Adbusters: 23 de Enero

We’re all familiar with the scene. Run-down shanty towns where the world’s poor try to get by amid violence, unsanitary conditions, political impotence, and bleak prospects for the future.

Handing out the first land titles in the Barrio Catia, Caracas

José Orozco
Adbusters Magazine

We assume it’s a festering mess. Precarious living at its worst.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In hundreds of barrios around Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, qualified doctors are staffing freshly minted clinics, grocery store shelves are stocked with cheap, locally produced food, small-scale cooperative businesses are thriving, and educational opportunities are being expanded. These advances are not simply the by-product of a public treasury awash in oil revenues. More than that, they are tied explicitly to President Hugo Chavez’s revolutionary Bolivarian process – or simply el proceso – that is fundamentally altering Venezuela’s social fabric, forcing the nation’s institutions to respond to the people, rather than vice versa. And while the flamboyant Chavez deserves credit for this sea change, his supporters – known as Chavistas – are driving much of the revolution themselves. For though it was Chavez who initiated discussions to draft a new constitution in 1999, the document’s tenets of justice and equity were hammered out by ordinary citizens through nation-wide forums and meetings. The final document is wildly popular among Venezuela’s poor, and many of them always carry a small blue booklet version of it in their pocket.

There is no shortage of mini-constitutions in the Caracas neighborhood of 23 de Enero. The area is named for the date on which Marcos Perez Jimenez – the country’s last dictator – fled Venezuela amid protests on January 23, 1958, initiating the modern democratic period. On that date, campesinos and the poor squatted in 4,000 unfinished apartments in a grand modernist housing complex built by Perez Jimenez to replace the area’s slums. The anarchic manner in which buildings were appropriated served as a final victory over the dictator’s policies.

Today, the multi-colored apartment blocks are home to 76,000 people. But beyond the projects lie proper homes that were once shacks and shacks that will one day be proper homes, pushing the area’s total population into the hundreds of thousands.

The population is particularly politicized, likely because of 23 de Enero’s location, name and history. It is situated within walking distance of the Miraflores presidential palace. And according to long-time resident, musician and organizer Cesar Agusto Rivas, “Previous governments always repressed the 23. The police would come in here and shoot it up. We’ve always been involved in social struggle here.”

But things have changed under el proceso. Today the government is a friend of 23 de Enero’s residents, implementing its own policies and programs, but just as often deferring to the community organizations that have been active for decades. One such organization is the 23 de Enero community council of water committees, made up of grassroots activists, many of whom are women who organize full-time for little or no pay. Yet they find their work rich in intangible rewards, and are happy to support the revolution they believe in so deeply. Digna de Rondon is a member of her local health, water and land committees. She and her cohorts spend hours getting to know their neighbors’ needs, spreading news, working to bring health clinics and other projects to their corner of 23. Once they prove themselves, they might meet directly with ministers, sometimes even Chavez himself. They don’t enjoy the privileges of the political class, but they are the revolution.

Rosaida Hernandez is another member of this crowd. She’s a divorced sile mom working to consolidate 23 de Enero’s various committees to enhance their efficiency and effectiveness. Part of her agenda is mediating between the people and their politicians, impossible under previous administrations. In addition, she’s working on a project called the Slum Charter to enhance her neighbors’ sense of identity and belonging. She is excited by what she is seeing around her: “There used to be no participation. Institutions decided things. Then, women woke up and realized we had potential; that we could develop. We realized that there was more than the home, that there was the street as well.”

Carmen Quintero has Hernandez to thank for taking her from political talk to political action.

“I used to hang out on Plaza Bolivar’s so-called ‘hot corner,’” where government supporters gather to argue about politics, explained Quintero. Today, she puts her thoughts into practice by serving on her local land committee.

Before Chavez, Quintero says, “there were no land committees, no land titles. We couldn’t do anything if they demolished homes. It didn’t matter if the kids were in school, if you worked. Your daily life didn’t matter. My building, Buen Consejo, was going to be demolished years ago to build a shopping mall, but we all got together and stopped it. Now, thanks to Chavez, the building is going to be turned into a housing complex.”