Analysis
Opinion
Cuba bypasses US aggressive policies via Celac page 7
A tale of two presidents: Mujica and Obama page 8
Friday, February 15, 2013 | Nº 146 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
Advancing public transportation As millions of Venezuelan and international vacationers took to the roads, buses, planes, boats, and trains to celebrate Carnival this week, various announcements were made by the national government in the sector of mass public transport. President of the Metro of Caracas, Haiman El Troudi, announced the usage of the largest metro system in Venezuela, which has been moving inhabitants of the capital since 1983, has risen to 2.2 million users daily. page 5
ENGLISH EDITION/The artillery of ideas
Venezuela adjusts currency, Carnival celebrated by millions
Strengthening ties with Brazil
Economy
Price controls to aid citizens Venezuela’s participatory economy allows for input on new measures. page 4
Social Justice
Youth commemorate day
Venezuela’s youth celebrate their role in Revolution. page 6
President Chavez undergoing “tough and complicated treatments” T/ COI
Integration
Venezuela advances relations with South America’s biggest economy. page 3
INTERNATIONAL
As the nation set forth to celebrate Carnival, Venezuelan Planning Minister Jorge Giordani and the President of the nation’s Central Bank, Nelson Merentes, announced a new exchange rate of 6.30 bolivars to the US dollar last Friday. The move marks a 32% adjustment in the national currency relative to the dollar and was accompanied by news of a new institution to oversee the allocation of foreign exchange to individuals and companies in the Caribbean country. Meanwhile, millions of Venezuelans and international visitors celebrated Carnival with extravagant festivals and parties. Pages 2-3
Building homes T/ AVN
Coordinator of the Housing Program, Rafael Ramirez, said Wednesday that the Venezuelan Government has set the ambitious goal of building 380,000 new homes for needy families. “This year, we will construct and allocate 380,000 homes as Commander (President Hugo) Chavez said and as it has been one of our main proposals in the government plan voted on in the last elections”, said Ramirez. During 2011 and 2012, he recalled, 346,798 houses were built through the Grand Housing Mission Venezuela, which were allocated to the same number of families. In addition, Ramirez informed that the mortgage portfolio for the year 2013 will rise from 15 per cent to 20 per cent. “It means that we will have 80,422,952,904 bolivares for mortgage lending”, Ramirez said, detailing that the measure aims at giving a boost to the construction of new homes through the social program.
Venezuela’s President has been recovering from a very intense, complex cancer-related operation that took place last December 11 in Havana, Cuba. Since then, he has not made any public appearances. On Wednesday, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro gave the most recent update on Chavez’s status. According to Maduro, President Chavez is currently undergoing “tough and complex complimentary treatments” following the cancer-related surgery. President Chavez has undergone four cancer-related operations and has overcome several complications, including a severe respiratory infection. Last month a Venezuelan cabinet member said Hugo Chavez was joking and giving orders, but his situation seems to have slowed since then. “Compatriots just leaving a meeting with our Commander President Hugo Chavez. We shared some jokes and laughed”, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said in a message posted on Twitter in January. “I passed along all of your blessings and love. Viva Chavez!”. The Vice President and other high level officials and Socialist Party members who have seen Chavez in the past few weeks, all say he is optimistic and fighting hard to make a full recovery, though his situation is difficult. The Venezuelan President has been actively involved in government in recent days, signing bills, authorizing budgetary issues and issuing orders to his cabinet members. Most recently, he instructed his government to make better use of the two satellites Venezuela has constructed and sent into space during the past few years.
2 Impact | . s Friday, February 15, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela sets new exchange rate, establishes agency for allocation of dollars T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
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enezuelan Planning Minister Jorge Giordani and the President of the nation’s Central Bank, Nelson Merentes, announced a new exchange rate of 6.30 bolivars to the US dollar last Friday during a press conference held in the capital Caracas. The move marks a 32% devaluation in the national currency relative to the dollar and was accompanied by news of a new institution to oversee the allocation of foreign exchange to individuals and companies in the Caribbean country. According to Venezuelan Vice President, Nicolas Maduro, the new initiatives will “provide stability for our currency, combat the perverse speculation that is the result of an economic war being carried out against Venezuela, and protect the economy and the people”. While critics have accused that the adjustments will lead to greater inflation, supporters have said that such predictions are unwarranted and that the measures will lead to greater social investment. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington-based think tank, reported on Friday that the government’s announcements “will overall be good for the economy”. CEPR Co-Founder Mark Weisbrot writes that “the devaluation will increase the cost of capital flight, and by making imports more expensive, provide a boost to import-competing industries”. Weisbrot also argues that while short term inflation may result from the change in exchange rate, there is no evidence to argue that such a trend will continue into the future. In fact, the economist points out, a similar devaluation in 2010 was followed by two years of declining inflation and economic growth reaching more than five percent in 2012. Such outcomes contrast sharply with media reports of the time that forecasted a 60 percent increase in
tion in order to receive foreign exchange through a system of certification by public officials will also be enacted, the Financial Minister said. The official creation of the new Exchange Optimization Agency was announced by Minister Giordani during a press conference on Saturday. “We declare this agency established and we are going to dedicate ourselves immediately to this necessary and most urgent work”, Giordani said in company of Merentes as well as Venezuela’s Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez and the president of Cadivi, Manuel Barroso.
GREATER MOVEMENT OF DOLLARS
Venezuelan inflation, Weisbrot asserts.
PROTECTING THE ECONOMY In 2003, Venezuela placed restrictions on the movement of international currencies in order to avoid the kind of capital flight and foreign exchange market fluctuations that have provoked long term damage in many developing economies around the world. The country’s Commission on Foreign Exchange Administration (Cadivi) has since been in charge of allocating a set amount of US dollars to citizens travelling internationally and to businesses working in the export/import sector. To relieve pressure on the demand for foreign currencies, the Chavez administration also issued some $7 billion annually in bonds under the country’s System of Transactions in Foreign Currency (Sitme).
Central Bank President Nelon Merentes reported last week that the Sitme has now been abolished in favor of a new agency that will oversee a more efficient administering of foreign currencies and will “stimulate non-traditional exports”. “[Sitme] had become imperfect in recent years and wasn’t carrying out its functions in some aspects”, Merentes said of the now defunct body. “It doesn’t make sense in the long term to maintain a system that uses debt in order to feed the country”, the Bank President added. The newly announced Agency for the Optimization of the Exchange System, in contrast to the Sitme, will set priorities for the allocation of foreign exchange based on the develop-
ment needs of the country and work to lessen Venezuela’s dependency on imported goods. Planning Minister Giordani informed that the measure is in line with the governmental focus announced by President Hugo Chavez last November of “Efficiency or Nothing”. “The President has demanded of us greater efficiency in this government in minimizing expenses and maximizing returns. It is in this direction that we are working”, Giordani said. Part of this greater efficacy includes coordinating work between the country’s Ministries of Planning and Oil, the central bank, and the Venezuelan tax administration, known as Seniat. Tougher standards on the verification of domestic produc-
A further initiative revealed on Friday includes the ability of Venezuelan citizens to open national bank accounts in US dollars and a relaxation of the regulations overseeing the movement of foreign exchange in financing institutions. Merentes and Giordani highlighted the fact that Venezuelan individuals will now be able to receive deposits from their exterior accounts as well as receive remittances from familiar members living abroad. These accounts will additionally be entitled to receive funds emitted by international organizations for work carried out in other countries as well as returns on international investments of up to $2,000 a month. Accounts registered to businesses will be permitted to move funds between national and international banks in order to pay loans and receive payments for capital invested abroad.
PRIVATE SECTOR SHOULD DO ITS PART Minister Giordani referred to the group of measures announced last week as “part of the new plan that is in construction, based on the Program of the Homeland and the instructions of efficiency from the reelected President Hugo Chavez”. While noting that the majority of the country’s foreign exchange is a result of the public sector, the government’s Planning and Finance head also made a call for reciprocity and greater productivity from the private businesses soliciting the currency. “An increase in public efficiency is required, but it is also required from the private sector”, he affirmed.
. s Friday, February 15, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela and Brazil fortify regional integration, discuss trade cooperation
very favorable for Brazil”, and that “the current situation is that of enthusiasm for the integration of Venezuela into Mercosur”. The Brazilian also highlighted the strong relationship taking form between private enterprises and the Venezuelan government. “The private sector sees great opportunities for trade with Venezuela and the situation of the country is positive”.
greater economic development, Rangel said, noting that the government has invested heavily in the cultural conservation of the city’s customs. “With these fiestas, we are promoting tourism as well as our cultural values”, the governor asserted. Benito Irady, President of Venezuela’s Center for Cultural Diversity informed that the South American country would be soliciting from Unesco the status of Intangible Cultural Heritage for the Carnival of Callao.
Venezuela’s Dancing Devils became the first tradition in the country to be recognized as such by the UN body last December. “We have the bases of investigation prepared and the work has been opened to register El Callao. We’re going to prepare a file for the next declaration of Cultural Heritage”, Irady said. It is estimated that 19 million people have travelled for the holiday season, requiring increased public safety presence throughout the national territory. Venezuelan Minister of Justice and the Interior, Nestor Reverol, reported last weekend on the total normality of the security operation that has seen more than 205,000 officers deployed throughout the country. “It’s been an extraordinary deployment”, Reverol said, commenting that accidents associated with automobiles and drowning have reduced “considerably” as a result.
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ating an inventory of supply would be key. Improvements in communication and transport will have an added impact of opening the door for greater collaboration in the tourist sector, Jaua said, confirming that the diplomatic teams of both countries will meet at the end of March in the Brazilian city of Manaus to further discuss strategies of cooperation. For his part, the Brazilian Foreign Minister underscored
the importance that Venezuela has played in the commercial life of Brazil over the last year, while articulating his country’s satisfaction of seeing Venezuela as full member of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) trade bloc. Patriota emphasized the benefits that his country has enjoyed as a consequence of its northern neighbor, citing that “economic indicators for trade [with Venezuela] in 2012 were
Carnival holidays celebrated in recovered, traditional places T/ COI P/ Agencies
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illions of Venezuelans in the capital of Caracas and around the country took part in the cultural activities and fiestas of Carnival that saw greater public engagement with a diversity of recreational events. In Caracas, the celebrations were marked by greater opportunities for families and residents to participate in the activities planned by the government of the capital district. This stands in contrast with the neglect suffered by the city’s public spaces at the hands of previous governments that had let the capital decline into a hostile and insecure metropolis, said Freddy Nanez, President of the Art and Culture Foundation of Caracas. “Caracas used to be a city to work, sleep, and run away
from when there were vacations because the city had been abandoned as territory, as landscape and as a common place”, Nanez said. “Now we have many more places to go to... There are venues to celebrate Carnival and all of the fiestas that we have on our calendar”, he added. One of those recovered spaces renovated by the Chavez government has been the Plaza Diego Ibarra where sporting activities, puppet shows and concerts for children provided wholesome entertainment for families. Other downtown plazas now accessible to the public include El Venezolano and Juan Pedro Lopez Square where similar activities were organized for the five days of Carnival that began on Friday and ended with a parade through Caracas on Tuesday.
EL CALLAO Another major center of Carnival activity in Venezuela is the small city of El Callao in the southern state of Bolivar where calypso music and Rio-like parades characterize the festivities of the gold mining outpost. According to the Governor of Bolivar, Francisco Rangel, tourism in the state “has grown by 800 percent in the past 8 years and we are expecting to pass 410,000 visits” for Carnival in 2013. Events like those held in El Callao are responsible for
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Jaua commented that this strong relationship with private investors is an indicator that, despite media portrayals, Venezuela is “a country at peace”. “Worries only exist in the media war rooms around the world that try to make it look as if Venezuela is falling into a destabilization - something that doesn’t exist in any part of the country. It doesn’t exist on any street or any of the beaches that are full of families enjoying Carnival right now”, Jaua asserted. In addition to regional integration between Northern Brazil and Southern Venezuela, the two diplomats discussed greater cooperation in areas of agriculture, scientific development and energy investment. The topic of Venezuela’s candidacy to host the 2019 Pan American Games in Ciudad Bolivar was also touched upon as was Brazil’s aspirations to take the helms of the World Trade Organization. Regarding the recovery of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Patriota expressed Brazil’s desire to see the quick recovery of the head of state, currently convalescing in Cuba after cancer surgery performed on December 11. “With respect to the illness of Chavez, what we, the government and Brazilian society have expressed is a great confidence in his recovery and the institutions of Venezuela”, the Brazilian Foreign Minister declared.
T/ COI P/ Presidential Press enezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua met with his Brazilian counterpart, Antonio Patriota, last Friday in Caracas for an encounter that resulted in the strengthening of productive enterprises and commercial relations between the neighboring countries. The bilateral meeting was held in the Yellow House of the Venezuelan government where the two diplomats discussed further integration of Northern Brazil and the Southern reaches of the OPEC member state. “We spoke about the supply of goods and the fact that the North of Brazil relies on necessities provided by businesses in Sao Paulo and how these needs could be covered perfectly by the southern region of Venezuela, which is closer than the industrial centers of Brazil”, said Jaua after the meeting. The highest diplomat of the Chavez administration reported that to see this relationship grow, transportation and infrastructure as well as cre-
| Integration
4 Economy | . s Friday, February 15, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela: New price control measures designed with participatory input
new cars in Venezuela to meet demand. Meanwhile the consultation and passing of the car sales law seems set to go ahead. “We hope that in less than two months the public consultation will be finished, to then enter into the second National Assembly discussion and final approval of the project”, said legislator Chavez. The lawmaker also confirmed that once passed, people’s power will have a role in
the monitoring and control of the law’s functioning. Further, the government’s National Superintendent of Fair Costs and Prices (Sundecop), responsible for designing and implementing price controls, is currently compiling information across the pharmaceutical sector as part of the continued regulation of prices of medicines. Sundecop is using the participation of various actors to design further price control measures in the sector. Last Thursday, a workshop was held with health professionals, doctors, nurses, and grassroots representatives to create strategies with the public and private pharmaceutical industry to guarantee medicines to the people at “fair prices”. Sundecop head Karlin Granadillo explained to Venezuelan public media that the workshop was the first of many, and that grassroots and community activists would be fundamental in the regulation of measures implemented. Venezuela’s Law of Fair Costs and Prices came into effect November 2011 to protect consumers and combat speculation. It allows the government to set prices not just at the point of sale, but along the production line. Other products which have their prices regulated under the law include personal hygiene and bathroom products, basic food items, some construction materials, and rent.
and have given a completely different version of Chavez’s condition. Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on Saturday that he expected Chavez to be back in Caracas “before too long” and on Sunday reported that Chavez was in good spirits. “What is never missing is the President’s good spirit, his will to be with us, his huge will to live, his smile, the light in his eyes, and his guiding message”, said Maduro during a government event. Just last month the Spanish newspaper El País published a photo of a man they claimed to be Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of his mouth. The photo turned out to be fake, taken from a 2008 YouTube video about medical practices with a man who vaguely resembled Chavez given the poor quality and angle of the photo. The Venezuelan government vowed to sue the Spanish news-
paper, and also criticized other Spanish media outlets like ABC for carrying out what they called a “media war” against Venezuela. Last month, Maduro criticized media outlets for reprinting and repeating what he called “the trashy news articles” written by ABC. ABC has responded in recent weeks claiming that their reports are always truthful and have been subsequently confirmed by the facts. However, over a month ago ABC claimed that Chavez was in a coma, and would soon be disconnected from the life support that was keeping him alive. The most likely result would be death “at any moment”, said the report. That report was published on January 2, yet ABC’s subsequent reports have said nothing more about the supposed life support, or the likely death that they assured at the time.
T/ Ewan Robertson P/ Agencies
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ew measures to protect Venezuelan consumers with price controls on car sales and medicines are being designed through participatory mechanisms, officials have reported. A public consultation is being planned to write the final version of a proposed law to regulated sales of new and used cars, confirmed Venezuelan lawmaker Julio Chavez. “We are asking all those involved, motor-bikers, vehicle owners, to participate in the public discussion of this draft legislation, that contains 33 articles which are undoubtedly going to be enriched by the discussion of concrete reality”, said the legislator for the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The proposed law is motivated by the need to protect Venezuelan consumers from speculation on vehicle prices, with car dealers often charging exorbitant rates. The legislation stipulates that the government’s consumer protection body Indepabis and tax authority Seniat, together with vehicle importers and national assemblers, will be responsible for designing maximum prices for the sale of each vehicle type based on a detailed study of the industry’s cost structure. Car importers and dealers will then have to publish their list of prices in national newspapers and online, with failure to do so attracting a heavy financial penalty. The draft law was approved in January in Venezuela’s National Assembly, with the progovernment bloc and even some opposition legislators supporting the move. Opposition deputy Míriam de Montilla complained in the assembly session that car dealers were committing “many abuses” against consumers. Julio Chavez, speaking on Venezuelan public channel VTV last Friday, explained that vehicle importers and assemblers use the government’s official favorable dollar rate to import vehicles and parts, before selling those cars to consumers at black market dollar rates, making a huge profit in the process.
He warned the sector was “in the hands of capital and the market. We already know what the ethic and logic of the market is: to speculate, and arrive at disproportionate levels of usury, against the constitution and national interests”. As such, he concluded, “Definitely, it’s necessary for the state to intervene through this legal instrument”. Venezuelan economist Jose Guerra recently commented that another factor creating
shortages in the car industry and thus driving up prices was the lack of dollars in the economy for the importation of cars and assembly parts. This issue was addressed by the government last Friday, when the Bolivar was devalued against the dollar and a new government body was established to improve the flow of dollars into the economy. Sources such as Bloomberg have predicted that this will help stimulate the supply of
Venezuelan government rejects report from Spanish daily ABC T/ Chris Carlson www.venezuelanalysis.com
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ust weeks after Spanish newspaper El País published a fake photo of Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan authorities responded to another report, this time by Spanish daily ABC, which claims that the Venezuelan President would not recover from his recent sugery. “This so-called information from ABC is about as true as the fake photo in El País”, said Communications Minister Ernesto Villegas via Twitter on Sunday. ABC published a report over the weekend claiming that Hugo Chavez’s doctors in Havana had affirmed that he would not recover, and will not be able to return to the presidency.
According to the Spanish daily, Chavez has completely lost his voice as a result of the medical treatment he has received, and is “very depressed” due to the fact that he cannot speak or get out of his bed. The report also claims that Chavez’s cancer is terminal, that the President is suffering the symptoms of an advancing cancer that has metastasized, and that the announcements by the Venezuelan government have not been truthful about the deterioration of his condition. Chavez’s family has already been notified, the report says, and the Venezuelan government will make the announcement in the coming days that Chavez cannot return. Government officials, however, have denied ABC’s claims
. s Friday, February 15, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Advances shown in transport
T/ Paul Dobson P/ Agencies
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s millions of Venezuelan and international vacationers took to the roads, buses, planes, boats, and trains to celebrate Carnival this week, various announcements were made by the national government in the sector of mass public transport. President of the publicly run Metro of Caracas, Haiman El Troudi, announced the usage of the largest metro system in Venezuela, which has been moving inhabitants of the capital since 1983, has risen from 2 million to 2.2 million users daily. In a city of roughly 6-7 million inhabitants, a significant percentage use public transportation. A one-way journey on the metro costs 1.50 Bolivars ($0.23). “In the last four or five months of 2012, the Caracas Metro exceeded 2 million users and now transports 2.2 million people daily”, said El Troudi. “That is 200,000 people who are now being attended to thanks to this vigorous policy of expansion which is being pushed on by the Chavez administration”. He also explained that the expansion of the network is a direct result of the policies of social inclusion of the Venezuelan government. Previously, the Metro only reached the downtown and richer areas of Caracas, but various projects by the Chavez administration have enabled the transport network to now reach some of the poorest neighborhoods, such as San Agustin and Mariche, and gives them access to the same
opportunities and resources previously available to only a minority. The Caracas Metro currently has four lines and 42 stations, and is part of a wider integrated transport network in the capital which now includes the Cable Car of Mariche, the Cable Car of San Agustin, the BusCaracas overland network, as well as being directly connected to the train networks heading west out of the city, and also to the Metro of Los Teques, the capital of Miranda State only 2 hours from Caracas. El Troudi also used the opportunity to update some developments to be inaugurated soon. He explained that shortly they would be inaugurating the new Independencia station of the Los Teques Metro, as well as the CableTrain of Petare,
which will revolutionize the commuting experience of one of the poorest sectors in the whole country. Similarly, the new Line 5 of the Metro, currently in construction, “shows a very significant advancement in its subterranean excavation”, and is currently 70% ready, he explained. This line will cover 12.5k and include 10 stations, which will connect the downtown (Parque Central) to the tourist attraction the Waraira Repano Cable Car, located in a highly residential sector. The other major advancement he drew attention to is the construction of the 18 kilometer long Guarenas-Guatire Cabletrain. Both Guarenas and Guatire are where millions of commuters live and travel from into Caracas on a daily basis, a
journey fraught with traffic at peak hours. He explained that the project is on course, according to their predetermined itinerary, and that they expect to inaugurate the section Guarenas-Guatire in 2015, and then connect both to the main Caracas transport network in 2016-2017. El Troudi also highlighted that the workers of the Metro of Caracas are forming a training group of blind and deaf workers, who will train a section of the workforce in the skills needed to be able to correctly attend to blind and deaf users of the Metro. This, he explained, embodies the inclusive polices of the Chavez government and of the Caracas Metro, whereby all users, whatever their impediment, have the right to use, as equals, the public transport network.
| Economy
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AIR TRAVEL In other news, it was announced that the airline, Aeropostal, plans to amplify its destinations in 2013, after resolving the crisis that led to its nationalization in 2008. In 2008, after years of mismanagement by its private owners, Aeropostal was on the point of bankruptcy, which would have left its workers without payouts or employment. For these reasons, the Chavez government intervened. The airline currently employs 115,000 workers, and is working to resolve the 60 international and 100 internal court cases which the new director, Luis Graterol, inherited from the previous administration. They are in “the second phase of growth which we have managed to finance commercially”, he stated. “Now we can say for certain that Aeropostal is a revolutionary company. They are the wings of the Bolivarian revolution, the wings of Venezuela”. The company has recently invested $5 million in the purchase of 3 new Italian built planes, to add to its fleet of 5, which fly routes in the center and east of the country. Graterol explained that they are working to remodel the central hanger, which has suffered 34 years of deterioration, and needs to be updated to meet new international aeronautical standards. Aeropostal currently moves 3,000 passengers daily, and according to Graterol, has “a punctuality index of close to 80%”. He also explained that, in line with the solidarity policies of the Chavez administration, Aeropostal has very low prices, and that children under 3 do not pay. Furthermore, elderly citizens, and those with disabilities enjoy a discounted fare. Graterol highlighted the new destinations Aeropostal is currently evaluating would be focused around destinations within ALBA and Mercosur countries, such as the Caribbean islands. The recent admission of Venezuela into Mercosur has facilitated commercial-touristic projects such as this one. “Our objective is to strengthen all of the policies of the Chavez Government, such as the integration of our peoples… Aeropostal is contributing to our development… it’s not Aeropostal, but rather Venezuela, and if it is Venezuela, then it is the Revolution. The objective is to keep dreaming, and convert these dreams into a reality”, he added.
6 Social Justice | . s Friday, February 15, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Venezuelan youth commemorate historic day
Green spaces in Venezuela help minimize harmful emissions T/ AVN P/ Agencies
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T/ Paul Dobson P/ Agencies
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ollowing pocket violent demonstrations by extreme right wing university sectors over the past few weeks, the revolutionary youth who support President Hugo Chavez made clear to the country and the world that they are the majority this week during celebrations of Youth Day. Despite attempts by the right wing opposition alliance to influence international public opinion and falsely imply that the majority of youth are against the Chavez government, the small, violent, and extremely localized shows of university rebellion seen during January have failed to impact most Venezuelans. Meanwhile, the more than 2 million members of the youth wing of the Socialist Party (Jpsuv), alongside the youth of the Communist Party (JCV), and other allied parties, held acts in every Plaza Bolivar in the country this past February 12 to celebrate all that has been achieved under the Chavez administration for young workers and students. Additionally, there is a national youth march planned for February 17. “We are clear in our role in this historic moment in which the country is living”, stated the General Secretary of the Jpsuv,
Antonio Galindez. “We, the university students who believe in the revolution and in President Chavez are in the streets debating each and every educational advance. We are peaceful, intelligent, we study, and we have our arguments, our rebellion, our joy, and our voice”. “Today, Chavez has returned to us our hopes to organize ourselves into student councils, of constructing a really liberating education system, and of participating in popular power, as a part of these proposals which serve to deepen the socialist system”, he went on to explain. February 12, which also commemorates the decisive Battle of La Victoria of 1814, when Jose Felix Ribas led one thousand students and other independence troops to victory over the Spanish colonialists, was declared in 1947 as Youth Day. Events began this year with a wreath laying ceremony in the Plaza Bolivar in Caracas at sunrise, presided over by the Ministers of the Interior, Youth, Culture, Defense, Education, and Communication. Minister of the Interior, Nestor Reverol, stated that they were commemorating “youth who offered their lies for our independence. Their example is the legacy for this revolutionary and Bolivarian youth”. He expressed that the responsibility for the future of the revolu-
tion lies with “all these patriotic youth who today are politicians, sportsmen and women, students, and social leaders, because they are part of the struggle that our people are undergoing today for our freedom”. Minister for Youth, Mari Pili Hernandez, reinforced the commitment of revolutionary youth to continue building socialism in the country. She also compared the historic continuity of the struggle of youth today to that of Ribas in 1814, who “is re-vindicated and restrengthened by today’s youth, by the Bolivarian people, who are willing to give their lives for our sovereignty and for our independence, so that we are never again a colony”. At other commemoratory events in Ribas Municipality, Aragua State, Mayor Juan Carlos Sanchez emphasized the importance of the maturity of Venezuela’s young population: “to continue constructing a more just society, balanced and conscious, these are the genuine tasks of the Venezuelan youth. Today, like never before, youth have the opportunity to achieve these goals”. “A generation that has access to education, to health, to food, is a generation that can assume the reins of the process of transformation and change which Venezuelan society is experiencing”, he affirmed.
enezuela is putting into practice various strategies to minimize harmful carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions derived from energy consumption, including planting trees. Venezuela’s Ministry of the Environment has promoted a program called “Mission Tree” throughout the country since 2006, and so far, the program has reforested more than 34,000 hectares of land to contribute to emissions reductions. Forests act as “carbon sinks”, capturing and absorbing carbon dioxide during photosynthesis. The director of environmental quality for the Ministry, María Leny Matos, explained in an interview with Agencia Venezolana de Noticias: “The leaves of the trees produce chlorophyll that, when exposed to light, undergoes a process of photosynthesis. Photosynthesis consumes CO2 from the atmosphere, and each plant that we have helps greatly to reduce our CO2 levels”. These projects are unfolding hand-in-hand with local communities. Mission Tree has formed 4,700 conservation committees, planted about 45 million plants and built 3,809 gardens, generating 62,365 direct jobs and 107,000 indirect jobs. Matos said that planting trees is just one way to fight global warming, given that unsustainable patterns of human consumption are the main problem. For this reason, promoting energy consumption has been another key government policy in combating climate change. A program called “Mission Energy Revolution” offers Venezuelans incentives
to change their behavior and habits to bring about a more efficient and rational use of energy and natural resources. This program hopes to generate change by raising the consciousness of the population, stabilizing the supply of services, meeting the demand for electricity and reducing levels of contamination and environmental impact. The Ministry of Electricity has developed several projects, such as one that substitutes traditional incandescent light bulbs with energy-saving ones in homes and public places throughout the country. This involves a public information campaign about the benefits of saving electricity. From 2006 to 2012, Mission Energy Revolution replaced 155 million light bulbs. The National Electricity Corporation, Corpoelec, plans to install another 20 million energy-saving light bulbs throughout the country. Matos said that “Here in Venezuela we have the tools… we have taken steps to reduce CO2 emissions, because each country has to do its part”. She also mentioned that Venezuela signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987, an agreement to control ozone-depleting substances. The Montreal Protocol was designed to save the ozone layer by reducing the amount of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, that are put into the atmosphere. In 2006, the Environmental Ministry began converting 88 refrigerant gas companies in Venezuela, moving away from the use of Freon gases four years earlier than required. With this sustained policy, Venezuela stopped over 50 million tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
. s Friday, February 15, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Cuban diplomacy bypasses US via Celac T/ Patricia Grogg
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uban diplomacy will be working full blast this year, promoting its own approach to integration in line with the needs and goals of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), a regional body that excludes the United States, Cuba’s leading ideological opponent. It is precisely this independence from Washington that most attracts Havana to Celac, whose presidency will be occupied until 2014 by Cuban President Raul Castro, together with Chilean President Sebastian Piñera and Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla. By special resolution, this three-pronged presidency will be supplemented by Haitian President Michel Martelly, who also heads the Caribbean Community (Caricom) this year. Celac is a diverse, plural and politically and ideologically tolerant bloc that gathers all the countries of Latin Amer-
ica and the Caribbean. Thus the challenge put to member countries even before Celac’s founding meeting is to tread carefully and find a path of agreement and consensus, with the overall aim of moving forward towards regional integration and growth, striving, in particular, to achieve a socially-just economic development. “We undertake to work for peace, justice and development for Latin America and the Caribbean, and for cooperation, understanding and solidarity among all Latin American and Caribbean peoples”, Castro said at the summit in late January, upon taking office as Celac president, but acknowledged that regional unity must be built on the recognition of the region’s diversity. The 33-country bloc closed its first formal summit in the Chilean capital of Santiago, and has scheduled its second summit for a year from this past January, in Cuba. The Cuban government has been a strong supporter of
the regional integration body since the idea for its creation first came up four years ago, at the Latin American and Caribbean Summit on Integration and Development held in Brazil. That 2008 summit, the first regional meeting of its kind to be organized without engaging the United States and Canada, was followed two years later in 2010 by a similar gathering, this time in Mexico, where participant countries agreed to create Celac. The bloc was finally founded the following year at a third meeting in Caracas. Cuba made its preference for a US-free integration known in June 2009 when the United States voted against the Caribbean island’s request to be reinstated as a member of the Organization of American States, from which it was suspended by consensus in 1962 after embracing MarxismLeninism. The Castro administration also stepped up its active involvement in forums that represent the countries of the
region, including Caribbean island nations. “Strengthening, expanding and harmonizing these bodies and groups is the path chosen by Cuba; (no longer holding on to) the impossible illusion of returning to an organization that refuses to reform and has been condemned by history”, Castro said. Cuba is a founding member of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), of which Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Dominica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Venezuela are also members. It also has close and active political and cooperation ties with Caricom. Cooperation with countries of the South is one of the strengths of Cuba’s foreign policy, a strategy which opens up significant opportunities for Latin America and the Caribbean to implement major projects despite limited resources. “We all have advantages and experiences that we can con-
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tribute”, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said shortly before the Santiago summit. As an example of this, Rodriguez mentioned the assistance provided by his country to Haiti, which focuses particularly on health aid. Solidarity is, in fact, the principle chosen by Cuba to guide cooperation among the countries of the region, moving away from conditions imposed from outside that have no place in a “new Latin America”, Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno added. While Cuba strengthens its regional environment, expectations that its relations with the United States will improve with the second administration of Democrat Barack Obama are low. Several commentators in the interactive Cafe 108 feature of the IPS Cuba website agreed that there is little chance that the US will reconsider its relations with Cuba. In the opinion of political scientist Esteban Morales, the United States is facing a difficult time, both on the domestic and on the international front, and in that context a change in attitude towards its socialist neighbour is highly unlikely. Morales, however, does not rule out the possibility of an indirect route, opened up as a result of the “changes (in US relations) with Latin America and the Caribbean”. “The last two years (of the Obama administration) may hold the greatest possibilities in this sense, depending on how well Obama does now”, Morales added. Journalist Roberto Molina, for his part, does not expect to see any change “in the suspended state of relations between the two neighboring nations, which have been enemies since the early 1960s”. “Obama has too many pending issues to address – immigration, fiscal reform, a war and other potential conflicts, and a shaky economy – to be thinking of Cuba as a foreign policy priority”, Boris Caro, a Cuban journalist living in Canada, said. In his last speech of 2012, Castro announced that he will put all his efforts and energy into his role as Celac president, but he did not forget to remind “the US government once again that Cuba is willing to sit down (with the US) and find a solution to all their bilateral problems in a dialogue based on mutual respect and sovereign equality”.
Friday, February 15, 2013 | Nº 146 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
INTERNATIONAL
! PUBLICATION OF THE &UNDACION #ORREO DEL /RINOCO s Editor-in-Chief %VA 'OLINGER s Graphic Design Pablo Valduciel L. - Aimara Aguilera
Opinion
A Tale of Two Presidents
Power, privilege, and climate change T/ Joseph Nevins
A
s I watched a video of Barack Obama delivering his second inaugural address last month, and listened to his call to “respond to the threat of climate change” lest we “betray our children and future generations”, I could not help but think of another President. Indeed, the very holding of the event at which Obama spoke is one indication why it is not to the occupant of the White House that those concerned with global warming should look for inspiration, but to someone else. After all, there is something disconcerting about hearing about the need to fight climate change—to reduce the gargantuan greenhouse gasrelated footprint of the United States in other words—at a huge event that was both unnecessary and expensive. Obama was already President of the US, so why another inauguration? No doubt, the answer illustrates how the nation-state relies to a significant degree on performances to reproduce itself. This is especially the case in countries such as the US where the benefits that the state actually delivers to its citizenry are increasingly meaningless in terms of everyday well-being. In a country in which more than 20 percent of its children live
below the official poverty line, for example, approximately half of discretionary US government spending is dedicated to its enormous, global military apparatus and what is called “homeland security”. But the event is also a manifestation of US wealth and power. As one historian stated in endorsing Obama’s decision to hold the inauguration, to “let it roll,” a US president “is part of the most elite club in the world”, and a second-term president “the most elite within the mostelite club”. Such elitism is costly: while the final price tag of the inauguration won’t be known for months, it will certainly be many tens of millions of dollars. According to The Economist, security alone for what it called “the three days of revelry” totaled around $100 million. It is also ecologically expensive. With an estimated 800,000 people in attendance, for instance, large numbers of the celebrants traveled long distances by ground transport and airplane—adding tens of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases to the Earth’s atmosphere in the process. Compare such consumption and priorities to another head of state, one profiled late last year in The New York Times: President Jose Mujica of Uruguay. Mujica, reports the Times, “lives in a run-down house on
Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road”. He hangs his laundry on a clothesline outside his home. As part of Mr. Mujica’s effort, he says, to make his country’s presidency “less venerated”, he sold off a presidential residence in a resort city on Uruguay’s Atlantic coast. He also refuses to live in Uruguay’s presidential mansion, one with a staff of 42. Instead, he has offered the opulent abode as a shelter for homeless families during the coldest months. The leftist President sees such practices as necessary for the proper functioning of a democracy, a goal which requires, reports the Times in paraphrasing him, that “elected leaders . . . be taken down a notch”. He also explains his austere life style by drawing on the words of Seneca, the Roman court-philosopher Seneca: “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor”. Jose Mujica’s net worth when he took office in 2010 was $1,800. While his official presidential salary is about $108,000 per year, he donates 90 percent of it, mostly to a program for expanding housing for the poor. This leaves him with a monthly income comparable to a typical Uruguayan. As Mujica is quick to say, “I do fine with that amount. I have to do fine be-
cause there are many Uruguayans who live with much less”. Barack Obama, by contrast, lives in luxury—in the White House—and also takes in $400,000 annually as President. That, combined with his royalties from book sales, gave him and his wife an income of $1.7 million in 2010. The Obamas, as they typically do, also donated a portion of their income—about 14 percent—but kept enough to maintain their position among the “one percent” nationally, and by easy extension, globally. Given these differences, it is hardly surprising that Obama embraces the interlocking interests of US capital, empire, and militarism, and the rampant consumption they entail. With less than five percent of the world’s population, the US consumes about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuels. The Pentagon, which devours more than 300,000 barrels of oil per day, an amount greater than that consumed by any of the the vast majority of the world’s countries, is the planet’s single biggest consumer. Such factors might explain why Obama’s soaring rhetoric about global warming in his inauguration speech only very indirectly and weakly, at best, indicates, why human-induced climate destabilization might be happening. Mujica has much more of substance than his US counterpart to say on this front. Uruguay’s
Pesident laments that so many societies consider economic growth a priority, calling it “a problem for our civilization” because of the demands on the planet’s resources. Hyper-consumption, he says, “is harming our planet”. In a speech to UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last June, the man who many in the media dub “the poorest President in the world”, insisted that “the challenge ahead of us is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one”. Pointing to a “model of development and consumption, which is shaped after that of affluent societies”, societies ruled by the dictates of the capitalist market, Mujica said it was “time to start fighting for a different culture”. Arguing that the assault on the environment was a symptom of a larger disease, he asserted that “the cause is the model of civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life”. Given the position he occupies, and the interests he serves, it is almost impossible even to imagine Barack Obama uttering these words, advocating living simply, or doing with a lot less in the name of equity. And the interests he serves are a big part of the problem. In an era of climate change and other ecological crises, it is these interests that humanity must confront. In this regard, Jose Mujica’s willingness to live by example and, through his words, offer a larger structural critique—while insisting that the everyday and the systemic are inherently linked—is not only inspiring, but instructive.