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World Youth Festival Offered a Look @ Venezuela Radicalization
by Carl Sack /
September 2005 issue of Socialist Action
CARACAS—The 16th World Festival of Youth and Students was held Aug.
8-15 here in the Venezuelan capital. The festival proved to be an excellent
opportunity for progressive and socialist youth from all over the world to
gather in a country that is currently a focus of deep political interest
worldwide.
The Venezuelan people pulled out all the stops for organizing the
festival. Signs throughout the city welcomed the roughly 15,000 delegates,
and it was
clear from people’s reactions to meeting delegates that the event
was being well-covered by the nation’s media. Venezuela was not only
prepared for the influx of radical youth, but greeted them with open arms.
Delegates were housed in various locations in and around Caracas.
The U.S. delegation was housed in the suburb of Los Teques in Miranda
State, an over
45-minute drive from downtown. The long drive into the city,
combined with the complex array of choices for participation and the
zealousness of some festival organizers at insuring U.S. delegates’
security, sometimes made bus transportation stressful.
Many delegates expressed frustration at the amount of seemingly
unnecessary waiting time they endured, and felt that less-than-effective
communication among organizers led to some missed opportunities.
Nevertheless, the housing situation afforded valuable opportunities
for youth from various tendencies within the U.S. radical
movement—including the Young Communist League, Young Socialists, Youth for
Socialist Action, and ANSWER—to exchange ideas, build understanding, and
get to know one another.
Most of the festival events took place in four different venues
within Caracas: the state-of-the-art Theresa Carree Theater, two blocks
away in an underground shopping center called Parque Central, the campus of
the Bolivarian University of Venezuela, and a military installation called
Fuerte Tiuna. These locations each
hosted several conferences and workshops every day, ranging in topics from
the crimes of imperialism in the Third World to specific struggles of
various groups for sovereignty and democracy.
In addition to the conferences, an opening march took place on a
major boulevard against a dramatic backdrop of fog-cloaked mountains.
Concerts and performances were held every night at various locations within
downtown, giving delegates a full dose of Latin American and hip-hop
culture. Every region of the world had a "club house," at which
delegates staffed tables with information about their homes and struggles.
While there were official themes for each day of the festival
corresponding with different regions of the world, in practice the events
melded into an over-arching theme of resistance to imperialism,
particularly that of the United States. The final two days of the festival
consisted of an anti-imperialist
tribunal, which took place at the city’s Poliedro (Polyhedron)
arena. A major element of the tribunal was solidarity with Cuba.
Some of the options for delegates included tours around Los Teques,
Caracas, and elsewhere.
Participants got a chance to view some of the
nationalized factories and new community centers completed by the
government.
One stop on the Los Teques tour was Inveval, a valve factory that
was occupied by workers in 2003 and is now planned to be run under
"co-management," through which the government owns 51 percent of
the factory
and workers own 49 percent. But there are still bureaucratic
obstacles to workers resuming full production in such factories.
Tours also visited a new government-built community center in a poor
neighborhood of Caracas, which includes a clinic, pharmacy, community
gardens, an internet info center, and 200-worker textile cooperative—which
is expected to expand.
Much of the festival focused on the process of radical measures that
the country has undertaken, including their challenges and shortcomings. As
part of this process, the government of Hugo Chavez has promoted
neighborhood "Bolivarian Circles," which make decisions about
development needs in the neighborhoods and are given resources by the
government to carry them out.
Much of the social progress in Venezuela has come through the
government’s 11 social-democratic "missions." These include
Mision Robinson, a literacy
campaign; Misiones Ribas and Sucre, secondary and higher education
initiatives; Mision Barrio Adentro, for free and accessible health care,
which has included importing Cuban doctors to work in poor neighborhoods;
and others which include job training, public housing, food assistance, and
strengthening the military.
The "revolution" in Venezuela is seen by the Chavez
government as an extended process. It has yet to declare war on capitalist
property relations. The
bourgeois opposition remains strong and well financed, despite the
threefold failure of an attempted coup against Chavez, a bosses’ lockout of
oil workers that nearly shut down the entire economy, and a referendum
aimed at toppling Chavez "legally."
Chavez himself stated in a speech before the Anti-Imperialist
Tribunal that he expects there will be attempts on his life by the U.S.
Despite the newfound revolutionary awareness of the masses, there is
concern that if Chavez were to be removed, the process could come to a
halt.
Despite the challenges, Venezuela is considered a major focal point
for anti-imperialist and revolutionary activity in the world today, and it
was indeed apparent from the amount of pro-Chavez and socialist graffiti
around Caracas that a deep revolutionary consciousness has been awakened
amongst the population. On many walls, every available space was
spray-painted with the word "no," referring to the August 2004
referendum to remove Chavez.
As in Cuba, the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara was
ubiquitous. Talking to ordinary Venezuelans and festival volunteers
confirmed this perception, and
that Hugo Chavez is similarly a popular hero.
It remains to be seen whether the people of Venezuela will be able
to deepen the revolutionary process and carry it through to the ultimate
goal of socialism.
It is clear that Venezuelan revolutionaries consider hosting the
World Youth Festival to be an important boost, and announced during the
closing ceremony that the country will host the 17th Festival in 2007. That
festival will undoubtedly provide an exceptional vantage point from which
to judge the progress that has been made in the intervening time.
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