The 6th World Social Forum held in Caracas, Venezuela, provided the shot in
the arm needed by this annual gathering of global civil society. The WSF had
come under fire, even from some of its key founders, for simply recycling
the discussions of previous fora with no discernible direction and goal.
In Caracas, discussions at the seminars and workshops appeared to have a
more urgent note than in the previous gatherings. The 52,000 participants
met for seven days in an atmosphere quite unlike sedate Porto Alegre. In
contrast to Porto Alegre, which is located in one of the richer areas of
Brazil, Caracas is a more typically Third World city — one marked by a sharp
divide between rich and poor, a glaring contradiction between plush urban
malls frequented by the elites and middle class and the squalid but vibrant
shantytowns or ranchos rising on the mountains surrounding the city, a
highly efficient underground mass transit system coexisting with hopelessly
clogged surface roads, and high rates of violent crime that not a few
delegates experienced first hand in the form of muggings.
Caracas, for all of Venezuela’s oil wealth, is “deep” third world and it
constantly reminded us of the many dimensions of the social and ecological
problems we had come to discuss.
Radical Climate
Yet it was more than the setting that accounted for the bracing atmosphere
at this social forum. Delegates were inserted into a process of radical
change the marks of which that were evident everywhere?in the highly
partisan attachment of the masses to President Hugo Chavez, in the venomous
articles against him in the establishment press, in the ubiquitous soldiers
with the trademark red berets of the Chavista revolution. Not to be
overlooked was the obvious affection felt by lower class Venezuelans for
their president, which took the form of the mass production and mass
consumption of Chavez T-Shirts, Chavez clocks, and “Chavecito” dolls that,
when pressed, would declaim on the “Bolivarian Revolution.”
Likewise, we could not resist the sense that we were in a country that is on
the frontlines of the struggle against the US empire. Posters of George W.
Bush, with a Hitler-moustache and the words “Bush Asesino” were everywhere.
And feted as the de facto guest of honor was Cindy Sheehan, the woman who
reignited the US peace movement with her highly publicized campout outside
Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas last summer. Hosted by Chavez at his weekly
television show, Sheehan, who lost a son in Iraq, electrified the forum and
the country with her strong denunciation of Bush as a “terrorist,” before
flying off to Washington, DC, to disrupt the American president’s "State of
the Union" speech at the US Congress.
Chavez at Center Stage
Chavez, of course, was at center stage throughout the week, hosting a number
of public and private events with participants. Calling Bush “Mr. Danger,”
he told a cheering crowd of 15,000 at the Poliedro Stadium that "the empire
is not omnipotent“and predicted that”we will bring down the empire in this
century." At every opportunity, he reminded us of the US’ long history of
intervention in Latin American affairs, its isolation of Cuba, and its role
in the unsuccessful coup attempt against him in April 2002.
This was clearly a politicized forum in the sense that it could not resist
being suffused with the militant anti-imperialist spirit surrounding it.
Clearly, this bothered some participants. Undoubtedly, the Chavistas hoped
that with the WSF being held in Caracas, they would have a platform from
which to project the truth about the Venezuelan process internationally and
gather more allies to neutralize Washington, which, they believe, is out to
get Chavez. Not surprisingly, the government went all out to support the
event, providing everything from visa assistance to participants to free
buses from the airport to downtown Caracas, to free rides on the subway for
everyone who had a WSF participant badge.
On the other hand, despite some frictions between the Chavez people and the
forum organizers, there were no claims that there had been an effort on the
part of the government to set the forum agenda or determine its content.
This was not a manipulated event; if anything, it suffered from a great deal
of unorganized energy.
The Alternatives Debate
The issue of alternatives to the current system of global capitalism was
debated in many workshops and seminars. Chavez unhesitatingly jumped into
the debate, mincing no words when he declared that the alternative he was
constructing in Venezuela was “socialism.” This did not exactly resonate
with many delegates whose notion of socialism was the system that prevailed
in the old Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. And it did not help matters
when he claimed that Marx and Rosa Luxemburg said “Socialism or Death,”
which they did not. On the other hand, Chavez seemed to be distancing his
project from that of his close friend Fidel Castro when he claimed that
“socialism was one of the great failures of the 20th century,” and when he
referred to his enterprise as a mélange of “authentic socialism,” "Christian
socialism,“and the”socialism of Latin America¹s indigenous peoples."
More stimulating was Chavez’ discussion of his short and medium
term programs, such as the massive nationwide crash course to eliminate
illiteracy, the drive to set up community clinics spearheaded by Cuban
doctors, and land reform. Also fascinating was his discussion of the first
steps of the ALBA project: the “Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.” In
his Petrocarib initiative, 13 countries in the Caribbean importing
Venezuelan oil get a 40 per cent discount off the international market price
of oil. In the Petrosur project, Bolivia exchanges soybeans and Argentina
trades cattle for Venezuelan oil. This kind of exchanges, he underlined, go
“beyond the logic of capitalism.”
Chavez’ Challenge and Ours
Perhaps Chavez’ main contribution to the forum was to challenge
it, warning about the dangers of it becoming simply a forum of ideas with no
agenda for action. He also told participants that they had to address the
question of power. "We must have a strategy of ’counter-power.’ We, the
social movements and political movements, must be able to move into spaces
of power at the local, national and regional level."
The frank talk was, however, two-way. Some of us challenged
Chavez on trade issues, asking him not to rest on his laurels after the
historic Mar del Plata Conference in November that effectively killed the
Free Trade of the Americas. The WTO, he was warned, posed an equal if not
greater danger We went on to tell him that while we appreciated Venezuela’s
formally registering “reservations” on the WTO Agreement arrived at in the
Hong Kong Ministerial in December, that was not good enough and we fully
expected Venezuela to help in derailing the talks based on the agreement
that are unfolding in Geneva in the next few months—even if that meant his
upsetting neighboring Brazil, one of the architects of a global deal that
poses serious threats to the economies of developing countries.
Tonic for a Movement
The mood was so heady that a week seemed rather short, with us
leaving with a sense that there was so much more to absorb, not only about
Venezuela but about the whole of Latin America, where a continent-wide
revolution against neoliberalism is underway, the latest signpost of which
was the election of Evo Morales, the radical peasant leader of Indian
descent, to the presidency of Bolivia.
Caracas was good tonic for a process that is in danger of losing its way.
It underlined the fact that success for our side can only come at the price
of tough struggles and great risk. Constantly threatened by a formidable
alliance between the US and the local oligarchy, Chavez and his supporters
are fighting for the space to transform Venezuela and Latin America. And he
was daring us to fight for the space from which to transform the world, to
translate into action the WSF slogan that “Another World is Possible.”
Mary Louise Malig
Focus on the Global South
c/o CUSRI, Wisit Prachuabmoh Bldg,
Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok
Tel: +662 2187363
Fax: +662 2559976
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