Analysis
Opinion
Who is opposition candidate Henrique Capriles? page 7
Was Chavez sent from god? page 8
Friday, April 5, 2013 | Nº 152 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
Maduro pledges to end violence
ENGLISH EDITION/The artillery of ideas
Presidential campaign begins with Chavez successor as favorite
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro made a call to the nation’s youth to help put an end to violence and crime in the South American country. President Maduro designated key officials to head a new government commission to fight violent crime, the Movement for Life and Peace, and he appealed to youth for “a rebellion” against the violent crime that has grown in major urban centers in Venezuela over the past 40 years. page 3
New debit cards for elderly
Oil with a conscience
With a double digit lead in all major polls and a movement built around the legacy of Hugo Chavez, socialist candidate Nicolas Maduro opened his election campaign for the presidency of Venezuela last Tuesday in the state of Barinas. Accompanied by his wife, Cilia Flores, and one of Chavez’s daughters, Maria Gabriela, as well as members of Chavez’s family, Maduro drew thousands in his first official campaign rally. Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski launched his campaign in Monagas, questioning the credibility of the nation’s electoral process. Page 2
Venezuela urges peaceful NK-US solution
Venezuela’s oil industry prioritizes people and social needs over profits. page 5 Politics
The bus driving president Venezuela’s interim leader & Chavez successor comes from the grassroots. page 6
Abreu highlights Chavez’s support of ‘El Sistema’ T/ Telesur
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Economy
Senior Citizens now have ATM cards to withdraw social security funds. page 4
INTERNATIONAL
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro made a call for peace and urged for a diplomatic solution to the dangerous situation between North Korea, South Korea and the United States. In his Twitter account @NicolasMaduro, the President wrote on Friday: “We pray for Peace in the World. The threat posed on the Korean peninsula must be solved though wisdom and diplomacy. Humanity asks for peace”. North Korea has said its authorized a nuclear attack on US interests after two B-2 nuclear-capable bombers of the US army flew over South Korean territory, seen as a threat by Pyongyang. In another message posted in the social network, the Venezuelan President insisted in the need of building a world based in peace. “Venezuela joins the world’s desire to prevent war, only in a world of respect and peace we may live as one humanity”.
ose Antonio Abreu, founder of the Youth Orchestra and Chorus System, highlighted on Tuesday the support that the Youth and Child Orchestra and Chorus System, known as ‘El Sistema’, always received from President Hugo Chavez. Abreu noted that President Chavez’s funeral featured many children and youth who sang the leader’s favorite songs as a homage to “the man who gave all he could so that ‘el sistema’ could become stronger and develop”. Abreu also mentioned that Chavez’s government “has always given true unconditional, direct and passionate support from the start...and the event that solidified an important move was on November 24, 2007, when President Chavez announced the creation of the Music Mission to create hundreds of choruses and orchestras in the country”. Maestro Abreu celebrated the emulation of Venezuela’s Youth Orchestra and Chorus System in other countries. “My great dream is that all of the orchestra and chorus systems of the world interconnect and become one global system of choruses and orchestras to be the most glorious emblem of the culture of peace”, he said. The ‘El Sistema’ model has been replicated in the United States, where youth orchestras and choruses have sprung up in cities including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles. Abreu has received important awards thanks to his ‘El Sistema’ project, such as the Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts, the Seoul Peace Prize, and the Polar Music Stig Anderson Award from the Swedish Music Award Foundation.
2 Impact | . s Friday, April 5, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Presidential campaign opens in Venezuela with Nicolas Maduro as heavy favorite T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
tional Electoral Commission (CNE).
and that the obligatory training of poll workers is carried out before April 14th. “We’re going to be training [poll workers] until the day before the elections and it’s important that all workers attend these workshops to refresh their knowledge in order to assist residents”, Lucena said.
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TRANSPARENT PROCESS
MADURO DOMINATES POLLS
On Monday, CNE President Tibisay Lucena held a press conference where she outlined the parameters of the election cycle and stressed the need for heightened civility given the sensitivities generated in the population following the death of Hugo Chavez. “This campaign will be carried out in a delicate emotional context. We are therefore demanding from the parties involved that they avoid unnecessary exacerbations and limit expressions that could cause problems to the electoral environment”, Lucena said. Despite the abbreviated timetable of the presidential contest, the CNE head assured that all the necessary electoral infrastructure will be in place to guarantee a smooth and efficient voting process. This includes making sure that all voting machines are operational, that the electoral witnesses of all participating political parties are registered,
According to a poll released by the firm GIS XXI, Maduro holds an 11 point advantage over his conservative rival with 55 percent of the intended vote as compared to 44 percent attributed to the Capriles camp. In releasing the poll results earlier this week, GIS XXI Director Jesse Chacon interpreted his firm’s findings as an affirmation of the positive impact that the policies of Hugo Chavez has left on the Venezuelan people over the past 14 years. “These indicators show that the legacy of President Chavez has left a mark on the contemporary history of Venezuela”, Chacon said. Another survey, divulged by the Venezuelan Institute of Data Analysis (IVAD) at the end of March placed the gap between Maduro and Capriles at 23 points while an additional company, Hinterlaces, gives the socialist candidate an advantage of 14 points over his conservative challenger.
the move was seen as a blow to opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who had praised the former Brazilian leader’s work and spoke of adopting similar social and economic policies in Venezuela. Mr. Capriles is again running in the April 14th race. Maduro, who is Interim President, holds a big lead, with 50.2% among likely voters, compared with 32.4% for Mr. Capriles in a poll conducted by Datanalisis last week and published Tuesday in a Credit Suisse report. A spokeswoman for Mr. Capriles declined to comment.
Despite Mr. da Silva’s disavowal, the remarks raised concerns about his role in the political process in Venezuela. David Fleischer, a politicalscience professor at the Federal University of Brasilia, said: “In point of fact, we can consider Lula’s video offering support as a sort of intervention in Venezuela”. Mr. da Silva’s spokesman defended the former president’s action. “In the video itself, Lula says he doesn’t want to interfere in the internal matters of Venezuela. He just gave his personal testimony, he’s an ex-president”, said the spokesman, Jose Chrispiniano. “He isn’t a lobbyist. Ex-president Lula has been hired by companies to give speeches, but that’s always been handled and publicized clearly when it happens. There’s no lobbying”. Mr. da Silva says in the video, which was recorded Friday, that Mr. Maduro is fully aware that Venezuela needs to escape the “oil curse” and will use the country’s energy revenue to develop industry and agriculture.
ith a double digit lead in all major polls and a movement built around the legacy of Hugo Chavez, socialist candidate Nicolas Maduro opened his election campaign for the presidency of Venezuela last Tuesday in the state of Barinas. During a visit to the birthplace of the recently deceased Chavez, Maduro stressed the need to maintain unity in the face of attacks from the country’s right wing and to continue with the project established by his charismatic predecessor. “We’ve come here to make a commitment to the living spirit of [Chavez] because his spirit is still alive and is more alive than ever... Here, in the place where he was born, we’ve come to ratify the commitment that we made with him while he was alive and ratify it for the rest of our lives”, the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) said in the Barinas town of Sabaneta. Maduro will be facing Henrique Capriles, leader of the
right-wing Democratic Roundtable (MUD) coalition during the nation’s elections slated for April 14th. This will be the second time in six months that Capriles will be representing the Venezuelan opposition in presidential elections. Last October, the Governor of Miranda state was roundly de-
feated by then incumbent Hugo Chavez who won 55 percent of the popular vote in an election that saw more than 80 percent turnout. This new campaign, called in the wake of Chavez’s death from cancer on March 5th, will only last for 10 days per Venezuela’s election rules as established by the Na-
Brazilian ex President Lula da Silva urges vote for Chavez successor T/ Rogerio Jelmayer
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ormer Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva plunged into Venezuelan politics, throwing his weight behind late President Hugo Chavez’s handpicked successor in elections this month, as the campaign officially kicked off. “One phrase sums up what I feel: Maduro for President and a Venezuela that Chavez dreamed of”, says the former president, known as Lula, in a video posted on YouTube, referring to candidate Nicolas Maduro. Mr. da Silva led Brazil from 2003 to 2011, and oversaw strong economic growth and a widespread reduction in poverty that made him the most popular president in Brazil’s history and gave him clout across Latin America. Even though he has no official capacity, Mr. da Silva said
he was also speaking on behalf of the southern cone Mercosur trading bloc, of which Venezuela recently became a full member. Aside from Brazil, Mercosur’s other full members are Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. Mercosur didn’t comment. “The decision to pick a new president belongs exclusively to the Venezuelan people”, Mr. da Silva said. “I don’t want to interfere in an internal affair in Venezuela, but I can’t avoid providing my testimony in the name of the future of that country that’s so loved by the Brazilian people but also in the name of Mercosur”. The video received a standing ovation after it was shown by Interim President Maduro during an address at the São Paulo Forum, a gathering of leftist political groups from around the region, which convened Monday night in Caracas.
“Comrade Lula has sent us a video with some very generous, very beautiful opinions which have touched us and I think it’s going to move you, too”, Maduro said. President Chavez died March 5th after months battling complications linked to cancer. For 14 years he led the oil-rich nation that lies along Brazil’s northern border. Mr. da Silva had made a similar video message in the run-up to President Chavez’s successful October re-election bid in which he endorsed the late socialist head of state. At the time,
. s Friday, April 5, 2013
The artillery of ideas
President Maduro appeals to Venezuelan youth to end violent crime, kidnappings
T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
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enezuelan President Nicolas Maduro made a call to the nation’s youth last month to help put an end to violence and crime in the South American country during a visit to the city of Maracay in the central state of Aragua. “We need a new, holistic and socialist vision in order to confront crime. If capitalism with its evils is the cause... then only a new formula that is profoundly socialist will be able to guide the right policy”, Maduro said. The comments were made during an event titled “Youth Constructing Peace” that saw the participation of various Venezuelan athletes and television personalities who have joined the ranks of the country’s Bolivarian Revolution. Well known artists and musicians were also on hand to lend their support to the new initiative denominated by the Interim President as “The Movement for Life and Peace”. Miguel Mejias, Co-founder of the youth collective Otro Beta, an urban social movement that supports the Venezuelan government’s social welfare policies, expressed the need for greater grassroots involvement
to tackle the problem of violence in the country. “The revolution is not the responsibility of a single man. It is born in our homes, in our communal councils, in the mayoral districts and in the gubernatorial offices. It belongs to everyone. If we work towards it, the revolution will be eternal”, the youth leader said. Diosdado Cabello, President of the Venezuelan congress, the National Assembly (AN), also present at the meeting, spoke of the importance of progressive politics and criticized the attacks sustained by the nation’s public figures from opposition media outlets. “We welcome you”, Cabello said of the celebrities in the audience. “Count on us to help defend you from those who hold intolerance as a way of life”, he affirmed. According to the head of the AN, the issue of violence needs to be understood in a wider social context and must be addressed by all Venezuelan institutions, including leaders of the Catholic Church. “This is not only a problem of the national government. It’s not just a problem of the police. This is a moral and ethical problem of Venezuela”, Cabello stated.
During last week’s event, President Maduro designated key officials to head the nascent Movement for Life and Peace including Interior and Justice Minister Nestor Reverol, Presidential Chief of Staff Carmen Melendez, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua, and University Education Minister Yadira Cordova. In announcing the composition of the new commission, the head of state appealed to the youth for “a rebellion” against the violent crime that has grown in major urban centers in Venezuela over the past 40 years.
CULTURE OF PEACE “Yes! We can build a country of peace without violence! And I am calling you, countrymen
who are on the path of delinquency, that you reflect, that you stop the killing, that you stop the kidnappings. Enough! Each person that you kill, each person that you kidnap could be your mother or your sister. This violence needs to cease!” Maduro exclaimed. The Caracas native referred to the plague of violence as “a poisoned cocktail where poverty, misery, anti-values of easy money, and the moral decomposition of society are combined”. “We were able to beat poverty, we were able to beat illiteracy, and now we will be able to beat the culture of violence”, he said, citing the human development gains made by the government of Hugo Chavez over the past 14 years.
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While in office, Chavez created a new Security University that has trained thousand of new officers belonging to the Bolivarian Police force that, through community engagement, has worked reduce crime substantially in certain Caracas neighborhoods. Part of the government’s new strategy, Maduro informed, will be the formation of cultural centers and sports complexes in the 79 municipalities that account for 86 percent of the crimes committed in the country. The erection of concrete alternatives will provide invaluable opportunities for at-risk youth, the Interim President said. “We need these spaces, these centers that we can come to and spend time with sports and music. We want to create these spaces in the communities in order to fight crime, inactivity, and drugs so that the youth imitate our artists and athletes”, he explained. Venezuela must also see a reorientation of media, which glorify violence and uses the country’s delinquency for political ends, Maduro asserted “Enough of using death for sensationalist ends”, the 50 year-old said of the media. The Interim head of state and candidate in Venezuela’s April 14 presidential election also announced that his wife, Attorney General Cilia Flores, and his four children would join the efforts of the country’s new movement. Although March 24’s meeting was not an electoral event, Maduro assured that if elected as commander in chief of Venezuela on April 14, he will work tirelessly to provide greater security to residents in the OPEC member state. “If you elect me...for the next 6 years as the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, I swear to you that from the depths of my heart, I will become a builder, leader and president of a peaceful Venezuela without violence and crime”, the former union leader promised Maduro is standing in the Caribbean nation’s presidential elections as the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) following the death of Hugo Chavez on March 5. He will be facing Henrique Capriles, leader of the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition and defeated presidential candidate in last November’s electoral contest.
4 Politics | . s Friday, April 5, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Venezuelan Government moves for peace
Venezuelan pensioners to benefit from new debit cards T/ COI
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T/ Ewan Robertson P/ Presidential Press
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enezuelan President Nicolas Maduro launched a new government initiative this week to work with communities and lower the country’s violent crime rate. Under the initiative, known as the Movement for Peace and Life, state bodies involved in the fight against crime will work with youth and community groups to promote alternatives to criminal and violent lifestyles. The Movement for Peace will be coordinated by an Executive Secretariat, which was activated by Maduro on Monday. The Secretariat includes government figures such as the minister of communes and social protection, Isis Ochoa, and the rector of the National Experimental University of Security (UNES), Soraya El Achkar. A representative of the youth group Otro Beta, Gabriel Pacheco, and a Jesuit priest, Numa Molina, are also members. Maduro informed the public that the Secretariat will form 19 work teams throughout the country, especially in urban areas where insecurity is considered to be a greater problem. These work groups will form local Movements for Peace and work with more vulnerable groups such as youth in order to lower levels of violent crime in the community. “When the movements [of peace] are established all over, a wave of desire for life will come,” augured Maduro, who an-
nounced the measures while on a televised visit to UNES facilities. “We’ll go into a process of progressive pacification. The only true peace is that based on equality and justice”, he continued. To this end, the Acting President also approved 91 million bolivars (US $14.5 million) for the construction of five “Sports Courts for Peace”, spaces for the promotion of “healthy” recreation, sport and culture. These will be built in urban areas where insecurity is perceived as a problem, such as Maracaibo in Zulia state, Petare in Miranda state, and El Valle in Caracas. Maduro highlighted his government’s commitment to tackling insecurity, and suggested the conservative opposition would be incapable of doing so. “Either we solve this problem, or no one will. Be aware of that… we don’t have an alternative. And you can be sure that we are going to resolve it”, he said. Insecurity has emerged as a top concern for Venezuelans, with government statistics suggesting that Venezuela has the 4th highest homicide rate in the Americas. Maduro, who is the government’s candidate in the upcoming presidential election on April 14th, has put the issue at the heart of his campaign, showing what he will do to tackle the problem in the coming constitutional period. Polls suggest Maduro will comfortably beat his right-wing rival, Henrique Capriles, in an election called following the
death of late President Hugo Chavez on March 5th. Maduro, who is Chavez’s chosen political successor, called for the ceasing of violent crime in Venezuela, and urged citizens to follow Hugo Chavez’s example. “Let’s build a community, a commune, a barrio, a residency of peace, respect, [and] brotherhood”, he said. Maduro has indicated he will build upon the security policies designed in the latter years of the Chavez presidency, such as the National Bolivarian Police Force, civilian disarmament strategies, and the Mission Full Life Venezuela crime-fighting program. The UNES, where the Bolivarian Police are trained in human rights and community liaison, is undergoing an enlargement process. Maduro reminded cadets that they are expected to be “the best police, humanely, professionally, scientifically, and morally, in the history of the nation”. Finally, the Acting President confirmed that the proposed Disarmament Law is expected to be passed by Venezuela’s National Assembly soon. The legislation, which was designed by the Presidential Disarmament Commission with citizen participation, aims to regulate the use of firearms in Venezuela, whose commercial sale has been banned since last year. “The main disarmament we need to do is the disarmament of the anti-values of violence and the criminality of capitalism”, Maduro argued.
enezuelan seniors heard some good news late last month when the government announced a new initiative that will provide pensioners with debit cards, thereby doing away with the long lines that were once characteristic of the country’s social security system. Beginning last Monday, those receiving social security in Venezuela will simply need to visit the nearest ATM in order to access their monthly stipend. The initiative was made public on March 27th when Interim President Nicolas Maduro explained that beginning in April, seniors will be able to apply for the debit cards and forgo the need to personally visit the banks were monthly disbursements were deposited. The measure will benefit millions of enrollees in the Venezuelan Institute of Social Security (IVSS). The offer of debit cards is being made to those pensioners who have an account with the Bank of Venezuela, the nation’s largest lending institution, bank President Rodolfo Marco Torres informed on March 29th. More than ten thousand automatic tellers will be available to the seniors as well as 350,000 business establishments that accept the card for ordinary purchases. As a law, no fees will be charged to those pensioners using the new debit cards.
STANDING UP FOR SENIORS The announcement of the new bank cards marks a further step in the Venezuelan government’s efforts to provide greater attention to the elderly population. In 2011, the government of then President Hugo Chavez created the Greater Love social program, which opened the doors to social security benefits for women over the age of 55 and men over the age of 60 who had been excluded from social
security due to their “informal” employment. With the inauguration of the social mission, artists, fishermen, and house servants who were never official recognized by the IVSS have been able to claim a monthly minimum wage salary of $325. Efforts like Greater Love have led, officials report, to the inclusion of more than two million seniors in the country’s social security payroll since Chavez was first elected President in 1998. At the end of last month, Interim Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro continued with this trend of prioritizing the needs of seniors by calling for discounts on home appliances of up to 30 percent for the nation’s pensioners. The remarks were made during the head of state’s inspection of a Haier assembly plant in the state of Miranda. Maduro recalled the government’s My Well Equipped House social program created in 2010 that provides price-regulated appliances with low-interest financing options to residents. The program was founded in collaboration with the Chinese company Haier and has distributed more than two million refrigerators, televisions, washing machines, and air conditioners to Venezuelans across the country. The move to give seniors preference in the distribution of the appliances being manufactured on Venezuelan soil represents, according to the Interim Venezuelan President, a further example of how the South American nation continues to advance in meeting the needs of its citizenry. “Socialist efficiency means making things better, producing more, and doing more with less in order to optimize our resources with the greatest organization, technology, and work discipline as well as with the best management and administrative methods”, Maduro said.
. s Friday, April 5, 2013
The artillery of ideas
All of the world’s major resource companies endorse social programs, with differing levels of commitment, but the stated aims of these programs are all too often undermined by the core operations of resource exploitation. Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum and others all boast social or educational initiatives in various forms. While investing piecemeal to development here and there, however, these companies systematically pursue socially damaging business practices.
SHELL IN NIGERIA
PDVSA: oil with conscience T/ Ryan Mallett-Outtrim P/ Agencies
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rom the Niger Delta to Kurdish villages in Turkey, oil companies have left a legacy of human rights violations, but in Venezuela, black gold is funding some of the 21st Century’s most ambitious social development projects. In 2012, Venezuelan stateowned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (Pdvsa) devoted $16 billion to humanitarian work, mostly in the form of the Bolivarian Missions. Even though the company posted a slight decline in income and revenue in its audited financial report on March 18, Pdvsa will increase local investment this year, and remains committed to funding both the missions and other humanitarian projects. Pdvsa’s net income for 2012 was $4.2 billion, while its revenue was $124.4 billion; both slightly lower than in 2011. A few days before the report was released, Petroleum and Mining Minister and Pdvsa President Rafael Ramirez told Venezuelan media that the company is prioritizing its own long term future, and supporting social programs, rather than focus on short term profits.
PDVSA & THE MISSIONS The first mission to be established by the Chavez administration, Barrio Adentro, couldn’t have delivered over 700 million free medical consultations over the last decade without Pdvsa funds.
Likewise, Venezuelanalysis.com has reported that since being established in 2012, over 40,000 Venezuelans suffering from addictions have received treatment from the Jose Feliz Ribas Foundation, another government initiative largely funded by oil revenue. Moreover, the government’s pledge to construct 350,000 housing units this year would be empty, if it weren’t backed up by Pdvsa cash. Pdvsa funds have also been used to provide monthly payments to impoverished families with children and elderly Venezuelans under the Children
Banking reforms to benefit the people T/ Paul Dobson This week the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) announced slashes in interest rates for loans taken out to finance the purchase of property, supporting lower income families and reaffirming its commitment to provide easy-access credit. The decision, which places quality of life over profits, increases the relative economic power of families to make repayments, thus increasing the feasibility of such loans to low income families. Venezuela is currently living a housing boom. Public housing program Mision Vivienda has
of Venezuela and Toda la Vida Missions respectively. However, it’s not just the Venezuelan poor who benefit from Pdvsa revenue. In January, Citgo Petroleum launched its eighth Heating Oil Program in Baltimore, USA. Citgo is owned by a subsidiary of Pdvsa, which responded to a 2005 spike in oil prices by distributing free heating oil to financially strained US families. According to a press release from the Venezuelan Embassy in the US, since its inception in 2005 the program has provided $400 million worth of oil to 1.7 million people, and expects to help 100,000 more this year.
already built over 350,000 apartments and houses for low income families since its start a year and a half ago. It plans to construct 380,000 more during 2013, and 3 million in total during the next Presidential term 2013-2019. As of April 2013, for families earning a joint income of between 4 and 6 times the minimum monthly salary, interest rates will fall from 6.91% to 6.66%. For those families earning between 6 and 8 times the minimum salary, rates fall from 9.16% to 8.66%, and for those families earning between 8 and 15 times the minimum salary, rates fall from 11.42% to 10.66%. Interest rates will remain at a base rate of 4.66% for those earning less than 4 times the minimum salary. Loans extended to private building firms will also see a fall in interest rates from 10.50% to 9.66%, stimulating construction in the private sector.
Throughout the 1990’s, Shell was subject to intense scrutiny due to human rights concerns related to its Nigerian operations. In 2009, Shell agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle a legal action over the company’s alleged involvement in the executions of Nigerian Ogoni activists, including writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. Saro-Wiwa was a leading figure in the movement against Shell’s operations in the Niger Delta. According to the US based Center for Constitutional Rights, oil companies like Shell “have brought poverty, environmental devastation and widespread, severe human rights abuses”. The company has also been accused of not only providing the Nigerian military with materiel, but was also allegedly complicit in the torture of Ogoni activists and raids on villages in the delta region throughout the 1990’s; though the company has denied all these allegations. However, Shell continues to punish the Niger Delta.
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In 2008, according to an Amnesty International report, Shell oil spills adversely affected local fishers. Many Ogoni rely on fishing in the delta for income and subsistence, but since two spills in 2008, environmental degradation has reportedly made it almost impossible to catch uncontaminated fish in some areas.
BP: THE NEW POSTER CHILD Despite Shell’s long history of alleged human rights abuses, since the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, BP has perhaps inherited the mantle of poster child of corporate abuse. Like Shell, human rights concerns have long dogged BP operations, particularly its flagship project, the BakuTbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline. Stretching from Azerbaijan and Georgia to Turkey, the pipeline passes through a number of Kurdish communities, where Turkish security forces have been accused of violence and intimidation of civilians by numerous human rights observers. In 2011, the BP-led consortium administering the pipeline was censured by the UK government for failing to adequately investigate human rights violations. As illustrated by the Curacao oil spill last August, Pdvsa isn’t exactly an example of flawless corporate responsibility. However, over the last fourteen years it has played an essential role in lifting thousands of Venezuelans out of poverty. This is a stark comparison to the modus operandi of companies like Shell and BP, who pursue profits often at the expense of the poor.
6 Politics | . s Friday, April 5, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Nicolas Maduro – The bus driver T/ Luis Hernandez Navarro – La Jornada
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icolas Maduro is a robust, burly man, 1.9 meters tall (6 feet 2 inches) with a thick black moustache. He drove a metro bus in Caracas for seven years, was foreign minister for six more and is now Interim President and candidate for the country’s top office. He is part of the a generation of Latin American leaders like metal worker Lula da Silva and coco-leaf unionist Evo Morales, that entered politics from the trenches of social struggles. Maduro is a socialist revolutionary who modified his original orthodox position to join the heterodox hurricane of the Bolivarian Revolution. He’s a man of the left who arrived to power without abandoning his principles. He is a self-made man, a loyal ally of Hugo Chavez and today is at the wheel of one of the deepest processes of transformation in Latin America. Politics is in his blood, and he breathed it from his earliest days. Maduro was born in Caracas in 1962, into the heart of a family very committed to collective public ac-
tion. His father was a founder of the party Democratic Action (AD) [founded in 1941] and organizer of the failed oil strike against the dictatorship in 1952, which forced him to flee and go into hiding. In 1967 Maduro went with his parents to the rallies of the People’s Electoral Movement, a left split-off from AD, and a year later he attended the massive grassroots events of support for the (presidential) candidacy of Luis Beltran Prieto Figueroa. In this campaign Maduro became acquainted with the world of poverty [and] cardboard shacks. He also spoke in public for the first time, when his father put him on top of a car with a microphone. Aside from parental influence, from a young age Maduro had his own political opinions. In 4th grade of primary school he defended the Cuban revolution against the criticisms of the monks who taught him. He was excluded from the classroom for three days and condemned to serve out his punishment in the library, which in reality was a reward for a restless boy who devoured any book he had before him.
Far from curing himself with the passing of time, his early interest in politics increased. When he was twelve years old and a high school student, he began to participate, unbeknown to his parents, in the Rupture movement, an open structure of the revolutionary project of Douglas Bravo. Youthful effervescence was the symbol of the times. From then he participated without interruption in community struggles, the organization of cinema clubs, in union movements and armed grassroots conspiracies. As a bassist in the rock group Enigma, he saw how many youth of his generation in the barrios became hooked into the world of easy money and drug culture, then becoming addicted and assassinated in gang wars. The experience marked him for life. Nicolas Maduro, the same as Hugo Chavez, is a great baseball player – third base. However, unlike the Comandante, who was a terrible dancer, he manages reasonably well when it’s time to dance salsa. Participation in grassroots movements was his university. As with many other activists of his generation, his intellectual
formation is directly associated with his involvement in the mass and revolutionary struggle. He studied the classics of Marxism and analyzed and interpreted Venezuelan reality in light of their teachings. Gifted with an extraordinary capacity for learning, he has simultaneously been self-didactic and a leader instructed by years of organized political participation. Until the [electoral] triumph of Chavismo he regularly suffered police persecution, and lived, literally, one jump from death. He participated in the Organization of Revolutionaries, and in its open expression, the Socialist League: a Marxist revolutionary grouping born from a break with the Revolutionary Left Movement. Its founder, Jorge Rodriguez, was assassinated by the intelligence services in 1976. There, Maduro stood out as a brilliant organizer and political agitator of the masses. In 1991 he began to work with the Caracas Metro. Outgoing, affable, charismatic, and committed to workers’ interests, he was elected by his co-workers as union representative. His vocation for democratic and class trade
unionism meant that he was frequently sanctioned by the company. Following the 1989 Caracazo [riots against a neoliberal structural adjustment package which were suppressed by state force and mass killing of civilians], he conserves the memory of the heart-rending sound of the permanent cries of the poor in the street, whose kin were murdered. Maduro met Hugo Chavez like the majority of Venezuelans did: he saw him on television when Chavez assumed responsibility for the military rebellion of 1992. Over a year later, February 16, 1993, he met Chavez personally in jail, along with a group of workers. The lieutenant colonel bestowed upon Maduro the clandestine name of Verde and gave him the responsibility of various conspiratorial tasks. When Chavez was freed in 1994, Maduro dedicated himself to the movement’s organization full time. Today’s Interim President was part of the Constituent National Assembly that drafted the new constitution in 1999. A year later he was elected deputy to the National Assembly. In January 2006 he was named Assembly President and a few months later resigned to become foreign minister. In this post he was a central actor in the effort to construct a multipolar world, spearheading Latin American integration and build peace. From there he went on to become Vice President, and a few weeks ago, Interim President. Maduro is married to lawyer Cilia Flores, who is nine years older than him. She is an important figure in Chavismo, and has been, due to her own merits, President of the National Assembly, Vice President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and Attorney General of the Republic. Together they have four children, including three from Flores’ previous marriage. Chosen by Hugo Chavez as his political heir, on April 14th Nicolas Maduro will face the test of the ballot box. Emerging victorious, he will have the challenge of being the new ‘driver’ of the Bolivarian Revolution; of solving problems such as insecurity and corruption, and continuing the Comandante’s legacy: radicalizing, and at the same time innovating it.
. s Friday, April 5, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Presidential candidate Henrique Capriles: leading to nowhere T/ COI P/ Agencies
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enezuelan democracy is about to be tested, once again. On April 14th, just weeks after the regrettable and untimely death of widelypopular Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias (1954 - 2013), voters will decide who is to govern during the 2013-2019 period Chavez was elected to late last year. For the country’s socialist majority, who secured Chavez 8.1 million votes (55%) in the 2012 election, Interim President Nicolas Maduro is their candidate. Meanwhile, the US-backed opposition, who for years assured voters that “Chavismo without Chavez” was next to impossible, has again chosen right-wing politician Henrique Capriles Radonski to represent them at the ballot box. Having lost to Chavez by over a million votes, Capriles is now running on a campaign aimed at dividing pro-Chavez forces and discrediting the country’s democratic institutions, something his political career depends on.
“Son of Cristina Radonski Bocheneck and Henrique Capriles Garcia, 40-year old Capriles comes from one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families” BORN INTO WEALTH Son of Cristina Radonski Bocheneck and Henrique Capriles Garcia, 40-year old Capriles comes from one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families. The Radonskis own, the country’s largest chain of private movie theaters, while the Capriles own numerous private media outlets (Cadena Capriles) and are said to have important investments in industrial and real estate holdings. Among other things, his parents’ wealth allowed Capriles to study law at Caracas’ private Andres Bello Catholic University and participate in numerous international student exchange programs in Italy and the United States.
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demonstrations reversed the short-lived coup before things got worse.
FROM GOVERNOR TO “LEADER” Taking advantage of his family’s wealth, access to the press, and personal contacts, in 2008 Capriles moved up the political ladder by winning the governorship of Miranda, a state with some 2.6 million inhabitants. In 2012, the opposition coalition chose Capriles to “lead” their failed attempt to defeat President Chavez at the ballot box. The Washington backed Capriles lost the election by over a million votes but kept his political career alive by returning to win Miranda’s gubernatorial race just two months later in a regional election that saw socialist candidates win 20 out of 23 governorships.
“Capriles joined the protestors and forced his way into the Cuban embassy by climbing over its perimeter walls”
In 1995, a freshly-graduated Capriles dove into Venezuelan politics by acting as legal counsel to his cousin and then lawmaker Armando Capriles. Serving his cousin during the closing years (1995-1998) of the so-called Fourth Republic (19581998), Capriles got his taste for politics just as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez won the first (1998) of many electoral victories to come. Eager to represent his family and social class at a time of heated national debate surrounding President Chavez’s proposal for a Constitutional Assembly, Capriles accepted a backdoor nomination from Venezuela’s right-wing party, Social Christian Democrats (Copei), and won a seat in the final Congress (1998) convened during the Fourth Republic. Not exactly illegal, Copei placed Caracas-based Capriles on the ballot to represent Maracaibo, capital of Zulia, where the party had a strong base of support at the time. A trained lawyer, he was sure to respect existing electoral laws by renting an apartment in Maracaibo during the course of the election. According to investigate journalist Eva Golinger, in 2001 Capriles’ nascent Justice First party was the principal ben-
eficiary of funds spent in Venezuela by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and International Republican Institute (IRI). That year alone, the latter spent $340,000 “training” members of Justice First and others of the country’s anti-Chavez minority on, among other things, “external party communication and coalition building”.
Capriles’ nascent Justice First party was the principal beneficiary of funds spent in Venezuela by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) UNDIPLOMATIC MAYOR From 2000 to 2008, Capriles served as Mayor of the wealthy eastern Caracas neighborhood of Baruta. During the shortlived 2002 coup against President Chavez, anti-communist protestors gathered outside the Cuban embassy (located in Baruta), cutting both water and electricity and threatening to storm the building. In response to requests by embassy staff for police protection, Capriles
joined the protestors and forced his way into the embassy by climbing over its perimeter walls. As Golinger notes in her book, The Chavez Code, Capriles “violated diplomatic law by forcing entry into the embassy, where he attempted to persuade Cuban Ambassador German Sanchez Otero to turn in Vice President Diosdado Cabello and other Chavez government officials whom the opposition believed were taking refuge in the embassy”. “Though Ambassador Sanchez Otero permitted Capriles Radonski on the premises to engage in dialogue”, explains Golinger, “he made it clear that the actions were violating diplomatic law”. Capriles “attempted to force a search of the inside of the embassy by threatening the ambassador that the situation would only worsen if a full search were not allowed. When the ambassador stood firm, Capriles Radonski left the embassy”. The right-wing mayor allowed protests to continue as they were, abandoning the Cuban diplomats and their request for help. Fortunately, for embassy staff and Venezuelan democracy, massive pro-Chavez
On March 10th, as the Venezuelan people were in the midst of mourning the loss of President Chavez, Capriles held a rushed press conference in which he accused Interim President Nicolas Maduro and others in Venezuela’s socialist leadership of “lying to the public about Chavez’s health”. Among other things, he claimed Chavez’s family and the country’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) had “planned with milli-metric detail” the March 5th announcement of Chavez’s passing as well as the now pending April 14th election. His strategy, it seems, is to try to divide the pro-Chavez majority while preparing for what is sure to be another electoral defeat. Though he currently is the opposition’s most well-known elected official, a recent poll by Venezuela-based Datanalisis found only 34.8% of voters intend to vote for Capriles. The same poll found 49.2% of voters intend to elect socialist candidate Nicolas Maduro. The International Consulting Service (ICS) found 58.2% of voters intend to vote for Maduro, 17% more than the 40.5% that plan to elect Capriles. The Venezuelan Institute for Data Analysis (IVAD) found the gap to be even wider, with 53.8% of voters planning to vote for Maduro and 31.6% for Capriles, a difference of 22%.
Friday, April 5, 2013 | Nº 152 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
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Opinion
Was Chavez sent by God? T/ Charles Hardy
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arch 5, I was in my hometown, Cheyenne, Wyoming. As I drove down Central Avenue I heard the news that the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, had died. I pulled over and called friends. I hurt from my head to my toes. I had never met Chavez personally, but I felt I had known him for nineteen years. Over the next few days as I listened to and read the distorted, biased, and untrue comments about him I almost started crying. I have lived in Venezuela almost continuously since 1985. I went there as a Roman Catholic priest, and continued to stay there after my marriage in 1994. I had the privilege of living in one of the barrios of Caracas in a pressed-cardboardand-tin shack without sewers or running water. It was part of a government housing project, built as temporary housing for people who had lost their homes in landslides or because of government building project. Temporary? The people had been there for more than ten years with no hope of any change for the future.
I say that it was a privilege for me, not because of the housing but, because of the wonderful people who had to live in that degrading situation. A sister of Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s religious congregation visited one time and said she had never seen anything as bad in India. I think her knowledge of India might have been limited, but it does give an idea of the conditions we were living under. I write about this because in all the news following Chavez’s death, I saw little mention about what life was like in Venezuela before Chavez assumed the presidency. I remember the afternoon when I stood with my hands in the air as a soldier pointed his automatic weapon at me and the neighbors who were standing around me. I can still hear people saying to me, “Charlie, the curfew starts in a few minutes. Go home and don’t come out of your shack tonight no matter what. The soldiers will kill you if you step out of the door”. I did step out of the door that night to take a dying woman to the hospital. With a torn pillowcase as a white flag, dressed with all the garments a priest uses for Mass to hopefully give us some
protection, and with prayers that we wouldn’t encounter any military, we made it to the hospital. There someone led me to the hospital morgue where I saw the naked bodies of young people strewn on the floor because there was no place else to put them. The next year I slept several nights in a cemetery where 68 bodies in garbage bags were being exhumed from a common pit that the government denied existed. I remember the day the police raided my house during a meeting with other clergy in the area. I remember listening to and seeing to the police helicopters passing overhead and wondering how many students would be killed on the street that day. I remember newspapers with whole pages blank because of censorship. Those are just some of my memories of B.C. in Venezuela— Before Chavez. Today the people where I lived have decent homes; they own vehicles; they and their children are studying in decent schools and universities. I haven’t heard much mention of this reality in the news reports I have seen and heard since the death of Chavez. I’ve not heard mention that since he assumed the presidency: the United Nations has declared Venezuela
free of illiteracy; the country is number five in the world in the percentage of population studying in higher education; poverty rates have dropped dramatically; a recent Gallup poll said Venezuelan people were the third happiest in the world; over a million people have had free eye operations. Lisa Sullivan is a US citizen friend who was married to a Venezuelan and continues to live in Venezuela. Lisa has taught many young people to play the cuatro, a four-string instrument similar to a ukulele. Lisa taught Chui, a young blind man how to play. As she walked down the road to her home one day, after being gone for a few weeks, she saw Chui. She shouted, “Chui”. He replied, “Lisa! You’re Lisa!” He was able to see her for the first time in his life because of the government’s “Miracle Mission”. In the Bible, when Jesus cured a man of his blindness, the Pharisees asked if the person who did it was sent by God. The man replied that he didn’t know if he was sent by God or not. All he knew is that he was blind and now he could see. Was Chavez sent by God? I don’t know, but many in Venezu-
ela and throughout the world believe he was. Lisa Sullivan wrote these words recently: “I do believe this is Chavez’s true mandate: Embrace your passion, and then share it with others. If you can play the guitar, teach a kid to strum, if you love basketball, shoot hoops with a teen. If you can fix a bike, teach the skill to an unemployed friend. If you have oil, share it with those who can’t afford their heating oil in Maine. If you have doctors, send them where there are none. Celebrate your beauty, your history, your dignity, and honor those qualities in others: as family, as neighbors, as nations, as global citizens”. Today I still almost weep when I continue to read the editorial comments in the United States about Hugo Chavez. The people who write them never lived in a Venezuelan barrio; they have never heard the voices of the ordinary people; and, sadly, they will probably never understand why they so loved Hugo Chavez. Charles Hardy is author of Cowboy in Caracas, a North American’s memoir of Venezuela’s democratic revolution.