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Millions of dirt poor people, many with no TV, all with no computers, turned South American history around, in Venezuela in 2002. Bear in mind that Venezuelan news media are even worse than here, if you can imagine--totally dominated by foaming-at-the-mouth corporate-controlled wingers. In 2002, the fascist elite in collusion with the Bushites attempted a violent military coup, to topple the leftist (majorityist) government of Hugo Chavez. They used the news media as one pillar of their coup (particularly RCTV). They kidnapped Chavez, and suspended the Constitution, the National Assembly (congress) and the court system. RCTV and others broadcast disinformation for the coup--for instance, that Chavez had resigned (he had not), and put the coup leaders on TV as if it was a fait accompli ('here's your new "government," kiss your Constitution goodbye'). Tens of thousands of mostly poor people nevertheless poured into the streets and surrounded Miraflores Palace (the seat of government) and demanded, a) restoration of constitutional government (--they are passionately attached to their Constitution in Venezuela; the people wrote it and passed it; they've all read it), and b) return of their kidnapped president. The democratic elements in the military were heartened by this enormous protest, and blockaded some the plotters' moves. The huge crowd of protesters would not disperse; the coup plotters skulked out of the palace in fear for their lives, and order was restored (the VP, who had gone into hiding, returned to the palace, and he and the cabinet took over, until the pro-democracy military brought Chavez back to the palace by helicopter).*
What is so interesting in this--and in other developments in South America--is that the majority of people (the poor) have little access to TV and no access to computers--certainly no cell phones, or often not even telephones. Further, what they heard from TV or radio sources they DID NOT BELIEVE. They had become immune to the propaganda. They knew it was lies. But how did they communicate? How did they organize this immense and peaceful protest? Surely they would cower in their hovels; the coup could pick off the few who came out into the streets to protest, and then the fascist plotters could shut down all dissent (as they clearly intended) the hard way (dropping leftists out of airplanes; chainsawing them and dumping their body parts into mass graves--as has been happening in Colombia; 'disappearing' anyone who dared to speak out).
SOMEHOW huge numbers of people--the least powerful people in the society--spread the word that Chavez had not resigned and that they ALL needed to come out--there is strength in numbers--to defeat the coup. No doubt many were simply brave hearts, and would have protested, enormous crowd or not. But how did so many people make that decision? How did so many people become convinced that the coup could be defeated by sheer numbers?
The movie "V" comes to mind. Some kind of super-consciousness occurred. Individuals began thinking as one. And they all came out of their houses, and they stopped the coup in its tracks.
South American history was changed forever. This had never happened before in modern history. You have to go back to the revolutionary early 1800s and Simon Bolivar--and also the slave revolt in Haiti--for anything comparable. In modern times, the fascists backed by the U.S. and its predatory corporations have always won. The "banana republic" dictators seize power and the people get smashed. The Venezuelans reversed this trend, definitively, with reverberations throughout the continent and in Central America as well.
Country after country in South America have elected leftist governments--Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile. Paraguay is next, and then Peru. In Central America, Nicaragua just elected a leftist government. And Mexico came within a hairsbreadth--0.05%--of doing so last year, and Guatemala will likely do so this year. The Bolivarian block--Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina--have had a powerful influence on ideas as well as on positive planning and actions. The two broad Bolivarian goals are social justice and Latin American self-determination. Venezuela is the most advanced as to social justice, and it is also the leader of projects like the Bank of the South (to push the World Bank/IMF--corporate loan sharks--out of the region), and regional trade groups (to counter U.S. corporate predator "free trade").
In Bolivia--where a huge revolt against U.S. corporations and social injustice has taken place--when one of the leaders of this movement, Evo Morales, was elected president--the first 100% indigenous president of Bolivia (and I believe the first in South America)--ten thousand Andes indians came down out of the mountains for a special religious ceremony to invest him as their leader, prior to his official inauguration.
Something deeply spiritual and profoundly moving is happening in South America. And it bypasses all the deadend fascist/corporate media. It doesn't so much oppose corporate monoculture and fascist oppression as it flows around it and under it, and over it, as a river flows around a rock. We see only the surface water, but beneath every visible river, there is another river, deep in the ground, called the "groundwater," flowing under and alongside the surface water, deep in the crevices of the earth. So the river flows beneath a rock (eventually moving it) as well as over and around it. And it is that deep-flowing river that is the best metaphor for the Bolivarian Revolution. It is visible on the surface in stunning reforms in Venezuela, for instance--a government that is using its oil profits to help the poor, to build schools and medical clinics in areas never before served by government; to provide universal health care, free university educations, assistance in returning to school, a fabulously successful adult literacy program; grants and loans to small business and worker co-ops; land reform; low cost housing for the poor (especially in the shantytowns of Caracas, which regularly slide off the hills in heavy rains); support for indigenous Venezuelan arts (as well as for their famous classical music school for the poor), and on and on. That is the surface. Beneath the surface, an amazing and historic change has occurred in the ability of the vast majority of people to imagine something far, far better than has ever gone before: a truly just society.
I could name a lot of things that have contributed to this peaceful revolution--for instance, decades of hard work on transparent elections, by the OAS, the Carter Center, EU election monitoring groups, and local civic groups and individual activists, and the steadfastness and persistence of indigenous tribes, on environmental and other issues, despite overwhelming, brutal oppression.
But I still come back to the river, flowing around, over and under the rock. The collectivity of the molecules of water, eroding and eventually moving the rock, by mostly ignoring it and moving on.
That is what is happening. Social justice, democracy and self-determination are what almost everybody wants. They are the overwhelming trend of history. They can only be suppressed for so long, and then the rock (fascism) is INEVITABLY eroded and forced into the flow. And this is something that happens within people and among people, in our collective dream of the society we all want to live in.
And if it can happen there--after all that South Americans have suffered--it can happen here, too.
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*(Must see: The Irish filmmakers' documentary on the Venezuelan coup attempt, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," available at www.axisoflogic.com. They were inside Miraflores Palace, just visiting, when the coup attempt occurred, and caught it all on film. An amazing documentary. A good source on the Bolivarian Revolution: www.venezuelanalysis.com.)
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