from Venezuela Analysis
Workers’ Control and the
Contradictions of the Bolivarian Process
Interview with Gustavo Martínez
By Susan Spronk, Jeffery R. Webber
On June 10, 2010 we caught up with Gustavo Martinez, a union leader in the worker-controlled nationalized coffee company, Fama de América, in Caracas, Venezuela. The company has 350 workers at the national level, with two separate plants – one in Caracas and one in Valencia. We sat down with Martínez to discuss the centrality of workers’ control in the ongoing struggle to transition toward socialism and some of the most pressing contradictions of the Bolivarian process in Venezuela today.
To start off, can you tell us your name, how long you’ve worked in this coffee company, your job in the company, and your role in the union?
My name is Gustavo Martínez. I’m a union leader in Fama de América. I’ve worked here for nine years. I started in 2001. As you would expect, when I started there, Fama de América was a private enterprise, characterized by exploitation of the workers and rampant corruption. The owners of the enterprise, as capitalists, were only interested in extracting surplus; they didn’t care about the conditions of the workers. All of these characteristics we already know about capitalism.
There was a union at the time, first established in 1978, that was controlled by the [centre-right] party, Acción Democrática(Democratic Action, AD). Logically, as people on the left we were opposed to the union. I was one of those on the left. My parents are Colombian, and my father was a militant in the Communist Party in that country. He was pushed out of Colombia, displaced economically and politically, and therefore moved the family to Venezuela. He worked for a transnational and faced death threats for his political organizing in the workplace.
So I found myself here in Venezuela, working at the company, and there were others with a revolutionary background working here too.
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by Gabriel Ash
Venezuela is changing. Fast. No other word captures the speed and magnitude of change as well as that weighty word--‘revolution.’ This is indeed the word used by many of the Venezuelans I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing during ten days in March. Venezuela is undergoing a ‘Bolivarian’ revolution. But what does 'Bolivarianism' entail? . . .
Contrary to the image often portrayed in the foreign media, Chavez has gone overboard in seeking to include as many as possible in the Bolivarian state. He has time and again extended an olive branch to his enemies. 
by Lori Mcleod- Financial Post
Thursday, March 29, 2007--Gold Reserve Inc. stunned a skeptical market yesterday after winning a key permit to mine a significant gold-and-copper reserve in Venezuela, sending its stock up nearly 49% in heavy trading.
The news killed fears the foreign miner might never get the green light for the mine from socialist President Hugo Chavez, which it won after making rigorous commitments to invest in the area and its residents that will extend long after the mine is exhausted and Gold Reserve has packed up and gone home.
"I grew up in Canada and lived in small mining towns, and you always have to ask the question 'What happens when the mine is gone?' " said Gold Reserve president Doug Belanger. 
by Jerry Harris
Cuba's 50-year defiance of US attempts to isolate it is an inspiration to Latin America's people
by Philip Agee, The Guardian
There is a wave of progressive change sweeping Latin America and the Caribbean after the many lonely years in which Cuba held high the torch, with free universal healthcare and education, and world-class cultural, sports and scientific achievements. Although you won't find a Cuban today who says things are perfect - far from it - probably all would agree that compared with pre 
[From SolidarityEconomy.net editors: While there's been plenty of coverage of Chavez's 'ruling by decree,' little has been said about the matters concerned and how its part of his country's legal system. It also gives an idea of how something like 'Economic Democracy' might be brought into being in other countries as well.]
By Venezuelanalysis.com, Caracas, January 17, 2007
Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a resolution yesterday, according to which the legislature would declare emergency sessions for the approval of an "enabling law," which will allow President Chavez to pass law-decrees on specific issues in the next 18 months. The National Assembly (AN) will begin deliberations on the law tomorrow. 
Interview with Heinz Dieterich
By Cristina Marcano, Rebelion.org
Q. Professor Dieterich, did you invent the concept of "Socialism of the 21st Century"?
A. Yes. I developed it, beginning in 1996. It has been published with its corresponding theory in book form, from 2000 on, in Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, Central America, Brazil, and Venezuela, and, outside Latin America, in Spain, Germany, the People's Republic of China, Russia, and Turkey. Since 2001, it has been appropriated all over the world. Presidents like Hugo Chávez and Rafael Correa use it constantly, and so do labor movements, farmers, intellectuals, and political parties. 
by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
by Christopher Toothaker
President Hugo Chavez snubbed a U.S. overture for dialogue, saying Tuesday he doubts Washington sincerely wants to improve relations.
Chavez, who overwhelmingly won another six-year term in elections Sunday, said if the U.S. really wants to take meaningful steps, it would halt the war in Iraq and extradite a jailed Cuban militant who is wanted in Venezuela for a 1976 airliner bombing.
"They want dialogue but on the condition that you accept their positions," Chavez said at his first news conference since Sunday's vote.
"If the government of the United States wants dialogue, Venezuela will always have its door open," he said. "But I doubt the U.S. government is sincere."
By Steve Mather, VenezuelaAnalysis.com
With punches being thrown and the odd chair flying through the air it was clear there was a good old fashioned labor union debate taking place. The different factions or currents within the National Union of Workers (the UNT, the pro-Chávez confederation of labor unions) had fallen out over priorities. Should there be a leadership election now or should that wait until after the Presidential election in order to devote all energy to that? While that is an accurate portrayal of the dispute at the II Congress there was much more to it than that. Under the surface a more dangerous quarrel is simmering away that could have consequences for the government and its revolutionary credentials. What is up for grabs is the meaning of XXI century Socialism and the UNT’s role within it.
On the surface the Bolivarian Revolution, internally, is sound: the flagship social missions, participatory democracy at the local level and occupied factories under partial worker’s control are empowering Venezuelans and are examples of which the government is proud. People come from all over the world to offer support, solidarity and to learn from the experience of Venezuela. 
By Mike Locker and Dave Hancock
The heat and the noise are almost unbearable in the casting room of Line 3 at Alcasa. This is one of two big aluminium plants in the south-eastern city of Puerto Ordaz, where most of Venezuela's basic industries are concentrated.
It is also the test bed for a new experiment in co-management, which President Hugo Chavez says is a key step towards a "socialism of the twenty-first century".
Alcides Rivero, who works here as a maintenance electrician, says co-management means that for the first time in this company's 37 years of existence, the workforce has control.
"It's us, the workers", he says, "who decide on questions of production and technology, and it's us who elect who will be our managers."
Can the revolution outlive its leader?
I am waiting to board the train in San Diego when I notice the Border Patrol agent making his way down our line. He stops by each person who looks 'Latino' and asks them to present their legal documents. As the people standing next to me rummage for their identity papers, I stand by, angry, embarrassed and ashamed. In that moment, I don’t know what to say or do to protest.
My mind suddenly travels back in time. I 'remember' what it must have been like during slavery for Black people who made it to the North. If they had no papers, they were doomed to live each day in fear. If they were 'legalized' by free papers, they still always needed these documents, no matter who they were or how old they were or how long they had lived in their community. These papers were all that stood between them and being 'deported' and returned to their slave status.
