Venezuelanalysis.com - News - News and Analysis from Venezuela http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1697 www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1697 Breaking Imperial Ties: Venezuela and ALBA Monday, Mar 27, 2006 Print format Send by email By: Tim Anderson - Green Left Weekly In late 2005, while war raged in the Middle East and oil prices rose drastically, governments and oil companies repeated the “market forces” mantra, saying there was nothing they could do about oil prices. However, the Venezuelan government-owned US-based petrol distribution company Citgo (with eight refineries and 14,000 petrol stations across the US) decided to discount up to 10% of its US sales, so that poor families in cold-weather US states could have access to heating oil over the northern winter. Citgo sold over 40 million gallons of oil to 150,000 poor US households at a 40% discount. This created a reaction. The Republican chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Texan Joe Barton, wants Citgo examined for possible breaches of anti-trust law. Michael Heath, of the Christian Civic League, claimed Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez is “a brutal Marxist dictator ... [who is] trying to split our nation”, and the American Family Association has launched a boycott of Citgo because it believes Chavez “has vowed to bring down our government”. No Latin American government has ever attempted to bring down the US government, nor have any of them backed military coups, corporate leverage, sabotage, intervention in elections, death squads, assassinations or terrorist bombings in the US. The reverse, however, has been routine for more than a century. The US government backed the failed coup against Chavez in 2002 and recently called for a regional front to oppose Chavez. It funds opposition parties in Venezuela. US President George Bush, in his 2007 budget, called for enhanced Voice of America propaganda broadcasts to Venezuela. Why does Venezuela bother the world’s most powerful nation? First, it is one of the top suppliers of oil in the world, when the US faces a crisis of rising oil imports. Second, Venezuela is the first country since Cuba to have broken the neoliberal model in Latin America. The influence of the Venezuelan example is spreading, through its influence on social and political movements and through the growth of agreements aimed at a new form of economic integration between Latin American nations. Changes within Venezuela Chavez came to power following popular reactions to two decades of neoliberal privatisation, social exclusion and corruption. A former military officer who led a failed coup in 1992, he launched a popular movement outside the traditional parties and won the 1998 presidential election. This movement, known as the Bolivarian revolution, has developed into a highly participatory and openly socialist project. While there have been no major nationalisations (other than wresting back government control of the state-owned oil company), government surplus has been directed into mass programs of education, health, housing and public investment, rather than subsidies to the corporate and privileged sectors. This created a sharp political polarisation, with almost all the major media and investment corporations opposing Chavez, along with much of the middle class. However, the majority of the Venezuelan population is poor. In 1998, Venezuela’s inequality was one of the starkest in the world, with the income of the richest 10% 62 times that of the poorest 10%. Support from the poor majority is one factor of several we must recognise when judging how Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution have survived and moved ahead. Second is the dynamism of the government’s participatory initiatives and movement building; third is the immediate goal of institutional change (a constituent assembly, followed by a new constitution in 1999, and reform of the trade union movement and the military); and fourth is the revolutionary legacy of Latin American independence struggles, which stressed anti-imperialism, solidarity and national autonomy. Cuba has been an important influence. Advancing the revolution’s ideals has been a difficult process. Venezuela’s population is highly urbanised, with massive levels of poor housing, a reactionary media and a state bureaucracy controlled by the old elites. These elites gained the support of the US for the 2002 coup attempt. This failed because of support for Chavez from masses of people and important sections of the army. However the turmoil of this coup and a subsequent oil lockout triggered a substantial recession over 2002-03. Strong economic growth in 2004-05, however, has opened up new possibilities for the revolution. An average 13% growth over these two years (a quarter of which was due to rising petrol prices) has given the government the means to pursue social programs and create new public economic institutions. The democratic nature of the revolution has also been consolidated in a series of 1 of 3 19-9-2006 18:30 Venezuelanalysis.com - News - News and Analysis from Venezuela http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1697 elections that have marginalised the opposition. Frustrated with non-cooperation from the bureaucracy in the pro-poor social programs, the government created a series of “missions” outside the normal departments, to fast-track new programs. Cuban professionals are playing an important role in supporting the health and education missions. Missions Robinson, Ribas and Sucre have set up primary, secondary and tertiary education systems, parallel to the schools and colleges. Illiteracy was the first target, but the increase in secondary enrolment (19% in 1992, but 59% in 2003) is most dramatic. These missions have added 3 million students to Venezuela’s education system, while the schools have also increased enrolments by half a million since 1998. Very low-interest loans are being made available to small farmers (and almost 3 million hectares of land has been given to 70,000 poor families), subsidies are being used for the development of cooperatives, and there is substantial employment being generated in local government programs. Apart from housing construction programs, the government has been hearing squatter claims over the occupation of unused buildings. There is a right to housing in the 1999 constitution, and programs seek to resolve the gap between promise and reality. Mission Mercal has set up a parallel chain of supermarkets, providing basic foods at cheap rates. Most poor families and even 28% of higher-income families now use Mercal, which accounts for 45% of rice, 38% of pasta and 22% of maize flour sales in the country. Private retailers have complained of “unfair” competition from this cost-recovery operation. Indigenous rights are defended in the new constitution, and the Chavez government has been handing back land titles to indigenous communities. However there is still controversy over some mining developments in natural and indigenous heritage areas. One of the most remarkable achievements of Venezuelan politics has been the communication between Chavez and the population “over the heads” of the corporate media. Ninety per cent of the newspapers and all the private television stations are against the Chavez government, declaring themselves the “voice of the opposition”. But the structure of the media is changing. Before 1998 the corporate media had substantial support from the government. More than 60% of newspaper advertising, for example, came from official sources. After they declared their political position, these papers received no government money. This change led to major restructuring and lay-offs, and the maintenance of some media as loss making propaganda arms of the corporate sector. Also, the government has supported some left papers (e.g. Diario VEA), has helped fund new TV channels and has set up a public news agency (ABN). The media war seems to be slowly turning the government’s way. Academic estimates of combined poverty and extreme poverty by the mid-1990s range from 49% to 84%. In the Chavez period, figures from the National Institute of Statistics demonstrate that poverty fell steadily from 1998 to 2001, rose again during the coup-linked recession of 2002-03, then fell again with the strong growth and renewed social programs of 2004-05. By the end of 2005, unemployment had fallen below 10% (it was 15% in 1999), there was steady progress in extending improved water and sanitation to households, and a new mission (Negra Hipolita) had been started to coordinate support for the poorest families. With oil revenue and strong economic growth, Venezuela has foreign reserves of more than US$30 billion. It is therefore in a strong position to help build new relationships with other countries in the region. The ALBA agreements Venezuela has promoted a model of Latin American economic integration that it refers to as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), which is directly counterposed to the US-pushed neoliberal Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). ALBA represents a challenge to the imperial domination of trade and investment in the Americas. These heterodox trade and integration agreements between six Latin American countries (Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil and Bolivia) also represent the most practical alternative to relationships generated by the neoliberal model. Because Venezuela and Cuba are currently leading ALBA, there is a preference for shared institutions and public (or joint venture) investment. In other words, there is a socialist tendency. The Cuba-Venezuela agreements, formalised in late 2004, give the best view of what this alternative could mean. The two countries agreed that ALBA relationships would be based on principles of “just and sustainable development”, “special and differential treatment”, guaranteed access to benefits, “cooperation and solidarity”, “energy integration” between countries, more regional investment and reduced reliance on foreign investment, a special emergency fund, measures to protect the natural environment, and defence of Latin American, Caribbean and indigenous cultures.