[Marxism] report from world festival of youth and students 2005 in venezuela

[Josh Saxe <joshsaxe@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is a report from the World Festival of Youth and Students that
happened this month in Venezuela.  I am a 23 year old white male
substitute teacher and History graduate student from Los Angeles, I
went there between August 4th-18th with a group of about 7 friends and
fellow marxist activists from the U.S.  I am a supporter of the
socialist group Labor's Militant Voice and a member of an independent
marxist youth organization in Los Angeles, Progressive Alliance.

The World Festival of Youth and Students: Background and history

These festivals started happening every 4 years in 1947 - they have
traditionally been organized and controlled by the international
Communist Parties and their youth organizations - this is changing as
these parties weaken absolutely and relatively among the world
revolutionary movement but is still basically the case.  The first
festival occurred in Prague '47 right after liberation and just as
Eastern Europe was politically and socially joining the "socialist
camp", as imperialism was taking blows from up-and-coming third world
revolutionary and nationalist movements.  Must have been an exciting
conference - attended by something like 70,000 young people.  The one
this year had a modest 15,000 in attendance although at times it
seemed more because of the presence of many extra Venezuelans not part
of the official Venezuelan delegation.

August 4-7th, the days leading up to the conference.

I arrived at the international airport outside Caracas by myself late
at night and was totally lost.  There was a bloc of at least 100
Angolans dressed up in the regalia of some left party - I tried to
communicate with them about where I was supposed to go but could not
understand their Portuguese.  Finally I found some young people from
the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) who directed me to a group there
for the festival and we waited around for a couple hours and then got
on a bus.

At that point I met a bunch of Americans (I am just going to use the
un-PC "Americans" for U.S. residents because saying U.S. residents all
the time is awkward) - my impression was that the American delegation
- about 700 people - was made up of three groups, here listed in order
of size: independents who were loosely around the left in some
fashion, often the anti-war movement, and basically held liberal
political views (but may have left the festival thinking a lot about
socialism!), CPUSA and YCL (the CP's YCL) members or supporters, and
then associates of the SWP and some smaller U.S. left groups.  The
trip was very interesting just on the level of meeting a big cross
section of the U.S. left from all over the country involved in a wide
variety of political work - from SWP mine workers in Utah to
Communists organizing in places like Alabama.  The CPUSA, who I had
never really gotten to know before (they are tiny in L.A.), was
fascinating to me in that they seem to be really the only group on the
US left that has a reflexive culture of orienting towards working
class communities, and who actually still has a base amongst the
American working class - the far left still has a lot to learn from
them.

The conference was incredibly disorganized.  For example the young
Chavistas assigned to get the bus I was on to the military barracks we
would be sleeping in did not really know where the place was, and we
spent from 10:30PM that night until 2:45AM driving around trying to
find it.  Finally they put us up somewhere else for the night, a
"military high school" where high school aged kids who want a military
career, and where the movement around Chavez also holds a lot of
gatherings, activities, trainings, etc.

It was these types (young Chavistas) who we met the next day.  I had
the privilege of translating for a group of about 20 Chavista youth
and about 15 Americans.  These kids for the most part worked in the
misiones (more on these below) which are schools and health centers
the Chavez government has set up in poor neighborhoods by the
thousands all over the country.  Talking to these kids reminded me of
talking to Cubans when I went to that country a few years ago - they
were zealous, emotionally swept up in the movement, and very curious
about the United States.  They asked us questions like: if you don't
support imperialism, does your government and other Americans consider
you traitors?  What are you doing to stop the war in Iraq?  What do
you think of Fidel Castro - don't you think he's a dictator (they were
testing us, they all love Fidel)?  What does the media tell North
Americans about Chavez and what is going on in Venezuela?  Do you
think the U.S. might invade Venezuela?

Everyone from our group had different answers for these questions but
these young people were I think surprised at how political our group
was and the way in which we shared equally harsh judgements of the
role of U.S. imperialism in the world setup.  They talked a lot about
nationalism - the need for Venezuelans to reaffirm their own history
and culture, about democracy - the need for Venezuelans to become
literate in the literal sense but also literate in politics and
culture to allow for free participation in the political system. 
Although Chavez is now talking a lot about socialism, I think the view
prevails in the movement there that this is a "democratic revolution"
that will bring the "excluded" (a very commonly used term) into
political participation.  And that certainly is where the movement is
at right now - spreading literacy, health care, employment, etc, to
millions, and empowering them and giving them the sense that they can
participate in the political and culture life of the country for the
first time.

Escape from the Stalinist Organization of the Festival

A lot of Americans got sick of the way all of our movements were
controlled during the Festival - they finally put us up in these
isolated military barracks on the top of a hill (eventually all 700 of
us), out of contact with Venezuelan society.  I'd say about 1/3rd of
us just left initially and opted for cheap hostels and hotels in
Caracas.  I went to Caracas for the first few days before the festival
actually started and had some interesting experiences.  A few friends
and I were dead set on going and trying to stay with the Cuban
delegation for the whole festival.  The festival organizers wouldn't
even tell us where they were.  We met some Mexican Trotskyists who
were part of some split off the Spartacist League (this was a friendly
group, though) who gave us insider information about where they were:
"Fuerte Tiuna."

The Cuban Delegation

We sojourned to this fort one night only to find it is the biggest
military base in Venezuela and is at least 10 square miles - we just
wandered around until we found the Cubans.  We chilled with a group of
Cuban doctors who were in Venezuela for a couple years living in the
"barrios" (the barrios at one point were shantytowns, but they have
been built up so that they are now poor neighborhoods with jagged
streets and permanent and semi-permanent dwellings).  This was a
fascinating group - representative of the popular base of the
revolution.  They were in their 30's and 40's and had been born into
poor families and given the opportunity to become doctors by the
revolution.  I asked them if it was hard living in Venezuelan
shantytowns for a couple years after having lived in a country like
Cuba where poverty is experienced so differently.  No they said, this
was how their parents lived before the revolution and they could
empathize quite easily...

There are 23,000 Cuban doctors in Venezuela (I also heard the number
20,000 quoted, so I'm not really sure) - Venezuela is a country of
something like 27 million people.  Considering that the doctors are
amongst the poorest section of the population (lets say 15 million),
23,000 goes a long way.  They are trying to set up a Cuba-like model
for medical care where doctors live in a neighborhood and are assigned
to a certain number of families that they check up on consistently. 
All the medical care is free.  This is part of an
oil-for-medical-services exchange with Cuba.  I had to go to the
doctor like 4 times while I was there and the medical service was very
good and had a whole different (and vastly more warm and amiable)
social vibe to it than in the U.S.

These Cubans were deeply committed socialists who had very interesting
analysis of the Venezuelan situation, even if I disagree with much of
what they argued.  If I go into this discussion here however this
email will become way too long.

A day with the Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective in the
Caracas barrios

Another thing a friend and I did was meet at random the people behind
the Green Left Weekly - a group of like 40 Australians from the DSP. 
We had long and interesting discussions with them (and arguments, we
had very different appreciations of the Venezuelan situation, but also
came to some agreements), and went around a knot of low-income Caracas
housing buildings.  These buildings were a big part of Chavez's
Caracas base - during the coup in 2002 thousands of people flooded out
of them to defend their president.  We meet with political committees
inside the apartment complex and a group of young peasant leaders who
were in Caracas for the festival - they were fighting for land reform
and involved in setting up cooperatives.  They told us about how they
had lost about 120 activists to death squads receiving support from
across the Colombian border, and then took us up to the top of one of
the apartment buildings for a magnificent view of the Venezuelan
metropolis.  Then they started chanting pro-Chavez slogans, pulled out
pistols and emptied their clips into the air!  We were shocked and
hoped the bullets didn't land on one of the many crowds waiting for
buses or at open-air markets but also impressed by these peasant
activists, at the fact they were going up against the very real
possibility of death in fighting for a different future...

Back to the Festival Housing and the Beginning of the Festival

Eventually like errant sheep most of the U.S. delegation made its way
back to festival housing in the military barracks.  A march of all the
delegations through a kind of regal entrance to Fuerte Tiuna opened up
the festival.  The march was amazing but we wished we had marched
through the populated centers of Caracas as an expression of
solidarity with the Venezuelan population.  They told us to march in
formation with our delegations but the march became a free-for-all in
which the formations often broke up with people going off to meet each
other - my friends and I met Brasilian left Communists who had broken
from Lula, Argentinian CPers, Cubans, Vietnamese, North Koreans (! the
nuttiest delegation of the whole festival, these people were in their
40's and didn't want to talk to anyone), Iraqis (actually Iraqi expats
from Canada, a disappointment), Venezuelan Palestinians, German union
members and Communists, etc, etc.  It was fascinating.  Speaking
Spanish and English were incredibly useful, one could communicate with
almost anyone with one of these two languages.

At the end of the march there were many speakers I ignored while
talking to international leftists, but then Chavez spoke which was
great.  I heard him speak three times during the festival, this time,
at a conference about socialism, and at the end.  He tends to talk
about the history of struggle against imperialism around the world
emphasizing the important role of Cuba in Latin America, the
nationalist struggle of Venezuela against Spain in the early 19th
century, the need for a "new socialism" for the 21st century (while
not depreciating the role of the socialist camp as a bulwark against
imperialism and possessing many positive qualities), and his economic
plans to create a kind of Latin American economic-political bloc
against U.S. power.  In his best speech - at the socialism conference
- he centered the whole talk around a quote from Rosa Luxemburg about
"socialism or barbarism" being the dilemma of the modern world.  He
said the fate of humanity would be decided in the next couple
generations on the fulcrum of this question and that it would be up to
the communists in their early 20's (people like us!) to play a
decisive role - a very inspiring speech.  He made a decent number of
references to Trotsky, Luxemburg, Alan Woods (a living British
Trotskyist!), etc...

Most of the festival was boring.  It was long speeches by middle-aged
academic/intellectual men (almost no women!) and scripted discussions
in which various CP delegations would get up and read written
statements.  One could intervene but get no response and get no real
discussion going.  The really fascinating part of the festival was
getting to know the movement in Venezuela and meeting left militants
from around the world.

Meeting the Invepal Workers

Invepal is a valve factory outside of Caracas where the workers have
occupied their factory and are running it on their own.  We made
contact with these workers independently and had the great privilege
of attending one of their business meetings at which they make
decisions about the running of the factory.  There were about 30 or 40
workers there, out of a factory of about 70.  The owner of the factory
was going to shut it down because he wasn't making enough profit
before the workers took it up.  It was a group of about 5 of us North
American leftists there and 2 Argentinian Maoists plus the workers.

The workers were incredibly warm and friendly and wanted to know just
as much about us as we wanted to know about them.  They were
socialists, as a bloc, and amongst them was a Trotskyist worker and
another about to join the Trotskyist group of Alan Woods the CMR
(Corriente Marxista Revolucionaria, by far the biggest Trotskyist
group there, more on this later).  They were also generally Chavistas
and we talked a lot with them about the "Venezuelan road to
socialism."  There is no clear leader amongst these workers, they made
decisions through fierce discussion, arguing, etc, and with tremendous
pride about what they had accomplished.  They sought to cultivate
links with us as North American communists, and with occupied factory
workers in Argentina and other parts of Venezuela.  Afterwards a bunch
of us went to one of the workers houses, ate delicious chicken wings,
got drunk, watched a homemade video about the history of the Invepal
struggle which I am highly embarrassed to say I feel asleep during as
at that point I had been running off of 3-4 hours of sleep a night for
a week!

A Day With the Misiones

As inspiring as they are to those of us who see the engine of the
revolution as the self-activity of workers in the class struggle, the
Invepal workers exist at the margins of the consciousness of the
Chavista movement.  They are rarely rarely mentioned.  On the other
hand, the "misiones" are the heart and sole of the movement around
Chavez in Venezuela, they nourish, build, and sustain his popularity
and power base.

There are tens of thousands of mission schools and doctors offices all
over the country divided into four big categories that I learned about
(there are more that are smaller I believe but which I did not visit
or learn about):

Mision Barrio Adentro - this is the medical care mission under of the
auspices of which 23,000 Cuban doctors reside.  You will find little
buildings with hand-painted letters spelling out "Barrio Adentro" all
across poor Venezuelan neighborhoods.  Increasingly Venezuelans are
training in Cuba and coming back to serve as doctors in this program.

Mision Robinson - the first educational mission, and largest program -
a typical working class district will have 10-15 schools.  The goal is
to eliminate illiteracy, a huge problem in Venezuela.  Like all the
Venezuelan misiones they use videos to teach the people and have an
instructional aide in every classroom (sometimes a university student,
sometimes someone older), to help those who don't understand the
video.

Mision Ribas - the equivalent of elementary education, but the people
at these missions (we visited maybe 6 of them) are usually between
15-60 years old, people who before Chavez could not have gone to
school.

Mision Sucre - Sort of like high school.  Same demographic.  Once they
finish this they can go to university.

Venezuelans articulate the goals of these mission not so much as
upward mobility and "equal opportunity" but as a way to rebuild
working class communities and give people skills and knowledge and an
outlook that makes this possible.  Education is politicized - these
are Chavez institutions, huge bases of support for the Chavez
movement.

Conclusion

The festival concluded with a huge rally of at least 20-30,000 people,
maybe more, in a Caracas stadium - imagine a stadium filled to the
brim with communists - Chavez spoke and asked people to raise their
hands if they were communists - the whole stadium raised their hands. 
I have major major differences with the CP's of the world, but
nonetheless for the first time I really felt part of something
international, in a visceral level, the international movement for
socialism - it gave me butterflies in my stomach.

This festival was a great event.  Venezuela is somewhere where poor
people are on the offensive.  We can all be inspired by that.  Chavez
is a president at the head of a capitalist state, but he is also an
honest mass leader figuring things out as he goes along - the
Venezuelan masses and Venezuelan militants understand this and this is
why he has almost total hegemony over the movement there.  If there is
going to be a revolutionary party in Venezuela it is going to grow as
the militant wing of the Chavista popular organizations, not in
opposition to them.  That said, Venezuelan militants are drawn to and
need a clear class perspective and a clear sense of the road forward -
arming the peasants who are already under systematic attack by rural
death squads, arming the urban popular organizations, the students and
teachers at the misiones, the left unions, the Frente Francisco
Miranda (maybe discussed in a later email), etc, to guard against
another coup attempt, and a more aggressive policy of nationalizations
at least of blatantly counterrevolutionary landowners and capitalists
as a preparation for a complete overturning of capitalism, a social
revolution.  The only Venezuelan organization I found that advocates
for these kinds of demands _within_ the popular movement in Venezuela
movement was the CMR which I mentioned above, which has grown from
like 3 foreigners to 200 Venezuelan members in the past few years,
with many militant workers joining.  As they acquire members from
symbolic and strategic centers of resistance like Invepal I hope they
grow and gain influence.

Hope this report is useful!
In solidarity
Josh

________________________________________________
YOU MUST clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.
Send list submissions to: Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism