"The People Behind the Bolivarian Revolution" -- [Gringa] Diary of Life in the Revolutions and Uprisings of Bolivia and Venezuela

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...The people you don’t see, who don’t make the press, but who without, you couldn’t say that this was a mass process, and who are a range of beings as diverse, complex and contradictory as the process itself.

For example, there is S. I asked him what he lives for once, and he told me he lives to change the world. He’s 20 years old and studying political science at university. He walks in life with a lazy posture and an unashamed lack of enthusiasm. Sometimes he’s talkative and affectionate, other times he’s quiet and withdrawn.
He says both anarchism and socialism are too limited and right now he says the way to change the world is to change oneself.

On Saturdays he participates in a radio show run by history students at the Radio E, one of the thousands of alternative or community radios and other medias that have sprung up over the last 10 years. They talk about history in a way history isn’t usually talked about, as something to question, to rewrite from the perspective of the people rather than the powerful, as something not determined by individual heroes like Bolivar, but by movements, organisation, the economy, and unfortunate events organised by more than one person, such as war. During these sessions S becomes more lively. He says he’s nervous but it isn’t noticeable. His arguments are well thought out, constructive, original and thought provoking.

There is A, a member of my communal council who lives in a two room house with her husband and kid, the house on the edge of a slope that is suffering erosion problems and it’s quite risky. She had her child when she was 16, now she’s 24 and has just finished highschool and is looking forward to going to university.
She is cheerful and usually turns up to communal council meetings and activities, but sometimes she can’t and only her husband turns up, while she cares for the kid. Her and her husband are also in a church group, and they organise social and community events through that too.

People on the slope can be lazy with their rubbish, not wanting to walk all the way up the hill to put it in the street where it can be collected, and she expresses her frustration about this at the meetings. Her and her husband will re-visit these people with information about the rubbish system and try to organise a meeting of all of them to find a solution to the problem. Her family is also looking for housing, and at the meetings they inform us of what the state government is doing- petrocasas, and the mayor is doing- cheap apartments but you have to pay a lot it upfront, so that we can then inform the rest of the community.

L. At first L was completely against politics. He couldn’t see the point and he got frustrated sometimes when we talked about it or when we couldn’t meet him because we were at a meeting. Then he fell completely in love with a guy who saw revolution as the only thing worth fighting for, who saw a reason to talk about it any social context. At first it made L resent politics even more, but then he started to embrace it. Then he was wearing PSUV [Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela] wrist bands and calling himself a revolutionary. But I’m not sure that he ever really got it. He came out recently. He goes out a lot, to pubs and things. His crush left and later he fell for someone else and I think in the end he is young, preoccupied with his own identity, and for now that interests him more than the rest.

Two guys I was talking to at the pub: They shouted me a drink and we talked politics. One was an art historian, the other worked in a bookshop. They declared they did not support Chavez. Why? Because he divides the people with his strong way of talking (he needs to stop talking in upper case, they repeated, use softer language, not talk about imperialism all the time). But the opposition are a small sector of mostly rich people, whereas those who support him are the vast majority of the country, and quite poor, do they think the country would be united if he just changed his discourse? Ah. And then, but things cost so much. We are a rich oil country, why can’t we buy more things? And then they repeated a lot of the opposition press rhetoric, Chavez supports the Farc! He spends too much time overseas, when we have our problems here to sort out first! Inflation. Ten years in government and bureaucracy and corruption are still rife! Well, I said, its true there are many problems, many things we need to work on, but don’t you think the widespread free education and health care, the communal councils where we directly solve our communities’ problems is more important than if we can easily buy electronic brands? Ah yes, these are good things, of course we support that! Then me, and don’t you think that not everything is up to Chavez, that where bureaucracy and corruption are a problem, rather than just complaining about it, it should be us, going out there and try to help fix these things? Well yes of course… they said, then went back to how Chavez needs to stop talking about imperialism so much…

The revolution here isn’t as simple as opposition verses red t-shirt wearing Chavez supporters. There are the people who dedicate a lot of time to the communal councils, just because they believe in their principles, but who probably wouldn’t call themselves revolutionary or Chavistas (though many would admit they voted for Chavez). There are those who do call themselves revolutionaries, but whose revolutionary work is limited to their job working for the government, or others who are in revolutionary groups but they focus most of their efforts on criticising the government. There are whole 10 member families who get involved in things, and there are couples made up of both “sides”, there’s the woman who makes chicha at the bus stop with the PSUV sticker on her cart, the guy with a computer collective shop who was helping organise the PSUV youth and who plays the guitar like a second lover, the CC rep who lost her mother and hasn’t been attending meetings lately, the other member who is always nervous, the Chavista students who are somewhat more motivated during elections and less so when they have lots of exams, etc etc.

There’s J, who’s organising a different communal council but who participates in our reading squadron. Despite his relaxed and fairly cheerful demeanour, I think he’s feeling a bit pessimistic right now. “Everyone in my communal council is waiting for the new law to be passed, we don’t want to do anything because the new law will make it all redundant. There’s too much apathy, people don’t come to things.” Are you in the PSUV? I ask. “Yes, I’m in xx patrulla. But we don’t meet. No one comes. Everyone’s very apathetic,” he repeats.