Civil Society

It is a Friday night in Caracas, Venezuela. We are standing in the back of a pickup truck surrounded by dozens of motorcycles, tearing through the streets of Catia, the massive slum area that makes up nearly half the population of the city.

Like many major cities in what North Americans and Europeans like to call the 'Third World', the streets in Caracas, Venezuela are busy and crowded people. However, Venezuela isn't your typical 'Third World' nation. There is a revolution going on and you can see it and feel it when you are there.

When Hugo Chávez struck out in his December referendum aimed at overhauling the Venezuelan political system, a small group of overfed men raised their glasses in triumph: the assorted owners of Major League Baseball.

Since January 12, more than 1,600 delegates to the founding congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — along with thousands of local socialist battalions (branches — have been discussing the new party’s program, principles and statutes, and in large part the future of the Bolivarian revolution.

When the recent accusations of government-sponsored anti-Semitism are thoroughly investigated, it is revealed that in the majority of cases, the strongly anti-imperialist political sentiments of Venezuelan social movements are erroneously conflated with anti-Semitism.

As the struggle to deepen Venezuela's revolution through the framework of the pending constitutional reforms intensifies, so too does the battle to create the new United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The simultaneous campaign for constitutional reforms and the formation of the PSUV means the two are intricately connected.

Students in Venezuela are at the center of a national debate on constitutional reforms.  Recently, a violent clash on a university campus in Caracas made international news.  But what do we really know about Venezuela's newest political actors?

That’s the U.S. political culture in a nutshell. It feels more engaging to free a stretch of highway from tiny bits of litter than it does to participate in the political process. Not so in Venezuela. “One thing you can say about Chavez,” said one middle class Venezuelan named Ramon, “is that he’s got everyone thinking about politics.”

The latest round of opposition mobilizations, the ostensibly “spontaneous” student mobilizations in defense of private television station RCTV, have once again for the opposition inadvertently produced an undesired result - the revitalization of Venezuela’s revolutionary student movement

Besides lack of free condoms, the fundamental challenges to improving sexual healthcare across Venezuela remains, at heart, an ingrained machismo. Women die because, in spite of rhetoric promoting health as a human right, sexual health is still marginalized.