by Robert Austin Thursday December 07, 2006.
Venezuela's confirmation of its anti-imperialist, democratic socialist revolution through the decisive re-election of president Hugo Chávez this week opens the way for major expansion of its free "womb to tomb" public education program. The following letter, still unanswered almost three weeks on, suggests that an enlightened NUS re-think on Venezuela may be overdue.
Ms Rose Jackson
President, National Union of Students
Dear Rose,
Evidently the NUS has resolved not to support the national week of solidarity activities with Venezuela, a curious decision for an organisation which would hopefully want to identify with enlightened democracies, not the sham conducted by Labor and Liberal parties in this country on behalf of their corporate sponsors, increasingly mimicking the millionaires' circus that passes for elections in the US.
Since 1996 I have researched Venezuelan history and culture during a series of stays in the country, and been privileged to observe first-hand the extraordinary transformation of Venezuelan society since the plutocratic neoliberal Fourth Republic gave way to the immensely-popular and steadily more socialist Hugo Chávez and the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR). The political process underway since 1998 has seen major progressive wealth re-distribution and labour democratisation; revived autochtonous culture; actively supported indigenous autonomy; reformed agriculture; initiated anti-patriarchal gender reforms on a scale rarely seen in most countries; provided health clinics in areas historically off the radar, often staffed by volunteer professionals from the 10,000 sent by Cuba; and involved the majority of the population in decision-making in a way which only a decade ago seemed all but impossible (as it remains, for instance, in Australia and the US). Internationally, the Bolivarian Republic has earned the respect of much of the world for its anti-imperialist politics and promotion of an independent, self-sufficient Third World. Leading intellectuals, student movements and popular democratic groups everywhere recognise and welcome such developments, more so given the grotesque depths to which Bush Inc.'s "American Century" has descended in the Middle East and a sizeable part of Latin America itself.
But the standout transformation in Venezuela has been education. Literacy rates have soared, students previously forced into child labour now attend school, and a new peoples' university (UBV) takes courses to workers and the unemployed in their suburbs, reducing dropout rates, saving precious resources and providing poor women higher education at a rate only seen previously in Castro's Cuba and Allende's Chile. The student movement, historically repressed and often little more than a bourgeois wine club, has risen anew and contributes much to democratising curriculum and campus life. And the UBV has just created a chair in critical pedagogy in honour of distinguished University of California professor Peter McLaren. To reiterate, none of this seemed possible only a decade ago. Consideration against the backdrop of five centuries of brutal colonial and neocolonial rule provides the necessary comparative context.
While Chávez himself happily concedes that mistakes have been made, the popular social and cultural achievements in just eight years compare favourably with those of the twentieth century's main revolutions, including the USSR (until Stalin), Mexico (1910-1920), Vietnam (1945-75), Mao's China, Cuba (1959-present), Congo (1960-62), Chile (1970-73), Angola (1980s) and Nicaragua (1979-1990). But the defining feature which all of these share with Venezuela today is the role played by US imperialism in sabotaging popular desire. Secret Washington files published by a Venezuelan lawyer have recently erased any residual doubt about a US conspiracy to extinguish this overdue insurrection; and a CIA-led counter-revolution can not be discounted.
The Bolivarian project has survived a coup, huge capital flight caused by the petrol bosses' strike, an assassination attempt on Chávez, a recall referendum, Colombian paramilitary and CIA intervention, inter alia; yet will probably win its third presidential term next month, decisively. The vibrant openness and commitment to popular democracy which the project has displayed surpasses with ease anything on offer in the West. Indeed most governments would long ago have shut down the vitriolic, oligarchic, pro-coup Venezuelan press on the grounds of sedition, if not terrorism. Under Chávez, it has had free reign. If, as GLW asserts, your faction believes that there is suppression of opposition parties in Venezuela, it will find little support outside the fantasy department of the CIA.
For the record, the Chávez government - contrary to its predecessors - has also played a leading role in counter-terrorism throughout the Americas, highlighted by its role in the detention of serial assassin Luis Posada Cariles, the Cuban ex-pat whose bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 - inter alia - extinguished 73 young Cuban and Jamaican lives, plus heroic crew (who almost got the plane down safely). Even the conservative US press understands this: see http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15991972.htm Venezuela's efforts to place him on trial for terrorist activities there some years ago have been frustrated not by lack of evidence (see for instance http://www.miami.com/multimedia/miami/news/posadacarilles_courtpapers.pdf ), but by the US refusal to extradite. Moreover, the US has just accelerated recruitment of neighbouring military forces to train at the School of The Americas in Fort Benning, aka the School of Assassins: see http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=41409
In my humble view, a student union which aspires to be progressive but is aligned with the interests of empire, whether by default or by design, would do well to review its position. Why not seek advice from the two RMIT students whose first semester in Venezuela this year I arranged, with the help of an embassy whose approach to overseas students is refreshingly un-bureaucratic and solidary? One was quoted in the New York Times on his Venezuelan experience in a way hardly supportive of your faction's claims. Or invite representatives from sceptical and socialist viewpoints to address the national executive? Hopefully then the NUS can return to contributing, in political economist Paul Baran's famous words, to "the triumph of civilization over barbarism."
Solidary regards,
Robert Austin, Ph.D (Latin American Studies)
Visiting professor, Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela (UBV, 2004)
Honorary Fellow
Department of History
University of Melbourne
http://www.history.unimelb.edu.au/staff/austin.html
Research Associate
Centro de Estudios y Capacitación Técnico Pedagógica (CECATP)
Santa Mónica 1938, Santiago Centro
Santiago de Chile
http://www.defendrobert.blogspot.com/
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