2005 Tinker Summer Research Report Camila H. Piñeiro Latin American Studies “Participatory Democracy in Venezuela”

Agricultural cooperative El Lucero Grande, established in NUDE La Hacienda Sanz, Miranda State. (Núcleos de Desarrollo Endógeno-NUDEs - are local development zones.)

I arrived in Caracas with two objectives. First, to assess the extent to which participatory democracy is taking place in Venezuela , and to assess how recent Constitutional reforms and other new laws have been implemented in practice. Also, I was hoping to determine a specific topic and case study for my MA degree thesis project.

Initially, I had planned to study the functioning of newly-formed Local Public Planning Councils (Consejos Locales de Planificación Pública- CLPP). But once there, I learned that there were only a few CLPP actually in operation because -in order to comply with the time frame established by Article 182 of the Constitution and the Law of Local Public Planning Councils- a significant number were created without the required participation of the communities. CLPP are now in a process of legitimization, but it seems that we’ll have to wait some time before a significant number of experiences are consolidated.

Construction cooperative La Matoma, contracted by GOL to repair street in barrio Nuevo Horizontes, Parroquia Sucre, Caracas.

On the other hand, several visits to “barrios” in Caracas (Nuevo Horizontes in Parroquia Sucre; Las Casitas in Parroquia La Vega) revealed myriad spaces for local participation, such as land, water, health and sports committees -spread all over Caracas and other states- where the community has the opportunity to evaluate their situation on a specific issue, then decide solutions and demand action from the appropriate governmental institutions. At a meeting on community participation organized by the Intergovernmental Fund for Decentralization (Fondo Intergubernamental para la Descentralización- FIDES) I learned about the Local Works Cabinet (Gabinetes de Obras Locales- GOLs) promoted by the Public Works Division (Dirección de Obras) of the municipality Libertador, Caracas’ main municipality . GOLs are spaces where neighbors organize themselves in working tables to decide which public works on infrastructure should be done, and supervise them. But what struck me the most was that the community could also decide which cooperatives in the neighborhood would carry out the work. In 2004, 50 percent of all the projects in the municipality were carried out by 170 cooperatives, amounting to almost $1 million (2 billion Bs) [Marta Harnecker: La Experiencia del Presupuesto Participativo de Caracas, December 2004].

To my surprise, I found that it wasn’t only this public institution that was opening spaces for small enterprises, and especially, cooperatives. CADELA, one of the five regional branches of the state-owned national electricity company, CADAFE, encouraged their maintenance and security subcontracted workers to leave their private business and form their own cooperatives. CADELA, an enterprise under co-management, has been very supportive of cooperatives- 575 cooperatives have been contracted for more than $3.2 million (7 billion Bs) in 2004 and almost $3 million (6 billion Bs) from January to June 2005 [CADELA: Informe NO. 21040-0000-26, July 2005]. Similarly, most of the stations of Caracas ’ state-owned rapid transportation system are maintained by cooperatives created by employees of former private businesses. Even the International Youth Festival that took place in Caracas this August was a space for cooperatives- Caracas’ municipality contracted 45 food elaboration cooperatives and 3 transportation cooperatives to feed and move around more than 20,000 participants for a week [Rosangel Sánchez: statements by the director of the Logistics Commission, August 2005].

So I decided to focus my fieldwork on cooperatives. I designed a survey with questions regarding their internal organization, commitment to technical formation and education on cooperative values, connection to their community, relationship to credits, plans for growth, relations with state institutions, level of integration, and foresights of their future, among other topics. I interviewed 25 cooperatives, mostly services (14: food processing-4; cleaning- 3; turism-2; technical-2; security-1; transport-1; social services-1), production (7: confections-2; food-2; agriculture-2; media-1), construction (2) and mixed (2); mostly from Caracas , but also 4 from the Miranda state and 2 from Mérida state.

Tourism cooperative Ruta Bolivaria brings public school children to an art museum in Caracas.

I found cooperatives everywhere. This proliferation originates from their presence throughout the Constitution and other laws as new economic actors within the social economy, and one which should be supported by the state. In March 2004, the Misión Vuelvan Caras was created to prepare and help marginalized Venezuelans -mostly recent graduates from other educational missions- to participate in the economy, preferable in the form of cooperatives. Since August 2004 -after the Chavez government won the referendum and took a break from the opposition- cooperatives have gained more momentum because they have been referred as the vanguard of the endogenous development model, on which the government would concentrate its efforts. A Ministry of Popular Economy (Ministerio de Economía Popular-MINEP) was created in September 2004 to support and institutionalize Vuelvan Caras, provide infrastructure and credits for cooperatives, among other functions related to the new economic model. I interviewed Juan Carlos Jimenez, director of the minister’s office; Ali Peña, director of Public Policies Control and Evaluation; and José Marcelino Salcedo, director of Asistence and Comercialization; to learn about MINEP’s work, their difficulties and their future plans to ensure cooperatives’ success. I learned that MINEP graduated 195,000 students from Vuelvan Caras between December, 2004 and May, 2005; most of them organized in 6,714 cooperatives, some of which are integrated in more than 100 development zones (Núcleos de Desarrollo Endógeno-NUDEs).

In interviews with Carlos Molina, the superintendent of the National Superintendence of Cooperatives (Superintendencia Nacional de Cooperativas-SUNACOOP), Juana Morgado (fiscal in the Dirección de Gestión Cooperativa) and Shelly Chacon (director of the Dirección de Consultoría Jurídica), I learned about their concerns with the functioning of the cooperatives, the changes they have been doing to improve their services and supervision of cooperatives, and future plans for the integration and consolidation of the cooperative movement in Venezuela. I also interviewed Oscar Bastidas, cooperativist and professor; Edgar de la Vega, community leader of barrio Las Casitas; Edgar Rivas, director of the Community Participation Division at FIDES; Henry Navas, director of Popular Economy at the government of the estate of Mérida; Rubén Linares, leader of the new union Workers National Union (Union Nacional de Trabajadores- UNT) and others.

In short, I noted the central role that cooperatives are playing in public policies in Venezuela today and the potential for a cooperative movement that guides a more social and participatory economy. Thus, I’ve decided to go back to Venezuela this winter break to follow-up with some of the cooperatives I’ve interviewed, identify more cooperatives, and evaluate the status of the cooperative movement. My goal is to obtain evidence that will indicate to what extent cooperatives are desirable economic and social actors in an alternative economic model.

Shoe manufacturing cooperative Venezuela Avanza, established in NUDE Fabricio Ojeda, Caracas.