Communes

‘The Commune Is Nothing New Here’: The Rio Cataniapo Commune

October 22, 2024 Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Indigenous Peoples, Socialism, Venezuela

Early in the last decade a set of communities along the Cataniapo River started to organize themselves to protect the river’s ecosystem and bolster their agricultural and handicraft production. A few years later, in response to Chávez’s call to build socialist communes, 15 community councils in the area came together to form the Rio Cataniapo Commune. Today, approximately 1500 people participate in the Río Cataniapo Comune. They come from various ethnic backgrounds, but the majority identify as Indigenous and some still practice common ownership of land.

‘National Popular Consultation’: Voters Choose State-Funded Projects

April 21, 2024 Ricardo Vaz, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Elections, Participatory Democracy, Venezuela

The Venezuelan people are called to the polls on Sunday, April 21, to decide on projects that will receive government support. The so-called “National Popular Consultation” will be held in 4,500 communal circuits spanning the entire Venezuelan territory. Each circuit is centered in a commune, an assembly-driven popular power organization. All citizens 15 and above are eligible to participate. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) will oversee the election in over 15,000 voting centers but without automatic voting machines.

Sovereign, Domestic Production: Venezuela’s Che Guevara Commune

August 17, 2023 Teri Mattson, WtF is Going on in Latin America and the Caribbean. Podcast – WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean Communes, Economic Security, Sovereignty, Venezuela

Joining the conversation from Merida, Venezuela are episode guests Felipe Vanegaz and Hilmar Rodriguez of the Comuna Che Guevara and the Unión Comunera. On August 1, WTF returned to Venezuela to participate on a 13 day delegation to study the Venezuela Commune System. While on assignment, each week we will share with you a WTF episode related to Venezuela's fight against US economic warfare including ending 200 years of US foreign policy based on domination of the hemisphere, as well as, the creation of socialist means of production for food and services which are helping alleviate the effects of unilateral coercive measures (economic sanctions).

‘Where Danger Lies…’: The Communal Alternative In Venezuela

July 25, 2023 Chris Gilbert, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Capitalism, Communes, Democracy, Hugo Chavez, Socialism, Venezuela

To frame the ecological promise of Venezuela’s communal project, it is useful to consider some of its main features, and contrast them with the capital system. The communes in the country are quite varied, in part because, as expressions of grassroots political and economic democracy, they have developed along diverse lines according to their geographic and social contexts. However, one consistent and decisive feature of all Venezuela’s communes—part of both the legal framework and the on-the-ground reality—is that they involve returning control of production to direct producers, whose conscious organization of productive processes substitutes for the capital system’s rule of abstract value relations that alienate laborers both from their own activities, and from their material and social environment.

Self-Governance In Times Of Blockade: El Sur Existe Commune

March 24, 2023 Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Sanctions, US Imperialism, Venezuela

El Sur Existe [The South Exists] is an urban and periurban commune in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city. Its communards have displayed impressive flexibility and creativity in these times of imperialist blockade. They initially worked to develop an economic foundation for their commune that would respond to people’s material needs. Then they worked to strengthen a model of self-government where executive and legislative decisions have to be taken by the community, not by an isolated few. In Part I of this two-part piece for the Communal Resistance Series, El Sur Existe communards explained their commune’s history and its productive initiatives.

The Commune Is The Supreme Expression Of Participatory Democracy

September 23, 2022 Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Participatory Democracy, Venezuela

There is a confrontation of models, a clash of two paradigms not only in Venezuela and in Latin America, but also worldwide. One of the questions in the debate is: who is the historical subject? For us, that is the question of who is it that activates, who lights up the field, who pushes changes forward. And when we reflect on this issue, which means thinking about our own practice, we guide our interpretation by the proposal that developed with Comandante Chavez. Chavez developed a hypothesis after a process of maturing, after a rigorous analysis of the Venezuelan and continental realities, and after a reflection on the revolutionary potential under our feet (based also on a commitment to justice for the poor that was there from the start). His hypothesis was: The commune is the historical subject, the commune and its people, the comuneros, that is where the revolution really begins. So we made this proposal ours, we committed to it.

Venezuelan Cooperatives

July 25, 2022 Ithaca DSA, Grassroots Economic Organizing. Create! Communes, Cooperatives, Land Reform, Venezuela

Dario Azzellini tells Theresa Alt about Venezuelan cooperatives. The Chavez government supported the formation of cooperatives. Many formed; few really succeeded in operating cooperatively. Liberation theology also had been encouraging cooperatives. Other cooperatives arose when entrepreneurs and landowners left Venezuela and the workers took over. Later initiating cooperatives was given to the local-government communes. Local communes have played a more constructive role than central government. Recorded June 8, 2022.

Jump-Starting A Commune: Voices From Monte Sinaí

April 28, 2022 Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Food and Agriculture, Sanctions, Venezuela

Monte Sinaí Commune is a young organization working hard to foster communal production and strengthen non-market social relations. This commune’s territory reaches into both Anzoátegui and Miranda states, but has its epicenter in the small town of Santa Bárbara in the Guanape Valley. Various crops, including coffee, cocoa, black beans, diverse tubers, and avocado, all grow in this lush and varied region. Since the coffee trees here are old and low in yield, the commune has built a plant nursery to grow coffee seedlings to replace the old trees. The process of forming the Monte Sinaí Commune began about a year ago. Since then, we have been working very hard. As the saying goes, we are a diamond in the rough, but the beauty of the project is beginning to show. Our parliament meets every Wednesday no matter what. That is where we bring our ideas to the table, debate, and plan.

Self-Government In Times Of Blockade: Luisa Cáceres Commune

April 18, 2022 Cira Pascual Marquina and Chris Gilbert, Venezuela Analysis. Create! Communes, Sanctions, Venezuela, Waste

Eastern Venezuela is home to extensive petroleum extraction and processing operations which have their hub in the cities of Barcelona and Puerto la Cruz in Anzoátegui state. The Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi Commune, one of the most advanced communes in the country, grew up in the shadow of this multibillion-dollar business in one of Barcelona's working-class neighborhoods. This is a rapidly-growing commune – remarkable because of its success in an urban context – which focuses on recycling and waste disposal to maintain itself. In Part I of this two-part series, Luisa Caceres’ communards explain the challenges of building a commune in a country besieged by US imperialism.

Venezuela: Communard Union Holds Founding Congress, Elects Leadership

March 7, 2022 Ricardo Vaz, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Communes, Socialism, Venezuela

Caracas ‒ Venezuelan communards gathered on March 3 and 4 to officially launch a national organization. More than 450 delegates were present in El Maizal Commune, Lara State, for the founding congress of the Communard Union. The collective aims to build a network of social organizations throughout the country. The delegates, representing 48 communes and 12 other social movements, approved the organization’s political program and internal statutes, which include a political structure and mechanisms for new organizations to join. The founding documents were collated by a provisional leadership following more than three years of meetings and grassroots work.

Seducing People With The Communal Model

February 13, 2022 Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuela Analysis. Create! Chavez, Communes, Revolution, Venezuela

February 4 followed on the insurrectional footsteps of February 27 [1989, the Caracazo], a massive social explosion triggered by the absolute failure of the existing societal model. Three years later came Chávez’s military insurrection. Now, the element that was missing on the 27th was there on the 4th. Conversely, what was absent on the 4th was there on the 27th. The Caracazo mobilized the masses: tens of thousands of people went to the streets and expressed their dissent with the existing order. On the other hand, February 4th had a vanguard and a strategic objective, but the masses didn’t participate. The Bolivarian Revolution is the synthesis of those two moments: it brings vanguard and masses together.

The Communard Union, Chávez’s Ideas In Action

June 21, 2021 Cira Pascual Marquina, Venezuelanalysis. Create! Bolivarian Process, Communes, Socialism, Venezuela

Since 2019, several Venezuelan organizations that were weathering the storm of the crisis began to meet and sound each other out. In doing so, they were motivated by the need to survive in the face of the crisis, but they were also concerned with the [capitalist] restoration that was being imposed by some sectors of the government. Thus began a process of building a shared platform around a common program of struggle. The Communard Union initiative took shape when these organizations were reflecting on the commune as a strategic project. The final proposal came out of a meeting held at the Che Guevara Commune in Mérida State in December 2019, with the participation of several communes, including Luisa Cáceres de Arismendi from Anzoátegui, El Maizal from Lara-Portuguesa, 5 de Marzo from Caracas, Sectores Unidos from Lara, and Pancha Vásquez from Apure.

In Commune: The Che Guevara Commune (Part 1)

March 5, 2021 Katrina Kozarek, Venezuelanalysis. Resistance Report Cocoa, Communes, Participatory Democracy, Venezuela

Outside of Venezuela, communes are a little known aspect of the Bolivarian Revolution, yet the development of the communal state is integral to the vision of 21st century socialism laid out by former President Hugo Chavez. In this series, In Commune, Venezuelanalysis will explore different experiences of rural and urban communes to help better understand what these highly controversial bodies mean, how they have been put into practice, and what they could signify for the continuity of the Bolivarian Revolution in the current situation of political and economic imperialist aggression.

El Maizal Commune: 11 Years Building The Communal Horizon

March 11, 2020 By Katrina Kozarek, Venezuelanalysis.com Educate! Communes, Latin America, Venezuela

On March 5, 2009, in the shade of a great Samán tree on the edge of unused farm lands rescued from a large landowner near the border of Lara and Portuguesa States, the people gathered with President Chávez and vowed to organize a commune which would collectively produce on those lands. Eleven years later, the El Maizal Commune has become a national and international reference for communal organization and production.

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