Completing the Chavez Revolution

By Karen Juanita Carrillo
SeeingBlack.com Diaspora Writer

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The Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations, made up of 30 groups in that country, is urging the administration of Hugo Chavez Frias to take on several issues to recognize and uplift Venezuela's Black population.

The network wants a reform of the constitution, so that it recognizes the nation's multi-ethnicity and respects Afro-Venezuelan rights; the creation of a new census that categorizes and counts Venezuela's Black population; the acknowledgement of Afro-Venezuelan history in school curriculum; the creation of a federal-level ministry to implement the World Conference Against Racism's "Durban Plan of Action"; the creation of a ministry to implement UNESCO's Convention on Diversity; and the creation of an Afro-Venezuelan Ministry, to address the everyday lives of Blacks in the country.

"This is just constructive criticism of the government. We're not part of the government and we're not at all part of the opposition to the Chávez administration," said, Jesus "Chucho" Garcia, a leader in the network, on a recent visit to New York City. "We just think that with the implementation of these six principles, we will make the Bolívarian revolution complete," he added.

While in New York, Garcia spent some time giving talks and interviews about the Bolivarian revolution being waged by his nation's populist president, Hugo Chávez Frías, and how that revolution is affecting the lives of over 7 million Afro-Venezuelans.

"As we all know, we are all a result of the crime of the slave trade, which ripped more than 30 million of us out of Africa," García said during a talk at the International Action Center on May 17th.

"We are all a result of the first 'globalization,' the one that took place in 1492," he continued: "And our resistance to that was in cimarronaje [Black self-liberation from slavery]."

A major figure in the current resistance to globalization is Venezuela's President Chavez, who has called for other nations to resist being forced into globalization schemes, and has changed theformerly exploitative structure of his own nation's economy.

García contends that there are more than 7 million Venezuelans of African descent, a fact that he and the groups who make up the Afro-Venezuelan Network have been working for years to have recognized by the government. "The Network has taken a lot of criticism because we've said, 'enough of playing the drums!' " he said, referring to the fact that Afrocentric music is widely celebrated in the nation, while Blackness is less appreciated. " 'If we don't take a political stance, the drums will soon enough disappear.'

"I'm a musician, but I understand that this is a political moment that we must take advantage of — so that our children will not have to suffer," he added.

The network's Encuentro Internacional commemorated the 210th anniversary of the May 10, 1795 anti-slavery uprising led by Afro-Venezuelan José Leonardo Chirino. The Afro-Venezuelan Network had gotten the country's national assembly to name May 10th "Afro-Venezuelan Day."

But beyond occasional recognitions, García says that the Network is pushing to have Chávez' government formally identify its Black population. "We had wanted to have the Afro-Venezuelan population identified and included in the new constitution," he said, referring to the 1999 Bolívarian constitution, which recognizes the nation's indigenous population, but does not specifically reference the rights and existence of its Blacks. "But at the time it was being drawn up, legislators rejected that idea."

President Chávez has termed his revolution "Bolívarian" because it upholds the ideals of South America's famous liberator, Simon Bolívar. García points out that one of the concepts Bolívar was lucky to have received from Matea, the Afro-Venezuelan woman who helped rear him, was the idea of comprehension.

Instead of the European-based ideal of "tolerance," which hierarchically permits others their existence, Bolívar was taught the African principle of "comprehension," García explained, which accepts others and makes the effort to understand them as they are. Chávez' revolution is finally showing Venezuelans how to understand their nation's indigenous and Black populations.

At the Encuentro Internacional, the Chávez government announced that it was ready to set up a Presidential Commission Against Racism in Venezuela. Even though Chávez is obviously of African and indigenous descent, García said that it has taken six years of lobbying by the Afro-Venezuelan Network to have the government commit to such a commission.

"Before the coup, Chávez would pretty much only say that he was a mestizo," Garcia points out. Members of the government were obviously upset with opposition forces who publicly referred to the president as a "mono" – or monkey. But Garcia was alone in taking his anger about this type of language to the United Nations: in March 2002 – a month before the coup — he testified at the U.N. about the race-based attacks on Chavez. "After the coup, he seemed to realize what we've been saying for 20 some years now. This is at least one thing we can thank the coup for: that racism in Venezuela is now something that the government knows it will have to do something about."

Prior to this week-long stay in New York, Garcia, who is also head of the Fundación Afroamerica/African American Foundatio, served as the principal organizer for the May 5-8 Encuentro Internacional de Afrodescendientes y Políticas Públicas/Summit Meeting of International Afrodescendants and Public Policy in Caracas, Venezuela.

Many of the network's agenda items will be dealt with in Chávez' new Presidential Commission Against Racism which began meeting on June 8th; two Afro-Venezuelan Network members have already been named to take part in the Commission.

The website for Red de Organizaciones Afrovenezolanas is www.redafrovenezolana.com.

— July 1, 2005

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