s democracy, grassroots organizing
Economy
Social Programs a Priority
Politics
Inmate vote favors socialism For the first time in history, Venezuela’s prisons voted overwhelmingly for the current government. page 4 Interview
Developing communes An interview with two activists about building communes at the grassroots level. page 5
Venezuela ranked among the world’s happiest countries T/ Correo del Orinoco
Venezuela is proud and euphoric that nine Venezuelan ball players in the US Major Leagues are participating in this year’s World Series games between the Detroit Tigers and the San Francisco Giants. Four Venezuelans play on the Tigers, including Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera, while five are on the Giants team, including the popular Pablo “Panda” Sandoval and MVP Marco Scutaro. No matter which team wins, Venezuela comes out on top. page 6
Venezuela’s 2013 budget prioritizes spending on social programs. page 3
INTERNATIONAL
In the first cabinet meeting since the landslide victory on October 7 that re-elected the Venezuelan head of state to a third 6-year term, President Hugo Chavez highlighted the democratic nature of his nation’s revolutionary process and called on his team to excelerate the creation of communal structures. The Venezuelan President also urged the Communications Ministry to dramatically improve the way information is presented to the public and to create an efficient, national system of public media. page 2
Collective communication Recently-named Venezuelan Minister of Communication and Information Ernesto Villegas called on all political sectors of public, alternative, community communication along with the people to build together a more efficient communication system. “We are all summoned to build a collective communication. I have no divine gift to build something by my own. Here we all are summoned to take part ... This is a joint process in progress and most importantly, we have to complete the task”, he said. Villegas said the National Public Media System is tasked with efficient communication in Venezuela and committed to assuming responsibility together with community and alternative media outlets to achieve this goal. “The National Public Media System is not a purpose per se, but rather a means to achieve a goal, which is to make inclusive communication a reality in Venezuela”, he added.
According to the Happy Planet Index published this year by the London-based New Economics Foundation, Venezuela is the ninth happiest country in the world. At the top of the list are Costa Rica, Vietnam and Colombia. According to the executive summary of the report, the Happy Planet Index measures sustainable wellbeing, or “how well nations are doing in terms of supporting their inhabitants to live good lives now” as well as in the future, taking into account environmental impacts. Nine of the ten happiest countries are located in Latin America and the Caribbean. Following Costa Rica, Vietnam and Colombia on the list are Belize, Jamaica, El Salvador Panama, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guatemala. The United States is ranked 105th, while Norway is 29th, the highest among European countries. Spain is ranked 62nd, Haiti 78th, and Botswana is last in the 151st spot. According to the report, the Happy Planet Index determines “which countries are most efficient at producing long, happy lives for their inhabitants, while maintaining the conditions for future generations to do the same”. The New Economics Foundation makes its calculations based on three factors: experienced wellbeing, life expectancy and ecological footprint. The executive summary states: “this is largely still an unhappy planet – with both high- and low-income countries facing many challenges… But it also demonstrates that good lives do not have to cost the Earth”.
2 Impact | . s Friday, October 26, 2012
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela’s Chavez hails nation’s democracy, calls for a dissemination of local power
T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
V
enezuelan President Hugo Chavez highlighted the democratic character of his country’s revolutionary process last Saturday during the Executive’s first cabinet meeting since the head of state won re-election on October 7. While in session with his Ministers at the Presidential Palace of Miraflores, Chavez called on his backers to maintain the rule of democracy in the country and “to not impose, but rather convince” people of their socialist ideas during the next 6 years of his presidential term. As part of this approach, the leftist leader explained, the government need to improve its communicational strategy to publish and disseminate selfcriticisms from the grassroots, which the former lieutenant colonel said “nourishes us and is lacking”. “We need to generate instruments, in the most systematic of ways, to continue convincing Venezuelans that this project is the one that is conducive to the great majority of them”, he said.
“We don’t have a National System of Public Media and we should create one. In it, we should interconnect other systems such as community media as well as regional and international outlets”, the Venezuelan President asserted. While discussing the governmental period 2013 - 2019, Chavez emphasized the compatibility of socialism with democracy and reiterated the need to transform the country’s economic base to one that promotes inclusion and participation in decision making. Increasing the efficiency and responsiveness of government to ensure these changes come about will be key in this respect, the head of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) affirmed.
BUILDING THE COMMUNES Chavez also made reference on Saturday to the Hungarian Marxist, Istvan Meszaros, in advocating for the greater distribution of political and economic power in regional entities not held captive to the capital of Caracas where the vast majority of public administration takes place.
“It’s about creating, as Meszaros says, a combination of coordinated parallel systems and from there, the regionalization of different centers. We haven’t created one of these centers yet and we have a law for it. We decreed a [Law of Communes] but that was it”, Chavez said. According to the President, the time has come “to achieve the transformation of the state to one that is communal, where the people can exercise all the capacity of the Executive”, he said. To this extent, Chavez spoke of the possible elimination of the Ministry for Communes, due to the error that the cabinet position may play a role in fostering the idea “that the communes are just the responsibility of this ministry” when they should in fact be designed and carried out at the local level. “In this stage of transition to socialism, we have to spread out the models to all the different territories”, the head of state said.
INAUGURATIONS During the cabinet session, broadcast by state television, Chavez participated in a num-
ber of factory inaugurations via satellite including a fruit processing plant in the Western state of Zulia that has the capacity to produce ten thousand tons of food items per year. The Mene Grande facility is the product of a bilateral agreement with Argentina and has benefited from an investment of 136 million bolivars ($31 million) from the Venezuelan national government. The head of state also made contact with the facilities of Canaima Industries, a computer factory built with the assistance of the Portuguese government in Caracas to provide all Venezuelan primary students with free mini-laptops. Officials report that to date, the factory has produced 2.6 million computers and that the plant will soon have the capacity to provide 500,000 units a year in addition to other devices. “In this process of national independence is also the process of technological independence”, Chavez said. For his part, Vice President and Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro praised the Canaima initiative and the fruitful collab-
oration between the Venezuelan and Portuguese governments. “With respect to technology, there had always been a gap between the first world and the South. This (technological advancement) is reducing this gap and is of great importance for the future development of the country”, Maduro said. Chavez additionally pointed out in Saturday’s meeting that the Venezuelan state oil company Pdvsa now represents the second largest company in Latin America - proof of the viability of the socialist model promulgated by his government. Likewise, the Venezuelan President informed of the 1.1 billion bolivar surplus ($255 million) earned by the government-run Bank of Venezuela in the past two months. Since its nationalization in 2009, Bank of Venezuela has increased its investments by 280 percent, reported Public Banking Minister Marco. “This forms part of the viability of the Bolivarian project, how to get out of oil rents and extreme dependency on oil”, Chavez said.
HOUSING Public housing was a further topic discussed during Saturday’s cabinet meeting as Housing and Habitat Minister Ricardo informed on the construction of 630 new homes to be built in the capital. The initiative forms part of the Chavez administration’s Mission Housing Venezuela social program and has benefited from a government investment of 363 million bolivars ($84 million). Molina mentioned that the plan is part of a greater construction project in Caracas that foresees the erection of “a total of 31,512 homes in the next six years” with a total government investment of 17 billion bolivars ($3.9 billion). An important aspect of the program, the minister explained, is the collaboration occurring between the executive and local grassroots activists to ensure the completion of the works. “We’re working with organized communities and with community councils to build directly with them and with the participation of Construction Brigades”, Molina said.
. s Friday, October 26, 2012
The artillery of ideas
Social investment a priority in Venezuela’s 2013 budget
T/ COI P/ Agencies
V
enezuelan Finance and Planning Minister, Jorge Giordani, presented the 2013 Executive budget to the nation’s congress last Tuesday in an address that underscored the social investment that continues to define the policies of recently reelected President Hugo Chavez.
Minister Giordani delivered the nearly 400 billion bolivar ($93 billion) financial plan to the National Assembly, citing a 33 percent increase from last year’s budget of 297 billion ($69 billion). The balance sheet has been based on a $55 barrel of crude, Venezuela’s largest export, as well as an inflation rate of between 14 and 16 percent for the coming year.
Venezuelans take part in Energy Saving Day, promote greater responsibility T/ COI P/ Agencies
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ith a festive agenda of recreational activities that included sports, dance, music and games, Venezuelans celebrated International Energy Saving Day in the capital’s Francisco de Miranda park last Sunday The event was organized by the Energy Ministry in collaboration with the state-run electricity company Corpoelec with the intention of raising consciousness regarding energy use, especially in the country’s youth. “It’s important that the little ones in the house begin to understand the relevance of energy saving at a international and national level. They need to see it as an important aspect of the formation of ‘the new
man’ and in that way make a commitment to themselves and society”, said the Vice Minister of Energy Use, Hector Constant. Venezuela ranks number one in per capita energy consumption in Latin America, evidencing what the Venezuelan News Agency (AVN) has referred to as a “squandering” and “lack of awareness in the population on energy production costs”. A report released by the Ministry of Electric Energy in 2011 detailed this consumption, pointing out that that the average Venezuelan consumes 85 percent more than her Brazilian counterpart, 25 percent more than in Argentina, and 254 percent more than the average Colombian. Much of the problem is associated with the high use of airconditioning units, especially in commercial establishments.
Giordani defended the low price of oil, currently trading at over $100 a barrel, as a precautionary measure to shield the budget from any potential fluctuations in the international market. The high-level official also pointed out that the income from oil established in the plan only represents 21 percent of the total budget.
Indeed, some shopping centers such as the Galeria Mall in the city of Maracaibo, which has average high temperatures well over 90 degrees, offers its kate clients the opportunity to skate k. on the facility’s own ice-rink. But the problem, accordordked ing to officials, is also linked age e to the energy use of average Venezuelans. he e To combat the excess, the mgovernment has been emw barking on a series of new e cut-back measures that have n been planned in conjunction sss with its public awareness campaigns. These measures, some off aws which have been passed as laws by the country’s congress, inrtaclude restricting the importan of tion and commercialization hat specific electric appliances that display high energy use. tor, “Being a responsible actor, tize the state will have to prioritize nces the most efficient appliances rtaand discourage the importation of those devices which are e to not efficient. It will also have
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“This strengthens, once again, non-oil fiscal income as the principal source of financing for the national budget”, he said. Six percent growth in Gross Domestic Product is being predicted in 2013, Giordani explained as the Finance Minister discarded the possibility of a devaluation in the country’s currency which is currently fixed at 4.3 bolivars to the dollar. The bulk of the nation’s spending in 2013, the cabinet member highlighted, will be focused on social programs and economically productive projects. Health care, education, housing, social security, and public services are slated to see a boost in funding as part of the social investment that represents more than 37 percent of the total budget. This follows the pattern of spending established by President Hugo Chavez whose government has invested more than $500 billion between 1999 and 2012 on projects intended to improve the living standards of the Venezuelan people, Giordani said. Other sectors that will receive substantial funding include electricity with an allocation of $363 million, oil and mining with $742 million, and transportation with $256 million planned. An additional $773 million has been provisioned for in-
dustry while agriculture will receive $683 million in funding and communications will be granted $657 million. During his presentation, Giordani made reference to the country’s “new financial architecture” which has established a number of funding bodies that work with local currency and foreign exchange to promote productivity and development. As such, Venezuela’s National Development Fund (Fonden) has allocated more than $92 million to 442 social projects in the country over the past seven years. Also key to the nation’s new financial structure has been the relationship between the Chavez administration and the People’s Republic of China, which has provided Venezuela with $20 billion in loans for development initiatives. With respect to workers’ rights, the Finance Minister spoke to the adjustment of the budget to the benefits granted as a result of Venezuela’s new Labor Law, signed by President Chavez at the end of April. Greater severance packages, bonuses and double time shifts have been calculated in 2013’s plan which Giordani described as promoting “a socialist and productive model with the purpose of achieving work and social security” as well as “strengthening the well-being of the working class”.
be on guard to not receive from any country appliances which are of low quality or obsolete”, Vice Minister Constant said. As a further way of reducing energy gy y c onsu on sump su mption, the mp consumption,
Chavez administration has also been distributing energyconserving light bulbs that use 80 percent less electricity than traditional incandescent bulbs. 20 Since 2006, the government has distri distributed 150 million such light bulbs with another 1 million for planned distri18 b bu tion through th bution the first trim ester of o 2013. mester Accor According to Constant, iinitiatives nitiativ such as these a re beg are beginning to have an iimportant mporta effect in the conssciousness ciousne of the people. national As a consequence, con consumption has been rec onsumpti to 2,000 Megaduced by close c watts over the past year and it estimated that the new light is estimate bulbs will provide a further savings of between 500 and additional megawatts. 1,000 addit “We all need to become advocates of the importance of conservation so that it energy con widespread around becomes w world”, the Vice Minister the world” affirmed on o Sunday.
4 Politics | . s Friday, October 26, 2012
The artillery of ideas
“The plan is currently renovating 8 centers across the country, where prisons will be increased in capacity, and will have improved toilet, dormitory, and sporting facilities, as well as better infrastructure”
Historic inmate vote for socialism T/ Paul Dobson P/ Agencies
M
inister for Penitentiary Services, Iris Varela, announced that for the first time ever, inmates voted in favor of President Hugo Chavez in the recent Presidential elections. Speaking on her regular radio program ‘Don’t Deprive Yourself’, Varela stated that 69% of inmates had voted for the victorious Chavez, proving that the government’s humanistic approach to prison reform is considered positive by those condemned to serve time. “Normally, the penitentiary population vote against the government” that is responsible for depriving them of their freedom and putting them behind bars, she stated, “but this time it wasn’t like that”. The Minister compared the policies of the Chavez government to those of the previous neoliberal governments, which treated inmates as third class citizens. “The opposition want us to go into the prisons firing guns and repress the prison populations, just as they did in the past”, she said. But the current administration is revising its approach and addressing the grave problems in the penal system by experimenting
and finding a “humanistic” approach, which gives certain offenders a second chance, affirmed Varela. The Minister highlighted certain frontline penal programs, such as Llegó Maíta , Cayapa, and Cambote, which are dignifying the network of 35 state prisons which, due to decades of underinvestment, are widely considered to be overcrowded, highly violent, and generally inadequate to house prisoners.
“But the current administration is revising its approach and addressing the grave problems in the penal system by experimenting and finding a “humanistic” approach” The Llegó Maíta program, which was launched in June, looks to give extra support to family members of inmates, especially mothers, by providing them with access to government social programs and incorporating them into socio-productive employment through training workshops.
Valera describes it as “a plan without precedent”. The Capaya operation is aimed at speeding up the administrative proceedings to process prisoners, hence reducing certain complications that arise. The Cambote program, now into its second phase, aims to renovate and redesign the penitentiary institutions across the country - both holding facilities as well as prisons. Cambote I lasted between January and June of this year, and renovated seven facilities, whilst Cambote II was launched in September, and aims to improve and expand 10 more prisons. “With the Plan Cambote, we will be able to recuperate the facilities and offer adequate spaces where those who are behind bars can live in dignified and salubrious conditions”, stated Minister Varela. The plan is currently renovating 8 centers across the country, where prisons will be increased in capacity, and will have improved toilet, dormitory, and sporting facilities, as well as better infrastructure. Under the scheme, prisoners can volunteer to work on the renovation, and payment is made available to their family members on the outside.
Plan Cambote looks to address not only the overcrowding of the prison system, but the historical underinvestment, which has left many prisons in terrible conditions. Using similar reasoning to that employed to the general public housing system of the country, the plan looks to reduce violence and criminality by treating the prisoners as dignified beings, and providing them with dignified spaces in which they will be kept. The new neighborhoods being built by the public housing program that offer a better quality of life have already seen significant reductions in criminality as they replace the network of shanty towns which have traditionally bred inflated violent crime levels. Varela also announced the construction of 24 new penitentiary centers during the next year, one in each state, to deal with the problem of overcrowding.
“The new neighborhoods being built by the public housing program that offer a better quality of life have already seen significant reductions in criminality” She was under the spotlight this week following two deaths at the Coro Prison. As part of the Plan Cambote, the prison was formally closed this week, and its 1600 prisoners moved to better equipped facilities in other parts of the country. During the process of prisoner relocation a gun battle broke out, in which two men were killed. A total of 56 guns, 11,445 bullets, and 12 grenades were found in the premises when inspected after the completion of the relocation of the inmates. The Coro prison, which has functioned for 85 years, was deemed too far beyond repair by the Ministry, and hence was doomed to closure under the census conducted by the Plan Cambote: “In the diagnostic which we ran, it was decided
that there were certain penitentiary spaces which weren’t worth repairing because of their conditions”. Speaking outside the now closed facility, Varela stated that “this is a debt that we have with the people of Coro All of the neighbors of Coro are very content and happy, because we are vacating the prison”. The prison is located in the center of Coro, an old colonial town and a Unesco World Heritage site, in the middle of a residential district. The site will now be refurbished by the local government and will hold the Symphonic Orchestra of Coro. Commenting on the small out-break of violence at the prison during the relocation of inmates, Minister Valera stated that “there is a majority which is allowing the relocation in peace… we have other facilities where they can serve their time in more dignified conditions… the violent sectors are a minority”. In further comments made to public television, the Minister explained that those responsible for the violence were unofficially controlling the prison through organized crime and smuggling, and who now felt threatened by the shakeup of the prison network. “There was no riot in Coro, what happened was the result of the breaking of the routine of those people who have led the business dealings within the penitentiary facilities, a minority which has confronted the majority of the inmates, who didn’t want to stay as they were losing control of the prison to the penitentiary authorities which are now arriving. Normally when a prison is relocated, they know that we do a meticulous check of the facilities… so we presume that it (the violence) is part of a reaction from certain inmates who want to erase the evidence and use up the munitions”. Varela also launched a rebuttal against sectors of the opposition, who, through their media outlet, Globovision, have heavily criticized the government’s approach to the prisons. In response to comments made by Humberto Prado on Globovision, Minister Varela stated that “it was Prado, when he was director of Yare Prison, who started the creation of the mafias, of the introduction of arms, and even drugs into the prison”. She also commented that in her opinion “there are many delinquents who are not in the prisons, despite the fact that they do the worst damage”, which she went on to define as “white collar delinquents”.
. s Friday, October 26, 2012
The artillery of ideas
T & P/ Rachael Boothroyd
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n his first ministerial meeting since being re-elected on October 7, President Hugo Chavez said the construction of communes would be at the heart of the Bolivarian Revolution over the next 6 years, and described them as “part of the soul of this project”. Here, Correo del Orinoco International brings you excerpts from two interviews with onthe-ground activists who have been trying to develop the communes at a local level over the past few years. Melitza Orellana is a member of the Ezequiel Zamora National Peasant Front, a revolutionary grassroots organization that works mainly in rural areas, where it follows a methodology of popular education to politicize and organize communities. Edwin Velasquez is a member of the Youth Bureau Caricuao, a youth organization aimed at promoting the communes and a new communal culture in Caracas. –What are the communes exactly from your point of view? –Orellana: In order to move on to the construction of communes it is necessary to consolidate the communal councils as a basic cell or nucleus. The communes would be something much more comprehensive, which would include a diverse range of things throughout the community and which would allow for collective action to resolve the basic needs of those communities. However the communes are also an organized space that allows people to govern directly for themselves, to make decisions and have an opinion and discuss and develop that opinion in citizen assemblies. The communes are a new way of living, and they are about planting that seed from childhood, about how to live collectively, how to live in a unified manner, based on socialist and humanist values and the defence of our territories. We believe the principal motor for the construction of Bolivarian socialism is the communes, because the communes are quite simply interaction between people in a delineated space, a space where your needs become my needs, where someone else can feel what you are living. It is a complex but effective project. Right now, this phase of the revolution demands popular organi-
Developing communes at the local level zation and the construction of the communes as geo-political spaces, which will allow us to integrate and relate to one another, and put into practice political processes on both a local a national level. Basically, they will allow us to make serious political proposals for the construction of Bolivarian socialism. That’s the way we conceive of the communes and that’s the way we have been developing them from the various experiences that we have been implementing in our communities. These experiences have allowed people to gain a certain level of consciousness and politicization, as well as having allowed people to make decisions and to decide exactly what they want to do in their communities. –What work has the Ezequiel Zamora Front been doing to develop the communes? –Orellana: We work in 18 states, including Apure, Tachira, Portuguesa, Barinas, Zulia, and in all of these places there are communes and communal cities in construction – which is a higher level of organization than the commune. Of course
some areas are more developed than others and some have more concrete experiences, but they have all been developed with the same logic of deepening popular power. One of our principal ideologies is to live within the community and accompany them in their struggles, this method has gained us the acceptance of the community, because they know that we are not going to come at them with political “lines,” but rather they see the possibility of developing their communities and growing in all spheres through us as an organization. The work we have been doing has been very systematic, organizing in all spheres, carrying out the promotion of communal organization, we hold political training courses and workshops in the barrios and countryside, and we also promote direct mobilization, holding events in the street where people can talk about what they have been doing. That is what we have been doing and it has yielded results. –Why are the communes so important for this project? –Orellana: The construction of the communes is essential be-
cause they will allow the people to take part in decision-making in all aspects, from the littlest decisions to those that will affect the destiny of the country. We as a collective have always supported the leadership of Hugo Chavez, but right now the process demands collective leadership; because socialism comes from popular power, because those sectors are the productive base of society, and that base, when it is organized and politicized, is what will direct this process. –What do the communes mean for you? –Velasquez: We are coming from a representative democracy before the revolution, where the people elected their politicians but didn’t actively participate in politics or their community. The difference between Venezuela pre-1998 and now, the Bolivarian Republic, is that the logic of social organization has changed and now it allows people to take control over their own social spheres. We have a state, a government, which calls on you to get organized in order to resolve your own problems. This is obviously massively different to before when we had
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a representative democracy when everything was in the hands of the elite. Today people can organize, take control of their resources, produce for the community, generate their own politics and transform the reality of the community. The communes, which are formed thanks to a group of communal councils, should think with a different kind of logic. They shouldn’t just think about the material and physical transformation of communities, but also other things, such as how to transform this culture (of capitalism and representative democracy). The communes have to be a government; they are about creating a new form of power, a micro-power, but a power all the same. It is a power that takes on responsibility for education, culture and sport etc. They are the conformation of people’s government but smallscale, and this makes it easier to resolve problems. Of course, we have to move beyond just resolving problems and move towards creating truly emancipatory politics. How are we going to move beyond exploitation and alienation if we don’t attack them from within our communities? –Why is the creation of the communes so important for the transition to socialism? –Velasquez: We started a battle against a huge enemy. The biggest monster in all history is neo-liberalism and imperialism, it’s an immense power and it is going to be extremely difficult for us. But we have to start somewhere and create something alternative to what exists, and obviously we cannot in a million years fall into the same logic as capitalism. If we are trying to construct socialism, then it is obvious we need social organization which will take on a character of its own and resolve its own problems first of all, and to do this it has to move away from neoliberalism and individualism and move towards a collective way of life. If we make a huge effort in the community productive sector (through the communes), and through this generate ourselves the resources which allow people to resolve their problems and self-govern, then obviously we will be making the bureaucratic State apparatus disappear without even meaning to, because the community will be taking on its role and as a result it loses its reason for being.
6 Sport & Science | . s Friday, October 26, 2012
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela euphoric as countrymen abound in US World Series
in the sports daily Meridiano. “The entire country is having a party”, Oscar Eduardo Izaguirre, Venezuela Baseball Federation executive director, said in an email in Spanish. The South American country known for oil, chocolate and coffee has been at the forefront of the Latin American influence on Major League Baseball. Ven-
ezuelans comprise the second largest group of foreign-born athletes in the majors after the Dominican Republic with a reported record 66 players on opening day rosters this year. And what a year it has been. Cabrera became the first player to win the prestigious Triple Crown in 45 years. In August, the Seattle Mariners’ Felix Hernandez became the first Venezuelan-born player to throw a perfect game. Also, Johan Santana became the first New York Mets pitcher to throw a no-hitter. And Omar Vizquel, 45, concluded a four-decade career as one of the game’s greatest shortstops this month. “I don’t think there is anything else people want to talk about other than baseball”, said Vizquel, who played with the Giants from 2005-08. “It is just amazing to see the impact these people can bring to a game”. Cabrera gave a nod to Venezuelan trailblazers such as Vizquel. “We’ve got to keep going what they did -- try to open more doors”, he said. “You never can forget where you come from”, Scutaro added. American oilmen introduced baseball to Venezuela in the 1920s. Although part of South America, Venezuelans relate to Caribbean countries such as the Dominican Republic and Cuba, which also have unsur-
passed passion for baseball no matter where it takes place. In Venezuela’s biggest event of the early baseball season last weekend, fans turned away from action on the field to watch a scoreboard showing the Giants-Cardinals playoff game. Never mind Navegantes del Magallanes -- Magellan’s Navigators -- were playing hated rivals Caracas Leones at the time. The crowd chanted in unison for Scutaro and Sandoval. “It was very emotional”, said Ismael Granadillo, Venezuela Professional Baseball League spokesman. There is little like baseball to unify Venezuelans who experienced a divisive election October 7 in which socialist President Hugo Chavez won a landslide victory. The Winter League that began four days after the election was like a salve, said Venezuelan lawyer Arturo J. Marcano Guevara, co-author of “Stealing Lives: the Globalization of Baseball and the Tragic Story of Alexis Quiroz”. “It’s like going to a spa to forget about everything for three hours”, he said. Now fans have the World Series to occupy their time. That includes about 2,600 Venezuelan immigrants living in the Bay Area, according to US Census Bureau estimates. “We root for Venezuelans to make something good of themselves inside or outside the country”, said Adriana Lopez, owner of PicaPica Maize Kitchen in San Francisco’s Mission District. “But we’re over the moon that Scutaro is one of the top players right now”.
who wish to undertake public works in their local areas. “These images are not just for academics and ministries, they are also for the people”, he said. The satellite was launched on September 28 from China, which is jointly managing the project with Venezuela. Over 50 Venezuelan professionals are currently out in China being trained to take over control of the satellite, which will be transferred over to Venezuela in January next year. “(Then) the relationship will be more of a cooperation and exchange of images with China”, confirmed Mariano Imbert, Executive Director of the Bolivarian Agency for Space Activities. Imbert also commented that the government was discussing the possibility of sharing the
images from the satellite with countries of the ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) in an attempt to deepen regional integration, as well as discussing further collaboration with the Chinese government in order to have access to the data recorded from two Chinese satellites.
“We are taking a further step towards independence”, Imbert explained. Miranda is the second satellite to be launched in conjunction with the Chinese government since Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998, with a first, named Simon Bolivar, being sent into orbit in 2008.
T/ Elliott Almond and David Pollak P/ Agencies
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aseball-loving Venezuelans from the Bay Area to South America celebrated Tuesday the most anticipated World Series in their long history with America’s pastime. A euphoria spread across the nation the moment countryman Marco Scutaro put his stamp on the postseason Monday night by lifting the San Francisco Giants into the Fall Classic. This is a milestone moment for a South American country that has a serious love affair with a game that has nothing to do with soccer. “They waited for this moment”, Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval said. Sandoval and Scutaro are two of nine Venezuelans on the rosters for the 2012 World Series, which began Wednesday at AT&T Park with San Francisco playing the Detroit Tigers. Also on the Giants’ active roster are Venezuelans Hector Sanchez, Jose Mijares and Gregor Blanco. Slugger Miguel Cabrera is joined on the Tigers by Anibal Sanchez, Avisail Garcia and Omar Infante. “It’s going to be exciting playing against players you know for a long time”, Cabrera said
Tuesday. “I think it’s going to be extra motivation”. In a year of chest-pounding achievements for Venezuela, the latest came Monday night in the rain when Scutaro was named NLCS most valuable player. His wife held up a Venezuelan flag as he received his trophy. “Venezuela Grows Giant”, blared the headline Tuesday
Venezuela’s first satellite images released T/ Rachael Boothroyd www.venezuelanalysis.com P/ AVN
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he Venezuelan government has released the first images taken by its new “Miranda” satellite, launched 3 weeks ago in collaboration with the Chinese government. The first images were presented during a televised press conference last Wednesday by a number of Venezuelan ministers. According to the Venezuelan government, the satellite will transmit up to 350 images a day and will be used principally to help the government plan “strategic areas of interest”, in-
cluding agriculture, industry, the country’s national housing mission and the environment. The images will also alert the government to climatic changes and help it to prepare for sudden rains, such as those that left thousands of Venezuelans homeless in 2010, as well as to improve planning for national harvests. They will also be used to aid military operations, specifically those on the frontier with Colombia. According to Minister of Science and Technology, Jorge Arreaza, the satellite’s images will be extremely important for public planning and will be made available to communal councils
. s Friday, October 26, 2012
The artillery of ideas
Investing in democracy in Venezuela
tronic voting with a verifiable paper trail and instant transmission of vote counts from remote locations to CNE headquarters. CNE’s anti-hacking and multiple transparent audit and identity authentication systems have put to rest past opposition claims of fraud. At each of the polling stations we visited, there were observers present representing both the Capriles and the Chavez camps. The observers expressed satisfaction with the
Pictures of 86 year-old Fidel have since appeared on the Cuban news site, Cubadebate, showing the Cuban leader looking active and healthy in a garden. Fidel has also hit out at the “imperialist yellow press” for deceiving readers following the incident, but stated that people were becoming more distrustful of mainstream media reporting. “Although many people in the world are deceived by the information bodies which publish
these stupid things, almost all of which are in the hands of the rich and privileged, many people believe in them less and less... no one likes to be deceived”, the former President wrote. “I like to write and I write, I like to study and I study... I stopped publishing [my column] because it is certainly not my role to fill up the pages of our press, which is focused on other areas required by the country”, he added.
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leadership (28 since the Bolivarian Constitution) and more electoral laws and regulations passed, the electoral system has become increasingly trusted and respected by the Venezuelan populace. The system has been used by unions to elect leadership and even by the opposition to elect its standard bearer in a primary last February (also witnessed by an NLG delegation). Since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez and the 1999 adoption of the Bolivarian Constitution,
voter registration has climbed from 11 million in 1998 to almost 19 million today, as a result of a robust registration program throughout the country, targeting the country’s poorest communities. The number of polling places has increased from 20,202 in 1998 to 38,239 in 2012. Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the Venezuelan electoral system is the technology used to record, verify, and transmit the votes. The technology provides for accessible elec-
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integrity and transparency of the process, regardless of their political affiliation. We were present at the CNE headquarters in Caracas for the announcement of the election results within a few hours of the closing of the more than 38,000 polling stations throughout the country. And we watched as Capriles conceded on television with the next hour. What struck us most was the national commitment to democracy as showcased by the very level of financial and popular investment in the entire system. Aside from the cost for the technology transfer from the Venezuelan company that designed the machines (Smartmatic), there is the cost of producing, maintaining, repairing, packing, and transporting the 46,000 machines, each with its separate electronic ballot and fingerprint authentication machines, as well as the significant investment in training field operators for polling stations all over the country. The CNE employs over 400,000 people to do the work that relates directly to the electoral process. We can only begin to imagine all the other jobs that result from this complex national process to ensure a fully transparent democratic system. Susan Scott is the National Lawyers Guild International Committee Co-Chair. Azadeh Shahshahani is President-Elect of the National Lawyers Guild.
T/ Susan Scott and Azadeh Shahshahani s part of an eight-member delegation from the National Lawyers Guild, we spent the week leading up to the October 7 Venezuelan presidential election in Caracas, learning about the electoral system that Jimmy Carter has called “the best in the world.” On the day of the election, we observed it in action all over the country as part of a group of more than 220 international parliamentarians, election officials, academics, journalists, and judges. As predicted by the vast majority of polling organizations, Hugo Chavez was re-elected by a double digit margin (55.11% to 44.27%) with an unprecedented turnout of 80.9%. Free and fair elections are only one feature of a democracy, but in Venezuela, elections have become something more—a national project which knows no party and constitutes a major investment. What makes Venezuela’s electoral system stand out resides in a combination of factors. The Bolivarian project of “21st Century Socialism” and Latin American integration, initiated by Hugo Chavez and his supporters after his first election in 1998, is a fundamentally democratic project. Chavez has repeatedly emphasized that its legitimacy and viability lies in the will of the people as expressed in free and fair elections. The 1999 Bolivarian Constitution was itself drafted by an assembly of elected members with significant popular input and was adopted in a national referendum by a 72% popular vote. It provides for an independent National Electoral Council (CNE), chosen by the elected National Assembly (Congress), and with a constitutional status equal to the other four branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial, and Poder Ciudadano, “People’s Power,” which includes the Attorney General, Human Rights Defender, and Comptroller General). The Constitution provides for more than the election of political representatives – there are provisions for referenda to change the Constitution (used in 2007 and 2009), referenda to abrogate laws, and even for recall of the president (attempted in 2004). As more and more elections are conducted under the CNE’s
| Analysis
Venezuelan meets with Castro, dispels stroke rumours T/ Rachael Boothroyd P/ Cubadebate
F
ormer Venezuelan VicePresident, Elias Jaua, has dispelled rumors that Cuban revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, had suffered a stroke after a Venezuelan doctor told international press that the former head of state was seriously ill. Rumors began circulating in the international press after Miami-based physician Jose Marquina told Spanish news network, ABC, that the Cuban leader was near to a “neurovegetative state” following a stroke and could “recognize absolutely no-one”. Marquina is most famously known for having falsely reported last year that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had
just months to live after he was diagnosed with cancer. Despite this, many news outlets such as the Miami Herald and the New York Post reported the Venezuelan doctor’s comments as fact. “We were conversing for quite a while on different topics, such as the Bolivarian revolution, the peoples’ victory on October 7, agriculture, and some experimental harvests that he [Castro] is carrying out. This is a demonstration that he is perfectly fine”, said Jaua after making a “surprise” visit to Cuba on Saturday. “He is a human being who thinks about humanity, about what the men and women of this planet are going to eat, both now and in the future...he is an extraordinary being, at the service of everyone....We’ll have Fidel for a while yet”, he added.
Friday, October 26, 2012 | Nº 132 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
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! PUBLICATION OF THE &UNDACION #ORREO DEL /RINOCO s Editor-in-Chief %VA 'OLINGER s Graphic Design Pablo Valduciel L. - Aimara Aguilera
Opinion
Nobel Peace Prize goes to war-makers, while peacemakers are shunned
T/ Dan Kovalik
“T
here are two types of people in the world -those that love and create, and those that hate and destroy”. -- Jose Marti While the Nobel Prize Committee has again awarded the Peace Prize to a war-maker on a grand scale -- this time to the European Union, which, through NATO, has been carrying out war continuously for decades in such far-flung places as Yugoslavia, Libya and Afghanistan -- it is important to remember that there are indeed peacemakers in the world deserving of the prize. However, these deserving peacemakers may not be people you would think of because they have either been vilified or completely ignored by the Western press. Contemplate this story from The Guardian, titled, “Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez played
role in Colombia’s peace talks with Farc” guerillas: “The ailing former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, together with Venezuela’s recently reelected leader Hugo Chavez, played a critical role in bringing the Colombian government and the... FARC guerrilla group together for peace talks that could end one of Latin America’s longest-running civil wars, the Observer has learned. According to sources closely involved in the peace process, which sees historic talks opening in Oslo on Wednesday, the key breakthrough after almost four years of back-channel talks between the two sides came during a visit earlier this year by Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos, to Cuba, where he met both Castro and Chavez, who was in Cuba being treated for cancer”. Spending almost four years to end a bloody civil war that
has been going on for more than 50 years, and which has cost tens of thousands of lives, certainly seems a feat worthy of a peace prize. Undoubtedly, this outshines the efforts of the US, which, through three different administrations, including the Obama administration, has spent more than $8 billion in military aid to the Colombian regime to keep the war going. Incredibly, though, it was Obama who was awarded the Nobel Prize, despite the fact that he has helped stoke the Colombian conflict, most recently by sending military advisers to Colombia; continued the war in Afghanistan; maintained the shameful gulag in Guantanamo Bay; expanded the war to Pakistan; started a war in Libya; and threatened further conflict in both Syria and Iran. Meanwhile, while Obama’s “assistance” to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake consisted of
sending 14,000 armed troops, it was Fidel and Chavez who sent doctors and medical assistance to Haiti -- help that, according to The New York Times, prevented Haiti from being overrun by the cholera epidemic. Again, this use of peaceful means, in contrast to the US usual violent means, to provide desperately-needed aid to the poorest country in our Hemisphere seems worthy of the Nobel Prize. In addition, there are other brave men and women living in Colombia who have for many years risked their lives to try to bring peace to that country. Foremost among these is former Senator Piedad Cordoba, who has been a key figure in jump starting the Colombian peace talks. Ms. Cordoba has sacrificed her political career for peace, thus being stripped of her right to stand and run for political office because of her
contacts with the FARC guerillas -- contacts which were necessary to bring about the release of captives held by the FARC as well as to advance peace discussions. It is unsung heroes like Piedad who deserve to be singled out for their sacrifices in the interests of peace. The Nobel Committee should also consider giving the Peace Prize to La Marcha Patrotica in Colombia, led by such brave souls as my friend Carlos Lozano, which has also played a key role in advancing the peace in that country. La Marcha has worked closely with those at the center of the conflict -- poor peasants -- to pressure the Colombian government to come to the negotiating table. For their efforts, a number of the leaders and rank and file members of La Marcha have been vilified, threatened, jailed, murdered and disappeared. Again, the Nobel Prize was created to reward the type of courage shown by such peacemakers. I also think of my friend Marino Cordoba, who, after escaping Colombia to the US after multiple attempts upon his life by right-wing paramilitary groups -- groups closely aligned with the military, which the US has been funding for years -- recently returned to Colombia in the interest of accompanying fellow Afro-Colombians in their struggle for peace and justice in Colombia. Afro-Colombians have been particularly affected by the conflict in Colombia, with more than 12 percent of Afro-Colombians being internally displaced, thus disproportionately filling the ranks of the more than 5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Colombia -- the largest IDP population on earth. Marino, without any means of support, has put everything on the line for this effort, leaving his wife and three children behind in the US while risking his life for peace in Colombia. Sadly, however, it is not such people who are considered for the Nobel Prize these days. Instead, the Prize is going to the world’s most powerful, like Obama and the European Union, who wield their power destructively, in the interest of war rather than peace. Meanwhile, those truly working for peace are ignored or ridiculed. This is the upside-down world in which we find ourselves. Dan Kovalik is a human and labor rights lawyer.