Talking 'Bout A Revolution

(apologies to Tracy Chapman for appropriating that title)

I didn't know what to expect as I crept four minutes late into the forum on the Venezuelan Revolutionary Process, at the UP ISMED. Maybe insights into military strategy, an outline of basic economic principles and frameworks, and a lot of history in between.

But these were nothing to what Manuel Perez Iturbe, Charge d'Affairs of the Venezuelan Embassy had to say. After going through a detailed power point presentation on their people's long struggle against Spanish colonial and U.S. neocolonial domination to build their 'government as the peoples' tool', he kept banging his gavel on a point that all Filipinos would be better off imbibing.

“It is sacred for us that our people can work, study, and read,” he said. I was honestly bowled over by such a simple statement: it's been quite a long while since I've heard anything vaguely resembling that statement from our own government, and to hear the representative of a 'revolutionary regime' say something as plainly and honestly as that deeply impressed me, to say the least.

It was an impression that deepened as Iturde went into describing the missions that the Venezuelan government conducted in order to ensure that their people worked for and received basic social services: Barrio Adentro, which aimed to bring medicine to the barrios with the help of Cuban doctors, tried to establish a health center with basic medicine for every three barrios, and provide free services for hospitals with medical specialists.

Mission Sucre, aiming for free education to the poor, strove to provide free things and services which would have been unimaginable in our present-day commercialized educational systems: free Internet service, free lunch and dinner for kids, and projects to make a laptop available to each student (mmm...) and Infocentros, with around 200 computers, to every town. The issue of unemployment was in part alleviated by the Vuelvan Caras mission, which involves the formation of cooperatives to build employment and food self-sufficiency.

These, and many other more explanations (such as how Venezuela came to control and nationalize its oil industry, and how the Venezuelan people dealt with religious conservatives, military putschists and U.S. covert and overt interventions to unseat and kill Pres. Hugo Chavez), makes me more sure of our convictions against U.S. imperialism, and the need to forge an economic, political, and cultural system that rejects the Empire's tenets of living.

I do not wonder why Iturbe and other Venezuelans harbor such spite for people like U.S. Pres. Bush (who they 'denonce to hell' and dub as a 'financier of other Hitlers'. Strong but fitting words). Or disdain for seemingly independent (but actually US-controlled) entities such as the United Nations. “The UN should close, it's bureaucratic and doesn't work for the people. Its not important to us, its just one assembly for receptions,” he said.

Iturbe knows that their battle is not only wages on the military and economic fronts, but on the cultural arena as well. “We can not believe [what's on] the [international] TV. In the TV, you and I are the bad people because we do not have blue eyes,” he said, continually invoking Mickey Mouse as a metaphor for the insiduous workings of ideological colonization.

I find comfort in the perception that Iturbe and company know on whose behalf they are fighting for. “The Revolution is not for a new bureaucracy,” Iturde said. I won't go into lengthy descriptions of Iturbe's schematic diagrams and (translated) slogans of their revolutionary strategy: the forum drove home the fundamental point behind all the revolts. It's so basic: a government that can not provide for the needs of its people should have no mandate to exist.

For someone who lives in a country where local physicians are forced to throw away their M.D.s to work abroad as nurses, where health care cards and fertilizer are issued only as electoral campaign strategies, and where the definition of 'employment' and 'poverty' has been stretched to apalling conceptual levels, Iturbe's report moved the mountain of doubt building up in my head. I only wish more people-millions more-were able to listen to the Venezuelan representative's words, how he spoke with deepest conviction and eloquence of their struggle to make these basic changes a reality.

If that's the case, I'd rather have a Revolution over a 'Strong Republic'. I'd rather uphold the 'Power of the People' over the 'Rule of Law'. I'd rather support a war against imperialists and dictators than a 'War Against Terrorism'. Give me a Revolution anytime, over this this pathetic, odious, and damning excuse for a government in Malacañang.

The only poignant moment in Iturbe's entire presentation came during the open forum, when someone asked how many human sacrifices did Venezuela need to accomplish what they did.

Iturbe, who was consistently fiery and firm all throughout the forum, obviously was choking back on his own memories as he said he was a political prisoner along with Salvador Allende.

He just said that they made a lot of sacrifices, obviously trying to swallow a river of tears damming up his throat. He never went into the details of this answer, but, for a moment of respectful silence from the audience, it was stark and painfully obvious to every one of us in that hall how many lives were lost, how many of his friends perished, and how enormous the effort spent in order to ensure that millions of Venezuelans get to exercise their basic rights to land, jobs, and education the way they do today.