Letter

Chávez Lives

Class conflict ridden history shall not allow Chávez to die. He is part of history, part of people struggling against dispossession, exploitation and poverty, part of people struggling for democracy and dignity. Venezuela can be called a land of cooperatives. Thousands of cooperatives are being organized in spheres of the society. There are thousands of farming cooperatives. It's an initiative to change the way food is produced and to move towards sustainable and community-based food production. Lands expropriated from land speculators are being used to achieve food sovereignty. There are cooperatives of taxi drivers, janitors, small producers.

Chávez initiated projects for the benefit of the people, especially the poor. At the centre, it's the Bolivarian Revolution. There are missions, projects, for heath, education. The housing program constructs dignified homes for the poor. More than half-a million houses for the poor have already been constructed. The public housing program plans to construct two million homes in the next 6 years. Project of Community Urban Agriculture with an aim to produce food free of agro-chemicals by not damaging soil and recycling organic waste has been initiated. The project contributes to attaining food sovereignty, and break down alienation in community. People are initiating "socialist" direct community production enterprises. Alternative, Free and Community Media aims feminism, gender diversity, and wages anti-patriarchal fight. There is effort to initiate a new type of policing aimed at dealing with the problem of crime through prevention and community engagement.

Mass Debate over Venezuela's Socialist Plan of the Nation 2013-2019 was initiated. People participated in hundreds of assemblies to specify the draft plan proposed by Chávez. On this plan he was re-elected as president. It's part of the struggle he began.

The struggle, a persistent fight to collectively transform the society, goes on. Thousands of revolutionary social movements join together to consolidate the Great Patriotic Pole, a platform of all the popular organizations and political parties supporting the Bolivarian Revolution.

Peasant organizations with thousands of people are struggling for "Democratic Radicalization" and Land Reform, and against bureaucracy as bureaucracy sabotages socialism. It's people's fight against bureaucracy. Their demands include acceleration of the land reform program and the elimination of corruption and obstacles to construct of a socialist economy. Workers are struggling to run industrial units properly. They are getting mobilized.

These are part of a fight for, what Chávez called, 21st Century Socialism. It's a long struggle. A bitter and longer struggle is there in the coming days. Already there are news of destabilization plans by the right wing and their international masters.

The people are rallying together to mourn the death of their president. They are expressing the defiant hope: "The struggle has already been ignited." People gathered in Plaza Bolivar, in front of Miraflores Palace, in central squares across the country voiced "Chávez lives, the struggle continues", "people united will never be defeated", the Venezuelan bourgeoisie "will never return to the Miraflores Palace". These hopes keep Chávez alive.
Farooque Chowdhury

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 36, Mar 17-23, 2013

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