OK after a little over two months on mark 2 Latin America at 3 am in Bogota central bus terminal I feel like it´s time to send an update. Firstly I should say that life is treating me well. I enjoyed teaching and I'm planning on staying for a while longer in this part of the world, next stop is Ecuador to visit Ro (my bro) and then I think I will do some volunteer farming/teaching before looking for paying work. I hope this email finds you well and as always I would love to hear from you either about the subject matter below or anything else that's going on. What follows is my passion that seems to dominate any attempt at a tourist recount of quirks of my adventure. .. ...
Venezuela was amazing for me. From the first few days in Caracas spent with my friend Sara and her family who I didn't get to meet the first time I came through Venezuela, onto Valencia where I taught English to business people, it was always interesting. Looking back I learnt a lot and already feel a desire to return someday.
For anyone who read my emails from my last trip they will know that my motivations for travelling were more than just learning about the foods and natural beauty of the world. I left Australia searching for some truth about why the world is the way it is and indeed exactly how the world is through my eyes. What is poverty? What direction in is the world going in? I arrived home with a much better idea of these concepts having spent most of my time away debating, writing and thinking about the world with whoever was closest by (or my book when there wasn't anyone.
I'm now certain that we must look for an alternative economy. Not just the poor world but much more so the rich world. That our method of wealth abstraction is not just unsustainable ecologically, it's not bringing the rich world life it should and it's completely immoral in the context of the world as a global community. Furthermore I see no hope in the "molding" of the current model because the changes are much more in propaganda than action. (For example the amount of money invested in renewable energy research is a minute fraction of that spent looking for new oil resources, beyond what we have, which we cannot if we find them environmentally afford to burn. This in mind Venezuela was the perfect place for me to get a job teaching English!
It definitely wasn't a revolutionary job nor a revolutionary life teaching the workers of Volkswagen Skoda group and Johnson Cleaning English but it did give me the chance to live in a country of change. President Chavez has started to become a world icon mostly for his statements about the George Bush being the devil at the UN and about imperialism in general. Having had the chance to listen to him speak a lot both in formal addresses and his casual Sunday 4 or 5 hour drawl Alo Presidente, I have a lot of respect for him. The criticism of him as self-absorbed may have some basis, I don't really understand his reasons for wanting to be such an icon, but to say he's self serving I think is to mis-understand what's really going on in Venezuela.
Politics are on every one's mind in Venezuela. The kids are talking about, bringing up statistics and historical precedents, mostly rehashed from their media outlet of choice. The media polarisation is amazing. The corporate media funded by advertising has a way to find an expert to criticise every single action of the government from giving aid to building hospitals. The government funded media (or the people's media depending point of view) is a constant exhibition of the projects that the government and it's new community branches. This polarisation in the media is a good metaphor for society. Those who are in the corporate world and work for multi-nationals generally hate Chavez as if he killed their dog while those who have hopes that their children will be the first generation of there family to go to University or moved from a slum house to one built by the government love Chavez in a way difficult for me to come to grips with given the politics of the rich world.
Given this polarisation you are going to get very different views on Venezuela depending on who you talk to or which media outlet you read from. Crossing the border into Colombia has helped put that into perspective. Colombia is much more famous than Venezuela (or at least I had heard more of it before I started travelling) because of it's reputation as the worlds Cocaine factory. (Incidentally the worlds biggest? heroin factory Afghanistan is another country which is also of very high strategical importance to the worlds only superpower.) It has higher levels of poverty which it's current president (Uribe) attributes to the Guerrilla groups ELN and FARC amongst others who have tried to create revolution in Colombia for many years. As such the mandate of the president is to destroy these groups with the populist goal of higher security levels and the corporate goal of being a betting investment proposition and being able to exploit the southern half of the country which has been untapped because of the success of the rebel groups in occupying these lands.
The point is in Venezuela high crime rates, people sleeping in the streets and the price of eggs in China are all Chavez's fault in corporate media where as in Colombia where "petty crime" seems to be a much bigger problem, there are more people in the streets and problems of access to health and water seem more dire the problems are not attributed to Uribe nor the economy which has maintained this misery. The contrast is striking. (It's like watching today tonight in Australia or Fox news from the US present a story or debate and then looking up some alternative sources like democracynow.org.) Also striking is the importance that each president seems to give to these problems.
In Venezuela there have been many changes to integrate informal retailers into the formal economy, through micro-financing and socialist based co-operative small businesses which have from from a few hundred to over a hundred thousand, as well public education about how to do this. Informal economy jobs have much more limited standards for quality control and working conditions and have also never had the right to a pension which means you can never retire or get sick. Obviously integrating these people into the formal economy is in every one's benefit including the governments for tax purposes (apart from that improving quality of life of the people should be the goal of any government! )
They also have pending a constitutional reform which would make the 6 hour working day law. Consider the effect that can have on a society! I think they aim is that people will become involved in more community projects along the lines of socialist philosophy. So they will be cleaning up and learning and exercising and holding community events in time that would have been used for production of goods or services. It seems that we have forgotten that is what the industrial revolution was supposed to bring. Why are we working more hours and taking less holidays and bringing more people into the workforce? This will also create more employment to maintain current output more workers will be needed. This will mean more people have to be educated to fill new positions. It's such a big change that I can't be sure how it will play out but the doomsayer's haven't really come up with anything (Venezuelan corporate media) other than that it won't create more jobs which seems like a tough argument to make but even still there would be the same number for people working for the same money with more free-time, also better.
Uribe has been successful in Colombia. The guerrilla have had very few actions in the big cities in the last 4 years and people generally feel safer, including tourists like me. The government has been implicated in funding an illegal army to kill them as well as pressure poor communities in the regions they operate. Many people have been displaced from their homes including a homeless guy I spoke to a couple of times in Cartagena (another story). So it's safer but it's certain that it has been made safer by illegal means. Many consider the government and the right-wing army to be one and the same. US companies have also been caught paying these organisations to kill union leaders and generally funding an illegal armed force. Still Colombia remains the biggest recipient of US (mostly military) aid outside the middle east (Israel, Egypt, Turkey I think are the 3 biggest).
It's extremely dangerous to be leftist in Colombia for this reason. If you think that poverty is unjust or that human rights law's are important and you say it with a group of other people you are going to get death threats or disappeared. For this reason the left lives in the jungle. In upcoming local elections the corporate media is saying there is only one candidate in some areas because no one dares run for what they believe in. So they don't run. People generally feel like politics has nothing to do with them and most think it's all about lining their own pockets. Privatization has lead to huge increases in energy costs but calling for nationalisation is going to put your life at risk so what can you do but pay the bill!
Venezuela on the other hand has no militia or guerrilla war and while the upper class feel excluded by Chavez and angry that they don't gain the wage they would as a professional in Miami, they aren't being buried. They are marching in the streets and painting the walls and having there say uninterrupted in the corporate media. They feel excluded but I think in the face of this polarisation you can see the most diverse political propaganda of any country in the world. Certainly in the US, Western European media and Australian media there is no debate about the fundamentals of our economic system. In Venezuela, a government elected (more times than any other in the world in the last 9 years) it's definitely still permitted to speak about the inhumane neo-liberal capitalist model of privatisations, foreign debt, foreign investment etc. Their voice coupled with the international media in my opinion is much stronger than Chavez's voice but for those in the new house, who's kids are going to go to Uni, who's seen a Cuban doctor (their first doctors visit) there is more to the battle than propaganda.
Time will tell for the people of Venezuela. For now I see many positive things happening there and above all the possibility for change.. what I'm searching for. In Colombia it seems hope is at all time low levels and those who have will continue being scared of those who don't. Let's see how easily their political border is perforated.
I love learning about these possibilities and the fact that real change is possible in Latin America is exciting. Their are also movements for change in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua as well as some structural changes about to happen in Cuba which not only provide interesting learning but give me hope that they old ladies I have given 50c to in the streets in every country of Latin America (apart from Venezuela, probably for lack of travelling) one day will be given the dignity they deserve. Indeed it is the human cost that compels me to learn and try to share with you my thoughts. A 10 year old kid was helping people (me included) catch Taxi's last night at 4am. I gave him $5 which is like giving $50 to some one in Australia and he didn't know what to do with his excitement. BUT WHY IS HE THERE, WHAT WILL STOP HIM BEING THERE IN EVERY CITY I GO TO? I believe that what I have seen is replicated in history and present in other "developing" countries. Certainly governments in the name of communism, socialism and other ism's have committed crimes. Mostly against the people within their own borders. Are the crimes of the neo-liberal system which denies food to the 30000 people who will die today for this crime or the hundreds of thousands of Latin American's who've died in the last 50 years in the fight for change (Africa and Asia have had their battles too) any less horrific or are they just winning the propaganda war. I don't want to see the USSR or Mao china or even Cuba repeat. But not looking for change from the current model for me is immoral.
Enjoying South America. If you want some more light-hearted stories send me a reply about what you have been up to!
Our thoughts are the only thing that are ours, with that is our responsibility.
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