The Cabildo Manuelita Saenz, presents a panel of experts who will discuss the history, the obstacles and current advances of the “Diálogos de Paz”, Peace Talks.
Dieter Misgeld, Ph D (Professor Emeritus U of T)
Miguel Figueroa, Secretary General of the Communist Party of Canada
Amparo Torres, (Colombian) Activist and Art Lecturer
nchamah miller, Ph D (Colombian) -- (Researcher Galfisa Group - Institute of Philosophy of Havana)
April 21st at 5:30 pm at Beit Zatoun
612 Markham St. (at Bathurst subway), Toronto
CABILDO MANUELITA SAENZ en Toronto
Somos un espacio de discusión política y organización de la solidaridad con los pueblos de America Latina. Somos la convergencia de dos organizaciones de larga trayectoria en Canadá: LATIN@S y el circulo Manuelita Saenz en Toronto. El CABILDO en la actualidad se enfoca prioritariamente en las conversaciones de paz en Colombia iniciadas en la ciudad de la Habana entre el estado colombiano y las fuerzas armadas revolucionarias de Colombia - FARC- EP. EDITORAS: Amparo Torres y nchamah miller
Wednesday 10 April 2013
Thursday 7 March 2013
Venezuela With and Beyond Chavez
By
Dario Azzellini
“Chávez
was one of us”, say the poor from the barrios in Caracas, the people throughout
Latin America, and Bronx residents together with probably two million poor
people in the US, who now have free heating thanks to the Chávez government. Sean Penn said on Chávez: “Today the people of the United
States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world
lost a champion.” These are sad days.
This
article is not going to delve into the many accomplishments of the Bolivarian
process with regard to healthcare, life expectancy and education – even if no
country in the world has improved living standards as much over the past 14
years as Venezuela under Chávez. I will not write about how Chávez shifted
hemispheric relations, helped to bring the FTTA to an end and built Latin
American and Caribbean unity for the first time without the US or Canada. Many
articles and writers focus on these matters.
This
article addresses the different approach to social transformation in Venezuela,
the idea of revolution as a process and the primacy of the constituent power, which
has been developed from below in the form of popular power throughout the
country. Chávez was an allay in the construction of people’s power and creative
building of a new world. This is the reason that while I am so sad with the
passing of Chavez, I am also totally confident about the future of Venezuela.
As with the people of Venezuela, I know where the power is. In the neighbourhoods,
in the towns, villages and cities, organized together.
The Two-Track Approach – From Above and Below
The particular nature of the Bolivarian
movement stems from the fact that social transformation and the redefining of
the State have led to the creation of a “two-track approach”: on the one side,
the State, institutions and traditional left organizations, and on the other,
movements and organized society. It is a construction process both “from above”
as well as “from below”. This entails the participation of antisystemic
organizations and movements, along with individuals and organizations which can
be characterized as traditional and state centred (for instance, unions and
political parties).
Both from the government and from the rank and
file of the Bolivarian process, there is a declared commitment to redefine
State and society on the basis of an interrelation between top and bottom, and
thereby to move toward transcending capitalist relations. The State’s role is
to accompany the organized population; it must be the facilitator of bottom-up
processes, so that the constituent power can bring forward the steps needed to
transform society. The State has to guarantee the material content the
realization of the common wealth requires. This idea has been stated on various
occasions by Chávez, and is shared by sectors of the administration and by the
majority of the organized movements.
The Communal State
Since January 2007, Chávez proposed
going beyond the bourgeois state by building the communal state. He applied
more widely a concern originating with antisystemic forces, meaning the
movements and political forces that assume that the state form has to be
overcome. The basic idea is to form council structures of different kinds,
especially communal councils, communes and communal cities, which will
gradually supplant the bourgeois state.
Communal Councils
The Communal Councils are a non representative
structure of direct democracy and the most advanced mechanism of
self-organization at the local level in Venezuela. The most active agents of
change in Venezuela have been--and continue to be--the inhabitants of the urban
barrios and the peasant communities.
Communal
Councils began forming in 2005 without any law and as an initiative ‘from
below’. In January 2006 Chávez adopted this initiative and began to spread it.
In April 2006, the National Assembly approved the Law of Communal Councils,
which was reformed in 2009 following a broad consulting process of councils’
spokespeople. The Communal Councils in urban areas encompass 150-400 families;
in rural zones, a minimum of 20 families; and in indigenous zones, at least 10
families. At the heart of the Communal Council and its decision-making body is
the Assembly of Neighbours. The councils build a non-representative structure
of direct participation which exists parallel to the elected representative
bodies of constituted power. In 2013, more than 40,000 Communal Councils had
been established in Venezuela.
The Communal Councils are financed directly by national
State institutions, thus avoiding interference from municipal organs. The law
does not give any entity the authority to accept or reject proposals presented
by Communal Councils. The relationship between Communal Councils and
established institutions, however, is not exactly harmonious; conflicts arise
principally from the slowness of constituted power to respond to demands made
by Communal Councils and from attempts at interference. The Communal Councils
tend to transcend the division between political and civil society (i.e.,
between those who govern and those who are governed). Hence, liberal analysts
who support that division view the Communal Councils in a negative light,
arguing that they are not an independent civil-society organization, but linked
to the State. In fact, however, they constitute a parallel structure through
which power and control is gradually drawn away from the State in order to
govern on its own.
Socialist Communes
At a higher level of self government there is
the possibility of creating Socialist Communes, which can be formed from
various Communal Councils in a specific territory. The Communal Councils decide
themselves about the geography of the Commune These Communes can develop medium and long-term projects of
greater impact while decisions continue to be made in assemblies of the
Communal Councils. As of 2013 there are more than 200 communes under
construction.
The idea of the Commune as a site for building
participation, self-government and socialism traces back to the communitarian
socialist tradition of the Paris Commune, and also to Venezuelan Simón
Rodríguez, who proposed local self government by the people, calling it
‘Toparchy’ (from the Greek ‘Topos’, place) in the early 19th
century, to traditional forms of
indigenous collectivism and communitarianism and the historical experiences of
the Maroons, former Afro-American slaves who escaped to remote regions and
built self administrated communities and settlements.
Various Communes can form Communal Cities, with
administration and planning ‘from below’ if the entire territory is organized
in Communal Councils and Communes. The mechanism of the construction of
Communes and Communal cities is flexible; they themselves define their tasks.
Thus the construction of self-government begins with what the population itself
considers most important, necessary or opportune. The Communal Cities that have
begun to form so far, for example, are rural and are structured around
agriculture, such as the ‘Ciudad Comunal Campesina Socialista Simón Bolívar’ in
the southern state of Apure or the ‘Ciudad Comunal Laberinto’ in the
north-eastern state of Zulia.
Challenges
After 13 years of revolutionary transformation,
the biggest challenge for the process is the structural contradiction between
constituent and constituted power. Especially since 2007, the government’s ability to reform has increasingly clashed with the
limitations inherent in the
bourgeois state and the
capitalist system. The
movements and initiatives for self-management and self-government geared toward overcoming the bourgeois state and its
institutions, with the goal of replacing it with a communal state based on
popular power have grown. But
simultaneously, because of the expansion of state institutions’ work, the consolidation
of the Bolivarian process and growing resources, state institutions have been
generally strengthened and have become more bureaucratized. Institutions of constituted power aim at
controlling social processes and reproducing themselves. Since the institutions
of constituted power are at the same time strengthening and limiting
constituent power, the transformation
process is very complex
and contradictory. Nevertheless, the struggles liberated by constituent power in Venezuela are often struggles for a different system
and not within the existing social, political and economic system. The contradiction is grounded in the difference
between institutional and social logic.
For example, if the job as community promoter
and the existence of a certain institution is guaranteed only as long as the
Communal Councils still depend on them, then the interest of the institution
and its employees in having independent Communal Councils will be minimal.
Conversely, the individual civil servant as well as the institution as a whole
will be desperately presenting advances and positive results, but always
proving that the Communal Councils, Communes and other instances of
self-administration in whatever sector need the support of the corresponding
institution. In fact the Ministry of Communes turned out to be one of the
biggest obstacles to the construction of Communes and most of the Communes
under construction complain about the Ministry. Only the growing organization
‘from below’, especially the self organized Network of Commune Activists (Red
de Comuneras y Comuneros), bringing together about 70 Communes could bring
enough pressure on the Ministry of Communes to start changing its politics at
the end of 2011. They forced the Ministry to register some 20 Communes.
Conclusion
While the ‘from above’
and ‘from below’ strategies have maintained themselves in the same process of
transformation for 13 years and the conflictive relationship between
constituent and constituted power has been the motor of the Bolivarian process,
conflicts are increasing. The growing organization ‘from below’ and the
development of popular power inevitably clash with constituted power. The
growing organization ‘from below’ and the development of popular power limit
the constituted power and overwhelm it if it does not limit them. They can only
expand over time if they get the upper hand, in which case constituent power
would profoundly transform constituted power.
I have no doubt that
peoples power will expand. The most important experience people have had over
the past 14 years in Venezuela was that they learned they can overcome their
marginalization by participation and self organization, creating their own
solutions. “We are all Chávez”.
Dario
Azzellini, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria, lived and worked in
Venezuela between 4 and months a year from 2003 to 2011. He worked with
communal councils, communes, workers control, rural and urban movements. He has
written extensively and directed documentaries on Venezuela. He published the
internationally acclaimed documentaries “Venezuela from below” (2004), “5
factories – workers control in Venezuela” (2006), and “Comuna under
construction” (2010). He also published the books: “Caracas: Bolivarian city”
(Berlin: b books, 2013); “Partizipation, Arbeiterkontrolle und die Commune”
(Hamburg: VSA, 2012); “Venezuela bolivariana. Revolution des 21.
Jahrhunderts?“; (Cologne: Neuer ISP Verlag) and “Il Venezuela di Chávez”,
(Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2006); and several articles in journals in English,
Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian.
24 DE JULIO NATALICIO DE HUGO CHAVEZ FRIAS - DIA DE LA DIGNIDAD, EL ORGULLO Y LA AUTOESTIMA DE LOS PUEBLOS LATINOAMERICANOS Y CARIBEÑOS
HOMENAJE LATINOAMERICANO Y CARIBEÑO AL
PRESIDENTE HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS
El Presidente Hugo Chávez Frías dedicó su vida a la lucha por la dignidad de los pueblos de la América Latina y el Caribe. Despertó su orgullo y autoestima, incentivando un proceso integracionista que despertó el orgullo y la autoestima de sus pueblos, abriéndoles esperanzas en un futuro de equidad y desarrollo, teniendo como eje primordial el bienestar de las gentes y no meramente el crecimiento económico, sin equidad ni justicia sociales.
Su legado es un claro incentivo para continuar el proceso de unión entre los pueblos latinoamericanos y caribeños
Por ello proponemos que los países que integran el CELAC, en homenaje a quien fuera su promotor, declaren al unísono, en toda la América Latina y el Caribe, el 24 de julio, día del natalicio del Presidente Chávez, como
DIA DE LA DIGNIDAD, EL ORGULLO Y LA AUTOESTIMA
DE LOS PUEBLOS LATINOAMERICANOS Y CARIBEÑOS
Teatro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Bogotá, marzo 6 de 2013
Propuesta de Gloria Gaitán con el aplauso unánime de los asistentes al Teatro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán en conmemoración del 6 de marzo, día de la dignidad de las Víctimas de los crímenes de Estado.
PRESIDENTE HUGO CHÁVEZ FRÍAS
El Presidente Hugo Chávez Frías dedicó su vida a la lucha por la dignidad de los pueblos de la América Latina y el Caribe. Despertó su orgullo y autoestima, incentivando un proceso integracionista que despertó el orgullo y la autoestima de sus pueblos, abriéndoles esperanzas en un futuro de equidad y desarrollo, teniendo como eje primordial el bienestar de las gentes y no meramente el crecimiento económico, sin equidad ni justicia sociales.
Su legado es un claro incentivo para continuar el proceso de unión entre los pueblos latinoamericanos y caribeños
Por ello proponemos que los países que integran el CELAC, en homenaje a quien fuera su promotor, declaren al unísono, en toda la América Latina y el Caribe, el 24 de julio, día del natalicio del Presidente Chávez, como
DIA DE LA DIGNIDAD, EL ORGULLO Y LA AUTOESTIMA
DE LOS PUEBLOS LATINOAMERICANOS Y CARIBEÑOS
Teatro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, Bogotá, marzo 6 de 2013
Propuesta de Gloria Gaitán con el aplauso unánime de los asistentes al Teatro Jorge Eliécer Gaitán en conmemoración del 6 de marzo, día de la dignidad de las Víctimas de los crímenes de Estado.
Wednesday 6 March 2013
MENSAJE PARA LA COMUNIDAD SOLIDARIA CON LA REVOLUCION BOLIVARIANA VENEZOLANA
Estimados Compatriotas y amigos!
En estos momentos difíciles que estamos sufriendo todos los venezolanos por la sensible pérdida física de nuestro Comandante Presidente Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías en el día de ayer 05 de marzo del 2013, queremos compartir con Ustedes que desde ya se encuentra abierto el Libro de Condolencias en la sede de nuestro Consulado General en Toronto en el 365 Bloor St. East, piso 19.
Las enseñanzas e ideales de nuestro Presidente siguen y seguirán vivas en cada uno de nosotros, quienes hemos compartimos sus sueños y su lucha en esta Revolución Bolivariana, por la igualdad e inclusión de los más necesitados, por un mejor vivir ahora él es eterno y dio su vida por nuestro pueblo. Viviremos y venceremos!
Igualmente, se les informa que mañana 07 de marzo del 2013 a la 4:pm se llevara a cabo una Vigilia en el Trinity Bellwoods Park donde se encuentra el Busto de "El Libertador Simón Bolívar" y el domingo 10/03/2013 a las 12:30 pm se efectuara una Misa Solemne en la Iglesia de San Lorenzo.
Por favor solicitamos su consideración a fin de hacer extensiva esta Misiva.
Atentamente,
Martha Pardo de Márquez
Cónsul General de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela en Toronto
Para los pobres del mundo el Presidente Hugo Chávez, VIVIRÁ PARA SIEMPRE!
Durante los 14 años continuos de lucha política ejerciendo la jefatura del primer Gobierno Bolivariano en nuestro continente, fortaleció la esperanza de cambio social, y la convirtió en realidad diaria para el pueblo venezolano.
Su ejemplo inmortal de dignidad, identidad y soberania inclaudicable, es precioso legado que enriquece el ideario bolivariano junto a Marti, Sandino, el Che Guevara, Salvador Allende, Emiliano Zapata, Alfonso Cano, y todos los próceseres de nuestra historia y los hombres y mujeres anónimos que dedicaron la razón de su existencia por la felicidad de los pueblos de nuestra América, enfrentándose valerosamente al complejo militar del Imperio norteamericano y la voracidad de los grupos económicos transnacionales.
Tuesday 5 March 2013
¿PRISONS OR HUMAN DUMPS?
In August 2012, the prisoners of war of the jail La Dorada (Caldas), explained to the national opinion that within three months, three of their prisoners had died. The medical inattention killed them mercilessly. They names are JAMES CHIQUITO Alberto Giraldo, who died on May 8th, LUIS FLORES CARLOS VILLAREAL, died on the 17th of August, and WENLLY ZULETA MURIEL ALEXANDER, who was killed on August 8th. Wenlly died after he was attacked by another inmate, who caused him 59 stab wounds, at only two meters from the prison’s guard post.
Around 9500 political prisoners are experiencing the cavalry of the Colombian prison system, which actually has become a maze of torture, humiliation and death for inmates of any kind. 90% of the political prisoners are civilians, who are put in prison with the clear intention of dismantling popular organizations and crush the popular dissent about social injustice in Colombia. The remaining 10% are political and war prisoners subjected to the use of the judicial and penal system, which has become a weapon to discourage and punish potential insurgents.
The prison is a scene of overcrowding, stench, suicides, infectious diseases, murders committed by guards, like the one reported by the inmates of the 7th yard of the Dorada prison in October 2011 (by a corporal named “GALLO”); blind, crippled, paralyzed prisoners, or killed by medical inattention, which is not even resolved by tutelage because judges don’t sanction for contempt.
Injustice rules in Colombian prisons, expressed in medical inattention, calabooses up to seventy-two hours, hunger, beating, indiscriminate use of tear gasses, harassment and humiliation, violation of judicial processes, in the middle of a dangerous armed criminal complicity between the INPEC - led by the sleazy general Ricaurte Tapias - and lawyers, judges and prosecutors, without any possibility of complaint; almost 100% of the complaints of prisoners are shelved on the grounds that there are no merits for further investigation.
On January 8, 2011, Jose Manjarrez Albeiro died in his cell, devoured by a stomach cancer. No action, not even the strike of his fellow prisoners was enough for the INPEC to give him medical care. After his death, he was entered in the morgue as NN, although they did have up-to-date information about his family and friends. They never informed them about his death.
Names like Arcecio Lemus, Ricardo Contreras, Jhon Jairo Garcia, Jonathan Snith Aria, Yovani Montes, Luis Fernando Pavoni, Oscar de Jesus Perez, among many other cases, are part of the list of deaths due to torture , mistreatment and medical inattention, together with the persecution of families of the revolutionary leaders who fall into prison.
In Colombian prisons, more than 400 prisoners are mutilated and more than 400 are in hospice situation, without being given the right to reduced penalties.
In these prisons, converted into real human dumps, because of the regime’s indolence and perfidy, inmates of different kinds are all put together on purpose, which produces brawls that sometimes lead to the death of political- and war prisoners, or to their constant intimidation.
Contrary to Law 65/93, which says that in the treatment of prisoners, family relationships are an important element to advance in their re-socialization process, in this case the penalties are designed to loosen family ties, since the prisoners are deliberately located by the INPEC at 4, 6, 10 and up to 24 hours away from their home regions. The possibility that they may see their loved ones and family members is very small.
They are sitting all day, they are swindled in the use of telephones, they don’t get any information, they are transported like animals and live in an incredible inhuman situation of overcrowding. For example, in Bellavista the overcrowding is of 500%. The Riohacha prison has capacity for 100 inmates, while there are 512 inmates, in La Modelo there is space for 2950, but there are 7965 prisoners concentrated. In the prison of Tramacúa in Valledupar, with 40 degrees, 1350 prisoners are throttled by the high temperature. In the best case, they have access to water only for 15 minutes a day. These are flagrant human rights violations, committed by the government, who doesn’t seem to have any intention to resolve these situations.
We ask the government to stop the perfidy of letting the injuries of war end up in physical immobility and/or loss of hands or feet. We ask freedom for those who are terminally ill, or have cancer.
We ask the government to declare a state of health and humanitarian emergency in the country's prisons, allow public oversight, without concealing things and take emergency measures to at least avoid the death of the prisoners who are seriously ill.
We ask the government to show a shred of humanity and seriousness, and to respond to the national opinion about these complaints we’ve made.
PEACE DELEGATION OF THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMED FORCES OF COLOMBIA, People's Army (FARC-EP)
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