Venezuela

from ainfos, 20 June 2009: "This past May 5 union leader Argenis Vasquez, organizing secretary in the union at Toyota’s plant in Cumana, was gunned down by thugs as he left his house. This assassination occurred just after a month-long strike demanding improvements. The murdered worker was a leader of the protest and key in confrontations with the company and the management..." more

from email, 5 January 2008: "During mid-December a large number of people working under temporary contracts in governmental offices lost their jobs due to orders “from above” that mandated a drastic reduction in the inflated state payroll due to the economic crisis. On the other hand a report by the NGO CECODAP counted 174 children dead by gunshots in one year in their neighborhoods, which testifies about the violence we live with in this country, symptom of our social crisis..." more

from email, 12 October 2008: Venezuela, Anarchist journal El Libertario #54 - Editorial - "This editorial from El Libertario (#54, September-October 2008, Venezuela) examines – from the current Venezuelan perspective – how authoritarian power builds its own security upon the destruction of collective security. Civil insecurity is a problem that has certainly been inherited by the so-called Bolivarian government, the product of, among other things, an immense social debt with large sectors of the population, getting worse to the point of being considered the mayor problem experienced everyday by the people of Venezuela..."" more

from email, 23 April 2008: The profile of anarchism in Venezuelan history has been less pronounced than in other parts of Latin America, where it has vigorously manifested itself through collective struggles, publications, personalities and ideological debate. It is, however, worth pointing out that it has also influenced our social and cultural evolution. more

El Libertario, Venezuela, 25 October 2007: "With a lot of rhetoric and propaganda the Chavez administration has advanced different examples of co-management which, they claim, demonstrate their desire to transform Venezuela’s relations of production. A compañero from Europe visited us recently and got to know two of the most celebrated cases: Alcasa and Invepal. Here is the report he prepared for El Libertario # 51 about the actual working conditions in the country’s most “important” co-managed businesses..." more

from IAF-IFA, 04.08.2007: "The newspaper Tierra y Libertad, mouthpiece of the Iberian Anarchist Federation, published in edition 227 of June 2007 this manifesto of the International of Anarchist Federations (IAF-IFA) in support of those who in Venezuela today confront the bureaucratic capitalist project of the Chavez government as well as their social democrat and right wing opponents..." more

From the publishers of El Libertario goes our reply to the habitual expressions that the coarse right or the easy-going left used to attribute us; the same left that, inside and outside of Venezuela allows that the mirage of the Chávez pseudo-revolution impressed them. We could and would like to say very much more about this subject, however currently here there is the essential and concise information about our point of view that, even when it was expressed several times it does not implies that it does not have to be repeated. more

From the Commision of Anarchist Relations (Comision de Relaciones Anarquistas): "We maintain that the two options publicized by the established order - Chavez as much as Rosales - represent the domination of financial power and empire over Venezuela, and present a scene of super-exploitation, unemployment, and social exclusion in addition to the fortification of big capital..." more

This weekend at the CommonPlace social centre in Leeds promises to be kerrazee with three days of jam-packed fun, frollicks and politics. more