When Hugo Chávez was elected President in 1999, Venezuela experienced
a transformative, 180-degree revolution, commonly referred to as the Bolivarian
Revolution. Chávez implemented several strategic reforms, along with the
Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Food
sovereignty is an integral part of that constitution and the framework was created through a
democratic process with input from the people and built
on four core principles.
Felix Lopez is the
Coordinator of Production at the Aracal Cooperative in Urachichi in the state
of Yaracuy in Venezuela. He is also part of the Indigenous Farmers’ Movement of
Yaracuy, known as Movemiento Jirajara. Feilx has been part of the struggle for decades,
including during the time prior to Chávez
when the Venezuelan government was not supportive of the campesinos’ (farmers’)
movement. This is his story.
“My story is very easy. My parents were farmers from this
area and I was brought up in this culture. My father was a member of the
communist party of Venezuela. My parents taught me socialist ideals and we grew
up thinking and speaking differently. Not just thinking within the system we
had, but beyond that. For years, I
have been part of the struggle. There has been a lot of opposition and I have struggled for
better conditions, better ways of living for the farmers. Because of this
struggle, I have been imprisoned twice. The protests and calls for our release
by the farmers’ movement outside the prison forced them to let me go. That was
in ‘78 and ‘91.
“Aracal is the fruit of the everyday struggles of the
campesinos. There, we united a large amount of people to come together to form
a cooperative. In order for it to be a true revolution, we had to change the
model of production, which had been production by and for a single owner. We
have had to maintain the battle because there have been a lot of enemies. We
had to, at times, fight against the state and other obstacles in order to have
a cooperative.
“We were creating a new kind of cooperative, because in
Venezuela there already were some cooperatives, but they were capitalist
cooperatives. We wanted to have a socialist cooperative. We have created laws
for the organization, as well as internal rules. According to the national law
of cooperatives, we have to come up with a statute for our organization about
what we want, as well as internal rules that moderates how we act. The
cooperative strives to get the greatest sense of harmony with our members. For
this reason, the members decide what they want to do, based on their interests.
“The socialism that we have been working to move forward is
not a form of socialism that we are just following some recipe of Marx or of
Mao. It is a Venezuelan style socialism. We are taking different concepts and
adapting them to our conditions in Venezuela. I think this is one of the most
effective models for society because, to work for yourself, you are not waiting
for someone else to give you something or lend you something or provide you
with something. It is hard work, but it is not impossible.”
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