page 7 | Analysis
page 8 | Opinion
How the US government is subverting Latin American democracies via USAID
Award-winning filmmaker John Pilger on Mexico’s political climate
Friday | November 11, 2011 | Nº 89 | Caracas
ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas
Venezuela’s community doctors provide humane healthcare
Dudamel at the Grammys
Thousands of Venezuelans will soon join the ranks of community-based doctors who are transforming healthcare in the South American nation
Mass destruction of weapons The Venezuelan government, together with local communities, has undertaken an ambitious program to disarm criminals and get guns off the streets. So far, over 200,000 weapons have been destroyed and community watch programs are growing. The state is also actively working on reforming and humanizing the nation’s prison system, as well as ensuring communities have access to activities, such as sports, culture and recreation, that help deter delincuency. page 2
Termed Comprehensive Community Medicine, Venezuela’s newest advancement in healthcare focuses on serving the entire population and bringing preventative medical care to the people. Despite protests from privatized healthcare providers and other conventional doctors, a legal framework was just created to allow community medicine to be treated on equal grounds with traditional healthcare. Thousands of the new community doctors will be stationed in rural areas throughout the country, while others will rotate through public health facilities in urban communities. Community doctors provide free healthcare focused on preventative treatment with a humanist philosophy. | page 3 ustavo Dudamel, the young conductor from Venezuela who heads the Los Angeles Philharmonic, performed this Thursday, November 10th, at the Latin Grammys in Las Vegas. Dudamel, who assumed the leadership of the prestigious LA Philharmonic in October 2009, is a product of the National System of Youth Orchestras of Venezuela (known as “El Sistema”) founded in 1975 by the Venezuelan economist and musician Jose Antonio Abreu. “El Sistema” has received a special boost from the government of President Hugo Chávez. In early November, the Venezuelan government announced that it will provide $38 million to the program, which has already benefited 300,000 disadvantaged children and young people.
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Integration
Daniel Ortega re-elected in Nicaragua The Latin American Left took another big win this week with the Sandinista’s re-election. | page 4 Politics
Chavez “jogs” towards 2012 victory The Venezuelan President showed off his speedy recovery & reminisced about the past. | page 5 Social Justice
Revolutionizing policing Venezuelans are creating a community-based police force to fight crime. | page 6
Chavez: Navy detected unauthorized submarine in Venezuelan waters, nation investigating T/ Agencies resident Hugo Chavez said Wednesday that his navy detected a foreign, unauthorized submarine in Venezuelan waters and that it quickly sped off. The submarine was detected on Tuesday near the Venezuelan island of La Orchila in the Caribbean north of Caracas,
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where Venezuelan troops are participating in training drills near the island, Chavez told state television by telephone. “The submarine was pursued. It escaped because it’s much faster than ours”, Chavez said, referring to Venezuela’s dieselpowered submarines. He said that judging by its speed and size, “it’s a nuclear-powered
submarine”. Chavez said his government was unable to say what nation might have sent the warship. “We can’t accuse anyone yet”, Chavez said, adding that his government is investigating. This isn’t the first time Venezuela has denounced unauthorized instrusions in its maritime territory by foreign war ships and planes. In late 2010, President Chavez revealed his Air Force had detected several illegal flyovers by US unmanned drone planes coming from the
US air base in Curaçao, just miles off Venezuela’s coastline. “Now you know how the empires (the US and UK) are used to going around the Caribbean Sea and going everywhere, and they also use their satellites for espionage. It’s espionage”, Chavez said. The US maintains several operative military bases on different Caribbean islands. Chavez praised Venezuelan navy troops for their handling of the incident, saying they had driven off the submarine.
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2 | Impact
The artillery of ideas
NoÊn ÊUÊFriday, November 11, 2011
Battling crime: Venezuela advances in gun control and prison reform As part of its plan to control the spread of gun violence and provide crime prevention services in team with organized communities, the Venezuelan government destroyed 1,840 firearms and inaugurated new public sports facilities last week T/ COI P/ Agencies enezuela has incinerated a total of 217,000 firearms since 2003, including 119,385 so far this year, ranking Venezuela first among Latin American nations according to United Nations data cited by the government. The firearms were destroyed in a nationally televised event that was meant to be “symbolic of how we want to destroy the tools of violence and generate conditions for a dignified life”, according to Pablo Fernandez, the executive secretary of the presidential commission on gun control. “The policy aims to receive arms and remove them from the streets, and to provide to our communities the elements necessary for life, such as sports, recreation, culture, and health”, Fernandez told local media outlets. “This is not a task we can do solely as a presidential commission. We need to join together with the willpower of organized communities”, Fernandez added. The commission began a process of democratic consultation with local community organizations in the capital city of Caracas in September, and is now extending these consultations nationwide, explained Fernandez. Fernandez, who served as coordinator of the non-partisan, non-governmental organization Red de Apoyo para la Justicia y la Paz (Support Network for Justice and Peace) before being
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appointed to head the presidential commission, said the ultimate goal is 100% disarmament of the population. The activist and government official emphasized that arming oneself does not assure that one will be secure. “When people are armed, the possibility of being a victim of a crime with a high level of violence increases exponentially”, Fernandez said. The 1,840 firearms that were destroyed last week had been confiscated in recent months by local, regional, and national security forces in the southeastern state of Bolivar. The government is planning another mass destruction of weapons by the end of the year. Vice Minister for Citizen Security Nestor Reverol, who also heads the National Anti-Drug Office (ONA), thanked the National Armed Forces for participating in the gun control effort, which achieved a 20% reduction in the crime rate in Bolivar state, he said. CRIME PREVENTION THROUGH COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES In addition to the destruction of arms, the government has notably increased its funding of community-based sports and recreation activities as a form of crime prevention. “We have the firm conviction that these youth shall participate and stay away from drugs, the consumption of
liquor, and other problems”, said Reverol during a local youth boxing tournament in Caracas last week. Soraya El Achkar, who heads the two year-old National Experimental University for Security (UNES), a state institution for higher education of police, said the combination punitive and preventive policies generated through community engagement is part of “a new police model”. “If we do not generate processes of crime prevention we are not going to do much, that is, if we dump all the responsibility for the issue of security on the police, we are aiming for failure”, El Achkar said in an interview on the government television station Venezolana de Televisión. “If tomorrow we want to have a healthy police force that respects human rights and is able to guarantee security without being linked to major vices or criminal networks, then it is necessary to make a profound change by way of a social change together with competent institutions”, she continued. In a budding effort by the nation’s communal councils, a total of 26 local committees have been elected to monitor police behavior. Also, commissions from Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru, Spain, England, and Canada have all been invited to eva-
luate Venezuela’s new policies on crime control and security, as part of what El Achkar called an effort to “validate” the government’s progress. Miossoty Gomez, the director of the ONA division dedicated to reducing demand for drugs, said 2,5 million people have undergone workshops and training in drug prevention in 45,445 communities nation-wide in recent years. Currently the government is training 11,800 security officials in the UNES, who are expected to graduate next August. Once deployed, these officials will help Venezuela reach its goal of having the presence of 3.6 police for every 1,000 residents, according to Vice Minister for Police Edgar Barrientos. PRISON CENSUS NEARS COMPLETION As a further measure to fight crime and defend human rights, the government is in the process of carrying out an unprecedented census of the nation’s prisons in order to help orient its prison humanization program. Iris Valera, who directs the newly created Ministry for Penitentiary Services, began a two-month journey in October to personally visit each of the country’s 34 prisons. To help her, Valera organized a 500-person team of lawyers, psychologists, criminologists, doctors, and social workers.
As of last week, the team had visited 28 prisons and registered 34,122 prisoners, according to Valera, who emphasized the problem of overcrowding in a prison system designed to hold about 14,500 prisoners. Valera spoke with the prisoners personally and proposed policies to assure the timely release of well-behaved prisoners and to reduce delays of trials, in particular for non-violent offenders such as women who were caught trafficking small amounts of illegal drugs. “When I meet with them in the yard and in their own cells and I converse with them, they trust that finally their situation is going to be directly addressed”, Valera told VTV. “I tell them it is the result of a government that is demonstrating a direct and systematic policy”. “There are many people who believe they are experts in penitentiaries and they try to make prison policy from an office, and that is an error”, Valera continued. “You have to feel it, to want to do this work and insert yourself in the reality, not just know the theory”. Valera assured that the government is planning an employment program to help rehabilitate and reinsert prisoners as proactive members of society. “We are treating the problem at its root, not just attacking the consequences; we are incorporating the prisoners so they can be protagonists in a better future”, she said. The Ministry for Penitentiary Services was created in July following a prison riot that resulted in the death of 22 in clashes between rival gangs. The government, consistent with its policy against repression, negotiated a solution to the conflict and arrested several top prison officials for corruption, including arms and drug trafficking in the prisons under their authority. According to Venezuelan Vice President Elias Jaua, the new ministry “has the principal task of bringing an end to the commercialization of the life and freedom of the prisoners; they are not commodities, and they shall not have to pay to have access to justice”. In recent years, the government has also increased the number of prison orchestras, theatrical programs, food services, health care, employment opportunities, and skills training in prisons.
The artillery of ideas
NoÊn ÊUÊFriday, November 11, 2011
Social Justice
Venezuela: Community medical doctors promoting free, humane care T/ COI P/ Agencies ver the weekend thousands of students set to become the Bolivarian Revolution’s next generation of medical professionals marched on Caracas to defend years of sweat and sacrifice studying Comprehensive Community Medicine, or Medicina Integral Communitaria (MIC) in Spanish. Responding to false accusations made by the anti-Chavez minority and their representatives in Venezuela’s National Academy of Medicine, students from the Revolution’s vanguard medical program united around banners that read, “In Socialism: Health is Popular and Community-Based”. “We, community-based doctors, are strongly committed to taking healthcare services to the entire population. We are humanists, socialists, and we have fulfilled all of the academic requirements established in order to attend to the medical needs of our people”, affirmed Roberto Bolivar, one of over 25,000 medical students who marched in Caracas on Saturday. Medical student Sidely Calderon, also at the march, told the Venezuelan News Agency (AVN) that all those involved in the sixyear medical program “have the sufficient first-hand experience in primary care and other (medical) specialties” to treat the general public thanks in large part to the presence and support of their Cuban counterparts working in the Revolution’s Barrio Adentro public health social mission. The joint Venezuela-Cuba program in Comprehensive Community Medicine, which first began in 2005, will graduate its first class of 8,250 “revolutionary doctors” this December, with an additional 6,000 expected to graduate in 2012. To prepare for the pending graduations, the Venezuelan National Assembly last week reformed the country’s 1982 Medical Practice Law to include the new community-based doctors into
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the country’s legal framework. In addition, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez approved 130 million bolivars (US$30 million) to hire the entire MIC graduating class into Venezuela’s growing public health sector. “They are about to demonstrate who they are and what they’re capable of”, said Chavez last week. “In the context of such hate and infamy bombarded against them (by the opposition), I wanted to respond from my battle post and provide all my support to this legion of life-loving doctors of socialism, of homeland, and of love”, affirmed Chavez before approving the funds necessary to hire all 8,250 doctors, 2,000 of which will be stationed in rural areas while the others rotate through public health facilities located in heavily-populated urban centers. OPPOSITION AGAINST COMMUNITY DOCTORS Defending the interests of private clinics and their medical practitioners, opposition forces within the Central University of Venezuela’s (UCV) National Academy of Medicine issued a public letter denouncing the MIC program as “a false promise” to both students and the general public.
After issuing a list of seven arguments against the Revolution’s popular health training program, including, for example, “the degree (MIC) doesn’t exist in Venezuelan law” and “the majority of educational personnel were foreigners (Cubans)”, UCV administrators also added unfounded claims of “discrimination” against graduates of their traditional medical programs currently looking for employment. It’s worth noting that last week’s legislative discussions took place precisely to incorporate the Revolution’s doctors into a dated legal framework, and that Cuban doctors, not to mention the entire Cuban health care system, have been recognized repeatedly for their quality training and professionalism by, among others, the World Health Organization. Responding to opposition claims and private media manipulation of the debate, former UCV professor and retired Doctor Angel Migual Rengifo denounced what he called, “the use of lies and value judgments” to defend “the curative medicine that is practiced in our clinics and hospitals”. Dr. Rengifo rejected the “false claim that MIC students are trained in three years, using videos,
computers, and photo galleries” and explained that “the truth is that it’s a six-year program in which the majority of time is spent in direct contact with the communities, in rural clinics providing primary care to people and CDI’s (Cuban-staffed Integral Diagnostic Centers)”. “It’s also untrue that in our traditional medical schools, medicine is somehow taught in the mind of the patient”, he added. “It’s actually an anarchy of book-based learning that includes five years in which students can’t even prepare a health history sheet and only at the very end of which they have any real contact with patients, for one year of brief internships though different hospital wards in which they generally see patients with chronic illnesses”. What the opposition ignores, writes Dr. Rengifo, “is that the majority of health problems can be avoided by applying simple primary care measures at an economical, clinical-based level”. PREVENTATIVE MEDICINE According to Venezuelan Minister of Health Eugenia Sader, incorporating the Revolution’s Comprehensive Community Doctors into Venezuela’s growing network of public
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3| health facilities is part of a plan to have 85% of all medical needs addressed at the primary care and preventative level, reducing to a maximum 15% the number of people needing secondary or “curative” medical interventions. “Curative medicine”, writes Dr. Rengifo, “defended by the Venezuelan (Medical) Academy, doesn’t resolve the people’s health problems…and the only ones who benefits are the pharmaceutical laboratories, owners of clinics, and doctors engaged in private practice”. REVOLUTIONARY DOCTORS According to Steve Brouwer, author of Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World´s Conception of Health Care, the popular program in Comprehensive Community Medicine, "is a 'university without walls' that trains young doctors in their home environments". "This is not a short-term course for health aides or 'barefoot doctors', but a rigorous program designed to produce a new kind of physician", he explains. "Every morning during their (6) years of study, the MIC students help (Cuban) doctors working in Barrio Adentro attend to patients’ illnesses and learn to comprehend the broad public health needs of their communities. And every afternoon, they meet with their MIC professors in a series of formal medical classes that constitute a rigorous curriculum and include all the medical sciences studied at traditional universities…The goal of MIC is to integrate the training of family practitioners into the fabric of communities in a holistic effort that meets the medical needs of all citizens, makes use of local resources, and promotes preventive health care and healthy living”, Brouwer writes. Published this year by Monthly Review Press, Brouwer’s investigation points out that MIC students, "are enthusiastic about their role in fostering good health and introducing reliable medical care into the fabric of their community and the larger world. And many of them dream of emulating their Cuban teachers and one day serving as internationalist physicians themselves in remote and impoverished parts of the world".
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4 | Integration
The artillery of ideas
NoÊn ÊUÊFriday, November 11, 2011
Big win for the left: Nicaragua re-elects Daniel Ortega T/ COI P/ Agencies his week Venezuela congratulated the Nicaraguan people and government for the successful re-election of President Daniel Ortega, the guerrilla leader turned President who has worked to consolidate regional integration efforts spearheaded by the Bolivarian Revolution. A popular leader within Nicaragua’s heroic Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), Ortega won Sunday’s election with a landslide 62.66% of the popular vote. Right-wing opposition candidate Fabio Gadea, of the Liberal Independent Party (PLI), came in a distant second with 31.13% of the votes. In the capital of Managua, the nation’s most populated city (2.2 million), Ortega won 69.02% of the vote while Gadea obtained only 23.75%. Though Gadea, the US State Department, and mass media outlets have tried to minimize or blemish the landslide Sandinista victory, Nicaragua’s Supreme Elections Council and the Organization of American States, among others, have recognized the legitimacy of the results.
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In a statement released by the Venezuelan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “the Bolivarian Government and the Venezuelan People” congratulated “the sister people of the Republic of Nicaragua, for the successful holding, amidst a climate of joy and peace, of the general elections”. Speaking specifically to the Sandinista win, the statement
read: “this new people’s victory, besides strengthening hope in a future of dignity and sovereignty for the whole region, is an expression of the sound support of Nicaraguans to a government deeply devoted to its people, to which the vast majority, previously excluded, recognize its task of reconciliation and national unity, because it has mana-
Brazil and Venezuela fortify joint housing program T/ COI razilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota arrived in Caracas last Monday for an official visit which saw the further strengthening of bilateral ties between the two allied South American countries. Topping the minister’s agenda was a series of conversations dealing with housing construction and agriculture as the diplomat pledged his nation’s support for Venezuela’s ambitious new social program, Grand Mission
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Housing Venezuela, which seeks to build 2 million new homes by 2017. During his third visit to the Caribbean nation, Patriota met with members of the Venezuelan government’s housing commission charged with carrying out the new social program and reported on the possibilities of developing the country’s industrial base for home construction. “Beyond the areas in which we are already working together, we believe that Brazil can
make new contributions. We’re going to evaluate the ways in which we can help in order to advance Venezuela’s industrial capacity in the construction sector, using its raw materials such as iron, aluminum and wood”, Patriota said. Grand Mission Housing Venezuela was officially launched by the Venezuelan government in April to combat the nation’s housing shortage and set as its goal for this year the construction of 153,000 new living units. Thus far, the government has
AN ALBA NATION Assuming the presidency in 2007, President Ortega’s first offi-
cial act was the successful petitioning to have Nicaragua admitted into the Bolivarian Alternative for the People’s of the Americas (ALBA), spearheaded by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. At the signing of Nicaragua’s membership into ALBA, Chavez referred to the historic wins and defeats of the Sandinista movement and affirmed that Latin America, “cannot give ourselves the luxury of a new historical defeat. This century must be the century of our America, of our liberation, of the definitive breaking of the chains of imperialism”. That same year, Nicaragua and Venezuela signed 15 cooperation agreements, Venezuela forgave a $31.3 million dollar debt owed by Nicaragua and donated $10 million in aid to boost social spending in the Central American country. In 2009, Nicaragua exported 6,000 metric tons of milk, 11,000 heads of cattle, 3,000 metric tons of black beans, and 100,000 metric tons of coffee to Venezuela, with bi-lateral trade that year reaching US$115 million. At a 2010 meeting between Ortega and Chavez, the Nicaraguan President affirmed, “we cannot advance alone. We must be united and, despite resistance from imperialism, in Latin America we have advanced considerably in the integration of our nations”. Now able to freely enjoy the benefits of having a popular government in power, the Nicaraguan people have voted to continue down the path of progressive change.
provided more than 84,000 homes for residents, something that Patriota called “impressive” given the short amount of time the program has been active. Speaking after the meeting with members of the Venezuelan cabinet, the Foreign Minister praised the Chavez administration for its efforts to take up the challenge of housing and called the work of the mission “an example to follow”. “It gives us great pride to participate in the development of this program which is guaranteeing a home to the most needy people in Venezuela. It’s also beneficial to take these kind of experiences back to our country”, he said. While in Caracas, Patriota also met with his Venezuelan
counterpart Nicolas Maduro and President Hugo Chavez where, apart from cooperation in home construction, projects involving energy and community banking were discussed. “We’ve already inaugurated 105 communal bank terminals and the goal is 200. We’ve already achieved thousands of transactions between our two countries”, Chavez said during a press conference held after the meeting. As part of the Chavez administration’s policy of pushing forward with greater regional integration, commercial relations between Venezuela and Brazil have grown by 227 percent from $439 million in 2002 to $1.6 billion in 2010.
ged to move on successfully to give rights back to the people”. Ortega won his first presidential election in 1984; five years after the popular Sandinista guerrilla movement overthrew the US-backed government of Anastasio Somoza – member of the notoriously brutal Somoza Family, unofficially in power from the late 1930´s through the entire 1970´s. After several years as a member of the governing National Reconstruction Junta (1979-1984), Ortega was elected President with 67% of the popular vote. Opposed to the Sandinista Revolution, US President Ronald Reagan authorized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to create and direct the “Contras”, a paramilitary force responsible for the death of an estimated 30,000 Nicaraguans during the 1980´s. In 1989, after years suffering the direct impacts of the Contra War as well as long-term effects from US-orchestrated psychological warfare, a US-backed candidate, Violeta Chamorro, defeated the FSLN in presidential elections. After 16 years of neo-liberal rule, Ortega was re-elected 2006.
The artillery of ideas
NoÊn ÊUÊFriday, November 11, 2011
Politics
A jogging Chavez advances towards 2012 reelection, reminisces
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5| Early political and military career timeline of Hugo Chavez
T/ COI P/ Presidential Press ast weekend, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez celebrated the 40th anniversary of his entering the South American nation’s military academy, reminiscing on his humble beginnings as a soldier and encouraging new cadets to follow in the footsteps of the nation’s peaceful revolution. During a surprise visit to the Fort Tiuna barracks in Caracas on Saturday, a healthy and invigorated Chavez took the opportunity to jog with new trainees and converse with recruits about their responsibility as soon-to-be defenders of the Venezuelan homeland. “I was passing by here and wanted to say hello. You are the sons and daughters of this Revolution. Here we are, 40 years later in the eye of the hurricane, in the middle of a peaceful and democratic revolution in which you aspiring cadets will have a very important role”, Chavez told the students. Before his arrival at the military training grounds, the Venezuelan head of state took time to reflect upon his roots as a soldier and public servant, making reference to his desire to become a baseball player rather than a military officer when he first began his career. “When I entered the Military School, I was a simple boy, a good student and an athlete who wanted to get better. I wasn’t a political activist but rather wanted to be a baseball player”, he said. Looking over past photographs of a thin, 17 year-old and non-descript youth, the native of the state of Barinas told reporters that as a young man, his political consciousness was limited to what he had gleaned from conversations in his household about alternatives to the bi-party establishment in Venezuela known as “puntofijismo”. It wasn’t until he began to study in the academy, Chavez recounted, that his true poli-
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tical education began, explaining that he was exposed to the writings of revolutionary heroes such as Che Guevara and most importantly, Venezuelan independence leader, Simon Bolivar. It was Bolivar who had the greatest impact upon the student and who would form the basis of the current president’s political philosophy which seeks to further Latin American independence and wipe out poverty and inequality in the region. Naming his own political organization after the Venezuelan forefather, Chavez founded the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement 200 in 1982, a precursor to what would become the mass movement that propelled the charismatic leader to the presidency in 1998 and ensured successive electoral victories in 1999 and 2006. “When Simon Bolivar became known to me, things became clear. 150 years of history fell upon me. It was here that I became a Bolivarian”, he explained. ARMED WITH VALUES During a phone call to the program The Kiosk of Truth, broadcast on the state televi-
sion channel VTV last Sunday, Chavez referred to the political movement that he launched in 1982 as the product of the rigorous standards and intense training he received in the academy as a cadet in the 1970s. “We were forced to study a lot and this provided us with a cultural and ethical base. Our graduating class was at the vanguard of a new era and it was there that the nucleus of the political movement arose”, he said. The result, the socialist leader commented, has been the realization of a new model for social change in Venezuela founded on the morals and principles of camaraderie, solidarity and democracy. “The Venezuelan Revolution is an armed revolution, armed with values”, he said. While conversing with Earle Herrera, host of the program, Chavez drew a contrast between the Bolivarian Revolution and the behavior of opposition presidential primary candidate Pablo Perez, current Governor of the state of Zulia, who arrived inebriated to a public ceremony in Maracaibo last Friday. “It’s incredible the behavior of this pre-candidate, drunk
on a stage during a religious event”, he said, adding that the nation’s conservative opposition “has nothing to offer but chaos, commotion, theft, alcohol and violence against the people”. According to media outlets and witnesses of the event last week, Perez showed up intoxicated to the traditional Christmas Lights ceremony held every year in the state capital and accompanied by police, accosted members of the public. “[Perez] began to incite the people by pushing his way through the crowd with police escorts. When the people that were there reacted, he ordered the police to move in and they began to hit people”, said Henry Ramirez, a Maracaibo city councilor. Among the participants in the ceremony was Jeniree Salas who said that Perez and the police “attacked” them on the stage. “He didn’t respect the fact that we were with our children and he let the police loose on us”, she asserted. Five people have resulted injured from the melee and charges of violence were formally brought against the Zulia governor by Venezuela’s Attorney General on Monday.
U 1971: Enters the National Army Military Academy of Venezuela. UÊ 1975: Graduates at the top of his class as Second Lieutenant with a Bachelor's Degree in Military Arts and Sciences specialized in Engineering. UÊ 1975 -1977: Assumes various positions in the Armed Forces including Commander of Communications and member of the Cedeno Hunters Battalion. UÊ 1977: Ascends to the rank of Lieutenant after finishing training in the Army's Armored Division. UÊ1978-1979: Carries out the duties of Commander of the AMX-30 Tank Company and the Braves of Apure Armored Battalion. UÊ 1980-1981: Becomes head of the Physical Education Department of the Venezuelan Military Academy. UÊ 1982: Ascends to the rank of Capitan and founds the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement - 200. UÊ1988: Takes part in an International Course on Political Wars, carried out in Guatemala. UÊ 1989-1990: Enrolls in a Master's Degree Program in Political Science in Venezuela's Simon Bolivar University. UÊ 1990: Ascends rank to Lieutenant Colonel. UÊ 1992: Leads a military uprising against the government of Carlos Andres Perez, known as Operation Ezequiel Zamora. UÊ 1992-1994: Imprisoned for insurrection. UÊ 1998: Elected President of Venezuela with 56 percent of the popular vote. UÊ 2006: Re-Elected President of Venezuela with 64% of the popular vote.
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6 | Social Justice
The artillery of ideas
NoÊn ÊUÊFriday, November 11, 2011
Venezuelan overcomes odds to complete New York City Marathon T/ Agencies P/ Agencies aickel Melamed, a 36-year-old Venezuelan with a severe muscle condition known as Hypotonia, completed the New York City Marathon on Sunday with a time of 15 hours and 22 minutes. Friends and government representatives from Venezuela were waiting to congratulate him at the finish line. “This marathon is a perfect international forum in which to bring a message, where many people from many different parts of the world have come with the desire to achieve. It is a spectacular environment, and I think it is one of the most emblematic marathons in the world”, Melamed said at the start of the race. During the marathon, Melamed was applauded by spectators who approached him to offer their support. The Venezuelan runner spent months training for the competition. His
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race was broadcast live over the Internet and chronicled on social networks, which Venezuelans used to offer their support and congratulations.
One of them was Venezuela’s minister of sports, Hector Rodriguez, who on his Twitter account used the hash tag #VamosMaickel, which soon
became a trending topic in Venezuela and various parts of the world. “A big hug to you! We’re watching!” and “#VamosMaickel
Interior and Justice Ministry has been faced with the daunting task of tackling the high rates of violent crime that still affect much of the country. In 2009, the government launched the National Bolivarian Police (PNB) with the vision of humanizing police work and putting an end to the mafia-infested security agencies that reigned in the country before the arrival of the current government. In its short existence, the PNB has been able to put more than
6,000 new officers on the streets and reduce crime in some urban areas by as much as 57 percent. But according to El Achkar, more needs to be done and one of the keys to continuing the PNB's success in economically depressed areas will be the creation of alternative lifestyles for the youth and the transformation of neglected public spaces into recreation centers. "We have to work much more with youth beyond the projects that are active today. This has to do with the efforts by the government to develop socially inclusive programs and policies that propose new models and do away with the use of arms and drug trafficking", she said. Speaking directly to youth involvement in crime, El Achkar, dismissed the idea that illicit activity is the result of strictly economic factors and appealed for a deeper, sociological understanding of the problem. "We need to work more within the symbolic concepts plaguing
Venezuela: Revolutionizing policing and security T/ COI P/ Agencies he Dean of Venezuela's innovative National Security University (UNES), Soraya El Achkar, outlined last Tuesday some of the steps being taken by the revolutionary government of President Hugo Chavez to reduce crime in the South American country and enhance security for the residents of the OPEC member state. During an interview presented on the public television program, Toda Venezuela, El Achkar spoke of the nearly two thousand cadets currently receiving training in the UNES and the new model of policing presently being implemented in Venezuela focused on community engagement and respect for human rights. "Ve-
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nezuela is becoming an international reference point in terms of security and especially in terms of police training", the head of the UNES said. Referring to the South American nation's presentation at the UN's Human Rights Council in October, El Achkar asserted that even "the most hostile countries have recognized the processes of social inclusion and the work that we're doing in reforming and transforming the police". In recent years, the Chavez administration has made security initiatives one of the national government's top priorities, investing millions of dollars in the training and deployment of new officers around the nation. Inheriting a corrupt and disorganized security apparatus from previous governments, the
You are an example to be followed” were some of the messages written on twitter. After 15 hours and 22 minutes, Melamed finished the race and his father placed his medal around his neck. Melamed was born with a motor handicap due to a complication that occurred during birth when his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck, partially suffocating him and leaving his body immobilized. He went on to recover basic motor skills and graduated with a degree in economics from the Universidad Catolica Andres Bello. He was later trained as a psychotherapist. Despite his handicap, Melamed has practiced various extreme sports, including parachuting, deep sea diving, hiking, and now long-distance running. He has climbed the highest mountain in Venezuela, known as “El Pico Bolívar” (5,007 meters above sea level), and has previously completed 7 and 10 kilometer running races. This year’s New York City Marathon was won by Geoffrey Mutai of Kenya (for the men’s category) and Firehiwot Dado of Ethiopia (women’s category). A total of 46,000 competitors participated in the race.
young men. That's to say, why guns? Why drugs? They don’t provide more money or food. That's a myth. They have to do with identity, power and one's relationship to society", she stated. INTERNATIONAL MODEL Since Thursday, the UNES has been participating in an international conference on Venezuela's new security model in Caracas with the participation of Brazil, Nicaragua, Peru, Spain, England and Canada. The goal of the event, El Achkar informed, has been to put the new policing methods on display for the world and to promote an exchange of ideas with international partners to enhance crime fighting efforts on a global scale. "I have no doubt that [the countries participating in the conference] are going to continue to endorse our work because it's original and unique not only in Latin America but in all the world", she said on Tuesday.
The artillery of ideas
NoÊn ÊUÊFriday, November 11, 2011
Social Justice
US subverting Latin America pment to “dissident” groups, which was to enable them to maintain contact with the CIA station in Miami. Cubans learned about secret USAID activity from a sequence of media reports in which former USAID activists supplied sensitive details of the agency's endeavors. USAID hands out money for organizing a range of events from roundtables to protest rallies, with activists being given mandatory training in the techniques of mobilizing supporters with the help of advanced communication technologies, floating provocative allegations against authorities, and organizing protests typical of Twitterbased color revolutions.
T/ Nil Nikandrov S President John Kennedy Established USAID - the United States Agency for International Development – in November, 1962 as an organization charged with an essentially humanitarian mission of providing economic and other support to struggling countries around the world. The agency's stated goals therefore include conflict prevention, the expansion of democracy, humanitarian assistance, and human resources training, but the truth which is not deeply hidden is that the USAID activities tend to be tightly interwoven with those of the US Department of State, the CIA, and the Pentagon. In Latin America, any illusions concerning the agenda behind USAID interventions have proven to be short-lived. In Haiti, for example, CIA operatives hosted by USAID funded and coordinated NGOs were instrumental in toppling President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. For several days protesters in Haiti vandalized city streets, attacked government institutions, and showered Aristide with allegations of corruption and complicity in the drug business. A curious brand of rebels dressed in US military uniforms entered the stage shortly there-
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after and occupied most of the country, eventually laying siege to its capital and the presidential palace. Aristide was arrested by US marines, taken to the airport, and - with no formalities like a court procedure - flown to South Africa. The warning issued to the displaced country leader in the process was that attempts to escape would earn him yet bigger trouble. USAID also played the key role in organizing the June, 2009 coup in Honduras, where CIA agents under the USAID guise similarly guided and sponsored puppet NGO escapades, spread the myth of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya's and Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez's joint communist conspiracy, and commanded the country's army officers. The coup culminated in the arrest of Zelaya who, like Aristide, was forcibly taken to another country - Costa Rica in this case - and threatened that reentering his home country would be lethal. As a result, Washington was happy about the resulting termination of Honduras' drift towards the Latin American leftist camp. CUBA There is also ample evidence that USAID is used extensi-
vely as a tool for inciting “color revolutions” and revolts in defiant countries across the Western hemisphere, especially in Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. As for Cuba, USAID has been pulling off secret operations there for decades, but most of the agency’s efforts aimed at planting “independent” media and “alternative” political organizations in the country have been remarkably unsuccessful. Cuba's counter-espionage agency must be credited with enviable efficiency. There is an unrefuted impression that a considerable portion of the US funding alleged to help bring “democracy” to Cuba simply ends up in the pockets of CIA operatives and their local protégées. When leader of the Cuban opposition movement known as Ladies in White Laura Pollan died of natural causes recently, her co-workers initiated an inquiry into the group's finances and discovered the disappearance of tens of thousands of dollars. USAID promptly hushed up the scandal, which was just one in a series of likewise incidents. USAID contractor Phillip Gross was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in jail in Cuba last summer over the transfer of satellite communication equi-
VENEZUELA While USAID doesn’t maintain any formal agreements with the Venezuelan government, the agency set up shop in the US embassy in 2002, just months before a coup d’etat attempt against President Chavez. USAID’s first step following the collapse of the coup was to set up the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas. It is indicative of the scale of USAID operations in Venezuela that the agency is known to have fed money to some 700 NGOs and political projects in the country, with the opposition groups nabbing via different channels a handsome $70 million. The amount went to supporting campaigns waged by anti-Chavez candidates, to initiatives meant to deepen Venezuela's political divide, and to building a team of antiChavez opposition leaders. Engaging with student groups and radicalizing them, along with raising the profiles of their leaders, are constant USAID priorities in Venezuela. As a part of the USAID future leaders program, the more successful of its student apprentices toured the US, received anti-Chavez ideological training, and, on top of the above, were taught conspiratorial skills. Yon Goicoechea, a charismatic student leader with a record of energetic campaigning, was made USAID's number one partner among Venezuela's youth. At 23, as the youngest recipient ever, he was awarded the Milton
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7| Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty plus a $500,000 check, causing the Chavez supporters to voice the suspicion that the funding served to implicitly support the opposition. In December, 2010, Venezuela passed a law for the protection of political sovereignty and national self-determination which was intended to put an end to the practice by which Venezuelan parties and NGOs received financial infusions from other countries' intelligence agencies or organizations associated with foreign intelligence communities. The legislation sets deportation from Venezuela as a measure to be faced by foreign nationals caught guilty of passing money to Venezuelan political groups. The US National Endowment for Democracy and USAID were cited most of the time during the Venezuelan parliament's debates which preceded the enactment of the legislation. BOLIVIA In Bolivia, USAID is clearly involved in every destabilization outbreak. Having obtained evidence that the US embassy was in the process of arranging for a coup, Evo Morales' government responded harshly and, in September, 2008 ordered US ambassador Phillip Goldberg, who stayed in touch with local separatists and coupsters, out of the country. In November, 2008, Bolivia also shut out DEA for meddling in its domestic affairs. According to investigative reporter Eva Golinger, in 20072008 the US Department of State dished out a total of $97 million to opponents of Evo Morales' government. A terrorist group which came from Europe to assassinate Morales was neutralized in a Santa Cruz hotel in April, 2009. Bolivians with USAID connections were among the group's aides and fled to the US when an investigation into the terrorist plot was opened. In August, 2011, the Bolivian administration said that USAID would have to withdraw from the country, but, judging by the current media coverage, Bolivia later adopted a softer position and limited its demands to the US embassy launching a probe into the unfriendly conduct of some of its diplomats. Predictably, results of the probe remain unknown up to date.
ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas
Friday | November 11, 2011 | NÂş 89 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
A publication of the Fundacion Correo del OrinocoĂŠUĂŠ `ÂˆĂŒÂœĂ€Â‡ÂˆÂ˜Â‡ …ˆivĂŠEva GolingerĂŠUĂŠ Ă€>ÂŤÂ…ÂˆVĂŠ iĂƒÂˆ}Â˜ĂŠAlexander UzcĂĄtegui, Jameson JimĂŠnezĂŠUĂŠ*Ă€iĂƒĂƒĂŠFundaciĂłn Imprenta de la Cultura
In Mexico, a universal struggle against power and forgetting ÂœÂ…Â˜ĂŠ*ˆÂ?}iĂ€ ÂœÂ…Â˜ĂŠ*ˆÂ?}iĂ€ĂŠÂˆĂƒĂŠ>Â˜ĂŠ Ă•ĂƒĂŒĂ€>Â?ˆ>Â˜ĂŠÂ?ÂœĂ•Ă€Â˜>Â?ÂˆĂƒĂŒĂŠ >˜`ĂŠwÂ?““>ÂŽiÀ°Ê ÂˆĂƒĂŠÂ?>ĂŒiĂƒĂŒĂŠwÂ?Â“ĂŠÂˆĂƒĂŠThe War You Don't See (2010) lameda Park is Mexico City's languid space for lovers and open-air ballroom dancers: the gents in twotone shoes, the ladies in ďŹ nery and heels. The cobbled paths undulate from the great earthquake of 1985. You imagine the fairground sinking into the cobwebs of cracks, its Edwardian organ playing forlornly. Two small churches nearby totter precariously: the surreal is Mexico's facade. Hidden behind the poplars is the museum where Diego Riviera's mural Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park occupies the entire ground oor. You sink into sofa chairs and journey for an hour across his masterpiece. Originally painted at the Hotel Prado in 1947, it was rescued and restored when the earthquake demolished all around. More than 45 feet long and 14 feet high, it presents the political warriors of Mexico's past, from the conquistador Hernando Cortes to Rivera himself, depicted as a child holding the hand of a fashionably dressed skeleton, the iconic symbol of the Day of the Dead. Standing maternally beside him is his wife, Frida Kahlo, Mexico's artistic heroine. Around them parade the impervious rich and unrequited poor. What is it about Mexico that is a universal political dream? As in a Rivera mural, nothing is held back: no class martyrdom, no colonial tragedy. The message is freedom next time. The autocracy that emerged from the revolution of 1910-19 gave itself the Orwellian-name Party of the Institutionalised Revolution. This was eventually replaced by businessmen
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promising a pseudo democracy, which in 1994 embraced Bill Clinton's rapacious North American Free Trade Association (Nafta). Within a year, a million jobs were destroyed south of the border, along with Emiliano Zapata's revolutionary triumph, the constitutional protection of indigenous land from sale or privatization. At a stroke, Mexico surrendered its economy to Wall Street. The beneďŹ ciaries of the new, privatized Mexico are those like Carlos Slim, now ahead of Bill Gates as the world's richest man, whose ďŹ ngers are lodged in every imaginable pie: from food and construction to the national telephone company. A US diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks says, "The net worth of the 10 richest people of Mexico - a country where more than 40 per cent of the population lives in poverty - repre-
sents roughly 10 per cent of the gross domestic product". The last election, in 2006, was won by Felipe Calderon, Washington's man, followed by persistent allegations that it was rigged. Calderon declared what he calls "a war on drug gangs" and 50,000 dead are the result. No one doubts the menace of the drug cartels, but the real "security issue" is more likely the resistance of ordinary Mexicans to an enduring inequity and a rotten elite. For most of this year, thousands of los indignados have taken over the massive parade ground known as the Zocalo facing the National Palace. The occupations in Wall Street and around the world have their genesis in Latin America. The difference here is there is none of the angst about the protestors' "focus". As in all places where people live on the
edge and the state and its cronyism cast lawless shadows, they know exactly what they want. Ask some of the 44,000 employees of the national power company, who prevented the ďŹ re sale of the national grid until Calderon sacked them all; and the striking copper miners of Cananea, whose owners funded Calderon's campaign; and the former pilots and stewards of the national airline, Mexicana, dissolved in a sham bankruptcy that was a gift to the private airline industry. These angry, eloquent and often courageous people have long known something many in Europe and the United States are only beginning to realize: there is no choice but to ďŹ ght the economic extremism unleashed in Washington and London a generation ago. Employment, trade unionism, public health, education, "life itself", says Manuel Lopez Obrador, the former
mayor of Mexico City who ran against Calderon, "has since been struck by a political and economic earthquake". Since Calderon came to power, 30 journalists have been killed, ten this year alone, says the Committee to Protect Journalists. Again, the drug cartels are blamed, but suppression of a national resistance, co-ordinated with the United States, is also the truth. Unlike in the US and Britain, many journalists, some of them inspired by the rise of the Zapatistas in the 1990s, have thrown off the patronage of the political and business elite and pursue what they call "civic journalism". The second largest newspaper in Mexico is La Jornada, famous for its fearless investigations and campaigns and for surviving mostly on subscriptions; it carries no commercial advertising. Reminiscent of newspapers before they were consumed by corporations, there is nothing like it in Britain; it reects much about Mexico City that is surprising and enlightened. In the National Palace the presence of Robocop guards is at once overwhelmed by Diego Rivera's most epic mural. Painted between 1929 and 1945, it follows the walls of the staircase, spilling, like his Alameda work, spectacles of revolution and tragedy, hope and deďŹ ance. When I ďŹ lmed it 30 years ago, I tried unsuccessfully to write a narrative to the pictures. In condensing and bringing alive 2000 years of history, it is art of which Europeans and North Americans are sometimes disdainful yet envious; for it charts the struggle of ordinary people, uniting and celebrating them, and identifying their true political enemies. Seeing it again, I am struck by how it speaks for us all.