‘Land of plenty, land of poverty, Venezuela ought to be soaring, a great success story in South America, with exceptional oil wealth spreading prosperity to all’.With these words James Robbins begins his documentary ‘Oil, Politics and Hugo Chavez’, part of the BBC’s Our World series first broadcast in February 2011. Sam McGill exposes this report as baseless propaganda.
Showing posts with label Barrio Adentro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barrio Adentro. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 April 2011
BBC distorts truth about Venezuela
Source: Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! (FRFI) 220, April/May 2011.
Friday, 14 January 2011
Mission Barrio Adentro
Mission Barrio Adentro: A socialist concept of Medicine
by Pearl Nguyen,
Translation: by Eva Golinger.
Source: Correo del Orinoco International, no. 22, 30 July 2010
In Venezuela, the concept of social medicine in which health is viewed as an essential part of humanism and as a right of every citizen and not a business, continues to grow. The work of Mission Barrio Adentro, a Cuba-Venezuela initiative, has been fundamental to achieve this end.
The relationship between Cuba and Venezuela has developed steadily since October 30, 2000, when Presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro of Cuba signed a Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement Cuba-Venezuela. In April 2003, the first Cuban doctors of Mission Barrio Adentro arrived to Caracas to jumpstart the social program, which was soon extended to the rest of the country. The initial goal was to bring healthcare into poorer communities, where most people had never had any medical care and had little or no access to preventive healthcare campaigns.
The mission currently is run by Cuban and Venezuelan doctors as part of an overall healthcare strategy and state policy of the Chavez administration, explained Vice-Minister of Health Networks, Iver Gil.
Today, more than 15,000 doctors are working in Mission Barrio Adentro, with a large percentage of Venezuelan doctors now working with human sensitivity and social commitment. There are approximately 30,000 Cuban collaborators, including medical and technical staff in hospitals throughout the country, with the goal of strengthening the national public health system.
NEW HOSPITALS AND CLINICS
The objective this year is to complete the construction of more than 500 comprehensive diagnostic centers (CDI), where Venezuelan and Cuban doctors provide care and counseling in the areas of healing, promotion and prevention. Students are also trained in social medicine at these centers, based on the notion that healthcare is a right, not a commodity, and is essential to aid in the improvement of quality of life in Venezuelan communities.
“It’s a joint program with doctors and communities working together to improve the quality of life and health of residents. We are now developing integral health community services, so that communities have an area or network with medical health services at the preventive, diagnostic and treatment levels to promote health and prevent disease”, explained Vice Minister Gil.
Gil reported that in the next two months 17 more CDIs should be inaugurated and 64 new hospitals built, along with the renovation of other public hospitals in specific areas such as operating rooms, laboratories, delivery rooms, emergency, among others. Gil stressed that the most important aspect of Mission Barrio Adentro is the promotion of social medicine, curative and preventive healthcare and proper rehabilitation.
“In many areas that never had access to medical consultations before, there are now popular, free clinics. During the program, we have increased the number of neighborhood clinics from 4,000 to 11,000 nationwide”, said Gil.
TRAINING
Vice-Minister Iver Gil also explained that previously in Venezuela, medical education was elitist, with limited spaces at universities. “A medical degree was seen only as a profession to make money or earn large sums of money, and the concept was of a doctor waiting in his offi ce for the patient to come with problems”.
With the new concept of socialist healthcare in the country, Gil noted the whole medical community is being reshaped. There are currently more than 28,000 students of Comprehensive Community Medicine studies in six experimental national universities. “In five years, we have incorporated more than 8,000 students into the public hospital system who will graduate in December next year, trained in social, socialist, integral medicine, which takes into account the community environment and not just the body or the sick person alone, but also how we live and how we can improve the quality of our lives. This is a process that includes home visits, and students are forming these clinics and networks in their own communities”.
PROVISION OF MEDICINE
The Ministry of Health has several strategies to ensure the provision of medicines and medical equipment for communities, hospitals and clinics. Alliances with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas) countries and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations), including Argentina, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, have enabled agreements to buy medicines at low prices.
Also, Gil noted that through these partnerships, major surgical equipment for hospitals and other medical supplies have been acquired. “Now we are engaging in agreements to enable Venezuelan industries to produce pharmaceutical drugs in our own country. This involves the transfer of technology and know-how from other nations, which is an essential part of these accords”, he said.
by Pearl Nguyen,
Translation: by Eva Golinger.
Source: Correo del Orinoco International, no. 22, 30 July 2010
In Venezuela, the concept of social medicine in which health is viewed as an essential part of humanism and as a right of every citizen and not a business, continues to grow. The work of Mission Barrio Adentro, a Cuba-Venezuela initiative, has been fundamental to achieve this end.
The relationship between Cuba and Venezuela has developed steadily since October 30, 2000, when Presidents Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro of Cuba signed a Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement Cuba-Venezuela. In April 2003, the first Cuban doctors of Mission Barrio Adentro arrived to Caracas to jumpstart the social program, which was soon extended to the rest of the country. The initial goal was to bring healthcare into poorer communities, where most people had never had any medical care and had little or no access to preventive healthcare campaigns.
The mission currently is run by Cuban and Venezuelan doctors as part of an overall healthcare strategy and state policy of the Chavez administration, explained Vice-Minister of Health Networks, Iver Gil.
Today, more than 15,000 doctors are working in Mission Barrio Adentro, with a large percentage of Venezuelan doctors now working with human sensitivity and social commitment. There are approximately 30,000 Cuban collaborators, including medical and technical staff in hospitals throughout the country, with the goal of strengthening the national public health system.
NEW HOSPITALS AND CLINICS
The objective this year is to complete the construction of more than 500 comprehensive diagnostic centers (CDI), where Venezuelan and Cuban doctors provide care and counseling in the areas of healing, promotion and prevention. Students are also trained in social medicine at these centers, based on the notion that healthcare is a right, not a commodity, and is essential to aid in the improvement of quality of life in Venezuelan communities.
“It’s a joint program with doctors and communities working together to improve the quality of life and health of residents. We are now developing integral health community services, so that communities have an area or network with medical health services at the preventive, diagnostic and treatment levels to promote health and prevent disease”, explained Vice Minister Gil.
Gil reported that in the next two months 17 more CDIs should be inaugurated and 64 new hospitals built, along with the renovation of other public hospitals in specific areas such as operating rooms, laboratories, delivery rooms, emergency, among others. Gil stressed that the most important aspect of Mission Barrio Adentro is the promotion of social medicine, curative and preventive healthcare and proper rehabilitation.
“In many areas that never had access to medical consultations before, there are now popular, free clinics. During the program, we have increased the number of neighborhood clinics from 4,000 to 11,000 nationwide”, said Gil.
TRAINING
Vice-Minister Iver Gil also explained that previously in Venezuela, medical education was elitist, with limited spaces at universities. “A medical degree was seen only as a profession to make money or earn large sums of money, and the concept was of a doctor waiting in his offi ce for the patient to come with problems”.
With the new concept of socialist healthcare in the country, Gil noted the whole medical community is being reshaped. There are currently more than 28,000 students of Comprehensive Community Medicine studies in six experimental national universities. “In five years, we have incorporated more than 8,000 students into the public hospital system who will graduate in December next year, trained in social, socialist, integral medicine, which takes into account the community environment and not just the body or the sick person alone, but also how we live and how we can improve the quality of our lives. This is a process that includes home visits, and students are forming these clinics and networks in their own communities”.
PROVISION OF MEDICINE
The Ministry of Health has several strategies to ensure the provision of medicines and medical equipment for communities, hospitals and clinics. Alliances with ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas) countries and UNASUR (Union of South American Nations), including Argentina, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Paraguay, have enabled agreements to buy medicines at low prices.
Also, Gil noted that through these partnerships, major surgical equipment for hospitals and other medical supplies have been acquired. “Now we are engaging in agreements to enable Venezuelan industries to produce pharmaceutical drugs in our own country. This involves the transfer of technology and know-how from other nations, which is an essential part of these accords”, he said.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
45,174 Venezuelans treated in Cuba
45,174 Venezuelans received free medical assistance in Cuba
by Ministry of Peoples Power for Foreign Affairs, 30 November 2010.
Source: Ven-Global News.
“It has been 10 years after the endorsement of the Comprehensive Health Agreement Cuba-Venezuela and the results can be clearly seen: 45,174 Venezuelan affected by different pathologies went to Cuba in order to receive assistance for their health problems.”Explained the coordinator of the cooperation program Jhonny Ramos.
Ramos assured that there are cases of patients who were declared terminally ill in health centers of Venezuela. These people suffered from cancer, CVAs and conditions in their vital organs. They underwent a proper medical treatment in Cuba and now enjoy perfect health and have a better quality of life.
He explained that one of the conclusions about the neglection of patients with serious diseases is that a significant number of Venezuelan doctors have a mercantilist conception of health. Thus, doctors send home patients who cannot afford a medical treatment.
“In Venezuela, there are excellent doctors, they are among the best of the world. The difference stems from the point of view in which medicine is considered. Venezuelan doctors had the idea of making money, while in Cuba they have the idea to help those human beings in need.” Ramos pointed out.
“We understand than a professional of medicine has studied to have a better life but a persons health cannot be priced, and that is what has occurred in our health care system.” He said.
However, thanks to the agreement endorsed by the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, the philosophical conception of health in Venezuela is being transformed through the education of new professionals of the Latin American Medicine School (ELAM).
More than 1,000 graduates are doing postgraduate courses in Cuba and Venezuela to date. A group of these postgraduates have joined the flagship binational health program: Mission Barrio Adentro.
“The directors Mission Barrio Adentro are Venezuelan. There are currently around 10,000 students in the last year of the medicine school and all of them are professionals with another way to conceive medicine, as socialist medicine, in which people is not treated as merchandise.”
Another decade to go
On November 10th, President Hugo Chávez Frías and Raúl Castro Ruz ratified the comprehensive agreement for another decade.
Ramos stated that this new phase has the aim to create centers of specialized assistance. The main objective during the first ten years was to consolidate Mission Barrio Adentro in its phases I, II and III, which include primary health care, comprehensive care, Centers of Comprehensive Diagnosis, Comprehensive Rehabilitation Rooms and restoration of public hospitals.
“The specialized centers allow not only to give assistance to the patients, but also to contribute to the education of the human resources. We are currently working on the creation of the Oncological Hospital, the National Center for Neurological Restoration and the National Center for the Treatment of Addictions.” Ramos remarked.
The agreement will enter a new phase in 2011: “10,000 Venezuelan doctors will join the program. They are going to progressively replace our Cuban brothers because the health system is intended to be managed by Venezuelans.” He added.
by Ministry of Peoples Power for Foreign Affairs, 30 November 2010.
Source: Ven-Global News.
“It has been 10 years after the endorsement of the Comprehensive Health Agreement Cuba-Venezuela and the results can be clearly seen: 45,174 Venezuelan affected by different pathologies went to Cuba in order to receive assistance for their health problems.”Explained the coordinator of the cooperation program Jhonny Ramos.
Ramos assured that there are cases of patients who were declared terminally ill in health centers of Venezuela. These people suffered from cancer, CVAs and conditions in their vital organs. They underwent a proper medical treatment in Cuba and now enjoy perfect health and have a better quality of life.
He explained that one of the conclusions about the neglection of patients with serious diseases is that a significant number of Venezuelan doctors have a mercantilist conception of health. Thus, doctors send home patients who cannot afford a medical treatment.
“In Venezuela, there are excellent doctors, they are among the best of the world. The difference stems from the point of view in which medicine is considered. Venezuelan doctors had the idea of making money, while in Cuba they have the idea to help those human beings in need.” Ramos pointed out.
“We understand than a professional of medicine has studied to have a better life but a persons health cannot be priced, and that is what has occurred in our health care system.” He said.
However, thanks to the agreement endorsed by the Venezuelan and Cuban governments, the philosophical conception of health in Venezuela is being transformed through the education of new professionals of the Latin American Medicine School (ELAM).
More than 1,000 graduates are doing postgraduate courses in Cuba and Venezuela to date. A group of these postgraduates have joined the flagship binational health program: Mission Barrio Adentro.
“The directors Mission Barrio Adentro are Venezuelan. There are currently around 10,000 students in the last year of the medicine school and all of them are professionals with another way to conceive medicine, as socialist medicine, in which people is not treated as merchandise.”
Another decade to go
On November 10th, President Hugo Chávez Frías and Raúl Castro Ruz ratified the comprehensive agreement for another decade.
Ramos stated that this new phase has the aim to create centers of specialized assistance. The main objective during the first ten years was to consolidate Mission Barrio Adentro in its phases I, II and III, which include primary health care, comprehensive care, Centers of Comprehensive Diagnosis, Comprehensive Rehabilitation Rooms and restoration of public hospitals.
“The specialized centers allow not only to give assistance to the patients, but also to contribute to the education of the human resources. We are currently working on the creation of the Oncological Hospital, the National Center for Neurological Restoration and the National Center for the Treatment of Addictions.” Ramos remarked.
The agreement will enter a new phase in 2011: “10,000 Venezuelan doctors will join the program. They are going to progressively replace our Cuban brothers because the health system is intended to be managed by Venezuelans.” He added.
Thursday, 9 December 2010
US interference in Venezuela
Wikileaks in Venezuela: Espionage, Propaganda and Disinformation.
By Eva Golinger, 5 December 2010.
Source: Postcards from the Revolution.
The first batch of recently released secret and confidential US State Department documents obtained by Wikileaks include over a dozen dispatches from the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, evidencing espionage against the Chavez administration, use of opposition media and politicians as informants and insulting remarks about the country.
The Wikileaks release last Sunday, November 28, of over a quarter million US State Department cables obtained illegally has caused scandals worldwide over the methods, perspectives and dirty maneuvering of US foreign policy.
Almost no country or government is exempt from mention in the thousands of secret and classified documents, which are being released over a period of months in order to appreciate the quality of the information, while also subjecting Washington to a type of prolonged torture.
The first several hundred documents made public primarily originate from US embassies in Europe and the Middle East, as well as direct from the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself.
But Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, classified as a "terrorist" and "enemy combatant" by the United States, has also released a select group of cables from US embassies in Latin America.
Approximately 14 documents so far have been published that were dispatched by the US Embassy in Caracas, though several other cables from different US embassies worldwide reference Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez. Of the documents released, the majority refer to Washington's obsession with Venezuela's relations with two particular countries: Cuba and Iran.
ATTACKING HEALTHCARE, FOREIGN POLICY
One document, the first published on Venezuela by Wikileaks, criticizes Venezuela's successful healthcare program, Barrio Adentro, by claiming it is "usurping funds from the public hospital system".
The cable, which was authored by former US Ambassador Patrick Duddy in December 2009, quotes only anti-Chavez sources, including a journalist from the opposition newspaper, El Universal, and several doctors working in private clinics and public hospitals.
There is little serious mention of the billions of dollars the Venezuelan government has pumped into the public hospital and healthcare system in order to not only renovate older facilities left in disarray by former governments, but also to create a new healthcare system, which the Embassy cable cynically calls "parallel", to guarantee free, universal care to all Venezuelans.
At the end of the cable, Duddy's comments show either ignorance or an intentional distortion of fact, when he claims, "The quality of healthcare in Venezuela has declined as the GBRV (Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) has shifted resources from the traditional medical system to "Barrio Adentro".
The hard evidence shows the contrary.
For the first time in the nation's history, all Venezuelans have access to quality, free healthcare, from the preventive care level, up to complex, high-tech treatments and interventions.
INFORMANTS AND SPIES
The Embassy cables on Venezuela don't just reveal a distortion of Venezuela's reality, which is an attempt to portray the Chavez administration in a negative light, they also provide insight into who the US government sources are and how US diplomats operate as spies in the country.
One document, a scathing analysis of the alleged Cuban presence in Venezuela's intelligence services and a host of other government institutions, would at first glance be alarming.
The cable, cynically titled "Cuba/Venezuela Axis of Mischief: The View from Caracas", was written by notorious former Ambassador William Brownfield in January 2006, and claims Cubans have penetrated almost every aspect of Venezuela's government, culture and economy.
It's reminiscent of Cold War era fear-mongering about the "communist expansion" and "red scare" in the hemisphere. This time, however, instead of the Russians, it's the "Cubans are coming...they are everywhere".
Be alarmed, be very alarmed.
Except that, when read in detail, it becomes clear that the sources behind this alleged "Cuban communist takeover" are actually high-profile opposition leaders, such as ex Governor and now fugitive from justice, Manuel Rosales, big business executives and journalists from anti-Chavez media.
Brownfield even writes in the cable statements such as "Anecdotal reporting suggests...", "Less reliable reports indicate..." and "Unconfirmed sensitive reporting suggests...", evidencing the weakness of the information provided, which was marked "Secret/No Foreign Distribution" and was sent to the Secretary of State, the National Security Council, the Pentagon's Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), and a host of other US embassies and consulates ranging from Brasilia, La Paz, Lima, Managua, Quito, Buenos Aires, Santiago and Mexico, to Brussels, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, Rome and The Hague.
Information that is unconfirmed, comes from exclusively biased sources (all anti-Chavez) and overall has no foundation in reality, is then used to craft US policy towards Venezuela.
The documents published by Wikileaks evidence that this dangerous scenario is repeated in US diplomacy around the world. The Caracas documents also evidence how Embassy employees violate their status as diplomats to engage in espionage against the Venezuelan government.
In the "Cuban scare" cable, Brownfield reveals that the Department of Defense monitors flight activity from Cuba to Venezuela daily, and then Embassy personnel try to gauge the number of passengers coming of the planes: "Embassy officers have noted regular flights of Cubans - or Venezuelans returning from official visits to Cuba - at Caracas' Maiquetia airport...Post cannot determine how many Cubans are on the flights..."
What Brownfield is most concerned about, apart from standing vigilance at the airport watching the planes come and go, is how the US could be affected by the Cuba-Venezuela relationship.
"The impact of Cuban involvement in Venezuelan intelligence could impact US interests directly", he claims, concerned about "the expertise that Cuban services could provide...about the activities of the USG". More or less, Washington is worried their clandestine actions in Venezuela will be exposed as the Venezuelans improve their intelligence capacity.
In another document, titled "Explaining Venezuela's coziness with Iran" Ambassador Brownfield invokes the "Iran scare" and comments, "Venezuela's support for a country that has nuclear ambitions, supports terrorism and talks about wiping Israel off the map is of grave concern. It also alarms nations - such as France...We can exploit this alarm". How exactly would they do that, interfere in Venezuela's relationship with France?
Brownfield remarks that Washington should not "dismiss the uranium rumors", referring to allegations that Venezuela was providing uranium to Iran to make bombs. But a later cable, written by the more steady-headed Charge D'Affairs John Caulfield in June 2009, contradicted Brownfield's war-mongering attitude.
"Although rumors that Venezuela is providing Iran with Venezuelan produced uranium may help burnish the government's revolutionary credentials, there seems to be little basis in reality to the claims...it is highly unlikely that Venezuela is providing Venezuelan uranium to third countries".
PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN
In 2008, the US Embassy in Caracas decided it was time to employ the heavy services of the Pentagon's psychological operations team to bombard Venezuelans with pro-US propaganda, to counter, what an Embassy cable claimed in March 2008, "Chavez's anti-americanism".
"Embassy Caracas requests DOD (Department of Defense) support in the execution of its strategic communications plan. The goal for this program is to influence the information environment within Venezuela...DOD support would greatly enhance existing Embassy Public Diplomacy and pro-democracy activities".
Influencing the "information environment" in Venezuela with Pentagon support is clearly an outright violation of Venezuela's sovereignty, which appears to be a common denominator in most of the Embassy cables published so far on Venezuela.
The State Department's 2011 budget includes a special multimillion-dollar fund for a "30-minute, 5-day a week program in Spanish in Venezuela" and the Pentagon's includes a new program for "psychological operations" in the Southern Command (Latin America).
Some of the information in the cables can be verified by fact and corroborating evidence, while other data remains in the realm of rumors and bogus sources.
What is clear is the that the documents reaffirm the increasing US aggression against Venezuela and its hostile foreign policy against the Chavez administration, including a willingness to use unsubstantiated rumors to make dangerous accusations.
By Eva Golinger, 5 December 2010.
Source: Postcards from the Revolution.
The first batch of recently released secret and confidential US State Department documents obtained by Wikileaks include over a dozen dispatches from the US Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, evidencing espionage against the Chavez administration, use of opposition media and politicians as informants and insulting remarks about the country.
The Wikileaks release last Sunday, November 28, of over a quarter million US State Department cables obtained illegally has caused scandals worldwide over the methods, perspectives and dirty maneuvering of US foreign policy.
Almost no country or government is exempt from mention in the thousands of secret and classified documents, which are being released over a period of months in order to appreciate the quality of the information, while also subjecting Washington to a type of prolonged torture.
The first several hundred documents made public primarily originate from US embassies in Europe and the Middle East, as well as direct from the State Department and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself.
But Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, classified as a "terrorist" and "enemy combatant" by the United States, has also released a select group of cables from US embassies in Latin America.
Approximately 14 documents so far have been published that were dispatched by the US Embassy in Caracas, though several other cables from different US embassies worldwide reference Venezuela and President Hugo Chavez. Of the documents released, the majority refer to Washington's obsession with Venezuela's relations with two particular countries: Cuba and Iran.
ATTACKING HEALTHCARE, FOREIGN POLICY
One document, the first published on Venezuela by Wikileaks, criticizes Venezuela's successful healthcare program, Barrio Adentro, by claiming it is "usurping funds from the public hospital system".
The cable, which was authored by former US Ambassador Patrick Duddy in December 2009, quotes only anti-Chavez sources, including a journalist from the opposition newspaper, El Universal, and several doctors working in private clinics and public hospitals.
There is little serious mention of the billions of dollars the Venezuelan government has pumped into the public hospital and healthcare system in order to not only renovate older facilities left in disarray by former governments, but also to create a new healthcare system, which the Embassy cable cynically calls "parallel", to guarantee free, universal care to all Venezuelans.
At the end of the cable, Duddy's comments show either ignorance or an intentional distortion of fact, when he claims, "The quality of healthcare in Venezuela has declined as the GBRV (Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela) has shifted resources from the traditional medical system to "Barrio Adentro".
The hard evidence shows the contrary.
For the first time in the nation's history, all Venezuelans have access to quality, free healthcare, from the preventive care level, up to complex, high-tech treatments and interventions.
INFORMANTS AND SPIES
The Embassy cables on Venezuela don't just reveal a distortion of Venezuela's reality, which is an attempt to portray the Chavez administration in a negative light, they also provide insight into who the US government sources are and how US diplomats operate as spies in the country.
One document, a scathing analysis of the alleged Cuban presence in Venezuela's intelligence services and a host of other government institutions, would at first glance be alarming.
The cable, cynically titled "Cuba/Venezuela Axis of Mischief: The View from Caracas", was written by notorious former Ambassador William Brownfield in January 2006, and claims Cubans have penetrated almost every aspect of Venezuela's government, culture and economy.
It's reminiscent of Cold War era fear-mongering about the "communist expansion" and "red scare" in the hemisphere. This time, however, instead of the Russians, it's the "Cubans are coming...they are everywhere".
Be alarmed, be very alarmed.
Except that, when read in detail, it becomes clear that the sources behind this alleged "Cuban communist takeover" are actually high-profile opposition leaders, such as ex Governor and now fugitive from justice, Manuel Rosales, big business executives and journalists from anti-Chavez media.
Brownfield even writes in the cable statements such as "Anecdotal reporting suggests...", "Less reliable reports indicate..." and "Unconfirmed sensitive reporting suggests...", evidencing the weakness of the information provided, which was marked "Secret/No Foreign Distribution" and was sent to the Secretary of State, the National Security Council, the Pentagon's Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), and a host of other US embassies and consulates ranging from Brasilia, La Paz, Lima, Managua, Quito, Buenos Aires, Santiago and Mexico, to Brussels, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris, London, Rome and The Hague.
Information that is unconfirmed, comes from exclusively biased sources (all anti-Chavez) and overall has no foundation in reality, is then used to craft US policy towards Venezuela.
The documents published by Wikileaks evidence that this dangerous scenario is repeated in US diplomacy around the world. The Caracas documents also evidence how Embassy employees violate their status as diplomats to engage in espionage against the Venezuelan government.
In the "Cuban scare" cable, Brownfield reveals that the Department of Defense monitors flight activity from Cuba to Venezuela daily, and then Embassy personnel try to gauge the number of passengers coming of the planes: "Embassy officers have noted regular flights of Cubans - or Venezuelans returning from official visits to Cuba - at Caracas' Maiquetia airport...Post cannot determine how many Cubans are on the flights..."
What Brownfield is most concerned about, apart from standing vigilance at the airport watching the planes come and go, is how the US could be affected by the Cuba-Venezuela relationship.
"The impact of Cuban involvement in Venezuelan intelligence could impact US interests directly", he claims, concerned about "the expertise that Cuban services could provide...about the activities of the USG". More or less, Washington is worried their clandestine actions in Venezuela will be exposed as the Venezuelans improve their intelligence capacity.
In another document, titled "Explaining Venezuela's coziness with Iran" Ambassador Brownfield invokes the "Iran scare" and comments, "Venezuela's support for a country that has nuclear ambitions, supports terrorism and talks about wiping Israel off the map is of grave concern. It also alarms nations - such as France...We can exploit this alarm". How exactly would they do that, interfere in Venezuela's relationship with France?
Brownfield remarks that Washington should not "dismiss the uranium rumors", referring to allegations that Venezuela was providing uranium to Iran to make bombs. But a later cable, written by the more steady-headed Charge D'Affairs John Caulfield in June 2009, contradicted Brownfield's war-mongering attitude.
"Although rumors that Venezuela is providing Iran with Venezuelan produced uranium may help burnish the government's revolutionary credentials, there seems to be little basis in reality to the claims...it is highly unlikely that Venezuela is providing Venezuelan uranium to third countries".
PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN
In 2008, the US Embassy in Caracas decided it was time to employ the heavy services of the Pentagon's psychological operations team to bombard Venezuelans with pro-US propaganda, to counter, what an Embassy cable claimed in March 2008, "Chavez's anti-americanism".
"Embassy Caracas requests DOD (Department of Defense) support in the execution of its strategic communications plan. The goal for this program is to influence the information environment within Venezuela...DOD support would greatly enhance existing Embassy Public Diplomacy and pro-democracy activities".
Influencing the "information environment" in Venezuela with Pentagon support is clearly an outright violation of Venezuela's sovereignty, which appears to be a common denominator in most of the Embassy cables published so far on Venezuela.
The State Department's 2011 budget includes a special multimillion-dollar fund for a "30-minute, 5-day a week program in Spanish in Venezuela" and the Pentagon's includes a new program for "psychological operations" in the Southern Command (Latin America).
Some of the information in the cables can be verified by fact and corroborating evidence, while other data remains in the realm of rumors and bogus sources.
What is clear is the that the documents reaffirm the increasing US aggression against Venezuela and its hostile foreign policy against the Chavez administration, including a willingness to use unsubstantiated rumors to make dangerous accusations.
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
RATB reports: Life in La Salina, Parroquia Carayaca, Vargas State, Venezuela
by Sam McGill, who is a member of Rock around the Blockade (RATB) reporting from Venezuela.
La Salina is a small rural village of about 2000 people in Vargas State approximately ninety minutes from Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. I had the opportunity to volunteer there for seven weeks working in a communal library teaching English, supporting the facilitators of Mission Ribas, (a high school level free education program for adults) and volunteering in the local school.
My partner also had the opportunity to work with the library making music with local young people. We were invited here by Rafael and Ivonne Delgado, two people whose history precedes them. Rafael and Ivonne have about 30 years of experience of working in the community. Within this time they have been active members and founders of ASOCITE (a community organization which began fighting for housing, education and social rights in the 1970’s and 1980’s) in La Vega, Caracas and also ENFODEP (Ensayo de Formacion de Educadores Populares), which trains, forms and qualifies popular educators who work in community development with a strong socialist political analysis. ENFODEP was created through the fusion of the ideas of ASOCITE and CEPAP an organization of the National Experimental University of Simon Rodriguez (UNESR). They began work with ENFODEP in 1992.
Currently ENFODEP in Vargas meets every Saturday when students get together to share their experiences, critically and politically analyse their assignments and receive first class training from Rafael and Yvonne, themselves popular educators with decades of experience. They are part of a network of three ENFODEP centres nationally in Caracas, Vargas and Acarigua.
They are also part of the Paulo Freire cooperative that runs the Salvador Garmendia community library and cinema. The library is open every weekday for students to come and investigate coursework and seek advice with their studies. The cinema functions every Thursday for adults and on Saturdays when young people come to watch free films. For an activist from England, a country where there free youth activities are hard to come by, free children’s films are a refreshing change from the expense of £5-7 for one person in the mega cinema complexes in the UK.
Casa Communal
In addition to the library where ENFODEP and the cinema are based, the community has organised a casa communal (communal house), a housing project, a casa de alimentation (local food provision centre where food and meals are distributed freely to the most needy) Mission Ribas and a grandparents club.
The casa communal is the base of the local consejo communal (community council). Although the community council has had a turbulent history where one council disintegrated and currently another has been formed and is functioning with few of the original members of the old council; the casa communal has many achievements to be proud of; there is a housing office in the casa as part of SUVI, (a project that aims to substitute new housing for Venezuelans who live in precarious shanty towns). Organised with the support of Mary Luz Pestano and Mirtia Yauquez, the housing office covers La Salina and nearby Puerto Carayaca and to date eighty people in the local area have benefited from home transfers, support after house collapse (a common issue in Vargas especially after the mudslide disaster in 1998) maintenance of houses and assignation of new houses. To date they have engaged 105 employees, donated paint and assisted with house decorations for forty families and organized various sports activities for the community.
INCES (the National Institute of training and Socialist Education)
The casa communal has existed for two years and also houses committees of health, services, education, tourism, sport, culture, communication and Mission Negra Hipolita. Negra Hipolita nationally provides free rehabilitation centres and programmes for people on the streets focusing on drug addicts, people with mental health issues or physical problems, alcoholism and other social problems that often keep people on the streets. The casa communal also functions as a community centre, providing karate classes, children’s theatre and, since February 2010, electricity classes have been provided in the casa communal by Eduardo Urbina, a local tutor through the INCES project. INCES (the National Institute of training and Socialist Education) is a state funded project that was taken over from the old INCE organization that solely focused on preparing young people for work. Now with INCES in conjunction with the “Socialist Che Guevara Mission” (La Mission de Che Guevara Socialista), socialist thinking runs through the project, developing Che’s ideas of “The New Man”(and woman) and raising political consciousness among young people.
INCES provides free education in a number of practical subject to students outside of school or work who want to gain qualifications for employment. The INCES project in La Salina is currently training twelve students who after 241 hours of classes will gain a certificate allowing them access to an occupation in electricity sector. This is particularly relevant for the young people of the area as La Salina is next door to a CORPOELEC (the state-owned electricity company) thermoelectric plant.
I also had the opportunity of visiting an INCES centre of formation in La Quizanda, in the state of Valencia. The centre provides training in areas such as topography, electricity, painting and decorating, unit pricing and financial management, carpentry, construction and metal work. We were invited to observe a carpentry class by Angel Cedeño, a local activist. We also had the chance to discuss with the students about their experience and compare education in the UK and in Venezuela. One of the main things that stood out was the privatization of education in the UK in comparison to Venezuela. For example in the UK during 1980’s and 1990’s there were many more technological colleges that trained people in skilled manual labour. Now many colleges have been run down and often young people take on apprenticeships with employers. This might mean working with an employer for up to two years on low or no pay in the hope of securing a job with the employer afterwards. Predictably, many employers use the logic of capitalism to treat the apprenticeships as a source of free and cheap labour. Instead of taking on the student as an employee with a salary and contract rights, they often ditch them and take on another student for two years. The young people of INCES were shocked to hear of the situation in the UK as so often it is painted in the media as a democratic safe haven where all needs are met and we all have tea and biscuits at 3pm every day!
The La Quizanda centre is one of five in Carabobo state; there is usually one main centre of INCES in each state with many local or specialist branches which reach out into local and rural areas like La Salina. It was great to see the national centre of formation serving a range of areas and teaching over eighty students, then to see the INCES in action in a rural area like La Salina, providing education for work in local sources of employment.
Casa de Alimentation
The Casa de Alimentation (food house) in La Salina, is fundamental to many of its members in the community. It was opened in 2003 and currently supports 150 people who can visit it for a free hot meal every day. Usually its members are older people, alcoholics, drug users, ill people, single mothers or unemployed. With the support of Mercal (a socialist state subsidized food market) the state pays the workers of the Casa de Alimentation and also for the food, and for special occasions, like Christmas, also provides free bags of food. The members get involved with the cooking, cleaning and general running of the centre which helps to create a sense of communal property and dignity.
This project runs alongside the Madres de Barrio (mothers of the neighbourhood) which supports young single mothers with money to buy food, clothes, medicines and other necessities for them and their children. Approximately 100 young women are inscribed in the project, which also supports them in studying and organizes community voluntary work.
A backbone of health services to many rural communities is the Barrio Adentro project. La Salina houses a walk-in clinic which runs Monday to Friday and provides the local population with free healthcare. I had the opportunity to go door to door with Barrio Adentro in order to carryout the local census that is essential for the first phase of a national vaccination plan. On the 12 March 2010, eight female community activists began a voluntary brigade with a doctor and nurses from the clinic. They have now visited every family in the area in order to find out what vaccinations have already been received by each family member and which vaccinations they need as part of the national plan. The national plan is offering ten free vaccinations across various age groups. This has been organized by the Ministry of Popular Power for Health under the banner “vaccination is a right!”, again this is a refreshing change from the health service in the UK, although currently it is a public, thirteen years of Labour Government has seen the selling off essential sections of our health service to private companies whose only interest is making a profit.
Mission Ribas
I also had the opportunity to get involved with the local Mission Ribas which currently has twenty students enrolled in night school classes at the local school. Mission Ribas was one of the first free education missions to be initiated in Venezuela in 2003, after Mission Robinson, a literacy and numeracy program and Mission Sucre, a university entrance program.
Using a system developed in Cuba, the mission teaches English, maths, grammar, science and Venezuelan history amongst other subjects, with the aid of specially formulated DVD’s. After 2-3 years students graduate from the project with a qualification that allows them to study at university. The Mission is mainly focused in supporting people who didn’t finish school with a qualification, thus preventing them from inscribing on a university course. Mission Ribas began in La Salina in 2003 and before this Mission Robinson functioned in La Salina. Currently Mission Robinson does not function as everyone who wanted to participate has passed through the course. The Missions were introduced by Ivonne and Rafael along with other community activists and original students like Alba Taillae have passed and become facilitators of Mission Ribas or become involved in the local section of Mission Cultura in the area.
Although La Salina, and Venezuela in general, primarily has a young population, the grandparents have certainly not been forgotten. I had the privilege of spending a few hours with Haideé de Amato who helps organise the local grandparents club that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the support of Barrio Adentro. The club provides free and regular medical checks for the older people and includes 45 minutes of exercise. Thirteen people from La Salina attend each session and a sister session in Vista al Mar higher up the mountain overlooking the community serves another thirty-three people.
As a local weekend and vacation destination for city dwellers of Caracas and surrounds, La Salina regularly hosts crowds of Venezuelans looking to relax by the beach. Whilst this obviously supports the local economy it also contributes to pollution. As is the case in so many cities and villages in Venezuela, the problem of rubbish is huge. Often after a weekend or national holiday, the beach is littered with plastic, glass bottles and paper, something which is compounded by a lack of bins. However, recently children from the local school have been carrying out questionnaires and surveys with the aim of commencing a project to clean up the beaches and develop better rubbish bin provision. This is also helped by daily rubbish collection from the local state services and a weekly beach litter pick.
The local PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) battalion is located centrally in the village and holds meetings twice monthly. They are now gearing up for the national assembly elections in September and soon will be going house to house to start the campaign. Over 80% of the population of La Salina is inscribed in the PSUV and almost everyone supports the Chavez government and the Bolivarian revolution. As Haideé de Amato from the Grandparents club emotionally told me, “never before has a president done so much to support the poor people of Venezuela, almost everything here in the community of La Salina is new thanks to this government and our revolution, we have Barrio Adentro, a new Bolivarian school, the education Missions, the housing project, the food house. That’s why so many people here support our president; we will fight for our revolution as we can’t afford to loose all the gains we have made”
All in all my experience of living in La Salina has been a revolutionary one. The kind of community provision and process of popular power, while not perfect and with obviously many improvements that can be made, has built a community that has a future worth fighting for, a future in the Bolivarian Revolution.
Viva Chavez!
La Salina is a small rural village of about 2000 people in Vargas State approximately ninety minutes from Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. I had the opportunity to volunteer there for seven weeks working in a communal library teaching English, supporting the facilitators of Mission Ribas, (a high school level free education program for adults) and volunteering in the local school.
My partner also had the opportunity to work with the library making music with local young people. We were invited here by Rafael and Ivonne Delgado, two people whose history precedes them. Rafael and Ivonne have about 30 years of experience of working in the community. Within this time they have been active members and founders of ASOCITE (a community organization which began fighting for housing, education and social rights in the 1970’s and 1980’s) in La Vega, Caracas and also ENFODEP (Ensayo de Formacion de Educadores Populares), which trains, forms and qualifies popular educators who work in community development with a strong socialist political analysis. ENFODEP was created through the fusion of the ideas of ASOCITE and CEPAP an organization of the National Experimental University of Simon Rodriguez (UNESR). They began work with ENFODEP in 1992.
Currently ENFODEP in Vargas meets every Saturday when students get together to share their experiences, critically and politically analyse their assignments and receive first class training from Rafael and Yvonne, themselves popular educators with decades of experience. They are part of a network of three ENFODEP centres nationally in Caracas, Vargas and Acarigua.
They are also part of the Paulo Freire cooperative that runs the Salvador Garmendia community library and cinema. The library is open every weekday for students to come and investigate coursework and seek advice with their studies. The cinema functions every Thursday for adults and on Saturdays when young people come to watch free films. For an activist from England, a country where there free youth activities are hard to come by, free children’s films are a refreshing change from the expense of £5-7 for one person in the mega cinema complexes in the UK.
Casa Communal
In addition to the library where ENFODEP and the cinema are based, the community has organised a casa communal (communal house), a housing project, a casa de alimentation (local food provision centre where food and meals are distributed freely to the most needy) Mission Ribas and a grandparents club.
The casa communal is the base of the local consejo communal (community council). Although the community council has had a turbulent history where one council disintegrated and currently another has been formed and is functioning with few of the original members of the old council; the casa communal has many achievements to be proud of; there is a housing office in the casa as part of SUVI, (a project that aims to substitute new housing for Venezuelans who live in precarious shanty towns). Organised with the support of Mary Luz Pestano and Mirtia Yauquez, the housing office covers La Salina and nearby Puerto Carayaca and to date eighty people in the local area have benefited from home transfers, support after house collapse (a common issue in Vargas especially after the mudslide disaster in 1998) maintenance of houses and assignation of new houses. To date they have engaged 105 employees, donated paint and assisted with house decorations for forty families and organized various sports activities for the community.
INCES (the National Institute of training and Socialist Education)
The casa communal has existed for two years and also houses committees of health, services, education, tourism, sport, culture, communication and Mission Negra Hipolita. Negra Hipolita nationally provides free rehabilitation centres and programmes for people on the streets focusing on drug addicts, people with mental health issues or physical problems, alcoholism and other social problems that often keep people on the streets. The casa communal also functions as a community centre, providing karate classes, children’s theatre and, since February 2010, electricity classes have been provided in the casa communal by Eduardo Urbina, a local tutor through the INCES project. INCES (the National Institute of training and Socialist Education) is a state funded project that was taken over from the old INCE organization that solely focused on preparing young people for work. Now with INCES in conjunction with the “Socialist Che Guevara Mission” (La Mission de Che Guevara Socialista), socialist thinking runs through the project, developing Che’s ideas of “The New Man”(and woman) and raising political consciousness among young people.
INCES provides free education in a number of practical subject to students outside of school or work who want to gain qualifications for employment. The INCES project in La Salina is currently training twelve students who after 241 hours of classes will gain a certificate allowing them access to an occupation in electricity sector. This is particularly relevant for the young people of the area as La Salina is next door to a CORPOELEC (the state-owned electricity company) thermoelectric plant.
I also had the opportunity of visiting an INCES centre of formation in La Quizanda, in the state of Valencia. The centre provides training in areas such as topography, electricity, painting and decorating, unit pricing and financial management, carpentry, construction and metal work. We were invited to observe a carpentry class by Angel Cedeño, a local activist. We also had the chance to discuss with the students about their experience and compare education in the UK and in Venezuela. One of the main things that stood out was the privatization of education in the UK in comparison to Venezuela. For example in the UK during 1980’s and 1990’s there were many more technological colleges that trained people in skilled manual labour. Now many colleges have been run down and often young people take on apprenticeships with employers. This might mean working with an employer for up to two years on low or no pay in the hope of securing a job with the employer afterwards. Predictably, many employers use the logic of capitalism to treat the apprenticeships as a source of free and cheap labour. Instead of taking on the student as an employee with a salary and contract rights, they often ditch them and take on another student for two years. The young people of INCES were shocked to hear of the situation in the UK as so often it is painted in the media as a democratic safe haven where all needs are met and we all have tea and biscuits at 3pm every day!
The La Quizanda centre is one of five in Carabobo state; there is usually one main centre of INCES in each state with many local or specialist branches which reach out into local and rural areas like La Salina. It was great to see the national centre of formation serving a range of areas and teaching over eighty students, then to see the INCES in action in a rural area like La Salina, providing education for work in local sources of employment.
Casa de Alimentation
The Casa de Alimentation (food house) in La Salina, is fundamental to many of its members in the community. It was opened in 2003 and currently supports 150 people who can visit it for a free hot meal every day. Usually its members are older people, alcoholics, drug users, ill people, single mothers or unemployed. With the support of Mercal (a socialist state subsidized food market) the state pays the workers of the Casa de Alimentation and also for the food, and for special occasions, like Christmas, also provides free bags of food. The members get involved with the cooking, cleaning and general running of the centre which helps to create a sense of communal property and dignity.
This project runs alongside the Madres de Barrio (mothers of the neighbourhood) which supports young single mothers with money to buy food, clothes, medicines and other necessities for them and their children. Approximately 100 young women are inscribed in the project, which also supports them in studying and organizes community voluntary work.
A backbone of health services to many rural communities is the Barrio Adentro project. La Salina houses a walk-in clinic which runs Monday to Friday and provides the local population with free healthcare. I had the opportunity to go door to door with Barrio Adentro in order to carryout the local census that is essential for the first phase of a national vaccination plan. On the 12 March 2010, eight female community activists began a voluntary brigade with a doctor and nurses from the clinic. They have now visited every family in the area in order to find out what vaccinations have already been received by each family member and which vaccinations they need as part of the national plan. The national plan is offering ten free vaccinations across various age groups. This has been organized by the Ministry of Popular Power for Health under the banner “vaccination is a right!”, again this is a refreshing change from the health service in the UK, although currently it is a public, thirteen years of Labour Government has seen the selling off essential sections of our health service to private companies whose only interest is making a profit.
Mission Ribas
I also had the opportunity to get involved with the local Mission Ribas which currently has twenty students enrolled in night school classes at the local school. Mission Ribas was one of the first free education missions to be initiated in Venezuela in 2003, after Mission Robinson, a literacy and numeracy program and Mission Sucre, a university entrance program.
Using a system developed in Cuba, the mission teaches English, maths, grammar, science and Venezuelan history amongst other subjects, with the aid of specially formulated DVD’s. After 2-3 years students graduate from the project with a qualification that allows them to study at university. The Mission is mainly focused in supporting people who didn’t finish school with a qualification, thus preventing them from inscribing on a university course. Mission Ribas began in La Salina in 2003 and before this Mission Robinson functioned in La Salina. Currently Mission Robinson does not function as everyone who wanted to participate has passed through the course. The Missions were introduced by Ivonne and Rafael along with other community activists and original students like Alba Taillae have passed and become facilitators of Mission Ribas or become involved in the local section of Mission Cultura in the area.
Although La Salina, and Venezuela in general, primarily has a young population, the grandparents have certainly not been forgotten. I had the privilege of spending a few hours with Haideé de Amato who helps organise the local grandparents club that meets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the support of Barrio Adentro. The club provides free and regular medical checks for the older people and includes 45 minutes of exercise. Thirteen people from La Salina attend each session and a sister session in Vista al Mar higher up the mountain overlooking the community serves another thirty-three people.
As a local weekend and vacation destination for city dwellers of Caracas and surrounds, La Salina regularly hosts crowds of Venezuelans looking to relax by the beach. Whilst this obviously supports the local economy it also contributes to pollution. As is the case in so many cities and villages in Venezuela, the problem of rubbish is huge. Often after a weekend or national holiday, the beach is littered with plastic, glass bottles and paper, something which is compounded by a lack of bins. However, recently children from the local school have been carrying out questionnaires and surveys with the aim of commencing a project to clean up the beaches and develop better rubbish bin provision. This is also helped by daily rubbish collection from the local state services and a weekly beach litter pick.
The local PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) battalion is located centrally in the village and holds meetings twice monthly. They are now gearing up for the national assembly elections in September and soon will be going house to house to start the campaign. Over 80% of the population of La Salina is inscribed in the PSUV and almost everyone supports the Chavez government and the Bolivarian revolution. As Haideé de Amato from the Grandparents club emotionally told me, “never before has a president done so much to support the poor people of Venezuela, almost everything here in the community of La Salina is new thanks to this government and our revolution, we have Barrio Adentro, a new Bolivarian school, the education Missions, the housing project, the food house. That’s why so many people here support our president; we will fight for our revolution as we can’t afford to loose all the gains we have made”
All in all my experience of living in La Salina has been a revolutionary one. The kind of community provision and process of popular power, while not perfect and with obviously many improvements that can be made, has built a community that has a future worth fighting for, a future in the Bolivarian Revolution.
Viva Chavez!
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